How Functional Medicine Helps You Get Off Medication (Dr. Mark Sherwood)

Dr. Mark Sherwood: We have control over what we’re putting our mouth, whether that be food or liquid And we have control over supplements We can control what we do with our body exercise wise. We can move more, set less, and we can make sleep a priority. Those things, foundational truths. No, they’re not sexy, though. They don’t sell TV shows, they do create health

Show Announcer: You are listening to the Dr. Haley Show, the podcast dedicated to helping you optimize your health. Each episode there will be an interview or a message to help you discover better health. We will be featuring health radicals on the show to bring new ideas to the table, as well as doubling down on key fundamentals to support you living your best life. Your host is no other than the founder of Haley Nutrition Dr. Michael Haley.

Dr. Michael Haley: This is the Dr. Haley Show podcast. I’m Dr. Michael Haley, your show host. And today, well, we’ve got a, fun interview with one of my. Well, I’m going to say friends that I don’t quite know yet. But the way I found out about Dr. Mark Sherwood, I hope you don’t mind me saying Dr. Mark. I own a company, Haley Nutrition. Everybody knows that, an aloe vera company. And when I see new customers, I like to look and find out who they are.

And sometimes I see that they’re a doctor or something, because their email address might say something about a clinic or something like that. And I do a little research, and I find this amazing person who has done all kinds of crazy things in his life, real go getter, from the, Swat team, power team, author of all these books and made some movies. I find him on YouTube where he’s, a guest on the Christian television network and more. So been in a lot of places, and I’m one of those guys.

I don’t know a lot of people. I don’t have a chance to keep up. And a lot of people say, do you know doctor So-and-so? And it’s always no. So it’s no surprise here that I wouldn’t know someone as big and famous as Dr. Mark Sherwood. But I’m excited to have you on the show. Thank you for joining me today.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: It’s my pleasure, man. Thanks for being here. And I, I get it. I don’t hang out a lot either. I just kind of try to do my job and do it well. And and value the opportunities that, that God gives us.

Dr. Michael Haley: Of course. Yeah. You know, and there’s something magnetic about that, that makes you attractive to people. And I’m going to call it excellence. And for some people, we might call it the excellence of Christ or something like that. and it’s a standard and it’s very obvious in your content that that’s who you are, that just kind of, permeates. And there’s a certain, trust factor, belief factor.

And I believe it’s authentic and it comes from, you know, somewhere deep and it’s good and it makes you make excellent content that’s beneficial and helpful to others.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. I think probably a lot of that comes from and it is, who I am, you know, with God’s help, of course. But a lot of times in life, you know, you’re pain, you’re past, the traumas, you go through the situations go through in life, careers that you’ve had and things you’ve seen and things you experience that kind of shape who you are. And, I legitimately, realistically care about people.

You know, I’ve seen people best in the worst types of situations, in the worst situations. and I’ve seen people die in front of me in my previous career. and so you begin to have a different perspective. And so even like, right now, you know, I want the listeners to know that I am completely engaged with Dr. Michael Haley right now. And I’m not thinking about anything else right now other than to, to represent well and, and do a great job to inspire people that are listening.

Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. And I’m going to encourage people to check out your content. I loved your YouTube channel. In fact, one, video that I came across was published just a couple months ago, and it was with someone that I had the pleasure of meeting probably 20 years back. And, in that video, you introduced Lou Ferrigno as your friend. So I obviously, know that you know him better than I do. I had a chance to meet him and shake hands with him.

And the neat thing about it, and I bet you can relate to this. I’m kind of a large person, and at the time I met him, I was in the powerlifting and all kinds of stuff like that. Not many people make me feel small. This guy is a tower. He is a mountain of a man. He is 6’4’’, probably 270 and still in really good shape.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: It’s funny, you know, probably like you, we’ve done events together and movies together, Lou and I, and, you know, a lot of people look at me and say, you should be his son. you look the same, except you’re smaller. And I’m like, that’s unusual, you know, because I’ll go out on the stage and usually, my physical stature is a little bit larger than most people’s. And, but Lou is still, an amazing, man with an amazing physique. And he’s a good guy. He’s got a really good heart for people.

Dr. Michael Haley: Well, that’s what I notice, too, because I remember at the time I had met him at the, Arnold Schwarzenegger fitness competition and expo in Columbus, Ohio. And I remember shaking hands with him this mountain of a man, and he was the most gentle kind, looked you in the eyes, big, warm, loving smile, which is kind of how people that are, you know, big and strong and confident are, they tend to be the most gentle, loving people.

Dr. Michael Haley: There are. And he was definitely not an exception to that. So just, you know, someone that you’re drawn to and love. But what I really enjoyed about the conversation you had, and I like knowing this about you and about people. I’m going to ask you this, too. What makes you who you are. But in that interview, you got to find out what really inspired him and led him to be, who he is now. And I’m not going to give it away.

