What Is 21st Century Medicine? Explained by Melanie Dorion

[Uncle Marv]
Hello friends, Uncle Marv here and welcome back to another episode of my unhealthy podcast, where we talk about life in a much different perspective. Yes, we talk health and fitness, we'll talk diet and exercise, but a lot of times we've got to talk about other things that are unhealthy in our life that we just simply need to fix. And today we are continuing with part two of my interview with Melanie Dorion.

And if you didn't catch part one, well, you should go back and listen. But if you're here and you can't change the dial, Melanie is the founder and medical director at Bee Vital Health Center. And she basically has fixed her life, overcoming chronic illness, Lyme disease, mold illness, and at one time she was the Canadian national champion for biking.

And we're going to finish up our story with her and we're going to talk about 21st century medicine. So, Melanie, welcome back to the show. Thank you.

All right. So I wanted to go back and just for people that listen to shows out of order, because we know that some do, your journey to getting into this 21st century medicine started as a result of you finding out that you had chronic illness and it started while you were trying to compete to get qualified for the Olympics.

[Melanie Dorion]
Yes, my journey started really, I became rapidly, chronically sick. I became very sick, very rapidly, and it was a long journey and a long decline in my health after I had my fifth concussion trying to qualify for the Olympics in 2000 for cycling, for mountain biking specifically. And within a year and a half, I became debilitated.

And really what it was like, the experience of what it was like to become chronically sick and live with chronic illness for years, really the experience, the worst part of that was how much shame I had around that, how hard it was to be so unreliable when you have chronic illness with the fatigue, with the brain fog, how forgetful I was. I missed so many friends events, so many family events because I was either too sick or too tired. And I was constantly weighing, OK, am I going to do this today or do that?

And at one point, it must be really cute because someone agreed to marry me despite chronic disease. And so I was a wife at one point in my life and had children. And what I realized with living with chronic illness through those stages of life, I was a pretty absent wife at times and often.

And I really wasn't the best mom while I was doing the best I could in the context of chronic illness. I missed a lot. I mean, I remember there are some days when my kid was, I have two beautiful biological and a foster child now.

But at one point when my 17 year old was around two years old, I had to make the decision. So he lived with her mom the first six years of his life at chronic illness. And again, the worst part wasn't losing my professional career, it was losing myself, losing the ability to feel joy.

I should have been so blessed to go to the park and play with him. But that day I had to decide, am I going to go to the park and be present and play with him? Or am I going to go to the grocery store and actually serve my family and do groceries to prepare dinner?

I couldn't do both. I was too tired and had too many chronic illness to be able to do both. And I realized the things that used to bring me so much joy, I had lost the ability to actually feel joy in many, many aspects of my life.

So I was faking it till you make it, you know, that fake it till you make it. I was living my life that way. And that's just not a way to live.

So for the listeners right now who are not living an optimal, thriving life, who are struggling, who are faking it till you're making it, who are not maybe able to be reliable because of depression or anything else with chronic illness, you know, heart disease, maybe it's hard for you to walk and exercise or it's like me, I, I, it was hard to be reliable because I was so exhausted and fatigued. So maybe it's painful. You don't know if you can attend your grandkids graduation because maybe you'll have to stand for a bit and you have so much inflammation and pain in your body.

Whatever it is, it doesn't have to be your future. It doesn't have to be that way. And I lived that way for over a decade and it didn't have to be that way.

So I just want to make sure that the listeners, like the worst part of developing chronic disease and living with it was losing the basic things in life, being present and serving my family, my community, which I love volunteering. I couldn't do that. I became so unreliable, I couldn't make any of the commitments of the things that really filled me with, with joy.

Yes, of course, I like to exercise, but I couldn't even tolerate a 20 minute walk. So the things that were so foundational to bringing me joy, I love reading. My brain fog was so severe.

I would get headaches and migraines from trying to read for more than 15, 20 minutes. So you don't make a lot of progress in reading a novel or a book or anything when it's, it's your life. So that was really the worst part.

