
Next Level Human
As humans we have a job to do. In fact, we have four jobs: to earn and manage money, to attain and maintain health and fitness, to build and sustain personal relationships and to find meaning and make a difference. Your host, Dr. Jade Teta, is an integrative physician, entrepreneur and author in metabolism and personal development.
Next Level Human
Personal Healthcare: Functional Medicine and Coaching with Vince Pitstick- Ep. 282
Vince Pitstick, a functional health coach, shares his journey and the development of his 4F method for holistic healing. He emphasizes the importance of a systems approach and the role of health coaches in guiding individuals towards optimal health. The 4F method focuses on flushing toxins, feeding the body with proper nutrition, fasting to promote healing, and optimizing the function of various body systems. Pitstick challenges the traditional model of Western medicine and highlights the need for a more comprehensive and personalized approach to healthcare. Vince Pitstick discusses the limitations of traditional medicine and the importance of results-driven practices. He emphasizes the need for a shift towards functional health services and health coaching. Vince explains that protocols alone are not effective and that a personalized approach with biofeedback tracking and regular adjustments is necessary for success. He highlights the role of coaches in providing support and guidance to individuals on their health journey. Vince also discusses the importance of addressing root causes and the order of operations in healing, including the optimization of hormones. He shares the success of his own coaching program and the impact it has had on clients.
keywords
Vince Pitstick, functional health coach, 4F method, holistic healing, systems approach, health coaches, flushing toxins, feeding the body, fasting, optimizing function, Western medicine, personalized healthcare, traditional medicine, functional health services, health coaching, results-driven, protocols, personalized approach, biofeedback tracking, adjustments, coaches, root causes, order of operations, hormones, success
Chapters
00:00- Introduction and Background
08:11- The Journey to Health Coaching
13:33- The Limitations of Western Medicine
18:46- The Power of Coaching in Healthcare
24:04- Creating a New Approach to Healthcare
30:50- The Limitations of Traditional Medicine
35:31- The Importance of Personalized Approaches and Regular Adjustments
39:00- The Role of Coaches in Providing Support and Guidance
45:40- Addressing Root Causes and Following the Correct Order of Operations in Healing
53:37- The Impact of Optimizing Hormones on Health and Well-being
Connect With Vince & Vidal Coaching
- Vidal Coaching
- Vince Instagram
Looking for a Next Level Human Coach? Get on the waitlist and get access to the brand-new science of quantum metabolism and identity restructuring with Dr Jade and the team.
http://nextlevelhuman.com/human-coaching
Want to become a Next Level Human Coach? Get on the waitlist. Go to: http://www.nextlevelhuman.com/human-coach
Connect with Next Level Human
Website: www.nextlevelhuman.com
support@nextlevelhuman.com
Connect with Dr. Jade Teta
Website: www.jadeteta.com
Instagram: @jadeteta
Welcome to the show, everybody. This is the Next Level Human podcast. I am your host, Dr Jay Tita. Today I have Vince Pitstick with me, who actually is a guy who is very much like myself. We were just talking before he came on. We're meeting each other for the first time and both of us have kind of gnashed our teeth in this world of functional medicine, specifically endocrinology around specifically women and men, TRT, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, all that kind of stuff, and Vince is going to talk a little bit about this. But Vince also trains professionals, as do I, and so we have a lot of overlap, me and you, Vince. This is going to be fun.
Speaker 1:My boy, Chase Tuning, who's also a friend of yours, put us together First time we're meeting. But I'm excited to have this conversation with you, partly because I really like to hang out with other practitioners, talk about the things that are working for us both, talk about the things that maybe don't and talk about the things that maybe you're doing, that I'm not, that I can learn from, and vice versa. So why don't you just kind of kick us off with telling us a little bit about your story? I know you do a lot, I know you're in the clinic world. You have a health coaching institute and university and do a lot with practitioners and individuals. So how'd you get into this work, man?
Speaker 2:Well, first, if people stay tuned, you're going to hear some things about metabolism and health that I promise you you've probably never heard before. So I would stay tuned because, uh, some of the things that we've discovered over 18 years, over my 55,000 case studies, um, bring some points very clear about metabolism, what's happening to the average female, uh, and what's happening to the general population that is not being recognized in the research, and those are things that my specific world is, the people that are unresearched. It's that if you are someone that is overstressed and underfed, this would be the podcast for you to listen to today. And that is 50% of women population, but also happens to men, believe it or not. And then you know they're not the ones in the research because, guess what, they don't have time. They're listening to this while they're going on to their next thing, they're in transit to the next thing they're about to do because they're busy, right, they're not going to take the $50 a day to get studied, so anyway.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I'm a functional health coach, vince Pitsdick, and I'm a really sick kid, seven years old, was a dropout of the current medical system. Tried to fill me full of drugs at a very early age Was dealing with rare health issues, couldn't find the solution inside conventional medicine, traveled the United States learning about the whole holistic world and there's a lot of randomness out there and there's lot of good stuff, uh, good and bad, just like anything, um. And so I had a very, very early um understanding of what it was like to be misunderstood or to be underrepresented, um, and to be bounced around a lot with no answers, um, and fall through the cracks, and, and so today more than ever, that's on display in the Western medical system Everyone's falling through the cracks if you have a chronic issue, because chronic lifestyle health issues, which represents about 90% of illness in today's society, does not get solved in a conventional practice because of the way that they're set up to solve problems. And so I decided to get my foot in the world. I dropped out of a finance degree. I'm like what am I doing with my life? I just want to help people, and the fastest way I could do that was start was as a personal trainer and started in personal training, got really popular with um, uh, reality TV stars and a few other things, and and uh.
Speaker 2:But then I didn't. Really that wasn't my passion. It was working with real people. And when I started working with real people, I started seeing real problems and I realized very early that, whatever your title is personal trainer, nutritionist, nd, md, rd, you know any of them is that you are a trusted guide. That is your primary responsibility, so that when someone comes to you, your job is to try to guide them to the solution, even if you don't have all the answers.