People go to the I’ll put a YouTube link in the resources. You can check out that interview with, Lou Ferrigno, interview by Dr. Mark Sherwood. Check it out and find out for yourself. But what makes you who you are? And if you go way back, were there words that were spoken to you that breathed life into some kind of philosophy or belief? How did you become who you are?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: I think it all starts, you know, with the, the childhood and early adulthood experiences you have. And, and in those experiences, you have a choice, you know, because experiences, you know, in life, you’re going to have ups and downs and all around you’re going to get knocked down, you’re going to get back up. That’s life. And the longer you live, the more you going experience those ups and downs and all arounds. And early on in my life, being an adopted kid, you know, I was a little unique.

I would say I had you know, great parents, but it wasn’t the most, awesome upbringing. You know, we didn’t have the conventional, types of brothers and sisters and families and sibling oriented, community. And so I had to kind of figure it out. And, there was a moment, believe it or not, that happened. I was probably I’m going to say, Michael, probably in the, fourth grade, maybe third grade.

It was a class, and I was always a shy guy, and I was a little bit of a, you know, decent athlete, but wasn’t one of the popular kids kind of in the middle of road. And it was a small school, so I had 47 people in my class graduating class. So, you know, everybody knows your business and knows everything you do and don’t do. Right. And if they did know it, they’ll make it up, you know, that kind of thing. Right?

So the teacher in class one day asked the class, well, does anybody have a goal that you want to do in life? And of course, all of our hands went up and I didn’t think she’d call on me, but she did. And I was shy, and she put me right on the spot that day. And she said, what do you want to do, Mark, when you grow up? And I said, I want to be a professional baseball player. You know, like every little kid wants to be, something, you know. Right.

And, the whole classroom busted out. I mean, it was like they started busting out and busting on me, and. And I was like, broken, man. I was like, this is not cool. But anyway, then exercise was to write down on a piece of paper what you want to become and put it in your pocket. Never let it go till the dream comes true. So, that day I was forced to do that.

I put it on a piece of paper hoop, put on a pocket, started to walk out of class, and the teacher caught me and she called me aside and really private conversation. And she said, don’t let anybody else determine your future. It’s up to you. I watch what happened to you. I watched what hurt you. But your job is not to prove everyone else wrong. Your job is to prove yourself right. And you know, I never forgot that. I mean, honest to goodness, I never forgot that.

And, I held onto that paper until one day. And this is a crazy story. I was in the dugout of one of my first professional baseball games in the country of Australia, and that light bulb went off. Yeah, it went over the dugout and it was between innings. I wasn’t, you know, I was waiting my time to hit and, I got my bag out and I thought, do I still have that note? And I dug around, dug around, and I found my driver’s license and it wasn’t there.

And I was like, oh, no, I lost it, you know? And I don’t know what made me think of that. But then I flipped my driver’s license around, and that little note was stuck to my license. And I was really careful because the white paper was now yellow, you know, and I peeled it back. And there they were the words, I will become a professional baseball player. and that moment kind of shaped everything. I am, you know, because if you have a dream, hang on to it.

And I’ve always been kind of a high dreamer, high achiever, high doer after that. And, you can’t let people stand in the way of a goal that’s really driven from deep inside you. And, so that really shaped who I am today. I suppose.

Dr. Michael Haley: You know, it’s interesting because there’s kind of power in wanting to prove people that you can do something that they say you can’t. And then there’s also power in the people that say, you can do that. You know, and you had it coming from both sides in one day.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: I did, which is, which is very, very cool.

Dr. Michael Haley: Whatever led you to the be part of the Swat team? And was that before or after baseball?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. My baseball career ended. I did not make the major leagues, in the United States, but I was able to play professionally over in Australia. And then I came back and, got cut a few times off of teams, you know, and that wasn’t like the funniest thing in the world. But you have to change careers at some point. And, I wanted something that was, helpful, that was goal oriented, that was problem solving. And I think that’s probably the way I’m wired to serve. And protect, I suppose.

And, I had a friend that was a police officer and he said, well, you should apply. You’d be great. And I did. And, before I knew it, you know, there I was on the streets of the city of Tulsa all by myself. And, I learned to operate, with a lot of stress going on and, issues that happened that I had to deal with. And about three years on, I was offered the opportunity to try out for the Swat team. And, made that.

And I stayed with that, ten years of my 24 year career.

Dr. Michael Haley: Okay. Interesting. Now, by any chance, have you seen the show, The Tulsa King?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Oh, yeah, with Sylvester Stallone, of course.

Dr. Michael Haley: All right, all right, now, does it, have, you know, truth or factual or does it remind you of Tulsa is or accuracy in it?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: There’s not, in that show, you know, he’s like the guy that leads the way, you know, and kind of dictates the pace of even interactions with law enforcement. And, that’s not what happens if that guy in that character would have been in front of me. He would have been in handcuffs very quickly. And, and if it would, it took two of me. And I am bigger than him by the way, just so people know, for sure.