And I just want to affirm if you're a listener and you're listening to this and you can, you know, either yourself or a family member that's experiencing chronic illness, it's, you don't have to live that way, you know? And when I knew that it was my birthright to feel thriving, optimal health at every stage of life, when I knew that that became my truth, I became very fierce at defending that. And I knew when I started getting my health back that I wanted to serve others within the healthcare community and I wanted to focus on chronic, chronic complex illnesses and serve others with my own experience and my knowledge.

You know, God did not put that experience in my life in vain. And he makes beautiful things out of really tragic situations. And what came out of that was this endless hope that I have now because of my experience and what I've seen in thousands of my patients, of people who recover, people, it's absolutely possible to recover.

And if you're a listener right now, you're allowed to thrive and have optimal health at every age and every stage of life. I do not care if you're a 70-year-old or if you're a 20-year-old right now, male or female, you do or you don't have chronic disease. You're allowed to thrive and feel optimal at every age, every stage of life.

And that's a core belief that I hold. And that's a core belief that we have in 21st century medicine. And my journey, I got everything back plus some.

I was given so many gifts through this healing journey and it's possible for everyone. You know, if you're on your own healing journey right now, understand wherever you are now, if you don't feel thriving, optimal health, it is not the end. I promise you that.

[Uncle Marv]
I think everybody can hear both through your story from our last episode and how you're starting out here. The passion that you have about educating folks and even the next generation, I guess, of health care providers that, you know, these are the things that we need to do right. Before we go on, I want to go back and ask one question that is probably going to feel like a sidestep.

But we talked about your chronic fatigue. We talked about Lyme disease. I think most people know what those are.

But at one point you mentioned a mold illness. Yes. And I just want us to kind of get a clear understanding of that because we know about mold.

We know if we have it in our home, black mold and stuff like that. But I don't think I've ever heard anybody talk about mold illness as something they're experienced. Can you share that real quick?

[Melanie Dorion]
Absolutely. And this is the case for any environmental toxin. So a big part of what we do at Be Vital is we focus on environmental medicine, environmentally acquired illnesses.

So anything that has an environmental component, Lyme disease is an environmental infection, for example. But toxins, the number one toxin that I see in my practice as a contributing factor to chronic illness is mold, mold exposure. So the estimate is that about 50, 5-0, half of especially government owned buildings in the U.S. have a toxin issue, including mold. So all of us pretty much are going to be exposed through our education or to mold. And not everyone responds to mold the same way or to any other toxins. It's very genetically dependent.

So a quarter of the population lacks the genetics to detox mold toxins. So mold is bad for everybody, Marv. OK, like we all go into a moldy building, a hundred of us.

None of us are going to feel good after a week. We're all going to have symptoms. But we come out of that building and 25% of us who lack the genetics to detox at all or properly, we're going to continue getting sick and sicker.

And the other people can detox. So within a few hours, a few days, they feel fine because their bodies can remove these toxins. So toxins are how a body processes toxins is very genetically determined.

And I can tell you because I've done testing, I did not win the genetic lottery for detox. OK, I am a terrible detoxer. So a mold exposure or any other toxin exposure for me has a much greater impact.

And please listen to part one if you haven't. But I talk about my analogy about a health bucket. Well, when it comes to toxins, my bucket is smaller per my genetics.

I'm not broken. My bucket is just smaller. So I have to create healthier drains and be a little bit more aware of how the bucket is being filled up.

And once you understand that and people I use also analogies for cars, for bodies, and I'll get into that. But, you know, effectively, I had a little Kia that had flat tires when it comes to toxins. And I had many, many toxin exposure, including heavy metals and then mold.

So mold illness is really when there's a clear trigger for illness, whether it's autoimmune disease, immune dysfunction, whatever it is. And that's mold. Toxins are known very, very well-known scientifically to cause immune dysfunction.

They're carcinogens. They are known to trigger immune dysfunction and immune suppression, contribute to chronic inflection, infections and chronic inflammation. Well, I had all of those things.

And I had mono at one point, positive, like symptomatic mono for four years. Understand that. But I was living in a moldy building that was suppressing my immune system.