Speaker 2:And so really early on and this is during the personal training boom you know about 18, 18 years ago people were coming to me for everything. You know, I, um and I my only modality at the time was working out. So every answer involved you working out to the part of the solution. And I realized, uh, that was very short sighted because I knew what healing required. It required multiple modalities happening at one time. You know, for me, mind, body and spirit need to be in alignment for healing to occur. And when you're only working on one of those paths or you're only working on one part of the body, it's very hard to heal something that's chronic, meaning past six months, because it's leaked itself into other systems of the body. So I set on a mission that I wanted to create a place one day I didn't know how I was going to do it where people could virtually or in person come in and someone could tie a whole, coordinate all the things they would need. As a health advisor which later became a health coach because it didn't exist at the time became your health advisor that coached you through it and walked you through all the different things you would need to do to liberate you to freedom from everything, from whatever's holding you back. And so I developed a very large system.
Speaker 2:And then I got poached by a global health organization called Metagenics. You may be familiar with them, and they are. They function as a green pharmaceutical company. What does that mean? It means that they have a research facility in Gig Harbor, washington, where they do research on functional medicine and different herbs and different things. Then they disseminate that through their uh, their medical relationships, through seminars across the world, and then they have reps that go out and teach it. And then and then they, those reps, become functional consultants how to build cash pay services, how to get health services into your business that aren't just pills or procedures, how to create longevity in your patient base. You know all these different things. So I became an expert in all these different areas.
Speaker 2:I got to train under an amazing Einstein of our time, dr Jeffrey Bland. I am definitely a Blandite. He was the founder of IFM and he's got a book out called the Disease Delusion. He's probably a little too smart for his own good, so some of it's a little hard read, but it's the truth and it's amazing. It's an amazing book if you have time. And so I learned this whole world of functional medicine Didn't know it existed. I paired that with my bodybuilding experience, my fat loss experience and all the other tools that I had picked up along the way in nutrition and in supplementation.
Speaker 2:You know, when I got my start just to give people context fish oil and vitamin D were seen weird. It was like you're recommending a fish oil and vitamin D, right? And now today everyone's like, yeah, it's common sense. You know, well, I believe that the things that we're going to talk about today are going to be a common sense in a decade from now. And we're just ahead. Just like when we go back to the first nurse we talk about.
Speaker 2:You know, florence Nightingale. She had this crazy idea of cleaning wounds, nutrition and bed care and the human element of healing, nutrition and bed care and the human element of healing and creating a system around that. And the first nurse is almost like your in-house modern coach, and it was the human element of healing and it was the greatest technology ever created in medicine by far. I mean you can argue it's penicillin. I don't think so. Everything's delivered by a nurse in the United States and the world today, and I believe that coaching, health coaching, outbound health services are the nursing of the world today, and I believe that coaching, health coaching, outbound health services are the nursing of the next century. I believe everything that you have will be delivered by a coach, and so everything that I do is training practitioners if they want to use these services, or training them how to use coaches in their practice, so that they can get next level and create incredible outcomes.
Speaker 2:So I created a method after working behind these doctors. I worked with a thousand doctors. I saw how all different doctors solved a problem. I took all the best tools and I created a system out of it that you can do virtually with anybody from home. It's called the 4F system. It's been trademarked and used for many years now, and then we teach it at our university to NPs, nds, but a lot of entrepreneurial coaches too that can do it, and that's what I did.
Speaker 2:I opened up my first practice. I jumped out of Metagenics. I opened up my first coaching practice, called Nutrition Dynamic, in the back of a chiropractic office in Waynesville, ohio, with only four people, 11 years, almost to the day. And then Vital Coaching, which is what it's called today, is now one of the largest one-on-one functional health coaching companies in the United States, and then we launched a whole network off of that that's dedicated to changing the way that fitness and medical services are delivered in the United States, because it's the way that we solve problems and deliver services that is exactly opposed to healing, which is why Western medicine will never solve the common man's problem. And so that's where I'm at today.
Speaker 1:That's where you get to today. Yeah, I love your story, Vince. I love your story and actually you and I have a lot in common. 2004 is when I graduated from Bastyr University, which is, you know, right there near Gig Harbor.
Speaker 2:I actually just spoke at the event.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, cool yeah yeah, yeah, and you know Jeff Bland now is PLMI, so I just actually spoke at his event in this past I guess what was it? April, march? So I was a speaker for PLMI with Jeff. So we have a lot in common and we both have been certifying professionals, sort of in this space and this is going to be a really interesting conversation. I guess let's. And, by the way, that's vital coaching with a D right. So it's V-I-D-A-L.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, V-I-D-A-L. Yeah, Like Latin for life.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yep, yeah. So we you and I have a lot of overlapping stuff. I am curious to learn now what is the method Like? So what did you? You know you did all this work. You had this really interesting sort of background, came from finance, you know, obviously a fit guy did all you know, went through your own health challenges. You know kind of gnashed your teeth in metagenics. It is an interesting place to be right Because, just for the listener to know, when you're working for one of these companies, like a metagenics or a Thorne or something like that, and you're a rep, you're working with doctors all day long and you're talking to them about their protocols and helping them solve problems.
Speaker 1:So you really are sort of right there with doctors, but you see a bunch of them. So you know, I'm sure that gave you a really interesting sort of perspective. And then you sort of went on your own and you know are building out, you know, this new organization, vital Coaching. So walk us through how you, you know how you see this. What is going on? Why are so many people unhealthy? What is the solution? That you, after doing all this sort of research and watching and observing and all your stuff that you're seeing that you, after doing all this sort of research and watching and observing and all your stuff, that you're seeing that you're able to solve.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let's do this first. I think the most important thing for people to understand is there is no one bad guy. I know we want to simplify it and say it's carbohydrates, birth control, antibiotics, toxicity in our environment, toxic thoughts, EMF. I mean we can sit here and scare ourselves a million ways from Sunday. I'm the enemy. The general issue is total load and we come up with this concept in toxicity when we think about total load effect.