But honestly, in that situation, you know, TV is sometimes not reality, and that makes for a good show. But that’s not reality. That’s law enforcement doesn’t, back down to drug lords or con men or anything like that. you just don’t you have to deal with the problem. And those cases like that made me laugh when I saw that. But I was like, well, you know, hey, man, people like it getting entertained. That’s all good.

Dr. Michael Haley: I suspected that might be the case. Yeah, of course. Now, the other thing that was, really cool. I don’t know if you know this. There’s videos of you circulating on, YouTube. When you’re on the power team.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: No idea.

Dr. Michael Haley: There you go. Yeah. You know, tearing phone books in half and rolling up, frying pans and bending rebar and all kinds of neat stuff.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah, breaking baseball bats. Yeah, we did a lot of crazy things, for sure.

Dr. Michael Haley: Well, tell us a little bit about, that. How did you get involved in the power team and what was the, mission behind it?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: So when I was on the Swat team, Swat team in those days was, a volunteer unit. We carried around pagers back in those days at work. My, you know, my, patrol job or whatever I was doing. And when the pager goes off, you gotta, you know, drive to the scene, you change right there on the street. I mean, legitimately change your clothes in the street, and you just do what you’re going to do.

But part of being a police officer, you get opportunities to, to work security jobs, you know, to make ends meet. Because back in those days, I didn’t make a lot of money. And, I got an opportunity to work security for the power team. John Jakes, and the power team at Oral Roberts University. And I’d never heard of these guys and didn’t know what they do.

And there I was, standing guard, if you will, backstage for these big men to come out on the stage and do whatever they were going to do. And I saw big scaffolding stacked up there with big stacks of brick and ice. And I thought, oh, what in the world am I witnessing? And so when they came out, my job was to walk out with John Jacobs. And John looked at me and he looked me up and down and, he said, nice arms. That’s what he said, straight up.

And so he went out there. And what I saw was an event for five days in a row of men getting out there and doing some extraordinary things that blew my mind didn’t seem possible, but they used it to get people’s attention. And they had a powerful message of hope, restoration, forgiveness. And I realized that when they got their attention, you also had an opportunity to get people’s heart. And I thought that was so cool.

And I said to myself that day, I said, man, I, sure like to be a part of something like that. And whatever year that was, maybe 1994 or 5 or something, give or take, and you kind of forget that they go their way, I go mine, I collect my paycheck for the security job and move on. And I’m like, well, about three years later, I was at the same location working security for a church service.

The same location, and a guy comes up to me and says, hey, have you ever done any martial arts? And I’m like, no. And he said, well, we’re going to start a little local, team, like the power team. and then we go around to different places in Tulsa and use that as a tool to, speak the gospel. And I thought, well, that sounds neat.

So he invited me to a meeting and I met and and before I knew it, I was out there in the housing projects in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the very thick places I worked. I was out on a flatbed semi-truck, you know, speaking and breaking bricks and hurting myself a lot because I didn’t know what I was doing. Right. But I did that for like two years and we weren’t getting paid for anything at all.

And then one day, out of the blue, I get a call and it was from the power team, and they said, hey, we want to offer you a tryout. I mean, just like that. And then those words came back to me. I’m like, oh my word. That’s crazy. So I was on a plane, flew up to Des Moines, Iowa. They gave me a uniform, didn’t tell me how to do anything at all. And I was on the stage and I failed at every one of those things,

Dr. Michael Haley: Oh No

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah, I mean, I it was, it was. And I thought, there’s no way these are five, nine events, you know, and there’s thousands of people out there and I’m thinking they’re going to tell me to go home. but I tried hard. I gave it my best. And at the end of that I was called in to the, that time it was a hotel kind of conference room. And I thought, here we go, go home. But it was instead, welcome to the team just like that.

And I think they saw that I wasn’t going to quit. I think that’s probably what they were looking for, supposedly. And, you know, ten years later, I was still there. So crazy story that.

Dr. Michael Haley: That’s really neat. Is that when you say, like, things didn’t work, that mean, like, you tried to tear a phone book, but you couldn’t?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Oh, I tried to a phone book, I failed, I tried to blow up a hot water bottle and it probably didn’t make it halfway through. I had a stack of bricks there, and I had no idea what I was doing. And it may have been, you know, maybe a foot and a half or two feet deep of concrete, which I watched these other guys, you know, go through this like butter, you know, and it was just so much power.

And I hit that thing with all my mind and thought I broke every bone in my elbow at the time, you know, I was hitting down on it and, I probably broke, you know, maybe half or a third of the way through and, and, you know, silly me, I, hit it again, you know, and they always tell me, you know, don’t do that because you can only hurt yourself on a jagged brick, you know? So but I tried, and, I think they want to see my persistence.

Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah, they must have seen, you know, not only, something in success, but something in failure. And you handle that. And isn’t that life anyway?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: It is. I mean, you’re going to meet obstacles, and I think I may they may even give me a chance to share that story. Maybe 3 or 4 nights later, you know, and, I shared about how that made me feel. And, not made me feel, but how I felt through that process of failure and, and what that meant to me and how that made me want to come back. And what I learned from that.

Dr. Michael Haley: Wow. Well, well, now, you know, years later, you’re helping people, get well. You’re on a mission to empower people to overcome self-imposed health challenges, and I, I like those words because we know there’s, truth in that. A lot of the challenges that we have are self-imposed, and I think that’s actually empowering. I think that’s a good thing, to be able to recognize that and say, I may have something to do with why I’m not. Well, because if that’s true, then I have some power to turn things around.

If I’m just a victim and, you know, this got me, well, then I’m pretty much powerless to do anything about it. So I kind of feel that recognizing this may be self-imposed. Well, now I can do it. And in your mission, you’re trying to, get people off of unnecessary medicines. All right, so let’s talk a little bit about, health and wellness. And I want to start with a definition. And this is one of my favorite definitions. I got it in front of me somewhere if I can find it. All right.

And this is from cancer.gov. Cancer.gov by the way is a government organization. It’s part of the National Institute of Health. This is big division. This is our government. And this is how they define mainstream medicine. They say it’s a system in which medical doctors and other health care professionals, such as nurses, pharmacists and therapists, treat symptoms and diseases using drugs, radiation or surgery, also called allopathic medicine, biomedicine, conventional medicine, orthodox medicine, and Western medicine. Now you, on the other hand, are practicing functional medicine.

What do you see wrong with that mainstream medicine definition? And how is functional medicine different?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: I hadn’t heard that definition before from that website, but I will probably use that again. I think that’s one of the most, deceptive, disempowering, discouraging and expensive thing that I’ve ever heard. That is not health. Health is not just the absence of symptoms. Health is the presence of health. Meaning you can do what you want, when you want, how you want, with whom you want and not hurt. And you can live younger longer. You increase health span, you decrease sick span, and you increase independence.

You decrease dependance upon drugs, etc. in the allopathic western system, I think the Western system is very flawed. I’m not anti medicine. I am a traditional naturopath, but I’ve been trained in medicine as well via my wife being an osteopath work together. So we got a great marriage, great team and we see both sides of the coin. Medicine is necessary from time to time and when it becomes unnecessary, that means your system is returning to normalcy and then you become negative. Affected by medicine. Once you get to a normal position.

So therefore you don’t need the medicine, functional medicine, or upstream healing, as I like to call it. We don’t disregard symptoms. I acknowledge the symptoms, but the symptoms indeed are telling us something because the body’s saying something at the body. Saying something like, if someone is saying something, you have a conversation. You say, well, why are you saying that? Tell me what that means. You know, and that’s what you’re doing with the body. You’re asking what it means, what’s the body saying to me?

And then you go back and you look for what may contribute to the dysfunction of a systems or system or system biology that may contribute to the presentation of the symptoms. And once you fix it upstream, the symptoms become irrelevant because they’re gone and the need for medication becomes further irrelevant because it’s not and was never needed. You. You’re not born with medication deficiencies. And that’s a very key statement. So we work up here and we are aware of downstream.

And then we also like to combine genetics and, you know, emotional health and spiritual health and and conversations around that because really look at the holistic care of a human being. We’re not a one dimensional person. And that’s another angle of conventional medicine. It’s completely failed. You know, it’s silo medicine. You know, I’ve got a headache. I’m going to get something from my head. I’m going to stomach aches for my stomach, and my stomach can’t have anything to do with my head. There’s no way. Because that doesn’t make sense.

It’s not the right department. You know? And that stuff doesn’t work. We are a synergistically derive being who lives synergistically with the world, you know, with bugs, with viruses, with bacteria. We are living in this world and we’re meant to thrive, not just survive. And I think that we need to look at it completely different. And we’ve had amazing, amazing, stories of things, conditions that went away and sometimes most of the time I Kind of know why and sometimes I don’t. And I’m okay with that.

All I care about is that people get free from the system, get independent from the system, and have a life that’s conducive with abundance and joy and, you know, fulfillment. I suppose.

Dr. Michael Haley: I want to tap into that mindset just a little bit more, but not quite yet. Because as you were talking about medicine, I two agree it has its place and if you’re using medicine, maybe to buy time while we get to the underlying cause. But the goal should always be, how can I get off this medicine, not need it anymore? How do we correct the problem? And you know, I’m not even opposed to pain medicine. I typically won’t go for it.

I remember I had a surgery, had an injury and followed by a, surgery, and I took I did take one Vicodin following that surgery, and, I decided I didn’t need any more, mostly because I really liked that Vicodin. And I realized I realized that is a bad thing. Yeah. And I could see how people Could get hooked on it. So for me, I said no to any more at that point. But if that helped me get a night of sleep that I needed, well, now there’s maybe a trade off.

There are benefits and sometimes the medication can get us over the hump while the body is healing, or while we’re correcting the problem of high blood pressure or overweight. glucose levels. You know, maybe we need to make changes so we don’t need the medicine anymore. BJ Palmer was one of the greatest chiropractors ever, He said something like, if you took all the medicine known to mankind and threw it into the ocean, it would be good for mankind. Yeah. Bad for the fish, but good for mankind.

And it’s not to say that all medicine is bad, but in a lot of cases it’s doing more harm than good. And maybe even in the majority of cases. Would you agree?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: I would, you know, a lot of people don’t understand the mechanism of actions with medications and really what they do. You know, again, like you mentioned, those applications that you cited are probably necessary from time to time. If you have a person that’s hypertensive when they’re about to, you know, have a stroke or heart attack, you need to do something to get that pressure down immediately until you figure out how to bring back, proper, relaxation or dilation of the vessels. Right. And that’s the point.

And then blood pressure medication that application would push your blood pressure to low, and it would make the blood pressure medication dangerous because your body’s functioning normally. But a lot of people don’t understand that medications as a principle, very general rule, they either start or stop a natural function starting or stopping a natural function. Now think about that for a second. We started stopping at a natural function. We’re bringing it unnatural. Start or stop to the function.

Additionally, when that happens, you get this scenario where you might get depleted, vitamins or minerals at that point, if vitamins and minerals and they are required for a cellular operation of other systems of the body, then this medication starting or stopping a natural function, creating an unnatural situation with neutral depletion could cause further downstream effects. Over here, I’ll give you one example that we all know.

It’s going to be the cholesterol lowering effects of statin drugs, that has been, a mistake because we must have cholesterol for our brain, for cell membrane repair and hormone formation. Does cholesterol itself cause disease? No, it is the particle damage on the molecule that becomes problematic. So when we take a stat and drugs, it’s a lower LDL cholesterol because there’s no bad or good, it’s all good. But if we lower it, making it lower, we now have a couple things have happened. We have our hormonal backbone or processes cut off.

You have no more construction. Your vitamin D, which is actually a hormone, begins to go down because you’re not producing it anymore. Okay. That’s just scraping the tip of the iceberg. But other hormones begin to go down, and all sudden you begin to have muscle pain because you lost your coenzyme Q10 structures. You know, in the whole system is that the beginning has the muscles messed up at these and people hurt. Those aren’t good things. And you compound that further.

If the brain needs cholesterol and you take stat and drugs repeatedly, are we seeing an increase in Alzheimer’s dementia today? We absolutely are. And so we need to begin to look at medications in the proper context. And just one more simple example. The PPI is the proton pump inhibitors that people are taking today.

You know, you might have a Barrett’s esophagus or something like that where you need to stop that acid for a second because it’s creating more damage until you find other things that can bring soothing to it, maybe like an aloe or something like that. I’ve used it in the application many times, and that proton pump inhibitors was never meant to be used long term.

But I see people all the time that use those things long term, and it knocks off the transportation of vitamin B12, which is necessary for the brain in other situations. It knocks off the synthesis of nitric oxide, which is necessary for proper vasodilation. So high blood pressure is tied to chronic PPI use. So, you know, those are some simple examples. But you’re right on point. Medications can be very, very dangerous if not, properly prescribed and properly deprescribed.

Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. The other problem I have with them is just the whole thought process of I have this symptom, so I’m going to take the medication. Now, I don’t have the symptom anymore. So everything’s okay. And in the case of Gerd, acid reflux, well, you might actually have to learn how to chew your food better. Or, you know, consume food that has digestive enzymes in it helps things digest.

Or you might have to eat proper portion meals at the right timing, maybe not right before you go to bed, you know, and but if I’m taking these medications and I don’t have the symptoms, why do I have to change anything? And so I see that problem. And then the other problem I see with medications and I’m going to have you talk about this one a little bit is they can be prescribed based on a number.

And that number might be a blood pressure or a sugar level or you know, we did a blood result and we’re looking at these averages. This is the average. So we expect you to fall in between these two areas. Tell me about the numbers. How meaningful are they. And should we use that as a, decision for whether or not to take a medicine.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, we shouldn’t numbers in labs are nothing more than informational pieces. But as we both know, if you don’t interpret information with wisdom, proper context, that information can be interpreted in a foolish manner. We could begin to treat people’s labs as opposed to treating the person. And this is exactly what you’re describing. When you treat the lab and not the person. The person that becomes a number, that’s all you are.

The ranges that we have today are set by a system, the same system you described in your definition of health as per the cancer.gov website. So if the same system that looks at health based upon a conglomeration of things, including prescriptions, sets, the ranges and the ranges are set so you prescribe medications, those ranges are derived so that medications will be used. So if you fall outside the norm that means you need medication. So what is the norm? I look at the norm as something that’s normally sick, like everybody else.

And I really mean that in a sense that you look at our population today and in these United States of America, it is the most unhealthy it’s ever been in the history of the world. And the influence of the Western diet, the Western lifestyle going now worldwide, is affecting the world in the same manner. We have more sickness per capita in this country than anywhere in the world. We spend more per person, per, number for this quote unquote, health insurance. But we’re near the bottom in outcome.

So what we’re doing simply doesn’t work when we look at numbers. I look at them and understand them in a different manner like I just described. But for me, it’s just reference pieces. It’s what’s passing through that blood right now. It may be what’s on the roadway right now. You can check labs, you know, 2 or 3 hours apart over and over again, and you’re going to get some different results. We tend to look at lab has static instead of emotion.

And it’s like going out to your favorite highway every day at 7:00 am. You could take pictures between 7:00 am and 8 a.m. at your favorite highway every single day. Monday through Friday, you’re going to find some same cars. Your general traffic flow might be the same, but you might find some different things on there between day to day. And you need to look at the whole picture as compared and opposed to just one lab we like. Also say one lab is no lab.

And people say, well, that’s out of range. And I’m thinking, well, when somebody calls me and tells me on a normal, you need to run because that’s not a compliment. That is meaning you’re normally sick like everybody else.

Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Normal. Not optimal.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Correct.

Dr. Michael Haley: Right. Right, right. You know, and I think of something like blood pressure and we might say, okay, it’s supposed to be between here and here, and then we give you the medications to, fall in that range and all of a sudden you’re unable to think clear, because you’re not getting enough blood flow to the brain. You have signs of dementia, but you’re within the right blood pressure that we decided is right. The other thing that’s kind of funny is these normal ranges change over time. Yeah.

The normal blood sugar level today is different than it was 30 years ago. When I went to school. They changed the numbers. They changed the range. Well, how can that happen? Are humans different now?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. It’s funny you say that. that’s an interesting one. I was talking to someone about that just yesterday. You know, we run a marker in our office called the Insulin Resistance Score. It’s kind of like the HOMA-IR score. But anyway, it’s a blood sugar. Analysis inclusive of insulin and C peptide in the normal ranges, say, 33 or less. But I can tell you at ten or more, you’re already subclinical, insulin resistant. And I try to get people to five. And so it’s like we’ve gotten off with this stuff.

And the more you, the more you tell a lie and the more you repeat the lie, the more truthful it becomes, you know? And that’s not really the truth, but it’s just what people believe the truth to be, although it was never the truth. And you’re right, they’ve changed the ranges of blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol numbers, especially LDL cholesterol over the years. And it it’s shocking.

And, the fascinating thing is, even as you age, there’s certain ranges and different markers, sections of labs where the age will, wherever you are, will change the range. Like, what is my range have to go down, and why do I have to be in a bad place compared to someone 20 years? My junior? When that’s a good place. Yeah. And so it’s a little bit of a, a shell game and it’s trickery and deception, in my opinion.

Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s talk about the, places that people have power or say in their health. What are the areas that that they can affect and make their health better?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, to set up, probably the best answer I can get with that one is to understand, well, one of the greatest con jobs first in the history of mankind is to say, well, it’s in your genes. It’s gotta be genetic. It’s in your family line. So you’re going to get that you’re susceptible, you’re predisposition. But our genes have changed 2% in 10,000 years. So it’s all in the inputs. You know, your genetics respond to the inputs of the environment.

That’s how they work by creating proteins to respond in response to that. It’s called the epigenetic conversation. Right. But what happens is over time is we need to know that it’s not the genes problem, it’s an input problem. The understand the genes and we check the genes on people. Oh, those are empowering and they’re informational. I want to know my hard wiring. I want to know my system and how it’s operating so I can have the right software inputs, you know. Right.

And so we can put in the following which we have control over. We have control over our thoughts, our words, our perceptions are stress management. We have control over what we’re putting our mouth, whether that be food or liquid And we have control over supplements which are supplementing what a diet is not. Obviously doing anymore because of the farming problems we’ve had. We can control what we do with our body exercise wise. We can move more, set less, and we can sleep more. We can make sleep a priority.

Those things, foundational truths. No, they’re not sexy, though. They don’t sell TV shows, they do create health and everything goes from those foundations. When you get those foundations right, those inputs right, the outputs have a better chance of being favorable as opposed to non favorable. And so we work on that a lot. You know what we do what we say, what we do with our bodies and how we rest our bodies.

Dr. Michael Haley: Now if you were to say one thing that tends to get in the way of people getting well, what would you say it is?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: I would say it’s the misinformation that is circled around nutrition. You know, because we don’t live on calories. We live on nutrients that are obtained from things we put in our mouth. Typically, you know, or our skin or whatever. And, we are told by a system to consume things that are not food, and there are poisonous substances that create a negative inflammatory response in our body.