And I had chronic Lyme disease, which also suppresses the immune system. So I had many, many hits against my immune system. And then so mold illness in environmental medicine is we consider that after a mold exposure, when there's like a trigger for especially immune issues, chronic inflammation, infections, that is you can relate while doing a proper history, which we do in 21st century medicine.

And you understand that, oh, this is a mold related illness. So my case got a lot worse. Everything got way worse when I was exposed to in a consistent basis to mold.

So I had mold related illness. And when I finally removed the mold from my environment, started removing it from my body, my healing was amplified like by tenfold. It was unbelievable.

But no one was doing that testing. So it took like years of really struggling and trying air quote here, everything that it took finally someone who was really thinking about things holistically and my own research to realize, oh my goodness, I've been living in black mold. And then I started drastically getting better within days and weeks after years of illness.

Once I removed myself from the moldy building and then I started doing things to detox. So mold illness, you know, it's not like a specific illness per se. It's just when you have severe inflammation and which also leads to gut dysfunction and immune issues.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. So you are going to lead me into a path which I hope will lead us into the core of your 21st century philosophy. This idea of detoxifying our lives, also known at least the way I understood it's clean living, learning to find foods that don't have all these chemicals and preservatives, all of the toxic stuff in our cleaning supplies and the things that we touch and wear every day.

Does all of that fall into your environmental aspects?

[Melanie Dorion]
Yeah. And do you want me to just jump in and explain 21st century medicine? Yeah.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah, go ahead.

[Melanie Dorion]
Really, 21st century medicine is it's an approach and a philosophy to health that and I mentioned earlier, the core belief is that everyone, it's your birthright to thrive and feel optimal at every age and every stage of life. We do not believe that as we age, people decline and it's just assume you're going to develop chronic disease. Okay, that's our foundational belief in 21st century medicine is that every human, it's his or her birthright to thrive and have optimal health at every age and every stage of life.

And what we look at is different dimensions, four dimensions. Diet and lifestyle and then mind, body, spirit and then the social aspect. Okay.

So diet and lifestyle is like the big, big, big foundation. And then the four dimensions are the mind, the body, the spirit and the social aspect. So those are the four dimensions with always, always a foundation of diet and lifestyle.

And that's how we approach things. And when we look at imbalances in your mind or in your body or wherever they are, we definitely take into account. So how we approach things like the pillars of the more medical piece of this or the body piece is we look at digestion and detox.

That's core to what we do. Okay. Diet and lifestyle is definitely one of the pillars, but then digestion and detox.

And then we look at the immune and inflammation. And then you look at hormones and metabolisms and then we look at support like coaching. That is core 21st century medicine.

And that's how we approach. We look at all those pillars , okay, let's make sure we cover our basics, right? The dimensions, mind, body, spirit and social.

Where are things out of balance? And then how are we going to get some answers other than a really thorough history and actually talking to people, which is a really lost part of medicine, a lost art in medicine? You know, I am doing a history for someone, it can take an hour just doing the history because I want to know mind, body, spirit, and social.

I want to know all of it, not just your medical history, your ICD 10 codes. I'm interested in that. Absolutely.

But I want to know everything else. You know, what feeds your soul? I ask this, what do you do for fun?

What feeds your soul? You know, how are your relationships? And then we look at then the pillars and the more medical side of things.

I'm going to do really thorough testing to figure out, you know, are things in balance for your hormones, for your metabolism? Are you being exposed to or do we suspect toxins? I will test for that.

I will look for how is your immune system functioning? And do you have inflammation, acute or chronic inflammation? And then why?

And I look at causes of chronic inflammation. And from my approach, and that's 21st century medicine now is what I've coined that term for this approach. We are going to look at all the causes, the known causes for chronic inflammation, which might be chronic emotional, spiritual, psychological stress, but it could also be toxins.

It could be chronic infections, nutritional deficiencies. So we look at the contributing factors and very science-based as well. So we're going to do very thorough testing in 21st century medicine.

Why? Because everyone deserves that. Whether you're chronically sick or you're healthy and you want to stay healthy, we've got to know in all those pillars what's going on.

Well, how's your immune system functioning? What's your inflammatory state? What are your hormones like?