Speaker 2:There's three main stress pathways of the body emotional, chemical and physical. And if the body starts to get overwhelmed in two of those pathways at once, I think all of us have met the smoker that had no problems until 80 years old. They go through a divorce, they get cancer and die. I think we've all meet. Let me go. Covid is a perfect example. Covid scared a lot of the people in fitness because it was like oh, John in Washington and like all John did was run seven days a week and was an ultra marathoner and trained all the time, and then he got COVID and died. Right, it's like well, what happened? Well, John was spending all of his stress coins in physical stress and then he got another on top of that. Right, he got.
Speaker 2:When you come in with a viral and it created another functional component and it shut the system down right. We all meet people that it's at the intersection usually of those, one of those two coming together and then all of a sudden creates disease and it builds up over time. I don't wanna name one bad guy because I think it gets us over-focused on one thing when we really need to be looking at the total concept and generally making improvements as we go in every area to the best of our ability, and that will continue to lower your net percent chance of ending up with a chronic disease, which, by the way, everyone should know right now. According to every national and global organization I don't care if it's NATO, NIH, you name any letter alphabet soup that you want seven out of 10 people in the world will have a chronic health issue by 2030. I don't know if you want to check the time, but that's less than six years, and so the problem is it's coming for us, it's coming for us all. It's coming fast.
Speaker 2:It is the pandemic of our time. Everyone's asleep at the wheel because everyone's profiting from it, so no one wants to talk about the real elephant in the room, yet the news will talk about three people that got Ebola in Massachusetts, but yet the thing that's got seven out of 10 of us almost right now, no one's talking about. So I realized that no one's going to do anything about it because everyone's making money off of it and if it's not a grassroots demand of something different and people coming together, nothing's going to be different. Period end up, and I'm not. I'm I'm that kind of guy that cannot sit back and not do anything. And so the two things that I figured out that I think make me starchly different was that I figured out that, if you take, for example, anyone can understand weight loss. Right, what do we do in weight loss? We create a system. So if you go to bodybuilding, one of the greatest weight loss systems you could talk about, or aesthetic systems we could talk about, is bodybuilding. What does bodybuilding do? It sets up a structure, Okay, and then that structure is, is coordinated, and then it is coached, and then progress is is tracked daily, and and then adjustments are slightly made to make the person as comfortable as possible, but also push them forward and continue to watch these biomarkers and these biofeedbacks to successfully get them to the goal. So that is a technology that is not just random bro stuff. That is a technology for how you succeed in a complex system like the body where multiple variables are changing all the time behind. And he's he nailed it talking about uh.
Speaker 2:As a consultant I was behind a lot of the doctors because of my experience coming in in weight loss. Everybody wanted to know like my answers, because I came in as a successful practitioner outside of being a rep. It was a little different people that are born into being a rep and they didn't create any success outside of that. Practitioners may look at them differently, but when you've had success outside of it and then you become a rep, they really look at you and I mean a lot of my doctors to get to know them. I would sit in on their case studies in the background for a day at one office, if it was big enough, this office. For a day at one office, if it was big enough, this office.
Speaker 2:And what I realized is that because of specialization in Western medicine you can never actually truly fully solve a problem and make someone well. So, for example, if you go to a chiropractor, every solution is going to involve adjustment. If you go to a hormone specialist, almost every solution that you're going to find is going to involve a hormone. If I go to an NP who's cardiovascular, let's say MD who's cardiovascular focused and every answer almost involves Lipitor or something of the sort, more than six months it is no longer in the one system that you're focused on. So Western medicine is systems medicine. It means everyone plays nice and everything's subdivided into 11 systems. So you stay in your area, I'll stay in my area, We'll just work our clients in our specific system and all will be well. And that's really nice for billing and it's really nice for logical organization of an industry.
Speaker 2:But it is fundamentally opposed to how people heal. Because after six months, even if you have a joint issue like if I have tennis elbow and I get it for a short period of time and then it comes back and then it comes back again and I can't get rid of it the problem isn't just in my elbow, it's in my immune system, Because the inflammation that has been in my joint so long is now hanging out because the immune activity is high in the joint. So I'm not just dealing with the musculoskeletal issue anymore, I'm dealing with an immunological, pro-inflammatory issue and a structural issue. Does that make sense? So, like, all of a sudden, more systems become involved in the problem. And so if someone really wants an answer, if someone's listening to this and they're struggling with something and they've gone to a 17 million people, it's probably because they only are working one modality at a time and you cannot do that. You have to work multiple things at once.
Speaker 2:And in bodybuilding, ironically, when you think about it, you get supplements, you get your diet, you get your workouts. Maybe they're great about mindset, right, they're working multiple modalities. So what I did was is I took the framework of bodybuilding that creates exceptional outcomes in aesthetic performance. I took functional medicine, science, and then I just changed the problem that you were trying to solve in the framework. So instead of a hey, I want to be 10% body fat, it's hey, I want to reverse diabetes. Hey, I want to get pregnant. Hey, I want to get rid of this autoimmune disorder, I want to get rid of my IBS. And so if you took functional medicine, science, and then you systematize the deductive process right inside of a bodybuilding framework, meaning that we control your training, control your mindset, we control your nutrition, we control your daily process, you know, and then we walk you through it by holding your hand every step, and then we're being very meticulous about tracking your biofeedback to find problems that are occurring that other people who aren't paying attention would not find, and then run labs as we're doing it. You create incredible, unattainable otherwise outcomes. So coaching as a technology will outdo the best specialized practitioner in any field, Unless you're dealing with children's heart surgery or cancer issues. You might want to be specialized for that, but know, but if you take an endocrinologist, that's an average endocrinologist and you put a health coach behind them and now the person's getting coaching while they're doing the endocrinology, guess what 10 times the outcome, right, I, I so. So that's the first thing.