I like to say it like this, and it’s a funny way to look at it, but it’s probably truthful to the point where it makes a point. If anything, the US government subsidizes it, makes cheap and puts on the end cap. Don’t hit it. Stay on the outside of a grocery store.

And I think a lot of people really think it’s too expensive, but it’s actually more expensive to eat unhealthy because we’re eating nutrient poor foods that provide no satiation or no fullness sensation, as opposed to nutrient dense foods that make us want to eat less and actually bring satiation or fulfillment.

And and I think if people would just fix that one thing right there, you know, it would help the systems of the body, it seems elementary and very complex, but really not if you could just imagine things being I mean, like in your background there, you got a field, you know, and I’m thinking to myself, that’s a natural picture of food and where food comes from, if you can imagine it, it’s a natural, setting, natural production setting, natural packaging. You know, that’s a good thing.

There was no there was no donuts in the Garden of Eden. I just want people to know that. So it’s real food. That’s what it is.

Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. And since you just said that, I have to make sure that people know one of your book titles is The Garden of Eatin’ Right? Which I think is hysterical.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: And, yes, yes, yes.

Dr. Michael Haley: So there’s a couple of things that you said that, I like. One is when I said, where do we have, you know, say in the things to do to get well, you kind of lead with the, mindset and stress management because really, I kind of think that leads everything else and including our food choices and, you know, what gets in the way? Misinformation. And I completely agree with that because so often we are. Arguing and we have these, dogmatic beliefs in what we should be eating.

And maybe because of your own personal experience, you know, I overcame cancer by eating raw vegetables and only raw vegetables. Well, you know, maybe that was perfect for you at that point in time for your situation. But we can’t dogmatically put that on everyone in every circumstance. So I would call that misinformation, you know, tunnel vision. Yeah. I heard a little bit of, maybe Western enterprise influence in some of the word choices you used. Is that accurate?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: It is. And even when you think about stress, I’ll carry this one more further. The mindset part of this, I learned this on the police department. It’s been so helpful for me. I was a sniper for a time on the Swat team, so I. I had to learn how to handle things better and how to know, like you mentioned, if you’re, activating that sympathetic nervous system side where cortisol is being produced all the time, you are thinking reactive versus logical. You can’t think clearly because you’re reacting perpetually.

Stress, which goes into mindset. And this will help people if you take nothing out of what we’ve talked about today, please get that. This is important because stress has been mystifying in literature. As a noun. It’s not. It’s a verb. if you can’t put stress in a person, place or thing. though there might be some triggers or stimuli that come from those person, place of things. Stress is a verb proving the point. How many listening have ever been in a traffic jam and late for an appointment?

Well, no matter how mad you get, that traffic is not going to move right? So that tells me that you have a choice in your response to the stimuli, which sets the tone for the proper mindset. Meaning I have control over more things than I think I do. Stress, therefore, is not a noun. Here’s a definition. It is an action. You take or decision you make to life. Expected or unexpected occurrences. So you really have a choice as to how you respond to life.

So does your body and your mind, and bringing those two things together is great. So I don’t respond. I don’t say, and I try to teach people not to say, well, I stress eat. No you don’t. It’s not the product. You know, you work them backwards to where their mind can shift. And that mind shifting process definition, paradigm shifting process that I just described can reset the mind set. And that mindset can go down 13 inches and become a heart set.

And that’s a change we all really need to have in our world today.

Dr. Michael Haley: I believe, you know, as you’re saying, that for the people that are struggling with those situations, if you were in traffic and you really can’t do anything about it, but you get all fired up, that is a problem. I’m reminded of the Serenity prayer, which I pulled up here. On the side, it says, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

And I think that’s a fantastic, prayer or meditation for those that, struggle with that. Did you watch the movie Apollo 13?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: I did, yes.

Dr. Michael Haley: Great. You know, my favorite, my favorite, words in that were, you know, gentlemen, failure is not an option, but failure is not an option. Did that stand out to you?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: It does. You can’t go into something with the idea that you’re going to fail because you’ll focus on it. It’s like even with diet, I always we don’t ever prescribe die. I don’t even like to use that word because diet focuses on what you can’t do instead of what you should be doing. You lose sight of abundance. You lose sight of opportunity. When you start focusing on the negative side of things, like you going to run a race.

I mean, you don’t focus on failure, you focus on finishing and it keeps you focused on the goal ahead. It’s like when you go to play a game. I mean, you wouldn’t coach a team and say, hey guys, gals, today we’re going to go out of here and give 80%. It’s okay if you lose. You play the game to win. Life is a big old game. You play to win. The competition is you. It’s me. it’s not anybody else. And I don’t wake up in the day.

You know, sometimes I hear people say, well, you know, I’m human. I’m going to fail. Like, stop. I realize that that’s probably true, but I wake up in the day and I don’t want to make mistakes. I don’t desire to make mistakes. I don’t desire to fail. And that’s not my goal. I’m not focusing on that. I’m focusing on saying the right things, doing the right things, being the right way. On the Dr. Michael Haley show that, you know, I’m using that example, but that’s true.

And that’s taking the life one piece at a time where failure doesn’t become the focus and therefore it’s not an option.

Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Now, let let’s, talk a little bit about your clinic, functional medical institute, people that might be hearing this and say, you know, how can I talk to, Dr. Mark Sherwood or Dr. Michelle Sherwood? What options are available?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, obviously, with, the beauty of technology and multi-state licensure, you know, people can work with us really, from all around the country. it’s pretty much of a center right now. We focus on, all the inputs. We talked about nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement, genetics, hormones, peptide supplements and wrap all that around the human being it’s a very personalized approach.

We have unique, testing combinations to actually, quantify and measure the biological aging processes and speeds of things like our immune systems and our organs and some of that stuff out there is so, awesome now because it motivates one to really, work on something. I like to coin the biological age versus the chronological age. We just need to think about aging differently. As time has gone on, you know, I, I would be remiss if I didn’t say, well, you know, I think about my calendar age, but I don’t need to.

I need to be focusing on quality of life all the time. So that’s kind of what we do. And we’re super easy to reach. I mean, our websites are simple. It’s drmarksherwood.com and drmichelesherwood.com And a little shout out to my wife. She’s my best friend. She’s not my spare ribs. She’s my prime rib. Just a shout out to her. But it’s Michele with one L. And I like to say further, there’s no hell in my Michelle. So it’s there’s no period in those it’s drmarksherwood.com and drmichelesherwood.com

Dr. Michael Haley: That’s great. Yeah. Easy to find. On your website you also have your own supplement line and, the brand would be the Functional Medical Institute. But within that, you have a certain line called the, Kingdom. Tell us about that. What was the inspiration behind it? And what’s your favorite? and what made you want to make that?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, it started off kind of was a labor of love back in, about 2020. And we had that wonderful thing that shook the nation and shook the world called Covid, man. And so, it really people were complaining about not having, food and not maybe not getting food and all that stuff. Remember all that talk? And so we thought, well, let’s just make something. So the very first thing we made was Kingdom Fuel. we sourced organic pea protein.

We got some organic greens and reds and some fibers both soluble and insoluble and some vitamins and minerals, and just sourced those materials ourself and pointed the money up. And we made Kingdom Fuel. We made it because the word kingdom from us was, I’m not living by the rules of this world. by the rules of this world, you know, and this world is terrible. And I want to do something different. So it was giving people a choice, you know.

And so we made that and we got it to where it would be between 2 and $5 per meal, so people can have something to, to go to. And then that bled into, we started mixing in some colostrum and some collagen and some, multi vitamins and minerals that were in packs. So people could be real convenient, easy, cheap. We started using, molecular hydrogen a lot.

So there’s some, hydrogen, initiating products in there, bottles and, and air or gas and, you know, man it’s been a journey, but it gives people an option, I suppose, to have some choices. And, we did our labor of love. It was it because we made a lot of money on it? Because it cost us kind of part of my right arm, but but it was worth it because it gave people options. That was easy and convenient to put good nutrition in our systems.

Dr. Michael Haley: Now, one of the things. You have a Kingdom coffee, don’t you?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yes.

Dr. Michael Haley: For a lot of people, a coffee is like bad word. But I enjoy my organic cup every day.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah, coffee’s a big one. It’s got a lot of benefits. Studies have shown as long as it doesn’t become the drink of choice, I think that’s one angle. And then most coffee today is moldy. And you know that. I know that. It’s just really sad. So especially the coffee buy in, powder form. And so we, I like coffee, so I usually have two cups a day, and I, I use the collagen as a creamer.

So I kind of all this stuff kind of bled out from what my wife and I like ourselves, I suppose. But, you know, we bought the rights to a field out of Colombia, you know, so we could actually have organic, mold, free tested coffee beans. And so they’re come to the bean form where people can actually grind it and have it’s really good. I have it every day.

Dr. Michael Haley: Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I kept you for an hour, and I want to thank you for your time. Are there any final parting words of wisdom that you want to share with the audience?

Dr. Mark Sherwood: I’m so grateful. Thanks for having me on. Super grateful. And I, I trust that, people are motivated today to make some changes. And the last thing I’ll leave with people, I think it’s important is, you know, don’t wait till tomorrow. Do what you got to do today. Remember that what you do today will affect you tomorrow. And so you decide today what you want your future look like on one respect. And then don’t live in the shame of yesterday. That’s like driving a car, looking in the rearview mirror.

You’re going to crash going forward. So start today. Do your best and make today being the present. The gift it is. And just do a good job. One day at a time.

Dr. Michael Haley: Dr. Mark Sherwood, thank you so much.

Dr. Mark Sherwood: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

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