And are there trends right now that we're seeing that you're progressing potentially into a deficiency or disease? So in insurance-based medical system, which is a system that is a sick care system, okay, let's call it what it is. It's a sinking ship.

The insurance-based system is a sick care system. It waits for disease to have an intervention. And this is not a conspiracy theory, guys.

This is what the U.S.-based Western medical system is a sick care system. It manages symptoms and disease. If you study medical models around the world, the Western U.S.-based medical model is a disease and symptom management model. So when you look at the normal ranges, for example, on your blood report, on your labs, the normal ranges are only to diagnose disease. They're not to tell you if you're thriving or optimal. So what we do in 21st century medicine is we look at where is there not just an absence of symptoms, but where is there thriving health?

We want absence of symptoms, but you can still be sick and have minimal symptoms, okay? You can still be really out of balance and have minimal symptoms. So we look at, okay, where's our thriving optimal health in the biochemical parameters in your blood work?

And that's what we look at. That's really the approach. And we continue supporting the person with, again, the foundations of diet and lifestyle, right?

If you eat crap and you're eating processed food and you're not eating fruit and vegetables and you're eating things mostly that come out of a box or a can, well, I mean, you can pray, meditate, and take vitamins and medications until you're blue in the face. You're not going to be healthy. That's just the basics.

So we work with people at optimizing diet, removing obstacles to healing. I've talked about that in part one. My job is to remove obstacles to healing.

A 21st century provider works with you as a collaboration, as a cooperation, and that you actually are in charge of your healing. You have sovereignty and agency over your health and your body. And that's also a core belief in 21st century medicine is we believe in health sovereignty.

We want you, the patient, to actually understand the beauty that is your body and how it works and what your symptoms mean. You know, the insurance-based medical system disempowers people. Well, don't complicate things or don't research too much.

Don't Dr. Google. You're going to get it wrong. You just don't understand.

Well, that's foolish. The best doctor is a person living in his or her own body. And I experienced that.

I was so dismissed and I was gaslit in my experiences. Yet later on, when I had the medical knowledge and I opened a medical textbook, I was like, I was actually textbook symptomatic of these things. They just ignore it, right?

Like we actually, you don't have to be able to read a medical journal or a textbook, like your experience is valid. What is your experience in your body? And understand that, you know, five different people having a similar symptom of, you know, a headache or fatigue.

Well, I know what that means for me. If I get a headache, I know what it means for me now. I didn't know 20, 25 years ago, so no one educated me.

So I do a lot of symptom education. And then I put with data, hey, when you feel like that, look at that. We've tested two or three times now, every time your B12 is on the low end.

So this symptom for you have the sovereignty over that, over your body. That symptom means you need more of this nutrient and go blast yourself with a beautiful steak and, you know, some leafy greens and eat food first. And if that's not enough, cool, man, let's give you a supplement.

And so I teach people symptom education a lot. Like, Hey, I want you to have the sovereignty, understand your body. So that's in 21st century medicine.

We don't want people stuck in our system. We want to teach sovereignty and agency. We want people to have what they need in their toolbox to take care of themselves.

[Uncle Marv]
Nice.

[Melanie Dorion]
A lot of education.

[Uncle Marv]
It's a lot of it is, it is. And a lot of it is in some ways, un educating people about the system that we've been in for such a long time. And the fact that we're still, people are falling into the trap that a pill is going to solve their issues.

I mean, we're, we're seeing a lot of that right now with the weight loss industry where, I mean, there are so many pills popping up to fix our weight issues, which is why when I decided to lose a little bit of weight, it's not a ton of weight, I just want to get rid of my belly. I'm like, I'm not going to get a pill. I'm not going to do a program.

I'm just going to, you know, I got here. By the way I eat and by the way I treat my body. So I'm going to fix it by the way that I eat and the way that I treat my body.

It's a whole nother show. All right.

[Melanie Dorion]
It is. But the thing is, is like you just reaffirm the foundation of 21st century Madison diet and lifestyle. What can we optimize there?

I've been practicing an advanced chronic disease for over a decade. What I have seen accomplished simply by optimizing and people like finally getting agency and sovereignty over their health and saying, I am going to actually do this. I'm going to change my diet.