Speaker 2:The second thing that I learned was there's 11 systems to the body and that as I looked at thousands of cases I probably reviewed over 70,000 cases in my five years that I was at Metagenics. One of the things that I learned was, once somebody gets systemically inflamed, is that the 11 systems all get off disproportionately, Like maybe my GI systems, you know, not working at 20% of its capacity, and then maybe my liver is 10% off and maybe my thyroid is 20% of the problem, and then maybe my whatever, whatever it is right, Whatever that imbalance is. I learned that there is a, there is a code that if you turn on certain systems first, the other systems will start to turn back online. It's like spinning plates. The body is an ecosystem, right? It's not a machine where you can work on one thing and just fix the wiring here and the machine will work. It is a diverse ecosystem.
Speaker 2:That, just like if I was going to put a lawn together in my backyard and, let's say, I go to the neighbor and the neighbor's like oh, because he has an amazing lawn, and I'm like what seed did you use? And then I bring the seed back and I dump it all over my lawn, but I don't water it correctly, I don't irrigate it correctly and I don't do it at the right time of the year. I end up with the same shitty lawn, Right, oh? So then I go back to the neighbor and I go okay, how much water did you use? So now I go back and I just dump all the water, but then I didn't relay the seed, I didn't do things in the right order and I didn't include everything that needed to be there for the ecosystem to thrive. Right, I'm still going to end up with the same shitty lawn, and so this is why a lot of people feel disenfranchised, because when they go to a doctor, they think they're going to solve the problem, when really a standard Western medicine doctor is fundamentally opposed in their problem solving skills and how you solve problems. That's the issue.
Speaker 2:So what we did is we created a system called the 4F method. The 4F method begins with certain. When you come in, I don't even have to know what your problem is. I don't, I have to. I just have to know how systems, the systems of the body, work and how to turn them back on in order. And if I work a system in order. Now, we love labs and all those things, but we took 7,000 people. We ran the 4F process, turning on certain systems first, so, for example, the endocrine lymphatic right, and then, in opening the liver, we start there, Then we move on to the gastrointestinal system, Then we move on to a couple of the other systems.
Speaker 2:I don't want to bore everybody with everything because they'll forget everything I said, but there's there's a there's an order of operations that if I turn the light switches on, like my, if my power goes out and I'm and I'm turning switches back on on my generator or my you know, my switch outlet that everything else will turn back on and start to work again. And so when I realized that I just took all the things that doctors were doing because I had this 50,000 foot view I took all the best stuff of the different systems, things that I could do virtually or in person, put them in an order and then started executing on that method. And that's when I quit and said you guys will not. You know most doctors. They're committed to certainty. They're not willing to invest in coaching. They're not willing to stop doing the main thing that, whatever their shtick is, it's like I do pellet hormones, I do X, I do Y. It's my moneymaker, I'm not going to stop doing it. Well, the problem is you have a 90 degree solution of a 360 degree problem and you're okay with it because it's how you financially make your money and that's fine. But I don't want to do this anymore, Right?
Speaker 2:So I quit, metagenics, opened up my own thing and I was going to show everybody you can have a practice that leads with health coaching and make millions of dollars. And that's exactly what I did. I have practitioners, I have doctors. You can see one of the doctors at our clinic anytime. You can see one of the nurses at our clinic anytime. But you don't need to.
Speaker 2:The coaches handle everything for you, because that's what you need. You need to be coached to the win. You don't need to be medicated or procedured to the wind and um, and that's what changed everything for me. Um and uh, you know. So that's that's kind of how I approach complex systems like the human body through the four F method and um, it's flush feed fast in function and we're working different systems in every F and you progress through the Fs, being coached, and then if you need a prescription or you need a drug or we need something that requires something outside the scope of the practice of the coach, you can just see the medical team for free on staff, and that's how I developed the system. So I have my own integrated healthcare system now and I told the rest of the world to take a hike because we don't need you Western medicine. In fact, you're the problem number one that coaches are really in a better position to do the primary care that a lot of doctors are doing.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you're saying that because a lot of these practitioners, from your point of view, are too specialized to be able to take a holistic sort of approach. So that sounds like the first thing you're saying, and the other thing it sounds like you're saying is that there's a systems approach that you use that is essentially a stepwise process that you bring individuals through, that you notice, through your education, that you should start with. So, again, I think people can raise their eyebrows at this. So I want to hear, you know, I know I'm imagining what some of the listeners might be saying. Right, they might be saying to themselves well, how, what? Who are these coaches? What is their background?
Speaker 1:You know what happens if someone you know has a condition that needs to be diagnosed. You know, like you know, is this do they go see a doctor first, Then they come see the coach, and then, you know, some people might raise their eyebrows at this process too and say, okay, well, this is what makes this different from just anyone else who's doing, you know, a cookbook protocol Like what is the? What is the? What is the differences there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you asked some really great questions. I love these and I'm very open to hard questions because because it is it is a hard thing to wrap your mind around when you're used to going in seeing a licensed professional right off the bat that says here's your diagnosis, now let me prescribe a therapy and see if it works. So when you go to a normal doctor, what happens is that you go in and then they're going to look for evidence that would suggest a diagnosis, because it's the diagnosis. Then, according to the codes and the diagnosis codes that allows them insurance reasons to go ahead and provide a prescription or procedure and they have to operate within that framework called a standard of care. That makes them very limited. So you think you're getting a lot of options, but you're typically not. You're going to get the run ofof-the-mill option that is taught to them probably 25 years ago. They probably didn't get any continuing ed on it. There are forward thinkers, there are great doctors out there. Let me say that there are a lot of great people out there, but the majority of Western healthcare is what I'm describing and I find it to be the problem. That's why we have more doctors, more prescriptions, more medical centers and yet we're getting sicker in almost every health category in human history faster than ever. So it's clearly not solving the problem right. And so what we're saying is right is something a little bit different. So again, you could go. If anyone's ever gone to a doctor and they go I think it's Crohn's. Let me prescribe this. All right, we'll give it a trial. That didn't work, come back. We'll try something else. That's called inductive reasoning. So if you ever want to read a book that'll change your life on how you problem solve, read the book. It's called the Problem of Induction. If you can bore through it, cause holy cow. It's boring, but the information that it has is absolutely incredible. And instead you want to go to a practitioner or of any kind that says all right, mrs Jones, you have symptom X, y and Z. Here are all the different variables that could be involved in why you have X, y and Z. Like, let's say, you've got a headache, you go to a doctor, you got a headache, they're going to prescribe a headache medication and then they're going to see if that works and then come back and see me. And if that doesn't work, we'll try something else. That's called inductive reasoning.
