August 11, 2025 • 43 mins
Let’s kick off INTUITION by re-sharing my conversation with Wendy Warner MD. Dr. Warner has played a crucial role in my health and well-being for the past 5 years and I have been thrilled to share her wisdom with my Warrior nation! In Dr. Wendy Warner’s holistic medical practice, she focuses on a functional integrative approach to health and healing, working alongside practitioners from many different backgrounds and offering a wide variety of therapeutic options.
Get your pen and paper ready for the ideas and wisdom from Dr. Warner’s world. It’s time to live optimally!
After 14 years of conventional ob/gyn practice, Dr Warner founded a collaborative holistic medical practice in suburban Philadelphia. There she focused on a functional integrative approach to health and healing, working alongside practitioners from many different backgrounds and offering a wide variety of therapeutic options. In the fall of 2022, she moved her practice to fully online, providing telemedicine exclusively. She is board certified in gynecology and holistic integrative medicine, is a certified Functional Medicine practitioner, an herbalist and a mesa carrier. She is a nationally recognized speaker and educator, and is faculty for the Institute for Functional Medicine as well as David Winston’s Center for Herbal Studies. She authored a chapter in the current edition of Rakel’s Integrative Medicine textbook, and is the co-author of “Boosting Your Immunity for Dummies”. She is a Past President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine.
(1:45) Dr. Warner shares her story, and her journey into Functional Medicine.
(4:50) What is the difference between traditional, integrative and function medicine?
(8:12) Dr. Warner shares her approach to helping people?
(11:10) What are some of the common themes that Dr. Warner has experienced with patients?
(14:50) How does stress impact our adrenal system and overall health?
(19:30) What tools does she employ to help people with their overall health?
(27:02) What is the future of Functional Medicine?
(32:16) Who does Dr. Warner follow, that inspire and assist in her research for her field?
(36:12) What does Dr. Warner do to help herself in her wellness routine?
(39:03) What is Dr. Warner doing in 10 years?
Subscribe: Warriors At Work Podcasts
Website: https://jeaniecoomber.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/986666321719033/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeanie_coomber/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeanie_coomber
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanie-coomber-90973b4/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbMZ2HyNNyPoeCSqKClBC_w
Get your pen and paper ready for the ideas and wisdom from Dr. Warner’s world. It’s time to live optimally!
After 14 years of conventional ob/gyn practice, Dr Warner founded a collaborative holistic medical practice in suburban Philadelphia. There she focused on a functional integrative approach to health and healing, working alongside practitioners from many different backgrounds and offering a wide variety of therapeutic options. In the fall of 2022, she moved her practice to fully online, providing telemedicine exclusively. She is board certified in gynecology and holistic integrative medicine, is a certified Functional Medicine practitioner, an herbalist and a mesa carrier. She is a nationally recognized speaker and educator, and is faculty for the Institute for Functional Medicine as well as David Winston’s Center for Herbal Studies. She authored a chapter in the current edition of Rakel’s Integrative Medicine textbook, and is the co-author of “Boosting Your Immunity for Dummies”. She is a Past President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine.
(1:45) Dr. Warner shares her story, and her journey into Functional Medicine.
(4:50) What is the difference between traditional, integrative and function medicine?
(8:12) Dr. Warner shares her approach to helping people?
(11:10) What are some of the common themes that Dr. Warner has experienced with patients?
(14:50) How does stress impact our adrenal system and overall health?
(19:30) What tools does she employ to help people with their overall health?
(27:02) What is the future of Functional Medicine?
(32:16) Who does Dr. Warner follow, that inspire and assist in her research for her field?
(36:12) What does Dr. Warner do to help herself in her wellness routine?
(39:03) What is Dr. Warner doing in 10 years?
Subscribe: Warriors At Work Podcasts
Website: https://jeaniecoomber.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/986666321719033/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeanie_coomber/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeanie_coomber
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanie-coomber-90973b4/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbMZ2HyNNyPoeCSqKClBC_w
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Warriors at Work Show. This is Genie Koomber,
your guide and host. This is a show for men
and women in the workplace who want to move from
the predictable to the potent. This is your weekly dose
of inspiration with an edge. I talk with CEOs and shawmans,
sports marketing executives, and therapists. All of us are like
(00:24):
minded thinkers and doers who tell stories, share wisdom, and
challenge each other to have the best life possible inside
and outside the office. Welcome to your Warrior Conversation. Hey everybody,
it's Gennie. Thanks so much for joining me here at
Warriors at Work and Happy July. As we reach the
(00:46):
halfway point of the year, it's a natural time to pause,
reflect and realign with ourselves. So over the coming weeks
I will be resharing podcast episodes from Warriors at Work
and the intention here is to help you to reconnect
with your your self, refuel your energy, and move forward
with clarity. Let's make the rest of the year really
(01:07):
count enjoy. So welcome doctor Wendy Warner. I am so
excited to have you here with me Warriors at Work
to have this conversation. Thank you again, for being here.
It's a pleasure to be here. So what's fun about
this is you've been such an integral part of my
life for the last number of years, and I get
(01:30):
to turn the tables on you and get for you
to share your wisdom with a much broader audience. And
so what I want to do is, first like take
a big step back, and I want for you to
share a little bit about your story. You practice integrated
functional medicine, and I would love for you to describe
(01:51):
your journey into this space.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Okay, I did the usual college medical school residency trying
to conventional OBGYN, did conventional OBGYN training practice for fourteen
years now. Very early on, I mean it's really corny.
Very early on, I figured out that I needed to
deal with my own PMS or nobody was going to
(02:15):
work with me for more than about three months. And
I did not want to do daily prozac, which is
what I was trained I was supposed to take, so
for the three or four days that I yelled at people.
So I honestly don't remember now how I even found this,
but I realized I'm not the first person who's had
(02:37):
to deal with this. There's got to be some other
way to handle it, and I was really interested in
getting into botanical medicine at the time because I'm a
gardener and found the right plant. It worked beautifully, and
I kind of kept it to myself because we're talking
the early nineties. No docs did this kind of thing
(03:00):
back then, and I was brand new in the area
and I didn't want to get run out as some
kind of weird witch doctor, so kept it quiet. I
eventually took pity on a patient who had the same
symptoms that I had when she burst into tears and said,
I think my husband's going to divorce me.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So I said, Okay, go.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
To this health food store, get this, take it for
three months, call me back.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
It worked.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Her friends found out about it, they were happy, and
I realized, O good, maybe I'm not going to get
run out of town. So all the time that I
was doing conventional OBGYN, I was actually learning about integrative
medicine and then functional medicine myself, and I was getting
training in botanical medicine and lots of other cool stuff.
(03:47):
And at some point, you know, some of my business
partners were not very happy about it, and we had
a big blow up and I started my own practice.
It was an awesome, awesome place. I had all these
cool practitioners under one roof, everything from acupuncture and massage
(04:10):
and energy medicine, shamans, stress management guys. I mean, like
all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
It was great.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Eighteen years COVID kind of changed all that, And so
now i close my brick and mortar and I'm doing
fully telemedicine consultations only and it's fun, and I do
a lot of teaching. I teach for the Institute for
Functional Medicine, and I teach for David Winston's Center for
Herbal Studies, and then do a lot of like webinars
(04:39):
and things for different people.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Wow, what an interesting journey. And where I think it
would would be really helpful too, is I think people
do not understand what integrated functional medicine actually is and
how it's different from quote unquote traditional medicine. So I'd
love for you to define that for us.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Okay, And I actually, well, okay, conventional medicine. The way
I was trained is you basically try to fix the
symptoms and make people happy and everybody, and I think
this is most patience experience. Also, different doctors kind of
stay in their lane, and so you're not really being
(05:24):
seen as a whole person. In my mind, integrative and
functional medicine are slightly different. Integrative medicine simply means you
see the whole person and you have different tools in
your toolbox. You might use herbs, you might use something else.
Functional medicine is sort of it's sort of like a
(05:46):
subset of integrative medicine, but it's a thing unto itself.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
It teaches you to.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Look at the underlying processes of what's going on and
to fix the basic process is rather than just fix
the symptoms. So you know, if you have inflammation, which
is a process, it may show up as blood sugar instability,
it may show up as Alzheimer's, it may show up
(06:15):
as perimoonopausal symptoms. So you say, how it's very, very
different than how a conventional doc would look at those things,
because in conventional medicine, those are all different.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Right. Well, it's interesting to give the background on why
I came to you, and I think a lot of
people that are watching and listening are going to relate
to this. Is you know, I've been working for a
number of years. I have probably what you would characterize
as like sort of a high stress job as an
executive coach. I'm in very intense conversations with people all
(06:48):
day long in the workplace, and I started to ask
myself bigger questions based upon my mom passed away suddenly
have a heart attack when she was sixty two. My
dad died of complications from a stroke when he was
seventy eight, when he was in great health. It had
happened very very quickly, and I started asking myself bigger
questions because I was having anxiety. I wasn't managing my
(07:09):
stress well. My sleep started to get crazy, it was
heading into menopause. I just was worried all the time,
and I knew that I didn't want a quick fix.
I wanted to look deeper what was really going on.
And so I found my way to you. And one
of the things that really changed for me, very very quickly,
(07:31):
is the care and the time you take to explain
what is actually at the root of what's happening. And
it isn't a quick fix. It is investigation, It is
trial and error. It is a lot of natural supplements
and things that work with your natural body chemistry, and
(07:53):
it isn't necessarily only a pharmacological approach to things. And
I just found your style to be warm, inviting, fun, lighthearted,
and you've just been such a key part of like
my team, if you will, my personal, my professional team,
and I'd love for you to talk about I mean,
(08:14):
this is Genie's experience with you, but I'd love for
you to talk about your approach. So somebody reaches out,
they get to your team, they go through their blood
work process, and they get to meet doctor Wendy Warner.
Talk to us about your approach.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Okay, Well, like all functional medicine practitioners, or at least
good ones, you know, I need to know your basic
medical background, and I need to know your family history,
and I need to know how you live your life.
Like you know, I have a nutritionist slash coach who
(08:55):
does intakes for me for all my new patients so
that we can get a real detailed feel for how
is this person eating, is this person sleeping? Is there
any exercise on board? Blah blah blah, because we need
to see the whole picture. Yeah, I get lab work
that is very different from what most primary care practitioners,
(09:18):
for instance, would get, because I need to see as
much detail as possible, and I will, like most practitioners
who do this kind of medicine, you know how, you
get your lab report and it'll have the reference range
there next to it, and it may or may not
be flagged as abnormal. And I know you've had this
(09:40):
experience where I've said, oh, yeah, it actually doesn't look
as good as you think, because we're gonna look at
these reference ranges differently, because we're looking for optimal ranges,
not just what the lab says.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Is okay, because.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Sometimes what can conventional medicine would consider okay is really
not optimal by any means. And sometimes the lab references
there's no science behind them. They just run the test
on a couple thousand random people and plot all the
results on a Bell curve, and that's the reference range.
So you need to understand that because otherwise you're going
(10:20):
to miss a lot of detail. And if you're so, Basically,
I'm looking for all the clues in what you've told
me and in your labs and in your symptoms, and
I put it all together into okay, Well, this process
is out of whack. And this process is out of whack.
(10:41):
And I don't know if you've ever had this experience.
But sometimes when I'm telling people all the different things
that are like, well, this is off, and this is often,
this is often this is off, I see their eyes
getting really big and they're thinking.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Oh my god, I'm so screwed.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
You don't have to go No, You've got all these
different things going on, but they're all related. And because
they're all related, we just need to fix this and
this and this and all the rest of it is
going to take care of itself.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I want to build on the word optimal that you
just talked about and get you to talk about common themes.
So what are some of the common themes you're seeing
with patients? So when when you think about this notion
you're looking for optimal, it's not perfect, it's optimal, which
I think is an also an important distinction. There's no
A in this. Yes, speaking from somebody who's always looking
(11:33):
for am I hitting the optimal performance number? It's like, no,
there's no perfection here. But I'd love for you to
talk about like the common situations, themes, challenges that you're
seeing in your practice.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Well, I can tell you the two things that I
talk about all day long. I talk about a drenal dysfunction.
And I talk about blood sugar instability because I mean, historically,
I've always had a small group of people in my
patient population who've had unstable blood sugar. And most Americans,
(12:12):
well most people around the world, their adrenal hormones are
a little off. But it has gotten so much worse
in the past couple of years. I spend all day
talking to people about blood sugar instability, and that is
that's a good example. Well, actually, both of these are
examples of how your lab results may make it look
(12:33):
like you're okay, but you have to be asking the
right questions and drawing the right labs and then interpreting
them correctly. So good example. Hypoglycemia, lots of that means
your blood sugar is crashing periodically. People feel that. Well,
if you're twenty or thirty something, you call it getting angry,
(12:56):
because you're really angry if you haven't eaten. Other people
will just say, well, yeah, sometimes if I haven't eaten,
I get a little dizzy for a second, or or
I'll crash if I eat you know, a really starch
heavy meal. That's bloods your instability. Well, if you're a
conventional doc, I was trained. You get a fasting blood
(13:17):
sugar and if it's normal, meaning it's under one hundred,
the patient's good. And so even though this person feels crappy,
you've just told them that they're okay. Well, I would
look at the fasting glucose and what's called a hemoglobin
a one c. That's a three month average blood sugar,
(13:41):
and I would also get a fasting insulin. All right,
That paints a different picture because in somebody with hypoglycemia
who feels the way I just described, their fasting gluecase
might be fine in the nineties, perfectly, okay, Their hemoglobin
A one c might be way down at the bottom
the normal range, like four point eight. Well, okay, if
(14:05):
they're normal, if they're fasting glucose is on the higher
end of the normal range, how do you end up
with an average that is that much lower. Well, that
kind of, by definition is hypo glycemia, and that matches
with how the patient feels. And so the person is
not only validated because you know how many people come
(14:27):
to me going I feel like crap, and my doc
keeps telling me I'm okay because they just didn't ask
the right questions. But it also lets me then monitor
over time as we go to fix the problem. Are
those numbers matching up.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And talk it does well, I'm living. I'm living that
story you just talked about. I also love for you
to talk a little bit more about adrenals, particularly how
stress is impacted our adrenal system.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Okay, we're going to talk about how stressed not only
impacts the adrenals, but also how that impacts all of
our health. Like I said, all of us. I mean,
you know, we have a crazy society where we all
live way too fast, in sympathetic overdrive all the time.
(15:23):
And there was a time where we could kind of
deal with it and it wouldn't really bother us all
that much, most of us. But in the past few years,
I mean, I think it kind of started during quarantine.
We all lost our resiliency. So now when we live
(15:44):
these crazy busy lives, our adrenals are trying to do
the fight and flight reaction day in and day out,
and that becomes very dysfunctional. I mean, cortisol is a
good thing. You need it to get out of an emergency,
you need it to get up in the morning, but
the fight and flight reaction is only supposed to last
(16:04):
this long. It's not supposed to be every day. So
if you're asking your adrenals to pour out this adrenaline
cortisol all the time, they'll do it. But in order
to do that, their function becomes abnormal. Because this other
hormone that's supposed to balance you out, called dha. Dha
(16:26):
keeps you calm and happy during the emergency, well they run.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
You can't do both.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So if the cornisol is really high, your DHA gets
lower and lower and lower, and so that starts messing
things up. So the adrenals get tired, and you can
go from you know, all the way to being overly
active to limping along barely able to make any cortisol.
(16:52):
Now over time, that starts messing with almost almost everything
in our body. Because think about it, our adrenals only
have one real job, and that's to keep you alive.
That's kind of an important job. So they get to
(17:13):
interfere with pretty much anything they want to. For instance,
they will tell your insulin, hey, listen, we're running away
from the tiger right now. I don't know when I'm
gonna eat again, so I'm gonna block you because I
actually need this glucose because I don't know when I'm
(17:34):
gonna run against, so I'm what I'm gonna eat against.
So it'll block the insulin and that throws off your
glucose metabolism and it either makes you initially hypoglycemic and
then eventually, you know, could lead to diabetes because it
doesn't know your adrenals don't know you're going to do
this for the next you know, ten years. They think
you're gonna do it for five minutes. They will mess
(17:59):
with your sleep because you know, if there's an emergency,
your body doesn't want you in a deep dark sleep.
It wants you sort of you know, one ear open
just in case. It'll make you live in your mid
brain too much. Our mid brain does emergencies. Our mid
(18:22):
brain is really good at getting us out of trouble,
but it doesn't remember things because that's not its job.
So that's why when people are really stressed out, they
start getting that weird brain fog and they can't remember anything,
like even as something as simple as where gonna put
my car keys? And oh, dang, I just met this
(18:43):
woman last week.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
What is her name? Yeah? Or why am I in
this room? What did I come here for.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You walk in well, and it also makes you really distractable.
So when if you realize that you can't stay focused
on anything, that's almost always an adrenal thing because think
about it, the amygdala, the mid brain, the emergency brain
doesn't want you focused on one thing. It wants you
scanning the horizon all the time for the next emergency.
(19:10):
So you walk into a room to do something, you
don't get around to doing that. You get you notice
something else, so you do that and then that sents
you to another room and you do that, and you
do that, and you do that, and you never did
do the first thing. Yeah, boy, you're describing a.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Lot of my life.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Well not just you, I think it's a lot of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Well, I'd love for you to share. I mean, you
have so many tools and perspectives in your toolkit that
are is so so interesting. But you know, beyond supplements,
I'd love for you to talk about, like particularly around
managing cortisol and the stress response. I'd love for you
to talk about some ideas you have and some results
(19:53):
you've seen.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, I do always use some kind of supplements. There's
a whole category of herbs called adaptogens. They are very helpful,
and I honestly think at this point I don't know
a single person who couldn't benefit from some adaptogens.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
However, I always couch it.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
In these terms. You've got to remember they're just herbs.
So if you're taking herbs to support your adrenals, but
you're still living your life like a tiger's chasing you,
the tiger's going to win. So it's our job to
constantly tell our adreanals we're fine, you can settle down. Yes,
(20:40):
we have a problem. It is not life threatening now.
I sort of figured this out really early on in
my own career about how much adrenals are going to
bother me, and it's relatively.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
It's an interesting story, I think, because I don't know.
I was thirty two or thirty three. I was a
conventional lobgyn. I'm sitting in the delivery room at three
or four in the morning and talking to the night nurses,
waiting on a baby to show up, And honestly, we
were gossiping about some of my older colleagues who were
about ten years older, so they'd been doing this longer,
(21:19):
and they were all getting sick now the guy who
wait donuts all the time. We expected him to get diabetes. Yeah, okay, fine,
But there were two guys that were athletes. One was
a runner, run was a cyclist. They ate well, I
mean I saw them they I saw him eating lunch
and dinner in the delivery room. And despite that, one
(21:42):
got hypertension anyway, and the other one got an autoimmune
disorder and became an insomniac. Now obstentricians canna sleep anywhere,
So that was like really weird, and we're sitting around
talking about how how weird it was because these guys
appeared to be doing a pretty good job taking care
of themselves, and all of a sudden, this light bulb
went off and I went, oh, guys, it's this and
(22:07):
the nurses went, what do you mean? I went, we're
awake at three in the morning all the time. That
makes our body think there's a problem because we should
be asleep. And it was all those emergencies that we
dealt with in the delivery room and in the operating
room and in the er and will I'm the first
one to admit I was an adrenaline junkie. That was
(22:27):
the fun part of my job because I always used
to say, well, you know, if a baby's going to
come out easy, you don't even need me.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Cabby can do that.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So that's when I had this light bulb moment when
I went, oh, I really love this work and it's
going to make me sick.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
In ten years.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
So I don't want that to happen. So I had
to go do some research because unfortunately they never really
talked to you much in med school about a dreanmal function.
So I had to go find how can I fix this?
And it turns out the sign it shows two things.
Our adrenal glands want to see a quiet brain on
(23:05):
a regular basis. Now, I don't know anybody who does
that unless.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
That's not normal.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
That's not normal for humans, right, we have to go
like do it on purpose. So that's any kind of
meditative technique, you know, seated meditation I did. I did
seeded meditation alone for a long time. Honestly, in the
past few years. That is more difficult for me now
I can't stay focused as easily. So I've added in
a practice called chigong, which is a part of Chinese medicine.
(23:36):
Actually it's like a moving meditation, and I also ran
across the research for the Institute of Heart Math. Now,
the Institute of Heart Math has been looking at this
for I don't know thirty years. How are yes, Our
adrenals respond to what the brain says, but the brain
determines our safety based on our emotions. And what it
(23:59):
comes down to is every single negative emotion gets interpreted
as crap, we're in trouble, and it tells the adrenals
to stay turned on. Okay, anger and fear, you need
to do the fight and flight reaction. That makes sense.
But it's every negative emotion, anger and fear, and pain
(24:20):
and sadness and worry and brain chatter. Because brain chatter,
even though we're all kind of used to it, it
looks to our body like anxiety. So I mean, imagine,
think of your adrenals sort of watching you, going Okay,
I don't see a tiger, but she's still planning things
and she's still worried about stuff, so there must be
(24:41):
something going on. So they'll just stay turned on if
you do a lot of brain chatter. Now, the good
news is what they found out is that positive emotions
do the exact opposite. If your brain sees that you're
feeling grateful and joyous and excited and happy. It's sort
of figures there's no tiger back there, because who in
(25:03):
their right mind would you feel good if they were
still in trouble. So they took all that data they
came up with these techniques that are kind of like
a meditation, but the difference is instead of just trying
to be quiet, you are actively creating a positive emotion
on purpose, sort of in a ritualized way, because like
(25:24):
you're hanging out in an old memory and you have
to actually recreate the feelings. By the way, I did
that entirely wrong. For the whole first year I taught
myself how to do it. I thought I was doing
it right. I was actually just thinking about positive emotions.
I wasn't actually feeling positive emotions. It took me a
(25:44):
little while to figure that part out. But they've shown,
and they've over and over and over again, under lots
and lots of different situations, you can get your adrenals
back to normal doing their techniques correctly four to six months.
Most people can get it under control if they actually
(26:04):
do it, and if they do it correctly and they
do it enough, it's a lot of variables.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Well, the enough part I mean as a student to this.
The way that I characterize is it sort of cuts
the noise right down the middle and you're inserting a
different like I use like an energy or frequency. You're
changing the dynamics of what's going on in that circumstance.
And sometimes when I'm doing it, I'll just start humming.
(26:31):
I know it sounds weird, but I'll just start humming
to get me into that space where like, remember a
time when you felt happy, Remember a time when you
felt relaxed, Remember the time you felt safe. Haven't mastered it,
but that's how I I think just even the act
of doing the breathing around it also is just it's
like a quick way to get yourself in a different state.
(26:53):
And if you're in a different state, you have more
optionality you can start to do. I think these techniques
in a really powerful way. I also am very curious,
like what's the future of a functional medicine, Like, how
is it going to play a bigger role in the
world of medicine. From your vantage point.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
I'm hoping that, well, let's put this way, it's going
to have to change from from the ground up. It
is not going to change from the top down. Our
medical system is too entrenched in the whole concept of
(27:39):
insurance providers and pharmaceuticals and all that kind of stuff.
What I believe and what I'm finding more and more
is that patients people are really disappointed in that system
and they don't feel as though they're getting the kind
of care that they really need, especially for long term
(28:00):
chronic conditions, because the medicine I was taught is about
fixing problems. It's not about helping people be healthy, and
people would prefer many people, not everybody. Many people would
prefer to learn how to be healthy and not have
(28:24):
to deal with just well, let me play wax the mole,
fix a problem, fix a problem, fix a problem. They're
getting irritated with that. So I'm hoping that there will
be enough groundswell from patient demand that it's going to work. Now,
there's a couple of things that are on the horizon
that I think eventually insurance providers are going to pay
(28:50):
attention to. The VA, believe it or not, is already
on board. The VA has been interested in integrative functional medicine,
and they're a big proponent of heart math. By the way,
because it makes sense to them. I mean, think about it.