I I'm going to do a few basic things, maybe add one or two supplements, but I'm going to change my diet. I'm going to start moving. I'm going to go hug some trees and get some sunshine.

Okay. I literally give these as prescriptions. I'm like, you're going to go for a go saunter in the woods, take a minute and hug a tree, like just appreciate nature, right?

I joke around, go hug a tree, but it's just go appreciate nature. Um, and then you're going to like go outside when there's some sunshine and you have a prescription 15 minutes, twice a day, you're either going to walk, if you're too tired, just going to sit in the sun, just sit in the sun and you do nothing else. You just sit in the sun.

And if you want to pray and meditate and sing great that you go sit in the sun and when they do that, beautiful things start happening and you just like reaffirm that experience of like the basics of diet and lifestyle. We don't need all this fancy stuff. A lot of the times that is promoted with medications and fancy programs and these fancy algorithms and you name it.

I'm, I'm a terrible salesperson right now for my practice because I do really advanced programs for chronic disease. But, um, really what I'm saying is when you do the foundations and when you have fun, so don't forget the social aspect of feeding your spirit. If you take clean up your diet, you start moving your body and you interact with humans and you have fun and you humans that you like, right.

Um, and you go out there and you have fun. It's amazing how, what heal, what healing happens.

[Uncle Marv]
Yeah. Um, so let me now ask a question and this is just from basically more for me than for my listeners, but, um, you know, I've talked to people and we've talked about holistic approaches. We've talked about functional medicine.

You've mentioned a, the, uh, natural pathic, uh, method. Um, and a lot of these things you've combined and all of that, but talking to what I'm going to do, I'm going to call them normal people. Come on ones that the ones that believe wholeheartedly in the systems that are out there in the hospitals and the pills and stuff, when they hear the concept of a functional approach, um, it's met with skepticism.

So I wanted to ask, and this is how we know we didn't prep for this. Um, what are some of the common misconceptions that you need to fight when people come to you? And you know, they want to get healthy, but they're going to push back on what you're talking about.

[Melanie Dorion]
Yeah. And, and just to clarify, right, this is not a fight. I'm not out there to fight anything.

Really. What I'm doing is I'm opening doors and I'm opening eyes and I'm educating with actually proper information about what true health is. And you know, the simple thing that I do is, well, how are you feeling?

Are you thriving? No. Okay.

So here's what I've learned with, and now I've been in the world of healthcare, either studying it, or my own journey for over 20 years. So I have an extensive amount of experience and over a decade of practicing advanced medicine and advanced chronic diseases. What I see the biggest misconception is that people don't, they have lost the belief and the hope that they can feel good.

So simply by doing that, and I do, I do free speaking and education almost every month, um, either through my practice or at conferences, or I get, um, asked to speak in the community, uh, very frequently. And I tell people this all the time. I said, if all you leave with right now is that you have hope that you can feel better or you can maintain feeling great, I will have done my job.

And then after that, that I want you to start believing that you can have agency and sovereignty over your health. Again, you are not dependent on the specialist, on another healthcare provider, on a pill, whatever it is, you know, a supplement or a medication that you can have agency and sovereignty over your health. I will have done my job.

So those are the biggest misconceptions is that, and I'm a geriatric specialist. I've studied advanced, um, chronic disease, but also aging, optimal aging. I call it optimal aging.

Anti-aging is complete bullcrap. Let's be honest. We're not going to anti-age.

So I believe in optimal and thriving aging. So you optimal age, and I've studied this. I've studied biohacking, you name it.

I've studied all the different philosophies and the different approaches to do that. But the biggest misconceptions is that people believe that they deserve to feel like crap because they're a certain age. Women have been told all the time.

Of course, you're going to feel like crap. You're a woman. You have hormones.

Of course, you're going to feel like crap. You're pregnant. Of course, you're going to feel like crap.

You're postpartum. Of course, you're going to feel like crap. You're perimenopausal.

And I give this as an example because of how neglected in healthcare and medicine women have been. I've been on the receiving end of it, so I can say it firsthand, but I get a lot of women. And that's just one example.

Also, men's health. You are just told that you're just going to gain some weight. You're going to decline, and you're not going to be as vibrant as you were in your 20s.

[Uncle Marv]
Well, that's- You're going to get a belly at 40.

[Melanie Dorion]
Yep. You know, the man bod. The dad bod.

I'm like, are you kidding me? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is not your future.

Let's do thorough testing. Let's look at your metabolism. Let's look at your blood sugars.

Let's look at your hormones. Men are a lot simpler. Women, we have to look at a lot more things.

But it's, those are really the biggest misconception. Like if you're here today and you're doubting that you should thrive and feel good, and I live with chronic diseases. So understand where I'm coming from.

I live every day. So I'm a super healthy thriving, but I say high maintenance person because I live with multiple chronic diseases that are super stable. I've reversed to put many things in remission that the reality is.

I just understand that my baseline, but I thrive. I'm a 48 year old woman. Who lives with chronic diseases.

If I accepted the narrative that the insurance based medical system told me I was going to be debilitated for the rest of my life and I'm going to keep declining and I'm going to feel like crap, right? That, that was the narrative that I was being told over 20 years ago. And this journey started.

If I accepted that I would be in rough shape. No, no, no. Instead.

I said, polite pass. Here's your prescription back. Don't put these diagnostic codes in my chart.

And thank you very much. I'm going to take care of myself. And I put myself through medical school and that fierce passion that I had to climb mountains and win medals.

I put it all in my recovery and understanding this and then serving others with that, please understand again, if all you leave with listening to this podcast is have some hope that you're allowed to thrive and feel great. Whatever you want to do. You want to be present for your grandchildren or your children.

Maybe, maybe you do want to do some sports again. Maybe you want to travel and right now you can't cause you're in too much pain or you're too tired. Maybe you want to do an international trip.

That's going to mean, you know, a big flight jet lag and all that. And right now you just don't think you have the capacity. No, that's bull crap.

I have 70 something year olds who are competing in triathlon. I have a 90 year old woman that I recovered from chronic pain and chronic Lyme disease. She came to me very debilitated a year and a half later, she traveled by herself to California to go see her great grandkids, 93.

You know, I see this all the time because I gave her, when I validated her, I validated her experience. I did not dismiss her because of her age or her sex. And I said, you know, what do you want to do?

What's in your heart? What, what's the thing that you really want to do? Everybody, I asked that every no, everyone knows what's in their heart.

What do you really want to do? Okay. I'm like, well then let's work together to make that happen.

And that's what she wanted to do. She wanted to be able to travel independently to go see her, her grandkids and great grandkids. And she did within a year and a half.

And believe that you're allowed to thrive and have optimal health. And you're going to have to believe in agency over your life and your body and your spirit. You know, really we have sovereignty.

Oh, ultimately, right. Where do you have the most independence is over your mind and your spirit, right? You have, we all have full sovereignty.

We don't always have necessarily full sovereignty over everything else in our life, but you certainly have agency. Um, you know, those are two different things and that's what we believe in. And that's what I want people.

And then after that would certainly be that the medical and dietary guidelines are there to help you. No, they're not open up your eyes. They're not.

I'm just going to repeat what we said in part one, the food pyramid. That's all I have to say. Period.

The food pyramid, the food, three words.

[Uncle Marv]
Why don't we do this? So in terms of, so somebody is listening to this and they're like, you know what? I, I want to make that switch.

I want to start to, you know, reset how I'm looking at myself, move into this 21st century movement, uh, of medicine. What are the steps that, that somebody could take on their own, I guess, uh, without having to get, you know, too geeky into, you know, the stuff.

[Melanie Dorion]
Yeah, it's a great question. I love that. I, what can you do on your own when clean up your diet?

Okay. And there's not one diet that fits all, please understand. You know, people are all over the map, whether you're more a plant-based person and whether you want to be vegan or vegetarian.

It's cool. Like, I love you. I'll support you.

Whether you want to be a meat eater and a carnivore. Cool. I love you.

I support you. And there's evidence for on the entire spectrum. Okay.

So if someone is out there advocating that you have to be plant-based, that is bullcrap. I've seen people thrive on a carnivore diet, but I've also seen people crumble on it. Same on a vegan diet.

So what is your preference? Okay. Let's start with that.

Are you like, I don't care. I love meat. Great.

Okay. You're like, then clean up that diet and include some high quality meat. What we do know is the foundations of a healthy diet are going to be unprocessed nutrient dense, meaning you eat the fool, the food in it, in its whole thing.

Egg whites. Oh golly. Show me where egg whites are better than whole eggs.

Cholesterol. It's so full of lies. That whole cholesterol myth.

It's a myth by the way. So it's, it's unprocessed. It's nutrient dense, meaning you eat the full food.

Okay. Um, and it's varied and you eat according to the seasons. And ideally if you can local, uh, there's a lot, a lot of toxins in our food.

So if you follow those parameters, if you clean, you know, stop eating from a can and a box, you make your own food. Yes. Grow up big girl, big boy, pants on eat your food and vegetables and cook.

Okay. All right. All right.

Moving on. That's such a basic parameter that people have forgotten. Um, and, and then move your body.

Well, what do you mean? Move? What do you like to do?

You like to swim? Cool. Swim.

What we do know though, especially for women, weightlifting after the age of 40 is critical, um, but walking for men or women, if you get, we don't need another study showing that you get about 10,000 steps a day, you're going to be healthier. We don't, we just don't need another study. It's not a random number.

We have lots of studies supporting that certain number of steps, meaning you're walking and you're moving. Okay. You're going to be healthier.

You know, motion is lotion. Your joints need to move. Motion is lotion.

If you're not moving your joints, your joints don't know how to create the lubrication that they need to be super healthy and thriving. And that goes the same for the ligaments, the tendons and everything around the joint. So you have joint pain, move.

R reduce processed foods, remove, not reduce, remove processed foods. And if you, if all you do and then get daylight, okay. Sleep when it's dark and be outside and be active when it's daytime, get some sunshine.

You know, my mom, that was her fix all cure for everything. Have a cup of tea. Even my grandmother was British.

So my mom was raised British. So have a cup of tea and then go get some sunshine. She, my mom would always say that.

And I started appreciating that when as a healthcare provider, I'm like, Oh my gosh, please go outside and get some sunshine. I'm like, Oh, I sound like my mom, but she was right. And she's like, just go sit outside.

If I was really tired or sick, I remember she was just putting me outside. Give me a cup of tea and give me a blanket. If it was cold, she'd go sit outside in the sun.

And it's like, she was disinfecting me with the sun, but it was, my mom had a lot of wisdom. So yeah, if you, if that's all you do. And okay guys, if you've done that diligently for three to six months and things are not shifting, you're not feeling a little bit clearer in your mind.

You're not losing a little bit of weight. You're not having a little bit more energy and stamina. Then there's maybe a medical issue.

Then look for someone who does 21st century medicine and please understand 21st century medicine. Just, I coined that term, what, two years ago now, I'm over 2025. So this is a very, very new thing, but there's lots of practitioners who practice something similar to that.

So whether they do integrative medicine, functional medicine, holistic medicine, lifestyle medicine, those are all approaches of someone who's going to approach you more in a more comprehensive way with an approach that's a lot more consistent with 21st century medicine. So it's, it's an approach and a philosophy really to health, like keep it simple, a kiss method is really for real and clean up your diet. You know, if someone is not helping you clean up your diet and optimizing your lifestyle and they go straight to pills, like, oh, you need these six supplements, maybe don't, maybe not.

That's a pill for an ill, but just for a supplement, right? The ill model pill is the conventional insurance-based medicine. If you need a prescription for whatever symptom, well, we're out of that.

21st century medicine is not how we practice. Again, I'm not against prescriptions, guys. I prescribe my practice almost every day, but with a lot of information and education around that prescription, that whenever I can use diet and lifestyle, that's where you start and then maybe a supplement.

But so if you're not feeling better after three to six months, Marv, then you should go see someone and not conventional insurance-based medicine. You're just going to be pushed further into disease and that, that system. So you need to find someone who practices 21st century medicine, holistic or functional medicine, integrative medicine, because you're testing also, and you need testing, get some testing, you know, test and don't guess.