Speaker 2:Deductive reasoning is like okay, mrs Jones, you've got a headache. Well, here's the simplest things that it could be First, simplest things that it could be. First, hydration status electrolytes could be, iron could be, your hormones could be we need to open up your liver, so it could be any one of these things. So what I'm going to do is to create a high level of success. That's why our programs have over 95% success rate is I'm going to work a process that deductively eliminates all of those variables and work towards the symptom and then the outcomes become 10 times greater. So it's a deductive process where you put theoretically multiple steps together and then test the solution. That's deductive reasoning.
Speaker 2:And so, through that framework, when you go to a coach, right, the coach is going to provide nutritional and again, we still have our medical team that will see people all the time if they've got a lot of problems. But most of my coaches are already dietitians. You know some of them are RNs, some of them have experience, in case we need to send them for something more immediate. But most of the processes that people can run do not require a prescription. So if they don't require a prescription and they don't require a procedure that you need to prescribe, then why does everything have to go through a physician? So our coaches are internally certified and then they're supervised by our medical teams and if anything needs to be upregulated, they are. But most of the things that you're going to do, that you can change, whether it's supplementally, nutritionally, in your lifestyle, in your movement, all of that can be done right, um, without much harm. And and that's why our work, they're trained.
Speaker 2:And, again, depending on what issues you have going on, we run different labs, of course, gi maps, everything from genetics tests we love genetics coaching I think it's the future when more detail comes through but we create a strategy. So once your intake's in our team looks at it, then your coach just executes it right. But a lot of our coaches are so good and have seen it so much they don't even need any really oversight, even though they have it. Because, again, coaches don't need to know every disease and everything in the world. You don't? I know that that sounds foreign, it's like no, I have to know exactly what it is and get a diagnosis to fix it.
Speaker 2:Most of the great practitioners in the world are not healing that way. They're dealing with all the fundamental root issues. All the root issues don't require a prescription. That's why it's called root cause medicine, right? And so that's why we take, when you take a root cause approach, the likelihood of a causing any harm. First off, we make sure we're trained enough that you're not going to run into those problems, so we're not going to give you any contraindications. We're not going to give a licorice to a high blood pressure patient, right, things like that, but a lot of those things. Our method that is prescripted has already taken all of this into account to make sure that there's no chance for contraindication. And then we walk you through the four steps. And again, the reason that we're different is because we're the largest and, at scale, our success rate is so high and you can see our results.
Speaker 2:One thing that makes me upset about medical practices and I know that you have HIPAA is they are not results-driven businesses. Doctors do not have to promote their success stories. All they have to do is put on the wall their licenses. That says somebody else gave them the permission to do the thing, but that doesn't mean they can do the thing, right. And, unfortunately, because it's not a results driven business, right, you don't know how to evaluate if someone's actually really good at what they do or not, and so you're kind of left to wonder, and a lot of times you can tell, because the average doctor's health themselves is worse than the patients that they're seeing, and that's pretty evident when you walk into any clinic in the country. I know I'm being pretty harsh on medicine. I think medicine is very important, I think it's an incredible tool and there are many good doctors out there. But I'm telling you they are not the solution to 95% of society's problem, and it's made very apparent, and so that's kind of like my thesis.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, all metrics and forecasting show that functional health services and health coaching is the future. When you look at forecasting, when you look at some of the major medical insurance companies are looking to add coaching services to their medical operations and to their networks outbound health services. It's where everything's going. I fully contend for you in 20 years, everything that you do outside of AI, the rest of medicine is going to be AI. You put your symptoms into a calculator and then Amazon's going to drop you off a prescription by two o'clock, which sounds really nice, but once again, that's not how healing is done either. So outside of that everything else is going to be delivered by some form of a coach that they give. They may not call it a coach, you know it's going to be whatever your health advisor or whatever.
Speaker 2:When they first by the way, when they first created you know cause, dr Jeffrey Bland created the first what's called um, what they call first health coach was called a first line therapist. That was the. That was the first health coach. Health coach the word didn't even exist. Uh, and so when we created our system, there was you know again, this is now 12 years ago there wasn't even a term for what we were talking about, where it was like a health coach that used functional medicine sciences. It just didn't really exist. So we coined the term functional nutrition, um, because it was, it was. It just seemed like it fit really well, um, and we were just, we were doing something that just didn't exist yet and we needed to find a way to translate and communicate what we were trying to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, all all this is super interesting. I'll run some thoughts by you and kind of get your take on this vince and let the listener kind of listen in on two people, yeah, so on. On the one hand, I agree with you, right, like to me. I think that, um, I would say and a lot of people who listen to this podcast know that I was on my way to traditional medical school and they didn't have any exercise, any nutrition or any psychology in their curriculum. I was on my way to East Carolina University and made a pivot. It was kind of like one of the first things, like what am I going to do now? So at the time I went into naturopathic medical school, which is a whole marketing debacle to call that, and that was back. You know they never should have called it that, but that became in my mind. That became a functional medicine.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I'll share with you and share with the listeners, which the listeners know, is that I agree with you. You said something early on that you basically like. You know there's a lot of nonsense in the alternative, complementary world, I agree, and there's also a lot of nonsense in the traditional world. So I really like you know, that's where I think functional medicine is really trying to do the best that they can do here's. Here's some of the things that that I thoughts on this. I still have become, and I'm one of these people who just likes to do you know, I like to do what works. I'll take whatever from whatever place. I don't care if it's conventional medicine, alternative medicine or whatever, as long as it works.
Speaker 1:But one of the things I have found is that functional medicine does not work that well either. For the vast majority of people it's better than traditional medicine. I think it's better than complementary medicine. From my perspective it still doesn't work great and part of the reason is that, because of our limited understanding is because we're still doing protocol medicine. So it used to be like you know, you got a headache, like you said, and we give you an NSAID for that headache and that's about as simple as it gets. But then it goes to more cookbook medicine outside of the traditional realm where it's like oh, here's your gut protocol or here's your blah, blah, blah protocol and that stuff works for some people and for the vast majority of people I think it fails. Now I could be wrong. Vince may have a different opinion than I on that.
Speaker 2:And then the next part is with the coaching, with the coaches.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting as well. Right, because you talked about the whole bodybuilding sort of lifestyle. I kind of come from that same sort of background. There's a lot of things that can be done that are you know, we are all each individuals, but there are overlapping things that we all could be doing that are going to benefit most people. And I think for a coach can easily deliver much of that. And so one of the things that I kind of look at is I go, yeah, I get the idea that a coach can you know when they're doing sort of generalized, overarching health information can be really good from that perspective. And you know protocols can work to some degree. They're better than you know, I think, what has been out there, but I still it's interesting.
Speaker 1:I'm still so curious, like when you say something like 95%, you, you know rates of, you know achievement or success. You know, for me, I'm like at my very best in medicine. You know people ask me all the time like Jake, what do you do? And I'm like, well, I'm in personal transformation and physical transformation. They're like, well, what is that like doing that work? And I'm like, well, if you want to fail most of the time. Then you have an idea of what I do.
Speaker 2:So of course my ears go up and go.
Speaker 1:How are you achieving these kind of results from this perspective? And I'm also curious, because you mentioned this idea that most of us can't map this stuff because of HIPAA compliance. So I'm wondering how are you measuring success? So those are all my sort of things and wondering your thoughts on that Couple questions.
Speaker 2:So I love what you're saying. So, first off, you're exactly right. Protocols are step one. So, like anything, like service centers in bodybuilding, if I apply a stimulus so I train you a certain way, I'm going to be watching daily in a tracker and I'm going to be watching your results and then the minute I apply a uh, a protocol, your body is in a complex system so it's going to go left or right on me, okay. So when you teach true protocols, you have to teach a protocol tree based on if and statements. Okay, and, and so that's why I agree with you 100%. If you try to do protocols, you're going to get it right 50% of the time and probably 40%. But that's why biofeedback, tracking and weekly or biweekly adjustments is how you win viable. Okay for them to spend that much time unless there's somebody getting their start right and two right. Their main money may be in hormones or it may be in whatever. What I'm suggesting for you is that we don't need to replace doctors, but doctors will not hire coaches. So since they won't, I'm just going to launch coaches and keep showing us how we can do it until they get it Like. This is the future.
Speaker 2:Doctors just don't get it and they're afraid to change their practices or do anything different because they can't always see how they're going to be able to scale a practice doing it. That's why our university teaches doctors how to scale businesses with coaches, because your outcomes become insane and you keep people way longer and people show up to their appointments and they take their pills and everyone's afraid to do it. And that's why I'm walking around kind of wagging my tail because I built an eight figure business doing the thing I told them they can do that they're unwilling to do. If anyone's listening to this right now and I can show you how to do it in your business right, and I don't like to build businesses, I just give you the tools and the systems. My team can take care of it.
Speaker 2:But what I'm getting at is you're exactly right, protocols don't get it done. So you can go to your weekend seminar and you can get your protocol and then you can try to apply it into your practice. But if somebody isn't in there coaching you to know how to do it, that's why our university is a trade school. Just like I used to do with the doctors, I go in there every single week and show them the next thing to do and the next thing to do and the next thing to do. You'll never know how to do it to the level that you would need to know how to do it, so you'll stop doing it. You'll never make any money off of it. People won't come back in for the service. You'll start and you'll stop. That's what I ran into in Metagenics when I was trying to build these systems.
Speaker 2:So what we were able to do is create such a handheld system where we're talking to our clients weekly, we're making adjustments, either weekly or biweekly, we're making it easier in certain diet areas or in others, and then putting them through systems and then holding their hand through it so they can do it. Now, the more committed they are, the faster they can do this. So we have that success rate we offer just so you know, we're the only company that does this In 12 weeks. If you come to my program in 12 weeks, if you don't see significant biofeedback changes measured in your labs or measured in your biofeedback, and you've been following the program, we will work with you for free until you do. That's our program. We have a guarantee on outcomes. We don't sell programs. I'm done with that.
Speaker 2:Most of these people go to these companies. They go to a naturopath, they go to a Cairo, they go here, they go there and they hope and then they have failed, unmet expectations and we just won't stand for it. And because our success rate is so high, I can actually do something like that and and it's because of the meticulous nature it's the system. The system is what does it. If I follow you and I hold your hand and I make certain adjustments and you get to believing the placebo effect. If I believe I can do it, I'm more likely to do it If I start changing some of the root cause issues that are leading to the total scope of the problem and I'm using some of the right protocols issues that are leading to the total scope of the problem and I'm using some of the right protocols that we're adjusting over time. Anything is possible. So when people look at my page I post an infinite number you can keep scrolling of the rarest conditions on planet earth solving these problems.
Speaker 2:We'll say solving because I don't treat, cure, prevent any disease, because I'm not a licensed practitioner. All I do is provide you the nutritional, emotional, lifestyle framework to change anything in your life, and I teach other people to do that. And then again, though, I'm still big on hormones and peptides, so you can visit with our doctors anytime. It's not that we're not. We're being so cavalier, and these coaches are following protocols that were designed by with me, my oversight by doctors, so we're leveraging their license.
Speaker 2:I don't want people to think that we're just like doing whatever, but I do need people to realize that if we leave healing only to the doctors, there's not enough of them to reach everyone at the fast that we're getting disease, and if anyone is ever interested in solving this problem, all you need to do is go to any. Everyone at the fast that we're getting disease, and if anyone is ever interested in solving this problem, all you need to do is go to any gym in the country where people have. There is 50 people in that gym just dying to have purpose and help others, and you can easily equip them with a, with a, with a three month training that now they become one of the best healing weapons in the world. You can build an army really, really fast, and you can do it at low cost, and you can add so much value to your practice. It's like some of the doctors that I work with today, like Dr Carrie Jones, she's a very popular naturopath. You may be familiar with her. She speaks across the country. She came in and saw our systems and we can talk about something specific particular to women and weight loss, resistance and menopause. She saw our systems, she saw our outcomes. She went back to Rupa health, quit the next day and started working with it.
Speaker 2:Right, a lot of my clients are high level professional doctors, right, who can't seem to find the answer in their, in their own area of expertise. And I don't want doctors to change Like if anyone's listening to this, and you're the best in the world at hormones, keep doing hormones, but make sure that you've got someone behind you that's working. All the modalities and your entire outcomes will change, and outcomes is what will bring business. You don't even need a marketing arm. We got this thing to 20 million before we ever started doing ads because of exceptional outcomes. Outcomes becomes your marketing arm and then if I need a prescription, if our people need a prescription, then they send them over to the medical team. The medical team takes a look at them right Now. The coaches usually know what's going on. So they'll relay what they think is going on. But the doctor is the ultimate authority, or our NPs are, you know, and they take a look and that's where we might use.
Speaker 2:I love using compounds, peptides and hormones. I love using those. We don't use them right away. That comes later, when we get to the hormones component of the process, when the second part of the endocrine system. We focus on the upper part of the endocrine system, first thyroid, adrenal hypothalamus and then, as we move through the body, after we've opened the liver, after we've opened the GI, improved detoxification, opened up the kidneys, then we move into hormone sensitivity. We're working on insulin, leptin, ghrelin, blood sugars, then we work on hormones. That's the correct order.
Speaker 2:A lot of times, when you try to work hormones first, if you try to manipulate hormones with a bunch of inflammation on top of it, you just end up with a watery mess. You probably know that if you work in the hormone field, if someone comes in and a doctor, they don't do anything else but the hormones and they just drop 200 milligrams of progesterone and maybe, like you know, 12 or to 20 milligrams of testosterone. What happens to the person? Do they lose weight? No, they turn into a watery, swollen mess and they're still tired. So, like there's an order of operations, typically that make it really successful. So before we put if they need hormones even if they need them, we're doing it natural first see what happens. Even if they don't need hormones, we're going to clear all that out of there, get rid of all that cellular inflammation and then the hormones can be felt. You know, people can have adequate hormone levels, but highly inflamed and can't feel sensitivity to their hormones, so they don't feel the energy that they're supposed to from the hormone level that they have. So you see that there's an order of operations and if you do it it can unlock anything.
Speaker 2:And I challenge anyone listening to this. Challenge me to it. Reach out to my Instagram. If we can't significantly improve you in 12 weeks, call me on it. But that's why I'm you know, I know I sound very bold and brash and it sounds salesy and all of this and the reason that I am this way is I'm trying to be in people's faces to show them that there is another way to do this, and when people find out that it's the truth and it's legitimate, then everyone gets on board and we really have an alternative way of coming at the problem, which is global chronic disease.
Speaker 2:Now, you're not going to fix any every structural issue, like I'm not. If you have an SI joint tear, there might be things that there are some things that functional medicine alone may not fix. Okay, like if you have a gunshot wound, thank God for modern medicine, I'm not going to do anything about that. Or early cancer, if you're going to do chemo and those are blessings, you know, and and we usually sometimes have them go on meds If you want to. If you need to start on an autoimmune med, or you need to start on a cholesterol med, or you need to start on a. I'm not demonizing medicine. It's a great tool. It is overused and it's over leveraged. Is that that means health and it doesn't? And so you know, that's what you know our vital ecosystem is about, and I appreciate you being, I'm sure I you're a lot like me, so you've got a lot of opinions and I've just listened to you sit here and like gracefully, listen to all this and you're super awesome. I appreciate you, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, listen to all this and you're super awesome. I appreciate you. Yeah, no, I appreciate you as well, and I think we have a lot, a lot of overlap. I have one more line of questioning for you, just because I'm curious and, by the way, I think, just so. You hear this Vince and a lot of people listeners too. I think what Vince is talking about. Many listeners will hear it, as structured flexibility is how I describe it. It sounds like what you're doing, vince, is you're given a structure because everyone needs a starting place, so that's a protocol. We have to start you somewhere. But then there's flexibility based on the individual, based on their biofeedbacks, their laboratory reports, and it sounds like that's how you're guiding the individual. That's what I'm hearing, and I think a lot of my listeners will recognize the term structured flexibility, which is a term I use.
Speaker 2:That is perfect. But, for example, I certify coaches at my university and then we work with practices and I tell practices. I said I'm going to put a coach into your business for a low risk to you. They're going to either work my system, but then if there's something that you like, that's particular to you, that's valuable to you, we'll add that to make sure that that's being done. The health coach becomes most of your customer service. Hey, do you want to take half less emails? Guess what? Put a health coach in your business right, like, like. But you have to be willing to risk it and then prescribe it or add it to a monthly plan or build it into your fee of service, and everyone's afraid to do that. Everyone's going to stick to whatever shtick they got that they're doing Because, like, that's what I'm getting at. Because what you're talking about with structured variation is we are flexible. You know, we, we really believe.
