How to Feel Better with Dr. Forrest Sauer

george grombacher 0:01
Well, hello, this is George G. And the time is right. welcome today’s guest strong and powerful. Dr. Forrest Sauer. Forrest, are you ready to do this?

Dr. Forrest Sauer 0:08
I am. Thanks for having me.

george grombacher 0:10
I’m excited to have you on let’s go. Dr. Forrest is the founder of Twin Oaks health. They’re an alternative medicine practice that helps people manage complex health problems like diabetes, thyroid disease and depression. Forrest excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work and why you do what you do.

Dr. Forrest Sauer 0:29
Well, I am a functional medicine practitioner. And I got here, because I obviously had some of my own personal health challenges. When I was in my early 20s, I was depressed, I hit the snooze alarm five times before ever wanting to get up. All of my drive and motivation was gone. And I was told that this was normal. I thought this was how aging was. And lo and behold, I was nothing could be further from the truth. We were meant to have energy, we’re meant to have purpose in life. And when I got exposed to a healthy way of living, and really the functional medicine approach that completely and radically changed, not just my health, for the health of my family, and my entire outlook on life. And I know without a doubt that if I had not changed my health, there will be no way that I would be in private practice today, because I would not have the brainpower to do it, I wouldn’t be able to have the driving motivation to do what I do every day. And so this is literally shaped my life.

george grombacher 1:37
So functional medicine, yes. What is that?

Dr. Forrest Sauer 1:41
Functional Medicine is the science of getting at the root underlying cause of the problem. So for perfect example, if you go into the medical doctor, at your local hospital or clinic, you’re going to tell them some symptoms, and you’re going to get a medication, or maybe some labs taken as the fix with functional medicine. We’re focusing on why you have that symptom in the first place. And how do we fix it so that way, we don’t have to mask those symptoms, with medications that you’re going to have to take for the rest of your life. So really, it’s the science of reversing diseases, if you will, if you have diabetes, if you have thyroid, depression, anxiety problems with sleep, problems with weight, that’s where functional medicines, anyone taking natural protests or functional medicine can step in and completely reverse that.

george grombacher 2:28
Would you say that it sounds like such a? Sounds like the right approach? Sounds? Right? That sounds pretty obvious. It?

Dr. Forrest Sauer 2:37
It really does. It really does. And honestly, I don’t get it like I don’t get what other people don’t see in it it just because, well, here’s the thing, when I don’t blame people who don’t take this approach, because you know, I was halfway through getting my doctorate in chiropractic before I ever learned about this. And it took a friend, I was a broke college student and took a friend saying, Hey, do you want to come to this free luncheon? And I, you know, me having no money? I said free food? Absolutely, I’ll be there. And so I showed up and the guy there was talking about how he in his practice, he reversed diabetes. And my mind just absolutely blew up and said, you can reverse that. And then I started going down this huge deep rabbit trail or rabbit hole of functional medicine. And yeah, it just makes so much sense. And when I and it’s not the first time I’ve heard that response, George, when when I ever I explained this style of medicine, inevitably, people are like, Well, why doesn’t everybody do that? Great question. I don’t know. I’m just doing what I do and what I believe is best, because it radically transforms people’s lives.

george grombacher 3:45
So somebody comes in, much like you did, you know, it’s I just don’t feel good. I don’t have the motivation. I don’t have the drive. Maybe I am suffering from some kind of a chronic condition that I’ve been trying to treat through through medication of some kind. You say? Well, let’s, let’s have a deeper conversation. Why don’t we take a step back? So I’d like to hear a little bit about that. And then what are some of the interventions that functional medicine utilizes.

Dr. Forrest Sauer 4:10
So our average person has already tried getting their health back two or three times, whether it be through a weight loss program, rather be through medication, or vitamins and minerals, and for lack of a better way to say it, they’re just simply playing the guessing game. And that’s where we want to take a different approach because they’re seeing me for a reason they’re obviously not getting results. We take very detailed labs, bloodwork to see exactly where we need to go first. Now, one of the main complaints that we have with most of our clients is but my labs are always coming back normal. Please understand, health insurance is only going to pay for labs that they can prescribe drugs for that that’s it. They’re not going to take full comprehensive labs to see exactly what’s going on with you know, they just want to simply see what see if there’s anything wrong Give you a pill and send you out the door. That’s the model that that medic that the Medical Main medical model is in where the functional medicine approach is, yes, we do need to take more comprehensive labs, we need to figure out what’s going on the root or line cause a problem. And then we can have that deeper conversation saying, Okay, you’re not feeling good. It’s because your thyroids not working, or you’re not feeling good, you’re feeling you’re, you’re have IBS, it’s because you got massive amounts of inflammation, or you got an hidden parasite or gut infection going on. And we need to take care of that. So if I am

george grombacher 5:35
under the impression that my labs are fine, because that’s what my primary care or somebody has told me that and you are looking at a fuller spectrum or fuller range? What are what are some of those indicators that that that would throw a red flag up? So you know what something is wrong with George?