I say this all the time, 21st century medicine, we test, we don't guess. Is there a test to confirm our suspicion or confirm what's going on? Yes.

But also let's establish a baseline and a benchmark and let's retest to confirm resolution. Traditional insurance-based medicine is terrible at confirming resolution.

[Uncle Marv]
You know, They're just going to find a problem and then prescribe something. And in other cases over prescribed because, well, this first one didn't work. Here's another one.

Um, so let me also go back and just reiterate that a lot of what you laid out in terms of those first steps, diet exercise, you know, um, moving, getting into sunlight, that's all free for all practical purposes. Yeah. You might have to pay a little more at the grocery store to find the right foods, but it's, it's, you're not paying for a program that's going to, you know, push you towards somebody else's idea of what works for you.

You find what works for you. Uh, you mentioned finding the right foods, you know, I like meat when I keep eating meat. That was one of the things that when I did talk to people about stuff and they're like, Oh, you got to eat this and not eat that.

[Melanie Dorion]
And I'm like, okay, that doesn't make me happy, but yeah, I mean, I've had people, they were, you know, recommended to be on a vegan diet and, you know, promoted as that, you know, the plant, a strict plant-based diet, and I do labs and I'm like, listen, you're iron and B12 deficient. Um, that doesn't exist , so many of these nutrients that you're deficient in doesn't exist at all in a strict plant-based diet. So let's just use data right now.

Let's just use data. I said, humor me right now. Food first 21st century medicine is food first.

I don't want you to rely on a supplement or an injection or whatever it is. So food first, can we agree that nature has provided beautiful ways of getting B12 and iron? And I see this frequently, which is why I'm, I'm, I'm picking on that, um, many times, and I have some people they're so close-minded about dietary approaches being varied and, you know, eating source locally and seasonally, and they'd rather be on an injection or a supplement for the rest of their life than bringing more variety into their diet.

You know, so, and same thing. Some people were like, I'm going to be a carnivore and their gut microbiome is an absolute mess. Well, if we don't bring more fiber, sir or ma'am, it's not going to work.

Your microbiome needs a little bit more dirt from plants and fiber from the plant world. We have got to bring more variety into your microbiome and optimize your microbiome. And that's only done through soil exposure through foods.

Like you get a carrot out of the soil, you wipe it on your pants, man, and you eat the carrot, right? Uh, then you get fiber nutrients and lots and lots and lots of good bugs. If the soil is healthy, of course.

So that's how, that's how I approach things. There's not one diet that fits all. There's absolutely not.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, Melanie, thank you again for spending some time with us and getting us, uh, moving towards the right track. Uh, I want to be cautious of your time here.

And, uh, folks, if you have, uh, been listening to both these episodes, um, and want to learn more, uh, you can head to her website, uh, Be Vital Health. I'll have the links in the show notes. You can reach out to her.

She does do a lot of speaking. And, uh, this has been an interesting look into the world of, um, I'm going to go ahead and say the integrate, functional, naturopathic medicine, the 21st century approach. And, uh, sounds much more healthy than a shot, a needle.

[Melanie Dorion]
Yes. 21st century medicine is full of common sense that we've lost, unfortunately. And again, please understand if you're listening to this, you're allowed to thrive and feel great at every age and every stage of life, and you should not be dependent on high force interventions like surgery and medications.

Um, you can thrive actually with very simple strategies. And if you're not after a few months, please come and see me or go and see a practitioner who, um, will be able to do testing to support you and get you some answers. Cause you deserve answers.

You absolutely deserve answers when you're not feeling well.

[Uncle Marv]
All right. Well, thanks, Melanie. For those of you out there, I'm sure you could hear in her voice, in her passion, uh, the inspiring journey from, uh, being a chronic disease, disease survivor to, uh, a now leading healthcare provider.

So that's it folks. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on any of your favorite pod catchers.

And I'll be listening for more thought provoking discussions on health and fitness, where we teach you to be, uh, to get rid of all that unhealthy stuff in your life. And in turn, you can live healthy and be happy. See you next time.

Allah.