Speaker 2:Early on in you start Mediterranean pescatarian to the best of your ability Then then you lead them into, because I created a diet called the flush method and that will, like, amplify your metabolism, get rid of most of your fatigue, clear a lot of the basic residuals that people get, that are very common and almost everyone kind of runs into. Because you got to clear the kids out of the street, I almost don't like looking at labs until I flushed you out, because half of what't like looking at labs until I flushed you out, because half of what I'm looking at labs is what you've just done to yourself dietarily and emotionally the last eight weeks. So I flushed that out and then I like like what's the real problems I'm going to be looking at? And then we like to run labs and um, but uh, you know, we develop these different nutritional systems, start pescetarian, we flush the body, then we like to go into something that's what we call a carb pulsing. We believe in diet variation is the key to health. Every diet works if you work it, until you work it too long. So this is the problem Monotonous diets cause monocolonization of the gut, which leads to overproduction of certain organic acids. That leads to immunological upregulation and inflammation. And so we use a tool where we have you eat certain foods three days and then different foods another three days and you pulse it back and forth and then, once all the rest of your inflammation is gone from that, then we get into autophagy.
Speaker 2:We either teach you how to maybe go into carnivore or go into like a low carb diet for a while, or go into ketosis whichever you're comfortable with you can pick or go into intermittent fasting, because there's so much healing in fasting that people have no idea. I've seen it with my own eyes. You know the Bible mentions fasting 77 times. For a reason Every religion in the world can't agree on one thing but fasting. That should tell you something. Maybe there's something there. Whether you believe there's a God or not, it's a book of wisdom and so maybe there's something wise about it.
Speaker 2:So we put people through a little bit of like a you know what's easy on them to get them into some form of autophagy or fasting. Then we optimize their hormones and we feed them up, and then that's called our function phase. So that way we make sure you function the way that you want to. Maybe you want to function great in. I want to. I want to build muscle, or I want to function to have the best energy, or I want to function to manage my Crohn's, or I want to function to manage this issue or whatever it is.
Speaker 2:And that's where you come up the four systems you know flush feed, fast function and um and so, yeah, that's uh, that's what I've been able to do and so, but I agree with you, you know, being able to meet them where they're at, even if they can't. They're not good at dieting at all. Maybe they just need to learn how to like cut out processed foods first. Maybe they just need to learn how to sleep more. Maybe we put on an HRV ring on them to see if they're how their oxygen status is at night.
Speaker 2:You know, maybe they've got problems breathing, because it has a lot of issues to do with people's health. You know, we're able to track all these variables to find the missing link that you cannot possibly find unless someone's looking at you with a magnifying glass and how you're living day in and day out, and a practitioner is just not in a position to do that financially and energetically. And that's why you need a team and that's why I believe it's the future, not that again, a functional leading practitioner like you or anybody else is already going to get better results than the average by far. I just think every practitioner becomes super powered when they create more of an integrated system, and I'm living proof. Right, I'm living proof.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's wonderful man. I think it's. I really just want to say thank you for your work, thank you for your passion. I'm right there with you that I think coaches we need really good quality coaches that can address the big movers that people are sort of suffering with. So I appreciate you so much. Thank you for being here. And just so everyone knows, you know, let them know where they can get you. I know it's it's it's vital coaching right. V I, d A LV.
Speaker 2:I D A Lcom. They can check it out. We have really advanced assessments on there that'll tell them what systems are off for them, so that you know if I've got a gut issue but I'm not sure what else is going on and why I have a chronic gut issue. You can fill out our advanced assessments and it'll give you really good reports on what else might be involved. You can check out my content on Vince Vince underscore, pit stick and that's pit and stick like an Australian deodorant.
Speaker 1:You can't forget that, and that's what I was doing. Actually, I was just. I was just finding you, my friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and all I want people to do is have an open mind. If people are still listening to this, cause I didn't piss them off. All I'm asking you to do is to give a guy a chance and start consuming my content, read my success stories and you're going to start going. There's something different. I'm not quite sure what this guy's doing, cause I'm not quite sure what this guy's doing because I'm just not seeing this anywhere else and then you're going to first ask yourself is this legitimate or not? You know, and all I ask is you keep consuming the content, because truth and and and true care and concern is almost impossible to fake long enough. And uh, and that's why I know, uh, eventually, and again, if you ever want to consult, you want to reach out, if you have any questions about what I said.
Speaker 2:You know we're heavy in our. You know we're getting hundreds of questions a day, but we love answering all the questions, because every life that we can get to touch is going to be a life change. We're real serious about that. And then you know, if you guys want, uh, you can also go over the university metabolic university, metabolic mentor, universitycom and we can literally train you or train one of your team members to run our systems in your practice, and we guarantee results. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so just as a reminder, everyone it's on Instagram. I just followed you, vince, so it's Vince. Underscore pit stick on Instagram it's VitalCoachingcom, right V-I-D-A's vital coachingcom, right, vidal coachingcom. And yeah, I love the. The metabolic mentor university. Is that what it is?
Speaker 2:that's, that's yeah yeah, yeah, also you need to look it up as mmu. We got great practitioners over there training uh, dr, uh or nurse practitioner megan del corral, gary Jones and then some of the best coaches that have combined functional medicine and sport together, like Alan Crest and myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I so appreciate you, vince. Thank you so much for your work. Actually, you and I share a friend in Cary, so I'm going to tell her I discovered you and got to hang out with you.
Speaker 2:And yeah, man, I appreciate you so much, Do me a favor.
Speaker 1:Vince, hang on the line. Yeah, oh, she's the best. She's the best. Hang on the line. I'm going to shut everything down, but I just want to make sure everything uploaded and for all of you. Thank you for hanging out with me and Vince, and we will see you at the next show. Everybody, thank you.