They have a mandate to take care of their soldiers
(29:12):
and to get them back, you know, to function as
quickly as possible, and they have a limited budget. So
it's the limited budget that pushes them because they just
want to know what works, and this kind of medicine
works really well for chronic illness and it is a
lot cheaper than conventional medicine. Now there's also Cleveland Clinic,
(29:40):
really well known, big clinic. Right they have a functional
medicine department that was started by my friend Mark Hyman
and Patrick Hanaway was one of the first medical directors,
and they're gathering data to prove that for many different
(30:01):
chronic illnesses they're not only at least as good as
conventional medicine, but they often get better outcomes than conventional medicine.
And they are saving the system a ton of money
and they're getting hard data to prove this. So that
Cleveland Clinic's on board. They have a huge backlog of
(30:25):
people trying to get into that practice, into that part
of Cleveland Clinic, and I think especially people who are
self insured organizations like Cleveland Clinic I and other large organizations.
If you have to pay for your own insurance. You
want to spend your money and get the most bang
(30:47):
for your buck. And I think for chronic illness this
is as effective, more effective, and definitely cheaper. Now we
still need conventional medicine. It does great for emergencies. I
mean I was really glad eight or ten years ago
when I fractured my ankle that I had an er
(31:08):
with an X ray machine that could help me. You know,
I wasn't gonna just just do acupuncture, right, I did
that for recovery. So for the current conventional model, the
current conventional medicine does really, really well for acute care medicine,
(31:29):
but they don't do well with chronic illness. They just
spend too much money for chronic illness because they're not
getting to the heart of the manner.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Do you find with your patient base that you have
to collaborate with other doctors outside of this functional space.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yeah, And what sometimes happens is that the poor patient
is stuck between two people that they trust and like
who were telling them completely different things.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
And I do apologize to patients for that all the time.
But I can show them the research and I can
walk them through the science and explain to them why
my approach may make more sense and their other doc
usually can't do that. I would love for you to
(32:18):
share with us who do you follow, Like, who are the.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Voices that inspire influence your thought or even the research bodies,
and why do you follow them. I'm going to tell
you two different things.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I'm going to tell you the people that if this
whole idea of integrated functional medicine is new and you
want to learn about it, I can tell you the
people you should follow. I mean, I kind of keep
an eye on what they do. Mark Hyman is a
well known name. Mark's been around a long time. He's
(33:03):
been with functional medicine from the very beginning. He's got
a gazillion books out there. He has done an excellent
job of getting information out and explaining to the world
what functional medicine is. And I will give him a
lot of credit. He is currently working hard to change
(33:24):
in Congress what we do with like the farm budget,
because if we don't change the food system in this country,
we'll never get well. So Mark, I'm is a good
person to follow. The Institute for Functional Medicine has really
good information on their social media all the time. The
(33:52):
p LMI Personal Lifestyle I'm going to mess up their
name Personal Lifestyle Institute, Personal Lifestyle Medicine Institute p LM
I that was founded by Jeff Bland, who is the
founder of Functional Medicine. It's an organization that is doing
research and they also have like they basically get people
(34:15):
together and share research. They have a cool conference every year,
and their social media has got really good information on
it as well. I am currently personally interested more and
more in regenerative farming and how to get how to
(34:37):
get our food system to change. So Mark's a big name,
he can go talk to Congress. They don't want to
talk to me. I want to go help my farm friends.
I mean I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, very close
by is where all.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
The farms are.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Ninety percent of the food that I ingest I know
who raised it, wow, both animals and plants. And what
makes me nervous, and what makes a lot of people
nervous is that the average age of an American farmer
is in there is in the fifties. We have to
(35:18):
convince young people to farm.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Who's going to do it right?
Speaker 2 (35:24):
And I'm interested in learning about people who have taken
the idea of regenerative farming and putting it into a big,
bigger scale to make it financially more important and more reasonable,
because you know, most of our farmland, it's ridiculous what
(35:45):
we do to that land. You know, we're doing monocultures
that are unhealthy. So the Rodale Institute, which is not
too far from me, about an hour north, they do
a Regenerative Agriculture conference every year and it's next September.
It's next month in September, and I'm going to that
so I get to meet some folks who are doing
(36:07):
this work and see how I can help get the
word out.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
I love that. Well, now I want to talk about
you and what you're working on, so we have to
do a little revealing out of your own personal life.
So like, from a health and well being perspective, what
are you working on for yourself?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Build and muscle? And I'm not happy about it. Yeah,
So menopausal women lose muscle easily. And although I have
been active all my life, strength training has never really
(36:46):
been very high on my priority list. I did it
when I was right out of residency because I was
in such bad shape and I have to admit I was.
I liked being strong, and I liked how I looked.
I look awesome, But the reality was I was mostly
hiding in the basement from my first husband because weren't
getting along very well. So I kind of have this
(37:07):
emotional thing about strength training. But I've been looking more
and more at the research and on the appropriate way
to gain muscle. It's all about lifting heavy things. Because
you know, those of us of a certain age, remember how
when we were younger, we were told, well, if you're
(37:29):
going to exercise, do a lot of cardio because you'll
burn off a lot of calories and you'll stay slender.
And if you want to do weights, have them be
small and do like ten thousand reps. Yep, Well that
just doesn't work. If you're menopausal. Menopausal muscle and bone
wants really heavy lifting. So I am working on that,
(37:51):
and it's rocking my world. I'm not happy about it.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Dead lifts, You're you're going to CrossFit or what.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Well, right this minute, I'm still working from home to
get ready to do that kind of stuff. No, CrossFit
isn't even the right thing you have to do. There's
a there's a doc she's an exercise physiologist who does
research on women.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Go figure.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Her name is doctor Stacy Simms. She was a speaker
at a conference that I organized this for Institute for
Functional Medicine. Her research is amazing. I mean she has
people doing very small number of lifts, but you're doing
to eighty percent capacity.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Wow, eighty percent.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
She goes when Yeah, she goes, basically, if you do
eight reps knowing you could do two more with good form, Wow,
very interesting. So as much as you can and then
you just rest for a little while. And she goes,
it's basically like hit. Like with cardio, you do really
(38:52):
high intensity and but you don't have to do a
whole lot of it. And she goes, and just think,
when you get to that point, you're saving time. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
I love this all right, So here's my last question.
I want you to just take a step back and
look out into the future. It's five to ten years
from now. You know, what is doctor Wendy Warner doing
and how are you having an impact?
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Okay, I'm gonna have to teach you that these kind
of thoughts are silly. Because when I was thirty something,
I sat down for the first time with a financial advisor,
and they said, tell me where you're going to be
in twenty years. I was one hundred percent sure. I
(39:39):
was ninety nine percent wrong. I was in the same house,
not married to the same person, not in the same job. So,
cause you know, crap happens, all right, five to ten years.
Five years, I'll probably be doing pretty much exactly what
I'm doing right now.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Ten years, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I don't know. I mean, I basically, you know, I
spend part of my day. I spend a lot of
my time seeing patients directly. I spend a lot of
my time teaching. I imagine over time the proportion of
that will change and I'll spend a lot more time
teaching and writing and a lot less time seeing individual patients.
(40:24):
I honestly don't see myself. My mom asked me this
recently this summer, Are you planning on retiring at any point?
Speaker 1 (40:34):
And I like the way she worded that, at any point?
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, you know, I'm sixty four, so I'm starting to
get that question a lot, and she's ninety six, and
she just goes, I don't, I don't know, are you
planning on doing it at any point? I go, I
can't imagine not working now. I do want to learn
to play a little more, and I don't want to
work the way I always have in terms of the
(41:00):
number of hours every week. But yeah, I can't imagine
not at least still teaching.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
I'm so grateful that you are doing what you're doing
in the world. And I mean, you've had such an
impact on my life, and then I can have an
impact in other people's lives. And I'm so so grateful
that you shared all that you did here today, and
I know that you have just helped numerous people just
by what you shared in this conversation. So doctor Werner,
(41:29):
so grateful.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
I thank you, And I want to say one thing.
You're the kind of patient we all want because you
are willing to go Okay, you're right, let me try this,
as opposed to just immediately block block block. No, I'm
not going to do it. No, I'm not going to
do it even because if a patient doesn't want to change,
(41:52):
I can have all of the tool I can offer
all kinds of tools, but if the person doesn't want
to change, I mean, you're a coach.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
You know how that goes? Yeah, yep, I agree, it is.
It is it's not. It's as I said in the beginning,
it's not a quick fix there is. It takes time,
it takes revision, it takes measurement. But the way that
I look at it is I want to live better,
I want to do better, I want to feel good,
(42:22):
I want to be happy. I'm not looking for the
perfect experience, but there's so much to learn, and I've
grown so much because of this experience, and so I'm
thrilled to just bring your message to my world. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
I think if people can just realize how much better
they will feel emotionally and physically when they take better
care of themselves, that's really.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
The only message I'm going to get across. Yeah, I
love it. Thank you for joining me for another episode
of the Warriors at Work Show. If you are interested
in learning more about what we do at the Warriors
at Work Show and platform, be sure to go over
to my website, Genie Koomber and subscribe to my monthly
(43:06):
Warrior Playbook newsletter. I share everything that I'm up to
month by month, as well as some lessons and insights
that I've learned. I'm also interested in hearing any feedback
you have about this conversation or future topics, so reach
out to me directly on JC at geniecoomber dot com
or on LinkedIn. Be sure to tell your friends and
(43:28):
your colleagues about this Warriors at Work Conversation, Subscribe, review
and rate us. It's the best way to get this
message out into the world. Be well,
Welcome to the Warriors at Work Show. This is Genie Koomber,
your guide and host. This is a show for men
and women in the workplace who want to move from
the predictable to the potent. This is your weekly dose
of inspiration with an edge. I talk with CEOs and shawmans,
sports marketing executives, and therapists. All of us are like
(00:24):
minded thinkers and doers who tell stories, share wisdom, and
challenge each other to have the best life possible inside
and outside the office. Welcome to your Warrior Conversation. Hey everybody,
it's Gennie. Thanks so much for joining me here at
Warriors at Work and Happy July. As we reach the
(00:46):
halfway point of the year, it's a natural time to pause,
reflect and realign with ourselves. So over the coming weeks
I will be resharing podcast episodes from Warriors at Work
and the intention here is to help you to reconnect
with your your self, refuel your energy, and move forward
with clarity. Let's make the rest of the year really
(01:07):
count enjoy. So welcome doctor Wendy Warner. I am so
excited to have you here with me Warriors at Work
to have this conversation. Thank you again, for being here.
It's a pleasure to be here. So what's fun about
this is you've been such an integral part of my
life for the last number of years, and I get
(01:30):
to turn the tables on you and get for you
to share your wisdom with a much broader audience. And
so what I want to do is, first like take
a big step back, and I want for you to
share a little bit about your story. You practice integrated
functional medicine, and I would love for you to describe
(01:51):
your journey into this space.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Okay, I did the usual college medical school residency trying
to conventional OBGYN, did conventional OBGYN training practice for fourteen
years now. Very early on, I mean it's really corny.
Very early on, I figured out that I needed to
deal with my own PMS or nobody was going to
(02:15):
work with me for more than about three months. And
I did not want to do daily prozac, which is
what I was trained I was supposed to take, so
for the three or four days that I yelled at people.
So I honestly don't remember now how I even found this,
but I realized I'm not the first person who's had
(02:37):
to deal with this. There's got to be some other
way to handle it, and I was really interested in
getting into botanical medicine at the time because I'm a
gardener and found the right plant. It worked beautifully, and
I kind of kept it to myself because we're talking
the early nineties. No docs did this kind of thing
(03:00):
back then, and I was brand new in the area
and I didn't want to get run out as some
kind of weird witch doctor, so kept it quiet. I
eventually took pity on a patient who had the same
symptoms that I had when she burst into tears and said,
I think my husband's going to divorce me.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So I said, Okay, go.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
To this health food store, get this, take it for
three months, call me back.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
It worked.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Her friends found out about it, they were happy, and
I realized, O good, maybe I'm not going to get
run out of town. So all the time that I
was doing conventional OBGYN, I was actually learning about integrative
medicine and then functional medicine myself, and I was getting
training in botanical medicine and lots of other cool stuff.
(03:47):
And at some point, you know, some of my business
partners were not very happy about it, and we had
a big blow up and I started my own practice.
It was an awesome, awesome place. I had all these
cool practitioners under one roof, everything from acupuncture and massage
(04:10):
and energy medicine, shamans, stress management guys. I mean, like
all kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
It was great.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Eighteen years COVID kind of changed all that, And so
now i close my brick and mortar and I'm doing
fully telemedicine consultations only and it's fun, and I do
a lot of teaching. I teach for the Institute for
Functional Medicine, and I teach for David Winston's Center for
Herbal Studies, and then do a lot of like webinars
(04:39):
and things for different people.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Wow, what an interesting journey. And where I think it
would would be really helpful too, is I think people
do not understand what integrated functional medicine actually is and
how it's different from quote unquote traditional medicine. So I'd
love for you to define that for us.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Okay, And I actually, well, okay, conventional medicine. The way
I was trained is you basically try to fix the
symptoms and make people happy and everybody, and I think
this is most patience experience. Also, different doctors kind of
stay in their lane, and so you're not really being
(05:24):
seen as a whole person. In my mind, integrative and
functional medicine are slightly different. Integrative medicine simply means you
see the whole person and you have different tools in
your toolbox. You might use herbs, you might use something else.
Functional medicine is sort of it's sort of like a
(05:46):
subset of integrative medicine, but it's a thing unto itself.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
It teaches you to.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Look at the underlying processes of what's going on and
to fix the basic process is rather than just fix
the symptoms. So you know, if you have inflammation, which
is a process, it may show up as blood sugar instability,
it may show up as Alzheimer's, it may show up
(06:15):
as perimoonopausal symptoms. So you say, how it's very, very
different than how a conventional doc would look at those things,
because in conventional medicine, those are all different.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Right. Well, it's interesting to give the background on why
I came to you, and I think a lot of
people that are watching and listening are going to relate
to this. Is you know, I've been working for a
number of years. I have probably what you would characterize
as like sort of a high stress job as an
executive coach. I'm in very intense conversations with people all
(06:48):
day long in the workplace, and I started to ask
myself bigger questions based upon my mom passed away suddenly
have a heart attack when she was sixty two. My
dad died of complications from a stroke when he was
seventy eight, when he was in great health. It had
happened very very quickly, and I started asking myself bigger
questions because I was having anxiety. I wasn't managing my
(07:09):
stress well. My sleep started to get crazy, it was
heading into menopause. I just was worried all the time,
and I knew that I didn't want a quick fix.
I wanted to look deeper what was really going on.
And so I found my way to you. And one
of the things that really changed for me, very very quickly,
(07:31):
is the care and the time you take to explain
what is actually at the root of what's happening. And
it isn't a quick fix. It is investigation, It is
trial and error. It is a lot of natural supplements
and things that work with your natural body chemistry, and
(07:53):
it isn't necessarily only a pharmacological approach to things. And
I just found your style to be warm, inviting, fun, lighthearted,
and you've just been such a key part of like
my team, if you will, my personal, my professional team,
and I'd love for you to talk about I mean,
(08:14):
this is Genie's experience with you, but I'd love for
you to talk about your approach. So somebody reaches out,
they get to your team, they go through their blood
work process, and they get to meet doctor Wendy Warner.
Talk to us about your approach.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Okay, Well, like all functional medicine practitioners, or at least
good ones, you know, I need to know your basic
medical background, and I need to know your family history,
and I need to know how you live your life.
Like you know, I have a nutritionist slash coach who
(08:55):
does intakes for me for all my new patients so
that we can get a real detailed feel for how
is this person eating, is this person sleeping? Is there
any exercise on board? Blah blah blah, because we need
to see the whole picture. Yeah, I get lab work
that is very different from what most primary care practitioners,
(09:18):
for instance, would get, because I need to see as
much detail as possible, and I will, like most practitioners
who do this kind of medicine, you know how, you
get your lab report and it'll have the reference range
there next to it, and it may or may not
be flagged as abnormal. And I know you've had this
(09:40):
experience where I've said, oh, yeah, it actually doesn't look
as good as you think, because we're gonna look at
these reference ranges differently, because we're looking for optimal ranges,
not just what the lab says.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Is okay, because.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Sometimes what can conventional medicine would consider okay is really
not optimal by any means. And sometimes the lab references
there's no science behind them. They just run the test
on a couple thousand random people and plot all the
results on a Bell curve, and that's the reference range.
So you need to understand that because otherwise you're going
(10:20):
to miss a lot of detail. And if you're so, Basically,
I'm looking for all the clues in what you've told
me and in your labs and in your symptoms, and
I put it all together into okay, Well, this process
is out of whack. And this process is out of whack.
(10:41):
And I don't know if you've ever had this experience.
But sometimes when I'm telling people all the different things
that are like, well, this is off, and this is often,
this is often this is off, I see their eyes
getting really big and they're thinking.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Oh my god, I'm so screwed.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
You don't have to go No, You've got all these
different things going on, but they're all related. And because
they're all related, we just need to fix this and
this and this and all the rest of it is
going to take care of itself.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
I want to build on the word optimal that you
just talked about and get you to talk about common themes.
So what are some of the common themes you're seeing
with patients? So when when you think about this notion
you're looking for optimal, it's not perfect, it's optimal, which
I think is an also an important distinction. There's no
A in this. Yes, speaking from somebody who's always looking
(11:33):
for am I hitting the optimal performance number? It's like, no,
there's no perfection here. But I'd love for you to
talk about like the common situations, themes, challenges that you're
seeing in your practice.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Well, I can tell you the two things that I
talk about all day long. I talk about a drenal dysfunction.
And I talk about blood sugar instability because I mean, historically,
I've always had a small group of people in my
patient population who've had unstable blood sugar. And most Americans,
(12:12):
well most people around the world, their adrenal hormones are
a little off. But it has gotten so much worse
in the past couple of years. I spend all day
talking to people about blood sugar instability, and that is
that's a good example. Well, actually, both of these are
examples of how your lab results may make it look
(12:33):
like you're okay, but you have to be asking the
right questions and drawing the right labs and then interpreting
them correctly. So good example. Hypoglycemia, lots of that means
your blood sugar is crashing periodically. People feel that. Well,
if you're twenty or thirty something, you call it getting angry,
(12:56):
because you're really angry if you haven't eaten. Other people
will just say, well, yeah, sometimes if I haven't eaten,
I get a little dizzy for a second, or or
I'll crash if I eat you know, a really starch
heavy meal. That's bloods your instability. Well, if you're a
conventional doc, I was trained. You get a fasting blood
(13:17):
sugar and if it's normal, meaning it's under one hundred,
the patient's good. And so even though this person feels crappy,
you've just told them that they're okay. Well, I would
look at the fasting glucose and what's called a hemoglobin
a one c. That's a three month average blood sugar,
(13:41):
and I would also get a fasting insulin. All right,
That paints a different picture because in somebody with hypoglycemia
who feels the way I just described, their fasting gluecase
might be fine in the nineties, perfectly, okay, Their hemoglobin
A one c might be way down at the bottom
the normal range, like four point eight. Well, okay, if
(14:05):
they're normal, if they're fasting glucose is on the higher
end of the normal range, how do you end up
with an average that is that much lower. Well, that
kind of, by definition is hypo glycemia, and that matches
with how the patient feels. And so the person is
not only validated because you know how many people come
(14:27):
to me going I feel like crap, and my doc
keeps telling me I'm okay because they just didn't ask
the right questions. But it also lets me then monitor
over time as we go to fix the problem. Are
those numbers matching up.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And talk it does well, I'm living. I'm living that
story you just talked about. I also love for you
to talk a little bit more about adrenals, particularly how
stress is impacted our adrenal system.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Okay, we're going to talk about how stressed not only
impacts the adrenals, but also how that impacts all of
our health. Like I said, all of us. I mean,
you know, we have a crazy society where we all
live way too fast, in sympathetic overdrive all the time.
(15:23):
And there was a time where we could kind of
deal with it and it wouldn't really bother us all
that much, most of us. But in the past few years,
I mean, I think it kind of started during quarantine.
We all lost our resiliency. So now when we live
(15:44):
these crazy busy lives, our adrenals are trying to do
the fight and flight reaction day in and day out,
and that becomes very dysfunctional. I mean, cortisol is a
good thing. You need it to get out of an emergency,
you need it to get up in the morning, but
the fight and flight reaction is only supposed to last
(16:04):
this long. It's not supposed to be every day. So
if you're asking your adrenals to pour out this adrenaline
cortisol all the time, they'll do it. But in order
to do that, their function becomes abnormal. Because this other
hormone that's supposed to balance you out, called dha. Dha
(16:26):
keeps you calm and happy during the emergency, well they run.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
You can't do both.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So if the cornisol is really high, your DHA gets
lower and lower and lower, and so that starts messing
things up. So the adrenals get tired, and you can
go from you know, all the way to being overly
active to limping along barely able to make any cortisol.
(16:52):
Now over time, that starts messing with almost almost everything
in our body. Because think about it, our adrenals only
have one real job, and that's to keep you alive.
That's kind of an important job. So they get to
(17:13):
interfere with pretty much anything they want to. For instance,
they will tell your insulin, hey, listen, we're running away
from the tiger right now. I don't know when I'm
gonna eat again, so I'm gonna block you because I
actually need this glucose because I don't know when I'm
(17:34):
gonna run against, so I'm what I'm gonna eat against.
So it'll block the insulin and that throws off your
glucose metabolism and it either makes you initially hypoglycemic and
then eventually, you know, could lead to diabetes because it
doesn't know your adrenals don't know you're going to do
this for the next you know, ten years. They think
you're gonna do it for five minutes. They will mess
(17:59):
with your sleep because you know, if there's an emergency,
your body doesn't want you in a deep dark sleep.
It wants you sort of you know, one ear open
just in case. It'll make you live in your mid
brain too much. Our mid brain does emergencies. Our mid
(18:22):
brain is really good at getting us out of trouble,
but it doesn't remember things because that's not its job.
So that's why when people are really stressed out, they
start getting that weird brain fog and they can't remember anything,
like even as something as simple as where gonna put
my car keys? And oh, dang, I just met this
(18:43):
woman last week.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
What is her name? Yeah? Or why am I in
this room? What did I come here for.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You walk in well, and it also makes you really distractable.
So when if you realize that you can't stay focused
on anything, that's almost always an adrenal thing because think
about it, the amygdala, the mid brain, the emergency brain
doesn't want you focused on one thing. It wants you
scanning the horizon all the time for the next emergency.
(19:10):
So you walk into a room to do something, you
don't get around to doing that. You get you notice
something else, so you do that and then that sents
you to another room and you do that, and you
do that, and you do that, and you never did
do the first thing. Yeah, boy, you're describing a.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Lot of my life.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
Well not just you, I think it's a lot of us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
Well, I'd love for you to share. I mean, you
have so many tools and perspectives in your toolkit that
are is so so interesting. But you know, beyond supplements,
I'd love for you to talk about, like particularly around
managing cortisol and the stress response. I'd love for you
to talk about some ideas you have and some results
(19:53):
you've seen.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Okay, I do always use some kind of supplements. There's
a whole category of herbs called adaptogens. They are very helpful,
and I honestly think at this point I don't know
a single person who couldn't benefit from some adaptogens.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
However, I always couch it.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
In these terms. You've got to remember they're just herbs.
So if you're taking herbs to support your adrenals, but
you're still living your life like a tiger's chasing you,
the tiger's going to win. So it's our job to
constantly tell our adreanals we're fine, you can settle down. Yes,
(20:40):
we have a problem. It is not life threatening now.
I sort of figured this out really early on in
my own career about how much adrenals are going to
bother me, and it's relatively.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
It's an interesting story, I think, because I don't know.
I was thirty two or thirty three. I was a
conventional lobgyn. I'm sitting in the delivery room at three
or four in the morning and talking to the night nurses,
waiting on a baby to show up, And honestly, we
were gossiping about some of my older colleagues who were
about ten years older, so they'd been doing this longer,
(21:19):
and they were all getting sick now the guy who
wait donuts all the time. We expected him to get diabetes. Yeah, okay, fine,
But there were two guys that were athletes. One was
a runner, run was a cyclist. They ate well, I
mean I saw them they I saw him eating lunch
and dinner in the delivery room. And despite that, one
(21:42):
got hypertension anyway, and the other one got an autoimmune
disorder and became an insomniac. Now obstentricians canna sleep anywhere,
So that was like really weird, and we're sitting around
talking about how how weird it was because these guys
appeared to be doing a pretty good job taking care
of themselves, and all of a sudden, this light bulb
went off and I went, oh, guys, it's this and
(22:07):
the nurses went, what do you mean? I went, we're
awake at three in the morning all the time. That
makes our body think there's a problem because we should
be asleep. And it was all those emergencies that we
dealt with in the delivery room and in the operating
room and in the er and will I'm the first
one to admit I was an adrenaline junkie. That was
(22:27):
the fun part of my job because I always used
to say, well, you know, if a baby's going to
come out easy, you don't even need me.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Cabby can do that.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
So that's when I had this light bulb moment when
I went, oh, I really love this work and it's
going to make me sick.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
In ten years.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
So I don't want that to happen. So I had
to go do some research because unfortunately they never really
talked to you much in med school about a dreanmal function.
So I had to go find how can I fix this?
And it turns out the sign it shows two things.
Our adrenal glands want to see a quiet brain on
(23:05):
a regular basis. Now, I don't know anybody who does
that unless.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
That's not normal.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
That's not normal for humans, right, we have to go
like do it on purpose. So that's any kind of
meditative technique, you know, seated meditation I did. I did
seeded meditation alone for a long time. Honestly, in the
past few years. That is more difficult for me now
I can't stay focused as easily. So I've added in
a practice called chigong, which is a part of Chinese medicine.
(23:36):
Actually it's like a moving meditation, and I also ran
across the research for the Institute of Heart Math. Now,
the Institute of Heart Math has been looking at this
for I don't know thirty years. How are yes, Our
adrenals respond to what the brain says, but the brain
determines our safety based on our emotions. And what it
(23:59):
comes down to is every single negative emotion gets interpreted
as crap, we're in trouble, and it tells the adrenals
to stay turned on. Okay, anger and fear, you need
to do the fight and flight reaction. That makes sense.
But it's every negative emotion, anger and fear, and pain
(24:20):
and sadness and worry and brain chatter. Because brain chatter,
even though we're all kind of used to it, it
looks to our body like anxiety. So I mean, imagine,
think of your adrenals sort of watching you, going Okay,
I don't see a tiger, but she's still planning things
and she's still worried about stuff, so there must be
(24:41):
something going on. So they'll just stay turned on if
you do a lot of brain chatter. Now, the good
news is what they found out is that positive emotions
do the exact opposite. If your brain sees that you're
feeling grateful and joyous and excited and happy. It's sort
of figures there's no tiger back there, because who in
(25:03):
their right mind would you feel good if they were
still in trouble. So they took all that data they
came up with these techniques that are kind of like
a meditation, but the difference is instead of just trying
to be quiet, you are actively creating a positive emotion
on purpose, sort of in a ritualized way, because like
(25:24):
you're hanging out in an old memory and you have
to actually recreate the feelings. By the way, I did
that entirely wrong. For the whole first year I taught
myself how to do it. I thought I was doing
it right. I was actually just thinking about positive emotions.
I wasn't actually feeling positive emotions. It took me a
(25:44):
little while to figure that part out. But they've shown,
and they've over and over and over again, under lots
and lots of different situations, you can get your adrenals
back to normal doing their techniques correctly four to six months.
Most people can get it under control if they actually
(26:04):
do it, and if they do it correctly and they
do it enough, it's a lot of variables.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Well, the enough part I mean as a student to this.
The way that I characterize is it sort of cuts
the noise right down the middle and you're inserting a
different like I use like an energy or frequency. You're
changing the dynamics of what's going on in that circumstance.
And sometimes when I'm doing it, I'll just start humming.
(26:31):
I know it sounds weird, but I'll just start humming
to get me into that space where like, remember a
time when you felt happy, Remember a time when you
felt relaxed, Remember the time you felt safe. Haven't mastered it,
but that's how I I think just even the act
of doing the breathing around it also is just it's
like a quick way to get yourself in a different state.
(26:53):
And if you're in a different state, you have more
optionality you can start to do. I think these techniques
in a really powerful way. I also am very curious,
like what's the future of a functional medicine, Like, how
is it going to play a bigger role in the
world of medicine. From your vantage point.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
I'm hoping that, well, let's put this way, it's going
to have to change from from the ground up. It
is not going to change from the top down. Our
medical system is too entrenched in the whole concept of
(27:39):
insurance providers and pharmaceuticals and all that kind of stuff.
What I believe and what I'm finding more and more
is that patients people are really disappointed in that system
and they don't feel as though they're getting the kind
of care that they really need, especially for long term
(28:00):
chronic conditions, because the medicine I was taught is about
fixing problems. It's not about helping people be healthy, and
people would prefer many people, not everybody. Many people would
prefer to learn how to be healthy and not have
(28:24):
to deal with just well, let me play wax the mole,
fix a problem, fix a problem, fix a problem. They're
getting irritated with that. So I'm hoping that there will
be enough groundswell from patient demand that it's going to work. Now,
there's a couple of things that are on the horizon
that I think eventually insurance providers are going to pay
(28:50):
attention to. The VA, believe it or not, is already
on board. The VA has been interested in integrative functional medicine,
and they're a big proponent of heart math. By the way,
because it makes sense to them. I mean, think about it.
They have a mandate to take care of their soldiers
(29:12):
and to get them back, you know, to function as
quickly as possible, and they have a limited budget. So
it's the limited budget that pushes them because they just
want to know what works, and this kind of medicine
works really well for chronic illness and it is a
lot cheaper than conventional medicine. Now there's also Cleveland Clinic,
(29:40):
really well known, big clinic. Right they have a functional
medicine department that was started by my friend Mark Hyman
and Patrick Hanaway was one of the first medical directors,
and they're gathering data to prove that for many different
(30:01):
chronic illnesses they're not only at least as good as
conventional medicine, but they often get better outcomes than conventional medicine.
And they are saving the system a ton of money
and they're getting hard data to prove this. So that
Cleveland Clinic's on board. They have a huge backlog of
(30:25):
people trying to get into that practice, into that part
of Cleveland Clinic, and I think especially people who are
self insured organizations like Cleveland Clinic I and other large organizations.
If you have to pay for your own insurance. You
want to spend your money and get the most bang
(30:47):
for your buck. And I think for chronic illness this
is as effective, more effective, and definitely cheaper. Now we
still need conventional medicine. It does great for emergencies. I
mean I was really glad eight or ten years ago
when I fractured my ankle that I had an er
(31:08):
with an X ray machine that could help me. You know,
I wasn't gonna just just do acupuncture, right, I did
that for recovery. So for the current conventional model, the
current conventional medicine does really, really well for acute care medicine,
(31:29):
but they don't do well with chronic illness. They just
spend too much money for chronic illness because they're not
getting to the heart of the manner.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Do you find with your patient base that you have
to collaborate with other doctors outside of this functional space.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Yeah, And what sometimes happens is that the poor patient
is stuck between two people that they trust and like
who were telling them completely different things.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
And I do apologize to patients for that all the time.