Dr. Forrest Sauer 5:55
It? Well, first off, the body doesn’t work in isolation. Great question. But the body does not work in isolation. So if you go to your cardiologist, they’re only looking at your heart, you look at go to endocrinologist, they’re only looking at your hormones GP, they just kind of look at everything. And they just do the highlights. So we need to look at the body holistically, because that’s how your body operates. And when you do it that way, like specifically, let’s go and just play with this, like one of the labs that we take, it’s called homocysteine, it’s an inflammation marker in the body. Well, if you have very, very high homocysteine, that could throw off your thyroid, the thyroid is like the, like the gas pedal. For your body, your thyroid controls the speed at which your body works. So if you’re feeling sluggish, you feel like you want to sleep all the time, you feel exhausted, you got brain fog, that could be thyroid, or it could be massive amounts of inflammation going in on your body. You don’t know until you do that proper lab testing that it’s done. And so when people always ask, well, well, what labs did you do? The Iran Sal knows the toes, like we test for everything. So that way, you know exactly what’s going on.

george grombacher 7:03
And, again, it sounds very, very reasonable and makes sense that you’d want to look at everything in total, even though a lot of what we’re I guess, accustomed to or taught or conditioned to, is to look at, you know, zeroing in on something, but it doesn’t really make a lot of sense that, just because I’m getting headaches all the time that there’s something wrong with my head, it’s probably something else going on. Yeah, that’s

Dr. Forrest Sauer 7:27
not how the body works. The body doesn’t work in isolation, your body where your lungs provide oxygen to the rest of your body, and your lungs just don’t simply work by themselves, they serve a bigger, larger purpose.

george grombacher 7:43
This is probably an unknowable question. But when you look at America, just as as a total, and you look at all the health problems, how much of it is environmental stuff that and the food that we’re eating just our lifestyle? Versus Wow, there’s a lot of people who are experiencing crazy health problems, but they’re, they have healthy lifestyles?

Dr. Forrest Sauer 8:09
That’s a great question. Okay. So let me tell you a story about a recent client. His name’s Jeff. And he walked in with fatty liver disease. And he was not an alcoholic, who wasn’t a diabetic, because those are the two main causes of fatty liver. It was unknown. The doctors didn’t know what to do with them. He was losing weight. And his wife was worried that they were going to lose him. And he was worried too, that he was gonna have to check out soon. And we started changing his lifestyle, what he was eating, what he was drinking, how he’s living in his life. And in six short weeks, his fatty liver has completely reversed. He’s gaining weight, he’s getting more energy. And it’s all because of the way he’s living his life, the foods that he’s eating the things that he’s drinking. Now, there’s no one size fits all approach. There’s no magic diet. There’s no magic pill. So we have a very standard process that we walk our clients through that shows them step by step, what foods are going to be building Jeff’s body of what food or were was tearing his body down, and we walk people through so that way by the time people are done with us, they know specifically, what is their ideal lifestyle, because not everybody is meant to go vegetarian. Not everybody’s meant to go carnivore or anywhere in between or keto or the next new fad diet. There’s a specific way there’s a specific lifestyle that is meant for everybody and we help people find that out.

george grombacher 9:42
I think that that’s exciting, that our bodies are capable of making pretty substantial changes if we give them an opportunity in a short amount of time. So in six weeks, you know, you could I mean, there’s no magic wand to your point, no silver bullet, whatever. But if you give your body a chance, it can make pretty good recover your gains quickly.

Dr. Forrest Sauer 10:06
Absolutely. I always I have a saying that, you know, if you believe what we believe that the body has the innate power to heal itself, and you can control that, then you belong here, you belong with us, because that is the truth. You were not meant to be a slave to your own disease, you can own your health, because what is health do health gives you options. A sick man only wants one thing, a healthy man wants 1000 things. And so when you have your, when you have your health back, it allows you to be creative, it allows you to show up at work on purpose, it allows you to do that extra thing that’s going to mean the most for that client or your customer.

george grombacher 10:53
How much of how much of being healthy and successfully having a healthy diet just to kind of take that example of figuring out what foods are right for me. And for my lifestyle. How much of that is success with that is is is is mental for lack of a better term of me shifting the way I think about it.