But I can show them the research and I can
walk them through the science and explain to them why
my approach may make more sense and their other doc
usually can't do that. I would love for you to
(32:18):
share with us who do you follow, Like, who are the.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Voices that inspire influence your thought or even the research bodies,
and why do you follow them. I'm going to tell
you two different things.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
I'm going to tell you the people that if this
whole idea of integrated functional medicine is new and you
want to learn about it, I can tell you the
people you should follow. I mean, I kind of keep
an eye on what they do. Mark Hyman is a
well known name. Mark's been around a long time. He's
(33:03):
been with functional medicine from the very beginning. He's got
a gazillion books out there. He has done an excellent
job of getting information out and explaining to the world
what functional medicine is. And I will give him a
lot of credit. He is currently working hard to change
(33:24):
in Congress what we do with like the farm budget,
because if we don't change the food system in this country,
we'll never get well. So Mark, I'm is a good
person to follow. The Institute for Functional Medicine has really
good information on their social media all the time. The
(33:52):
p LMI Personal Lifestyle I'm going to mess up their
name Personal Lifestyle Institute, Personal Lifestyle Medicine Institute p LM
I that was founded by Jeff Bland, who is the
founder of Functional Medicine. It's an organization that is doing
research and they also have like they basically get people
(34:15):
together and share research. They have a cool conference every year,
and their social media has got really good information on
it as well. I am currently personally interested more and
more in regenerative farming and how to get how to
(34:37):
get our food system to change. So Mark's a big name,
he can go talk to Congress. They don't want to
talk to me. I want to go help my farm friends.
I mean I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, very close
by is where all.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
The farms are.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Ninety percent of the food that I ingest I know
who raised it, wow, both animals and plants. And what
makes me nervous, and what makes a lot of people
nervous is that the average age of an American farmer
is in there is in the fifties. We have to
(35:18):
convince young people to farm.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Who's going to do it right?
Speaker 2 (35:24):
And I'm interested in learning about people who have taken
the idea of regenerative farming and putting it into a big,
bigger scale to make it financially more important and more reasonable,
because you know, most of our farmland, it's ridiculous what
(35:45):
we do to that land. You know, we're doing monocultures
that are unhealthy. So the Rodale Institute, which is not
too far from me, about an hour north, they do
a Regenerative Agriculture conference every year and it's next September.
It's next month in September, and I'm going to that
so I get to meet some folks who are doing
(36:07):
this work and see how I can help get the
word out.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
I love that. Well, now I want to talk about
you and what you're working on, so we have to
do a little revealing out of your own personal life.
So like, from a health and well being perspective, what
are you working on for yourself?
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Build and muscle? And I'm not happy about it. Yeah,
So menopausal women lose muscle easily. And although I have
been active all my life, strength training has never really
(36:46):
been very high on my priority list. I did it
when I was right out of residency because I was
in such bad shape and I have to admit I was.
I liked being strong, and I liked how I looked.
I look awesome, But the reality was I was mostly
hiding in the basement from my first husband because weren't
getting along very well. So I kind of have this
(37:07):
emotional thing about strength training. But I've been looking more
and more at the research and on the appropriate way
to gain muscle. It's all about lifting heavy things. Because
you know, those of us of a certain age, remember how
when we were younger, we were told, well, if you're
(37:29):
going to exercise, do a lot of cardio because you'll
burn off a lot of calories and you'll stay slender.
And if you want to do weights, have them be
small and do like ten thousand reps. Yep, Well that
just doesn't work. If you're menopausal. Menopausal muscle and bone
wants really heavy lifting. So I am working on that,
(37:51):
and it's rocking my world. I'm not happy about it.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Dead lifts, You're you're going to CrossFit or what.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Well, right this minute, I'm still working from home to
get ready to do that kind of stuff. No, CrossFit
isn't even the right thing you have to do. There's
a there's a doc she's an exercise physiologist who does
research on women.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Go figure.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Her name is doctor Stacy Simms. She was a speaker
at a conference that I organized this for Institute for
Functional Medicine. Her research is amazing. I mean she has
people doing very small number of lifts, but you're doing
to eighty percent capacity.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Wow, eighty percent.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
She goes when Yeah, she goes, basically, if you do
eight reps knowing you could do two more with good form, Wow,
very interesting. So as much as you can and then
you just rest for a little while. And she goes,
it's basically like hit. Like with cardio, you do really
(38:52):
high intensity and but you don't have to do a
whole lot of it. And she goes, and just think,
when you get to that point, you're saving time. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
I love this all right, So here's my last question.
I want you to just take a step back and
look out into the future. It's five to ten years
from now. You know, what is doctor Wendy Warner doing
and how are you having an impact?
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Okay, I'm gonna have to teach you that these kind
of thoughts are silly. Because when I was thirty something,
I sat down for the first time with a financial advisor,
and they said, tell me where you're going to be
in twenty years. I was one hundred percent sure. I
(39:39):
was ninety nine percent wrong. I was in the same house,
not married to the same person, not in the same job. So,
cause you know, crap happens, all right, five to ten years.
Five years, I'll probably be doing pretty much exactly what
I'm doing right now.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Ten years, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
I don't know. I mean, I basically, you know, I
spend part of my day. I spend a lot of
my time seeing patients directly. I spend a lot of
my time teaching. I imagine over time the proportion of
that will change and I'll spend a lot more time
teaching and writing and a lot less time seeing individual patients.
(40:24):
I honestly don't see myself. My mom asked me this
recently this summer, Are you planning on retiring at any point?
Speaker 1 (40:34):
And I like the way she worded that, at any point?
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, you know, I'm sixty four, so I'm starting to
get that question a lot, and she's ninety six, and
she just goes, I don't, I don't know, are you
planning on doing it at any point? I go, I
can't imagine not working now. I do want to learn
to play a little more, and I don't want to
work the way I always have in terms of the
(41:00):
number of hours every week. But yeah, I can't imagine
not at least still teaching.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
I'm so grateful that you are doing what you're doing
in the world. And I mean, you've had such an
impact on my life, and then I can have an
impact in other people's lives. And I'm so so grateful
that you shared all that you did here today, and
I know that you have just helped numerous people just
by what you shared in this conversation. So doctor Werner,
(41:29):
so grateful.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
I thank you, And I want to say one thing.
You're the kind of patient we all want because you
are willing to go Okay, you're right, let me try this,
as opposed to just immediately block block block. No, I'm
not going to do it. No, I'm not going to
do it even because if a patient doesn't want to change,
(41:52):
I can have all of the tool I can offer
all kinds of tools, but if the person doesn't want
to change, I mean, you're a coach.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
You know how that goes? Yeah, yep, I agree, it is.
It is it's not. It's as I said in the beginning,
it's not a quick fix there is. It takes time,
it takes revision, it takes measurement. But the way that
I look at it is I want to live better,
I want to do better, I want to feel good,
(42:22):
I want to be happy. I'm not looking for the
perfect experience, but there's so much to learn, and I've
grown so much because of this experience, and so I'm
thrilled to just bring your message to my world. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
I think if people can just realize how much better
they will feel emotionally and physically when they take better
care of themselves, that's really.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
The only message I'm going to get across. Yeah, I
love it. Thank you for joining me for another episode
of the Warriors at Work Show. If you are interested
in learning more about what we do at the Warriors
at Work Show and platform, be sure to go over
to my website, Genie Koomber and subscribe to my monthly
(43:06):
Warrior Playbook newsletter. I share everything that I'm up to
month by month, as well as some lessons and insights
that I've learned. I'm also interested in hearing any feedback
you have about this conversation or future topics, so reach
out to me directly on JC at geniecoomber dot com
or on LinkedIn. Be sure to tell your friends and
(43:28):
your colleagues about this Warriors at Work Conversation, Subscribe, review
and rate us. It's the best way to get this
message out into the world. Be well,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.