Dr. Forrest Sauer 11:21
I think when when I think a mentality and like mindspace headspace, how do we think about healthy lifestyle? Number one, you have to be in a space and recognize that what you’re doing is not working. And we have to be willing to change, because otherwise, we’re not going to get results. So we have to be willing to change our lifestyle. That’s number one. But when I was first getting started on my own wellness journey, I seen the direction that I was taking in that my health was going and in my early 20s When things were not going well. And I was just simply not okay with that. And I also knew I didn’t want to be one of those people. That was yo yo dieting that was always on again, off again, never consistent. And so I shifted my belief, I started believing that I was a healthy person. And I did not simply wait until I had the belief, because I knew that I needed to take action to enhance the belief. So I started off saying no, I’m a healthy person. And then I started behaving or acting in a way that I thought a healthy person would live. And your actions enhance and strengthen your belief. And your belief enhances and strengthens your actions. And they compound. And that is what has allowed me to live a consistently healthy lifestyle, not having depression or anxiety, or IBS, or and having my motivation back for the past 12 years, that sort of has allowed me to be consistent is because of that belief in that and I’m taking actions to support that belief.

george grombacher 12:54
Yeah, again, making sure that we are thinking about the whole person. So all the individual things are important. But we also need to have that belief and had take ownership over it. Which again, sounds obvious for us, but not necessarily the case for everybody. Right?

Dr. Forrest Sauer 13:13
Well, I you know, I believe that oftentimes, we need to be reminded more than we need to be taught new things. And you know, a lot of us know that we should be eating less sugar, or fewer carbs. But knowing specifically when to do it, how to do it, what recipes to cook, how do we escape the sugar cravings? How do we go ahead and start rebalancing our hormones, all those things, and having a coach and a mentor help guide you hold you accountable to your why to your bigger goals, that is really the missing piece that that we provide. So when I see a client, they’ve already tried getting their health back, they’re missing that coach, they’re missing that person to say, You know what, you need some tough love right now you need the kick in the pants, because you told me three weeks ago, that this is what you wanted. And now we’re having a bad day and it’s okay to have bad days. Nobody’s perfect. I’m not perfect. But remember, we have this bigger, bigger purpose. So having a coach having a mentor keeps you consistent.

george grombacher 14:13
Yeah. need to be reminded more than

Dr. Forrest Sauer 14:18
educated taught, taught need to be reminded more than taught new things. New, it feels shiny, and really exciting. But most of the times we already know what we need to do. And sometimes that’s not the case with with health care, especially if you haven’t had the proper labs taken, then you just simply don’t know. And we do need to do comprehensive labs. But as far as taking the action, like we all know that we should be taking action.

george grombacher 14:45
And it’s so important. I mean, even the most self disciplined strongest willed people in the world still need support and help and the hand up for the kick in the butt. Every once in a while.

Dr. Forrest Sauer 14:57
I was listening to a podcast So this is a while ago, but it was with Arnold Schwarzenegger. And he said there’s and he said this quote, and it just really resonated with me because in America, we, we think that the successors are all lone wolves. They’re just simply doing it by themselves, they can make everything happen. And Arnold said, like, there’s no such thing. As a self made man. Everybody stands on the shoulders of someone else. And that is exactly how and that’s what Arnold gave credit to his success is that he stood on the shoulders of his giants. And that really resonated with me and just brought home the fact that yes, we need community we need someone to help us ring our dreams to fruition.

george grombacher 15:45
Arnold Schwarzenegger said that. I mean, there’s not just an example of what you would perceive to be a self made human being on planet Earth. And he’s saying that then I think it’s definitely true.

Dr. Forrest Sauer 15:55
So I heard that and I’m like, I’m in I get it. I’m done. No, no questions

george grombacher 16:01
before us, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you and how can they engage with you and Twin Oaks health?

Dr. Forrest Sauer 16:09
You can hit me up on the socials. I’m at Dr. Forest sour just about everywhere. If you want to work with my clinic specifically, that is Twin Oaks health.com. We have a lot of different resources that have recently come out and are still coming out to help people get educated on functional medicine. And again, that’s Twin Oaks. health.com.

george grombacher 16:30
Excellent. Have you enjoyed as much as I did show Dr. Forrest your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to Twin Oaks health.com. And check out the great resources and find out if it’s the right fit for you to get your health back and feeling better and everything that we’ve been talking about today and find Dr. Forest on social media at Dr. Forest sour. It’s f o r r e s t s a u e r certainly link that in the notes of the show. Thanks Kim forest. Thanks, George. Till next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai