RPF0327-Mohammad_Ashori

00:00:00.000 | Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best in premium seating at stadiums, arenas,

00:00:05.000 | and amphitheaters nationwide. With Sweet Hop's 100% ticket guarantee, no hidden fees, and

00:00:10.500 | the personal high-level service you expect with a premium purchase, you can relax knowing

00:00:15.000 | you'll receive the luxury experience you deserve. Visit SweetHop.com today to book your premium

00:00:20.340 | tickets to your favorite teams, artists, and all the must-see live events to Sweet Hop

00:00:25.000 | around LA. It's more than just a ticket. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show

00:00:31.820 | dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:00:36.060 | to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10

00:00:40.660 | years or less. My guest on today's show is Mohamed Ashoury. Mohamed is a doctor, and

00:00:45.940 | he's here today to share with us some ideas of how to save money on your medical costs.

00:00:51.700 | Wouldn't it be great to know about the stuff that you actually need and also to know about

00:00:55.200 | the stuff that's a waste of money so you could get the same or better results for cheaper?

00:00:59.900 | Mohamed, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.

00:01:02.300 | Mohamed Ashoury, MD Thank you, Josh.

00:01:03.660 | Josh Brennan I'm glad that you reached out to me with

00:01:05.260 | this topic. There's going to be two major aspects of our conversation. First, a little

00:01:09.860 | bit about your personal financial story, especially as it relates to early retirement. Then we're

00:01:14.300 | going to dig heavily into the topic of medicine, of how to save money on medicine. I can just

00:01:20.140 | hear the screams of people coming right now. Don't save money on your health. You have

00:01:25.300 | to spend money on medicine. This is going to be a fun and provocative topic. First,

00:01:30.580 | I'd love to hear a little bit about your personal story, especially as it relates to retirement

00:01:35.460 | and personal finance.

00:01:36.860 | Mohamed Ashoury, MD Sure, sure. I finished residency in 2009,

00:01:42.220 | and immediately I started spending as much money as I could just to catch up for those

00:01:47.660 | initial few years. I did pretty well. I got into debt. I bought a condo. I was, I think,

00:01:56.620 | $50,000 in credit card debt, maybe $45,000.

00:01:58.620 | Josh Brennan You did it right. Congratulations.

00:02:00.620 | Mohamed Ashoury, MD I did it. Yeah, I did it professionally. I had

00:02:03.740 | student loans. Pretty much by 2012, I just didn't know how to get out of it. I was so

00:02:11.460 | inundated with debt. I was making a ton of money at the time. I was pulling in, I think

00:02:17.500 | like $300,000 a year. I just didn't see any way I could ever retire unless I was going

00:02:23.980 | to work into my 70s. That's when I just turned it around. I found a website, YNAB, which

00:02:30.700 | I know you're pretty fond of. I just got so much great information there. I just started

00:02:36.420 | keeping track of everything, brought my expenses down to $7,500 a month, which was awesome,

00:02:43.100 | which was huge for me. Just kind of slowly chipped away at it. I think I've made pretty

00:02:49.580 | good progress now.

00:02:50.580 | Josh Brennan So tell me that number again. You brought

00:02:52.660 | your expenses down to what number?

00:02:54.060 | Mohamed Ashoury, MD $7,500 a month.

00:02:56.060 | Josh Brennan Okay. That was down from, do you have any

00:02:57.980 | guess what you were spending before?

00:02:59.100 | Mohamed Ashoury, MD Yeah, it was probably about $10,000 to $11,000

00:03:01.820 | a month with everything that I was spending on. I was spending money on cars, clothes,

00:03:06.620 | traveling, food, that sort of stuff.

00:03:09.060 | Josh Brennan How old are you now?

00:03:12.500 | Mohamed Ashoury, MD I'm 37.

00:03:14.500 | Josh Brennan You consider yourself to be financially

00:03:16.620 | independent, right?

00:03:17.620 | Mohamed Ashoury, MD Yep.

00:03:18.620 | Josh Brennan Okay. So the timeline for you from graduating,

00:03:21.820 | well, I guess we got to figure when you graduated from school versus residency. How many years

00:03:27.060 | of an active career did you pursue as a physician until you now consider yourself financially

00:03:32.220 | independent?

00:03:33.220 | Mohamed Ashoury, MD So 2007 is when I started kind of moonlighting,

00:03:39.260 | taking a little extra shift on top of my residency. So from 2007 until now, but I would say from

00:03:46.900 | 2007 until 2012, I was busier accumulating debt than working towards financial independence.

00:03:54.180 | So from 2012 until now is when I think I really just got serious about it.

00:03:58.660 | Josh Brennan So about four years and it's primarily based

00:04:00.920 | upon reducing your expenses. What did you do? What were the major changes in your lifestyle

00:04:06.340 | that you did that allowed you to reduce your expenses?

00:04:08.780 | Mohamed Ashoury, MD I think I just second guessed everything.

00:04:11.300 | I just said, you know, this is how much I'm paying on rent. I don't need to pay this.

00:04:17.460 | What's the lowest I can pay? I'm paying this much for my cell phone. I don't need to pay

00:04:21.540 | this. What's the lowest I can pay? Just everything. My insurance, the fact that I own the car,

00:04:27.300 | I don't own a car now. Traveling, all the different things, food expenses, all the things

00:04:33.140 | that I thought I really, really needed. I just cut them out completely. So in 2012,

00:04:39.100 | I think it was August 2012, I actually moved out of a penthouse in downtown San Diego and

00:04:45.460 | rented a 212 square foot apartment in a really gorgeous part of town, but just completely

00:04:52.660 | downshifted. Got rid of everything and said, all right, I'm not going to buy anything.

00:04:56.940 | I'm not going to add anything back into my life. I'm going to bike everywhere, which

00:05:00.940 | isn't easy to do in San Diego. I said, all right, let me just build it up and I'll buy

00:05:07.740 | or purchase whatever I desperately, desperately need.

00:05:11.620 | - That's hardcore, man. Are you still living that kind of super minimalist lifestyle or

00:05:18.740 | have you adjusted to a more comfortable standard of living?

00:05:24.620 | - I moved from San Diego to Portland about a year ago. When I moved over here, I still

00:05:32.100 | got a really tiny studio, 140 square feet. I got rid of my car completely, so I biked

00:05:38.780 | everywhere. But I feel like I have a really good lifestyle. There's parks around here.

00:05:45.380 | I play soccer. I go rock climbing. I have a nice gym membership. The food's amazing

00:05:51.420 | here. I go out, drink with my friends, beer. The lifestyle is really good. I don't know

00:05:57.860 | how much of a minimalist lifestyle it is, but yeah, I don't have a car. Even though

00:06:03.760 | sometimes I will get a rental if I need to, I bought a condo here, cash, for about $140,000.

00:06:11.420 | It's small. It's 350 square feet, but it's close to everything. It's close to a grocery

00:06:17.180 | store. It's close to public transportation. It's within walking distance to my job.

00:06:24.300 | - In the last four years, from 2012 to 2016, do you have any guess on how much you were

00:06:29.340 | making during that time?

00:06:31.980 | - So 2012, I probably made about $230,000 and then $300,000, $350,000. I got up to $430,000

00:06:42.580 | in 2014 and then back down to $300,000 and some. So I'd say on average about a solid

00:06:48.860 | three something, $330,000.

00:06:50.380 | - That's great. You mentioned you're picking up extra shifts and working extra in order

00:06:56.140 | to get your income up?

00:06:57.780 | - Exactly. That was the time when I had the student loans and the credit cards and probably

00:07:03.220 | some other little expenses. I had a car for a while, so I paid that off. That's the time

00:07:08.340 | when I really got serious about picking up extra shifts. I said, "Okay, I have good use

00:07:12.180 | for this money. I'm probably not going to burn out because I'm not just picking up extra

00:07:16.220 | shifts to be a workaholic." I used all that extra money to pay down the debt.

00:07:21.500 | - It's exciting. It definitely shows the power of a strong income. You certainly invested

00:07:26.380 | many years into building that income, but it demonstrates how with focus, living on

00:07:32.060 | $7,500 a month is $90,000 a year. You can live a really great lifestyle on $90,000 a

00:07:37.620 | year if you minimize a couple of those major structural costs, have reasonable housing,

00:07:44.060 | reasonable transportation. It leaves you with luxury in every other budget category, but

00:07:48.820 | yet still when you have a substantial income, you can make a major difference.

00:07:53.980 | At this point in time, two more questions and we're going to move to saving money on

00:07:56.980 | medicine. First, what are your thoughts? Do you intend to quit working? Are you going

00:08:02.580 | to adjust anything or are you satisfied and planning to continue the career that you've

00:08:08.460 | built?

00:08:09.460 | - Yeah. I think in a positive way, I'm struggling with that a little bit. I would love to do

00:08:17.060 | something for free, just practice medicine for free. I think that's going to be in the

00:08:20.900 | long-term plan. At the same time, it's kind of a shock for me right now, not recognizing

00:08:28.300 | that I don't have to work anymore. It's really exciting. It's awesome. I'm super excited

00:08:31.940 | about it. At the same time, I think I'll just keep going for this next year and just keep

00:08:39.460 | saving the money for now and definitely want to do something more productive. You're probably

00:08:45.820 | going to hear me be a little bit critical of the medical industry.

00:08:50.180 | - I'm glad that we're discussing that. It's so new for you. Like you said, you just declared

00:08:58.820 | it on March 1st. As we record this interview, it's March 22, 2016. This is just a few weeks

00:09:03.500 | old. It's going to take a little time to settle in. I'm excited about the possibilities because

00:09:08.980 | there are some, I don't know what you're into personally, but there are some awesome aid

00:09:14.420 | organizations. There are some awesome organizations that could really use somebody with medical

00:09:19.700 | expertise especially if they don't have to pony up a big salary.

00:09:25.300 | I see some of these doctors who go in and to work with people in remote areas of the

00:09:30.500 | world. For me, if I were skilled in medical, that's the direction my bent would be. Very

00:09:37.380 | cool. Last question on this topic before we transition to medicine. If you were giving

00:09:43.940 | advice to yourself, a young medical student, maybe just graduating from school, heading

00:09:49.180 | into residency, what would be your words of experience from having lived a couple of different

00:09:55.820 | lifestyles over the last decade? - I would say ignore the prestige of the profession,

00:10:06.380 | ignore how other people treat you, and definitely ignore the income. Don't just keep working

00:10:14.200 | and keep spending because you can easily outspend any kind of income that you can make. Recognize

00:10:20.600 | that that income has so much more potential for something really good, like whether you

00:10:27.260 | give the money away to a good organization, whether you can become financially independent

00:10:32.860 | and then give your expertise, give your knowledge away for free. Knowing that you can do that

00:10:41.220 | in less than 10 years, I would love somebody to just drill that into my skull back then.

00:10:51.300 | - Sometimes we have to have a little life experience to be ready for advice. After living

00:10:56.220 | like a broke college student for years, usually to young residents, the BMW starts to look

00:11:01.400 | pretty attractive. Sometimes it takes a few years of driving a BMW, sitting in traffic

00:11:06.020 | to say, "This is fine, but it would be just as fine in a different form of conveyance."

00:11:12.460 | Let's talk about medicine. Specifically, you sent me a note to recommend to suggest this

00:11:18.820 | show topic, saying how we could save on healthcare. I'll tell you, I'm totally into saving on

00:11:24.420 | healthcare, but I want to start with just the big rebuttal. Anytime I ever say anything

00:11:29.980 | about saving on health expenses, people immediately accuse me of negligence, negligence toward

00:11:38.660 | myself and negligence toward my family. Are we going to play roll the dice on the roulette

00:11:45.420 | wheel here and we're gambling with our health just to save a buck, or is there a reasonable

00:11:49.740 | path through looking at various medical expenses with a rational mind?

00:11:54.940 | Absolutely. I think medicine in America is practiced completely in a shotgun approach.

00:12:02.700 | We're throwing a ton of technology. We're throwing a ton of medications, treatments,

00:12:09.020 | labs, and everything at patients. There's so much room for patient autonomy, step in

00:12:15.380 | and saying, "Well, yeah, that's great, Dr. Ashoury, but I'm cool. I don't want that."

00:12:20.780 | It's so sobering. It's incredible when I witnessed that. I think I probably haven't said this,

00:12:26.340 | but I trained in family medicine, so I did that. Right after I finished residency, I

00:12:34.020 | started practicing urgent care because even though I did a lot of family medicine, had

00:12:38.380 | my own patients that I was following through in residency, it was just not appealing because

00:12:42.900 | there was a lot of hand-holding. These patients became dependent on me. I feel like they started

00:12:50.420 | neglecting their life a little bit because they would wait until they got the appointment

00:12:54.460 | with me. Then they're like, "Okay, Dr. Ashoury, what are you going to do for me? I've gained

00:12:58.140 | another 15 pounds." That's not good. I started practicing only urgent care. I see my patients

00:13:07.340 | coming in, and every once in a while, someone will just completely stop me and say, "Yeah,

00:13:12.620 | that's great that you want to get a chest x-ray, but what would happen if I didn't get

00:13:15.940 | the chest x-ray?" You immediately have to change your mentality as a physician because

00:13:22.700 | we're trained to protect the patient. We're trained to make sure that we don't miss something

00:13:26.900 | big. We're trained to self-preservation. I don't want to get sued. I don't want to miss

00:13:34.580 | something huge that's going to come and bite me in the butt later. When you get a patient

00:13:39.460 | like that, it's very refreshing. That's the patient where you want to focus on, and it's

00:13:45.420 | rare. It's very, very rare. I'd say probably the past few shifts that I've had, I can recall

00:13:50.580 | two patients.

00:13:51.580 | Two patients that actually pushed back.

00:13:54.460 | Oh, yeah. I see about 30 to 30-some in a 10-hour shift.

00:14:01.380 | What percentage of the patients that you see actually need to be there with you?

00:14:06.420 | Oh, my goodness. Three to five percent.

00:14:11.180 | Wow. Now, just for the sake of clarity, I would probably have you on if you were on

00:14:20.740 | the fringes of the medical profession, but my impression is that you come from a fairly

00:14:25.220 | mainstream medical background. You're not pushing, I don't know, herbology as medicine.

00:14:33.260 | You're a mainstream physician, mainstream educational background. In one room, you're

00:14:39.100 | doing Reiki, and in the next room, you're prescribing antibiotics. You're coming from

00:14:42.820 | a mainstream perspective of practical experience.

00:14:46.940 | It's so funny, right? Because in America, we do have to qualify ourselves. I mean, my

00:14:50.420 | name's Mohamed. I was born in Iran, and I lived in Germany for a while. Sometimes people

00:14:56.380 | are like, "Oh, you finished medical school in your country? How was that?" No, I finished

00:15:00.340 | medical school here in the States at UCLA, and then I did UCLA for family medicine residency.

00:15:08.140 | You kind of have to justify that to a lot of people, especially when you start saying,

00:15:11.860 | "Well, actually, you don't need to give your child antibiotics for this ear infection because

00:15:15.420 | it will clear." Oh, well, maybe in your country, you guys did that. Sometimes you have to justify

00:15:21.860 | it, but no, I don't practice herbology out of the back office. I actually don't know

00:15:30.700 | much about Western medicine. I do know that it works. I do know when to refer patients

00:15:34.940 | to maybe, I don't know, acupuncturist, rarely, but sometimes a good chiropractor, that sort

00:15:43.860 | of stuff. But no, I definitely have good, strong conviction that Western medicine is

00:15:49.900 | great, but we are completely overusing it. We are completely, completely addicted to

00:15:56.060 | it.

00:15:57.060 | So, the next category on our outline here is the risks of going to the doctor. Are there

00:16:03.260 | risks of going to the doctor?

00:16:05.780 | There are huge risks of going to the doctor. Yeah, absolutely. I think, where do we start?

00:16:12.660 | I mean, by just the fact that you know, so Josh, you're coming in to me and you have,

00:16:20.460 | let's talk about a vague complaint. You have abdominal pain, you have back pain, you have

00:16:23.740 | a headache. The risk by coming to the doctor with those things is that I am not thinking

00:16:29.780 | like, "Oh, well, it's probably just a migraine. You're good to go." I can't diagnose you with

00:16:33.420 | a migraine or a tension headache or a simple headache based on just examining you, at least

00:16:42.460 | not in our current medical system. A lot of these diagnoses that I give you are what we

00:16:46.940 | call diagnosis of exclusion, which means I ruled out an intracranial bleed. I ruled out

00:16:52.100 | a subarachnoid hemorrhage. I ruled out an aneurysm. I ruled out a tumor. I ruled out

00:16:57.100 | a vertebral artery dissection. I ruled out, oh, you name it. So, I rule all that out.

00:17:03.540 | Then I can say, "Guess what, Josh? After the MRI, the CT scan, the blood test, the spinal

00:17:07.820 | tap, everything's fine. You just have a headache." And you've probably experienced this and I'm

00:17:13.300 | sure people who are listening to this have experienced this before.

00:17:17.460 | Definitely. There's a place, I'll tell you, me personally and my family, I'm on the suspicious,

00:17:27.060 | I want good medical help when I need it, but I generally don't want it to be the first

00:17:36.220 | thing. Now, obviously, I'm in a car accident. My arm's hanging, severed, holding by a strip

00:17:42.020 | of flesh. Get me to a surgeon and let's see if we can reattach this thing. But it seems

00:17:48.140 | normal that our body is designed to heal itself. If you have vague symptoms or a little bit

00:17:56.900 | of pain, a little bit of discomfort, if there's nothing really striking, maybe just give it

00:18:02.100 | a little bit of time and see how it works.

00:18:04.340 | Because the other thing that I observe as a layperson, not qualified in any way to give

00:18:08.060 | medical advice, I observe simply that if you have vague symptoms or a vague experience,

00:18:15.660 | it's not enough information for a physician to even be useful. You need something more

00:18:20.460 | specific, something that can actually be slightly categorized so that the physician can rule

00:18:24.820 | something out.

00:18:27.100 | Yeah, it's funny because you're so good with words so you can say this so nicely. I unfortunately

00:18:32.940 | can't. But now that you say it that way, it makes a lot of sense. And when somebody does

00:18:38.660 | come into my office with vague symptoms, it's so difficult because... And I think when you

00:18:45.180 | become a more seasoned physician, sometimes you can tease that out. Somebody comes in,

00:18:49.980 | you say, "Well, what's the reason you came in? What's your biggest fear? What are you

00:18:53.060 | worried about? Did somebody tell you something? Did you come across something?" "Well, Doc,

00:18:57.820 | honestly, my dad died of an aneurysm." Or, "I was online and I saw this article about

00:19:04.420 | how... God, I don't know. Something crawls into your brain and lays eggs and I was worried

00:19:09.680 | about it." So then I can say, "Okay. All right. I assure you there's nothing that's laying

00:19:15.340 | an egg in your brain. That I can rule out. Are you happy with that?" And every once in

00:19:19.700 | a while they're like, "Oh, yeah. That's great. That's awesome. Thanks, Doc." But I think your

00:19:25.100 | grandma could... That's the thing. I feel like people have lost that independence, that autonomy

00:19:33.100 | of just saying, "Hey, I can own this. This is my body. I have a headache. I have an abdominal

00:19:39.620 | pain. What would I do for it? Is it getting worse? Is it getting better? Is it so severe

00:19:44.900 | that I can't do anything with it? Let me go to my grandma. Let me go to my aunt. Let me

00:19:48.900 | go to that old lady in my apartment complex. She looks, I don't know, motherly. Maybe I

00:19:55.820 | can ask her and see what she thinks." So I think that's really the first step and not

00:20:03.100 | going to the doctor, not dishing out $50 or $100 in the urgent care for it.

00:20:09.500 | I feel like there's a tendency in financial planning as a profession to try to always

00:20:15.020 | go to the extreme in order to protect yourself as a financial planner. Something simple...

00:20:21.740 | I have a buddy of mine who's my age. He's an estate planning attorney. It's just funny

00:20:26.840 | to me because he's an estate planning attorney. So for him, a simple will is not enough with

00:20:32.420 | simple instructions. You've got to imagine every circumstance and scenario down the road.

00:20:38.660 | He's not willing just to say, "Just have a will and a sign of guardian and let them figure

00:20:41.940 | out if you have a simple affairs." I feel like the same tendency can be there in most

00:20:48.340 | professions. Is that the case in the world of medical practice that the doctor has to

00:20:53.380 | be concerned with what's practical but also has to kind of go and protect against everything?

00:20:57.580 | We've got to rule out every possible outcome?

00:20:59.900 | Absolutely. I mean, that's always my biggest fear. If I walk into the urgent care, I just

00:21:04.980 | don't want to miss something big. So I got to really, really, really go far out. Somebody

00:21:13.740 | comes in with a very simple complaint and I really got to rule out all the craziness

00:21:18.460 | that could be around it. Is it a vasculitis? Is it an autoimmune disease? Is this some

00:21:23.220 | odd infection that we haven't encountered? Is this histoplasmosis? Is this malaria? In

00:21:30.860 | America, we don't see any malaria, so it's so easy to miss malaria in this country. But

00:21:36.220 | the most common things are common. If someone comes in with a headache, it's probably a

00:21:41.460 | tension headache. It's probably a migraine. It's probably from them clenching their teeth

00:21:45.700 | and referred jaw pain. But like you said, probably somebody who's really good can make

00:21:53.980 | those diagnoses. But with the way the system is, with the way the culture is, the lawsuits,

00:21:59.340 | the patient complains, all these other things, you have to go to that next step.

00:22:04.820 | What are the influences that affect your mentality as a doctor in today's world?

00:22:15.700 | I'd say it's what's expected of me, I think. What's expected of me. I feel like I'm expected

00:22:24.660 | to be infallible. I'm expected to make no mistakes and to not get anything wrong. But

00:22:32.540 | I'm given a limited set of resources and I'm being given a fallible income. So yeah, I

00:22:40.380 | mean, if you paid me $10 million an hour and let me run any kind of test and everything

00:22:46.500 | possible, sure, maybe I wouldn't make any mistakes. But I think that's what is driving

00:22:51.380 | me, is this very unrealistic expectation to cure and not miss anything while in reality,

00:23:04.220 | it should be 99% in the patient's hands and it's not.

00:23:09.420 | So how do you deal with that? I mean, you get pulled in all directions. You've got the

00:23:14.420 | primary goal, which is to care for the health and safety and well-being and comfort of your

00:23:21.300 | patient. That's primary. But you're also faced with the fact this person could turn around

00:23:25.780 | and sue you. You've got the threat of litigation if you miss something. You've got the practical

00:23:30.300 | realities of your practice, running a business. You've got the professional realities of wanting

00:23:35.980 | to be acknowledged as an expert in your field. How do you deal with these various conflicts

00:23:41.900 | of interest?

00:23:42.900 | Well, I think what's important in medicine is you have to practice within the scope of

00:23:50.380 | your practice. So I'm an urgent care physician. I'm not a surgeon. So I will do what I was

00:23:54.260 | taught in Western medicine. But at the same time, I am looking for a way out. Not trying

00:24:03.980 | to escape medicine, but I'm also recognizing that the majority of the patients that I'm

00:24:09.500 | seeing and the majority of the patients that I'm unfortunately making a lot of money off

00:24:13.740 | of, I don't need to see. They don't need to be there. By me being there, I'm sort of enabling

00:24:20.220 | them. So I am doing the next step. I am saying, "Okay, I've got to become financially independent.

00:24:24.660 | I have to not rely on this income, and I have to do something else with it." Like you. I

00:24:31.620 | mean, not saying that you left your profession, but you're taking it to a whole different

00:24:36.260 | level. You're taking that veil off of it and saying, "This is the reality of personal finance.

00:24:42.260 | This is the reality of economy. Let me give you all the knowledge and have you make your

00:24:47.300 | own." Same here. I want to be the consultant. I used to be really big into cars. And one

00:24:53.820 | of my great, great buddies, a mechanic, he's just brilliant. And when you take a car into

00:25:00.340 | him, he's just giving you his opinion. He's not emotionally vested in it. He's not trying

00:25:04.420 | to lead you in this direction. He's not trying to upsell you. He's just telling you, "This

00:25:09.100 | is my professional opinion about your car." And he's usually right, but then he'll just

00:25:13.580 | walk away. And it's sort of funny. That's what I want to do. Come to me for medical

00:25:18.340 | advice, but just take your health in your own hands and just own that.

00:25:25.020 | - Yeah. And the parallel I would draw from finance that I'm hearing you say is in the

00:25:31.260 | world of finance, when you need insurance advice on life insurance, you need a life

00:25:36.780 | insurance agent. You don't need an article on the internet. You need a life insurance

00:25:40.060 | agent who's practiced and experienced. When you need portfolio advice because you're trying

00:25:44.940 | to figure out how do I structure my portfolio and can I stress test it such that it's going

00:25:50.020 | to sustain me for a 30-plus year retirement, I think that's a really good place for a financial

00:25:54.700 | advisor. The problem comes when what somebody actually needs is a budgeting system. And

00:26:00.500 | then they're sitting in the office of an insurance agent, and the insurance agent is taking time

00:26:04.900 | to try to fix their budgeting system and then try to convince them to buy insurance. And

00:26:09.820 | so the actual diagnosis of the condition, what's the appropriate insurance product,

00:26:15.780 | what are the appropriate insurance products, that conversation gets minimized because the

00:26:21.420 | other things are to the maximum. And I feel like the same thing applies in the world of

00:26:26.940 | medicine and what you're sharing is if I come to you and I have a specific clear symptoms

00:26:31.740 | and if you're a specialist, you can spend very valuable time diagnosing something that's

00:26:36.620 | significant. But if you've got to weed through all this other stuff that should be common

00:26:40.580 | knowledge that should be addressed first, then your effectiveness is diminished.

00:26:45.100 | So let's talk about the most common, I would say, misconceptions, the most common medical

00:26:49.860 | misconceptions, the things that you see people all the time that they don't need to be spending

00:26:53.940 | money on. What is the first thing that you see people coming all the time and you say,

00:26:59.820 | "You should not be spending money sitting here in my office asking me about this"?

00:27:03.260 | Gosh, I'd say things like back pain and upper respiratory infections, upper respiratory.

00:27:12.060 | So what do we mean by that when we say upper respiratory? So pretty much any kind of sinus,

00:27:17.100 | ear, nose, eye, throat, lung, chest, throat. I mean, did I say throat already? Ear, whatever.

00:27:25.720 | Any kind of infection that you catch from other people, any kind of, any of this cough

00:27:32.620 | and cold stuff, I see... So this is cold and flu season for us right now, right? I probably,

00:27:38.580 | and I do phone visits too. We do this tele-visit stuff, but I'd probably say 85 to 90% of my

00:27:46.660 | visits right now are all for colds. Colds, colds that we would never... I can't do anything

00:27:54.260 | for. I can't treat a cold. I can recommend over-the-counter medicine. I can prescribe

00:27:58.940 | you a stronger cough medicine, but I'm seeing like 30-some patients just for colds in one

00:28:06.780 | day. Can you imagine?

00:28:09.100 | So what do they expect you to do? Why do they come in to see you?

00:28:12.060 | I don't know. It's... I don't... Maybe... So this is the weird thing. I think I was raised

00:28:19.380 | in a different culture. I wasn't raised, but I was about 10 when I lived in Iran. And so

00:28:26.940 | in that culture, you don't take your kids in for colds. So maybe there is a bit of disconnect

00:28:30.620 | there. But I think maybe in the Western culture, you go in for a cold because you just want

00:28:37.780 | it to be better faster. And that's really what I get from the patient. Like, "Hey doc,

00:28:42.620 | I'm kind of tired of it. It's been seven days. It's been 10 days. I really, I can't, you

00:28:46.820 | know, I need to stop coughing. I have meetings. I have phone appointments. My clients are

00:28:51.780 | getting annoyed that I'm coughing. They're worried that I'm passing something on to them."

00:28:56.700 | You know, or sometimes they're, you know, they're just miserable. They're like, "Doc,

00:28:59.900 | I can't sleep at night." You know, or "My ear hurts so much. It's really becoming frustrating.

00:29:04.100 | I don't want to take all these over-the-counter meds. Can you just give me some antibiotics

00:29:08.100 | so I can get better?" And that's really where the crux of it is. I want antibiotics.

00:29:16.020 | Do you think it's primarily like almost a placebo that I'm going to feel better because

00:29:19.500 | I've been prescribed a pill and this magic pill is going to make me better?

00:29:23.100 | Well, the pill is not coincidentally magic. I mean, antibiotics like azithromycin, erythromycin,

00:29:30.500 | doxycycline, these were intentionally designed to decrease inflammation. They're fed to farm

00:29:36.580 | animals to decrease inflammation. They just make you feel better when you take them. Even

00:29:42.820 | if you're not having an infection, even though, you know, people know all the side effects,

00:29:48.420 | they want them because they've taken them before and they are getting better. And they've

00:29:53.300 | probably grown up taking antibiotics when they've gotten sick. So it's intentional.

00:29:59.380 | I'm very convinced that medications these days are engineered, built, designed to, you

00:30:07.340 | know, make you feel good in some sort of way so that you do want them.

00:30:13.060 | I guess I'm just testing my own perspective to see it, just to find out if I'm wrong

00:30:17.980 | or right because I don't want to be foolish or foolhardy. It's especially as a parent,

00:30:22.420 | you know, I feel the weight of my children being sick much more heavily even than myself

00:30:27.580 | because of that sense of responsibility. So I don't want to be foolhardy. But I was

00:30:30.740 | raised, my mom was a farm girl and I guess just kind of a more practical approach that

00:30:37.980 | if you're sick, you get in bed for a couple of days and generally, I eschew the use of

00:30:43.420 | medicine unless it's very much needed because I figure every medicine has potential benefits

00:30:48.700 | and it also has potential side effects. I mean, if I get diarrhea when I'm traveling,

00:30:53.500 | I don't want to use Imodium unless I'm going to fly and I'm going to be on a plane

00:30:56.220 | because I don't want my system disrupted. I figure my body is trying to get rid of something

00:31:01.040 | and it's trying to fix itself. So I should just give it some time and let it work, stay

00:31:05.060 | hydrated and give it some time to let it work because I don't want to be dealing

00:31:08.220 | with the side effects of everything. So I'm looking to see if what I hear you saying

00:31:15.940 | is that that practical perspective is valuable. What other things do you see people for all

00:31:20.660 | the time that you would say are just common misconceptions?

00:31:23.660 | Yeah. So I think in Western medicine specifically, people feel the need to take vitamins. They

00:31:31.580 | think supplements and vitamins are helping their cause and it's not. Vitamins have a

00:31:36.580 | ton of side effects. Vitamin C and calcium can increase your risk of kidney stones, can

00:31:41.860 | increase your risk of heart disease later on in life. So vitamins, I don't know. I

00:31:47.020 | hope you're not taking them, but I just don't recommend them.

00:31:49.460 | Do you say that as a blanket statement, meaning just no vitamins or a multivitamin a day might

00:31:56.220 | be useful? How hardcore are you?

00:31:59.140 | I'm pretty hardcore. I mean, even in Europe, it's pretty common knowledge for physicians

00:32:05.940 | to say that vitamins are not good for you and they actually are detrimental to your

00:32:10.300 | health. And when you research it, they really are. They don't offer any benefit and some

00:32:16.660 | independent studies have shown that they increase your independent mortality. So they're not

00:32:21.580 | good for you.

00:32:23.740 | That's one I haven't researched, but it's an interesting topic to me. What next?

00:32:28.860 | Oh, this one's a good one. Cholesterol screening and blood sugar screening. So people think

00:32:36.180 | that they have to go to the doctor to regularly get their blood tests done, get their cholesterol

00:32:40.060 | done, get their blood sugar done, get their blood pressure checked. We definitely overdo

00:32:44.700 | it. I think there's a need for that in somebody who is at high risk or has a very unhealthy

00:32:52.620 | lifestyle. Sure, you can get a good sense of where you're at, but blood tests are not

00:32:57.740 | that accurate. And I think that's what a lot of people miss. You can get somebody who is

00:33:03.380 | six foot tall and 350 pounds coming in, but their blood tests, everything might be perfect.

00:33:08.140 | Their blood pressure might be perfect. Does that mean everything's okay? No, it doesn't.

00:33:12.500 | It does not at all. So that's another big misconception.

00:33:15.980 | That's been personally my medical history. I've always been overweight, but I've always

00:33:21.660 | had perfect, anytime there's lab tests or blood tests, all the ranges for cholesterol

00:33:27.140 | and blood sugars and things like that come back as within the normal ranges. And it can

00:33:35.380 | be probably misread. On the one hand, it allows me a sense of security of, "Oh, yeah, I'm

00:33:41.580 | overweight, but at least I have perfect blood numbers. Therefore, everything's fine." I

00:33:45.500 | don't know if that's good or bad, but that's my personal experience.

00:33:49.420 | I think it's understandable. People just want to have some sort of a sense of where they're

00:33:54.700 | at. And if they see a bad cholesterol number, then at least they would kick it up into the

00:34:00.020 | next ... They would say, "Okay, that's it. I got to really get my stuff together." But

00:34:04.740 | I feel like we lull patients into a false sense of security by telling them, "This blood

00:34:09.940 | test shows everything's fine, so you're good. But who designed the blood test? What does

00:34:14.100 | this blood test really measure? Is it really looking at the lining of the vessels?" And

00:34:18.780 | it's not. It's like in a good economy, if you got a crappy bunch of tech stocks in a

00:34:24.900 | good economy, you're always going to be fine. But when it's really tested is when the economy

00:34:30.580 | crashes and everything else crashes with it. Same here. If your body really gets sick one

00:34:35.580 | day, if you contract, God forbid, some sort of a crazy illness, a cancer, something, and

00:34:41.340 | your health is not that good, I don't care what those numbers read, you're not going

00:34:45.000 | to recover that well from that illness. But if you're healthy overall and you do get really

00:34:49.780 | sick, you're probably going to be okay. I'll touch on that in a little bit, but people

00:34:54.740 | can get cancers and heart attacks and strokes and be just fine if they're healthy. So that's

00:35:01.780 | another big one.

00:35:03.260 | Mammograms and PSA tests.

00:35:04.980 | Right. So we overdo mammograms. There's been plenty of studies for that. Not only do we

00:35:10.200 | overdo mammograms, which means by the way, a mammogram is a low dose x-ray that we apply

00:35:16.000 | to breast tissue and men can get mammograms as well. And we look for cancers. We look

00:35:21.480 | for real subtle abnormalities. And the problem is we're radiating so many young women's breasts.

00:35:27.540 | We're radiating people who possibly are a bit at risk for cancers. And by radiating

00:35:34.420 | them, we're increasing the risk of cancers. And then when we do find something, we over

00:35:39.820 | biopsy them. We over-treat them. Benign cancers that probably would be fine, we're going crazy

00:35:45.220 | with it.

00:35:46.220 | PSA tests. So we do a prostate specific antigen, which is a blood test that checks whether

00:35:51.640 | you might have prostate cancer. A lot of people want them. They come in, they ask for them.

00:35:56.380 | Unfortunately, a lot of times these are abnormal for other reasons. For example, your prostate's

00:36:00.340 | a bit inflamed from an infection or from just being larger due to age. And then PSA is abnormal.

00:36:08.500 | Great. Let's do a biopsy. Biopsy didn't show it. Let's go in with a camera. So it's just

00:36:13.860 | a big spiral.

00:36:15.940 | Ear infections.

00:36:16.940 | Ear infections in children. There's a lot of great studies and a lot of good pediatricians

00:36:21.700 | will not treat ear infections in children anymore unless, for very specific reasons,

00:36:27.540 | if the child's very young or if they're recurrent and the child has decreased hearing. But other

00:36:32.420 | than that, ear infections, probably viral, even if bacterial, will go away on their own.

00:36:38.060 | So our thought, we want to be very careful with a very young baby. We try to be extra

00:36:45.540 | cautious with a very young baby as far as anything like that. But with a similar advice

00:36:51.300 | to a cold, apply. Just give it a little bit of time. Watch the child for a little bit

00:36:56.240 | of discomfort, a little bit of sickness that's not necessarily cause for alarm. Give it some

00:37:01.620 | time and watch for acute symptoms. Watch for something that's really worrying. Is that

00:37:06.260 | a reasonable approach?

00:37:07.580 | Yeah. So I like this question because this is a great money saver and stress saver for

00:37:13.540 | parents. So you have a little one, I don't care, three months, a year, two years, and

00:37:18.580 | he or she comes down with a cold, coughing, congested, can't breathe out of the nose,

00:37:23.860 | has a croupy cough, has a barking cough, a little bit of wheezing, fevers. But the

00:37:28.660 | child's eating, the child's pooping, the child's peeing. There's no weird coloration. Sure,

00:37:34.980 | the kid might have a little bit of a hard time getting through the night. If you really

00:37:38.520 | want to, you can do a bit of Tylenol or ibuprofen for the fevers or the pains. But if the child

00:37:43.640 | is doing well, they're able to hydrate. And that's really the biggest key with children

00:37:48.100 | is if they can hydrate, if they're having wet diapers, you're probably okay. If they

00:37:52.900 | can keep something down, even if they're retching and vomiting, nausea, you know, they don't

00:37:58.100 | want to eat, their throat's really sore. If they can get through this very, very well,

00:38:02.940 | as long as they're staying hydrated, as long as they can take in some calories. It doesn't

00:38:07.020 | have to be solids. It can be Gatorade, it can be Pedialyte, as long as they can keep

00:38:11.300 | those things down. Yes, watch it, wait it out, because you bring them to the doctor's

00:38:16.220 | office and those lungs sound terrible, I got to get a chest X-ray. If that ear looks horrible,

00:38:21.700 | probably going to have to recommend antibiotics.

00:38:24.300 | So, on the next four bullet points on our outline here of our preparation for today's

00:38:30.740 | show, these are pretty wacky. And so I'm going to give you a chance to talk about this and

00:38:34.900 | then I'm going to push back on how these things actually save money. But I'm going to read

00:38:38.780 | because I think this is a funny setup. So, under the heading of common medical misconceptions,

00:38:43.840 | you have indicated, number one, you need a doctor to control your pain, alcohol is bad

00:38:49.900 | for you, coffee is bad for you, cigarettes kill, and you'll die if you don't eat. So,

00:38:55.980 | you got a little bit of a case to make because these are unusual. How do you mean that these

00:39:00.100 | are misconceptions?

00:39:01.100 | So, misconceptions is, you know, if you even look at a cigarette, you're going to die.

00:39:06.820 | No, not true. Plenty of good studies out there show that if you're smoking one or two cigarettes

00:39:11.780 | a day, your risk of cancer, your risk of heart disease is minimal. I'm not saying smoke,

00:39:17.020 | I don't smoke. I'm not telling anybody that you should go pick it up. But, you know, let's

00:39:23.140 | face it, we have this big campaign against tobacco, but it's also a big financial campaign.

00:39:29.300 | Tobacco is not as bad as it's made, it's this huge villain. It's insane. It's insane and

00:39:36.180 | it's not true.

00:39:37.180 | You know, I've only ever met one person who actually does that. I'm sure more people do,

00:39:40.260 | but I had one friend who was a financial planner and she had one cigarette every single night.

00:39:46.420 | And so, every night after dinner, she would go out on her balcony and she would smoke

00:39:49.500 | one cigarette. And I never knew anybody else who could keep that point of non-addiction,

00:39:56.740 | non-over usage other than her. But, there would be a perfect case study of what you're

00:40:01.860 | talking about.

00:40:02.860 | Right. And I think one other thing to consider is when you're driving in traffic and you're,

00:40:07.900 | you know, butt to butt to another car, you know, the amount of chemicals you're getting

00:40:12.100 | in your system is way, way, way more than a pack of cigarettes that you could get because

00:40:17.540 | you're getting it every single day. You're also sedentary. You're sitting down, you're

00:40:22.140 | stressed. When you're sitting down and when you're stressed and your body is getting these

00:40:26.220 | nauseous chemicals in the system, there's a big difference. And when you're all relaxed,

00:40:30.700 | chilling, listening to some Joshua Sheets podcast and smoking a cigarette, it's very

00:40:36.060 | different.

00:40:37.060 | You know, I have a theory on cigarettes and you could, I've never talked about this publicly.

00:40:40.180 | This is just one of my little pet theories. But I think that sometimes smokers who occasionally,

00:40:47.020 | I don't know what the number is on this because obviously there's pretty damning evidence

00:40:50.180 | on the level of carcinogens at a point and I don't think you're disagreeing with that.

00:40:54.820 | But sometimes I wonder if smokers' happiness isn't simply due to the fact that they take

00:40:59.500 | breaks and they breathe. And those two things combined can make a big difference on your

00:41:05.420 | stress levels. Now, I have zero medical qualifications to opine on this subject. So take it for what

00:41:11.060 | it's worth.

00:41:12.060 | But when I read studies and just talking about the impact of stress and how the chemicals,

00:41:18.780 | whether it's the levels of acidity or just the chemicals that your body creates when

00:41:22.700 | responding to acute stress, I see how just simply the virtue of slowing down, taking

00:41:28.460 | a break and kind of what smokers will do out on the smoker's corner is sit down and breathe

00:41:34.060 | and talk. Now, of course, you could do that without the smoke going into your lungs. But

00:41:39.180 | my theory is that sometimes smokers have a more positive lifestyle simply because of

00:41:45.020 | taking the time to have a break and to breathe.

00:41:47.420 | Yes. And Josh, honestly, if I could prescribe one cigarette a day to somebody versus Xanax

00:41:54.740 | or Ativan or Prozac, I would do so. But I still need my medical license for a little

00:42:00.220 | bit. So I'll hold off on that.

00:42:03.060 | So keep going on these other.

00:42:04.820 | So another one, you need a doctor to control your pain. Pain is such a big one in America

00:42:09.500 | too, right? Because people are busy. They got stressful lives and they just can't be

00:42:14.100 | bogged down with pain and pain takes over the world. But I think people are more afraid

00:42:18.920 | of pain because they think it indicates something really bad. And that's never, never the case.

00:42:24.100 | No. Well, I should say that's almost never the case. When your body hurts, it's OK. The

00:42:28.980 | pain is probably going to go away or there's something you're doing wrong. And you don't

00:42:33.380 | need a doctor for that. If you have a bad knee, some exercises, some maybe some weight

00:42:38.700 | loss, some strengthening, the pain is probably going to go away. You don't need a surgeon

00:42:43.060 | to go in there and say, oh, you have a meniscus tear. We're going to clean this up. So in

00:42:47.580 | my case, I have a small tear in my medial meniscus and I got a labral tear in my right

00:42:53.220 | shoulder and I still do everything that I'm pretty active. I'm fit and everything. You

00:42:59.180 | don't need a doctor for that. You just don't. And it hurts. Yes, it hurts every once in

00:43:02.340 | a while. It's not a big deal. Once you get used to that kind of pain, once you accept

00:43:06.300 | it and say, hey, this is my body, it's going to be all right. It's not depressing. I don't

00:43:10.500 | have a bad lifestyle. It's just something I noticed. So I think just putting it into

00:43:15.220 | perspective, it's really, really important. It's OK to live with pain. It's not a big

00:43:19.180 | deal. Our pets do it all the time and they're the happiest things on the planet.

00:43:23.140 | Here's my way of thinking about it. Feel free to correct it. But my thought, I like the

00:43:31.820 | more natural approach. And with regard to pain, this makes sense to me. Pain is my body's

00:43:36.980 | way of saying, I have a problem. I need a little bit of time to rest and recuperate.

00:43:41.560 | So treat me gently. So if there's some mild knee pain or mild shoulder pain, I need to

00:43:46.660 | be careful and not put excess weight. It's the body's way of protecting that so that

00:43:50.580 | it can mend and heal itself. It's not something to immediately freak out about. It's something

00:43:55.020 | to observe and to notice and to perhaps give a little bit of extra rest to that body part.

00:44:00.980 | It's not something that I should cover up. It's not something that I should try to numb

00:44:05.380 | with medicine. Just it's something that I should pay attention to.

00:44:09.540 | Now, again, my caveat, of course, there may be an acute pain and that's a symptom of something

00:44:14.300 | significantly wrong. But is that a reasonable way of thinking about it?

00:44:17.900 | Absolutely. I agree 100%. And I know some of your listeners might have some serious

00:44:24.660 | chronic pain issues. And so, of course, they're crucifying me and hopefully they're not crucifying

00:44:29.060 | you. But there are certain conditions. There are certain things that are so bad. There

00:44:34.180 | are certain types of pains that are so tough to deal with. And again, I'm not saying you

00:44:38.220 | don't need a doctor at all. But we're talking about the most common pains that we have.

00:44:44.280 | And they are exactly that. They're signals. Something, your body's saying, "Something's

00:44:49.260 | off. Can you please just give me a break?" And you do that and it works. So, I agree.

00:44:55.100 | You'll die if you don't eat.

00:44:56.660 | All right. This is a good one. So, you'll die if you don't eat. Patients come in, they

00:45:01.900 | say, "Doc, I've been having nausea. I've been having vomiting, diarrhea for the past seven

00:45:05.220 | days. I haven't eaten anything for three days." Okay. That's fine. You're not going to die.

00:45:10.860 | You don't need to eat. You won't die if you don't eat. You're not going to become more

00:45:16.520 | unhealthy if you don't eat. You can drink water. You can drink your calories. You can

00:45:20.440 | do Gatorade. You can do Pedialyte. But people fast. People fast for days on end. People

00:45:26.920 | actually – there are some studies that show that individuals who fast a few hours a day

00:45:31.940 | or fast for a few days in a row have certain better health conditions. I'm not a fan of

00:45:38.080 | that. I never think it's good to do some sort of an extreme to your body. But there's nothing

00:45:42.640 | wrong with not eating. And if that's part of your sudden weight loss plan, that's fine

00:45:46.960 | too as long as you realize that you're probably going to crash pretty good afterwards.

00:45:51.000 | Coffee and alcohol?

00:45:52.000 | Right. So, I drink coffee regularly and I think I heard you take a sip of yours. So,

00:45:59.920 | coffee is not bad for you. There's great studies that show that it can decrease your risk of

00:46:03.680 | colon cancer, certain other types of cancers. It stains your teeth, sure. It can give you

00:46:08.680 | more acid, but probably most of your acid is coming from stress. Alcohol, right. If

00:46:14.920 | you have an addiction, it's very different. I don't know if you drink or have drank, but

00:46:19.080 | if me or another one of my friends drinks alcohol, we're not going to get addicted to

00:46:24.680 | it. We just don't have the genes. We don't have the predisposition. But a little bit

00:46:28.260 | of alcohol does not cause cancer. A little bit of alcohol does not destroy your liver.

00:46:32.680 | So, I think also recognizing that, that these little insults to your body mean nothing in

00:46:39.400 | the big scheme of things. You can deal with quite a lot and come out just fine, but it

00:46:45.000 | matters whether you're stressed, whether your body is just depleted of energy because then

00:46:50.240 | it can't cope with it. And here's a good one. Last one. I know I keep talking a lot about

00:46:54.880 | this scientific stuff, but there's been a lot of great studies that show people have

00:46:59.480 | a higher risk of melanoma if they've been drinking a lot of alcohol and been under the

00:47:04.880 | sun for extended periods of time. So, that combination together has a much higher effect

00:47:09.600 | of you having melanoma than just having either sun exposure or alcohol.

00:47:14.160 | Interesting. So, you make that statement and obviously I understand, but I don't understand

00:47:22.960 | the meaning of that. Is the idea don't drink when you go in the sun or is the idea that

00:47:27.040 | stressed out people are the ones who are just slamming them down while they're sitting in

00:47:30.320 | the sun and that's ultimately what's leading to the melanoma?

00:47:33.200 | So, in between that, it means that if your body's under stress because you're overworked,

00:47:38.720 | you're not sleeping enough, you're fighting with your spouse, and your body is so depleted

00:47:43.840 | of energy that it cannot even maintain the simple act of treating little tiny cancers,

00:47:50.960 | treating little bit of DNA damage that happens every single second in your body. If you're

00:47:55.680 | in that condition, you put a little bit of alcohol in your system, then sure, it can

00:48:00.160 | damage your body. If you go drive behind a big semi truck and you inhale all those carcinogens,

00:48:06.080 | sure, then you have a higher risk of cancer. But if your body is really not under that

00:48:11.000 | much stress and your body can do a lot of self-regulation and self-healing, you could

00:48:16.920 | probably work in some pretty dirty industries with a ton of carcinogens and you would be

00:48:22.400 | just fine. And I think that's a really, really important thing to take into consideration.

00:48:27.560 | I read a book one time, you mentioned the acidity of stress, and I guess I read a book

00:48:32.760 | one time talking about the acid-alkaline balance of your body. And the major premise of the

00:48:41.080 | book was, I believe it was called The pH Miracle, if memory is right, but the major premise

00:48:45.340 | of the book was that it's the acidity of your body that causes your body to become sick

00:48:53.320 | and that if you focus on acidity, you can generate better health. And so the primary

00:48:58.640 | cause of acidity was self-created hormones and chemicals in the body, primarily due to

00:49:05.320 | stress. That was one of the author's conjectures. And then also many other factors, coffee being

00:49:11.120 | acidic, meat being acidic, sugar being acidic, etc. I haven't seen that theory. I read that

00:49:17.240 | book on it and it seemed to make sense to me as a layperson, but I haven't seen that

00:49:23.320 | theory spread more widely. I haven't seen that receive a lot of popular attention. Do

00:49:28.800 | you know anything about that? Is that accurate? Is that known in the medical circles? Has

00:49:32.320 | that been corroborated or disproven in some way?

00:49:36.000 | It's just that the way we do scientific research, I don't think it's been ever proven. That's

00:49:43.200 | just not the way things are tested in medicine. Things are tested on animals based on whatever

00:49:48.280 | outcome you get. If the animal didn't have a horrible outcome, you test it on humans

00:49:52.520 | and then you just go for it. But if you look at other cultures, so some cultures believe

00:49:57.280 | in hot and cold versus acidic and basic. So it's just one of those things that's been

00:50:04.180 | around a lot of cultures for a long time. And yes, if you talk to people who are a little

00:50:09.600 | bit more holistic based, they absolutely believe in that. And my patients, even the patients

00:50:15.560 | that I have who lead their life that way, I feel like they're much healthier by just

00:50:21.400 | controlling their acid base. And they can call it whatever they want. This food creates

00:50:25.380 | more heat. This food creates more cold. This food creates more acidity. This one more basicity.

00:50:30.440 | So I know where I've experienced those is with stress. So I have observed if I get a

00:50:36.760 | there are a few emotions that when they get to me, I feel them physically. And the big

00:50:42.960 | three are when I get a sense of overwhelm. And this happens to me from time to time.

00:50:47.560 | I generally put so many things on my to do list and I start to get overwhelmed. That

00:50:51.000 | leads to just this tension. And I've noticed it. I don't want to be too dramatic, but it

00:50:55.960 | almost just forces my brain to shut down. And I've learned that I have to proactively

00:51:00.600 | manage that. I'm not great at it. I'm getting better at it. But just proactively managing

00:51:05.180 | that sense of overwhelm. I have to shut everything off and I have to focus on just some simple

00:51:09.680 | quiet reading. I have to build time into my schedule where I ignore the world because

00:51:15.280 | it seems like I have so many things running at me. I got inboxes filling up in eight different

00:51:21.600 | applications. I've got all these things coming in. Everyone's upset at me. Everyone's blah,

00:51:25.640 | blah, blah. And so I tend to get overwhelmed. Another one is that I feel the physical effect

00:51:31.200 | of that emotion. And so I know there's a physiological connection. Another one is fear, which I don't

00:51:38.280 | experience a lot of that, but I know that sense of unease if I start to get it, I feel

00:51:42.760 | it. And then the big one for me is criticism. I feel that in my stomach. One of my major

00:51:51.080 | character weaknesses is I'm a people pleaser and I like to please people. And so when someone

00:51:54.720 | is displeased, it causes me, I feel it in my stomach, Mohammed. I actually get viscerally

00:52:00.240 | sick when that, and I have to just turn it off. I usually have to ignore it for a little

00:52:04.440 | while, let some time pass and then relate. But I am convinced that those emotions and

00:52:10.480 | just call them stresses, those stresses have a physiological effect on me that I can feel.

00:52:15.280 | Not that I know I'm going to get sick in 10 years, but I can feel them now in the pit

00:52:19.020 | of my stomach. And so I'm convinced that a lifestyle of that type of stress built up

00:52:23.720 | over time has a physiological effect.

00:52:27.960 | It has a physiologic effect and a long-term damaging effect because people put themselves

00:52:35.120 | under these stressful situations for so long and they don't have good coping mechanism,

00:52:40.360 | good coping skills. You do. I mean, just listening, I feel like listening to your podcast, you

00:52:45.400 | seem to do such a good job of taking criticism and brushing it off. Or it might just be show,

00:52:52.000 | but I doubt it. Usually people succeed when they have good coping mechanisms. And I think

00:52:57.280 | if you can develop that, if a person can develop good coping mechanisms, then you can do fine.

00:53:03.120 | And even though you do get a bit of damage in your body, you can recover as well. And

00:53:08.200 | I think that's important too.

00:53:09.600 | Yeah. It's not, no, I don't brush it off. I've just learned how to, because I know it's

00:53:13.920 | going to affect me. I've learned how to put some distance between it and then I've grown

00:53:18.840 | in that a lot. It's a new skill that I've learned over the last few years. And so I've

00:53:23.280 | learned, listen, I'm not going to allow this to affect me. And usually for me, it's just

00:53:27.200 | time. Just give it a few hours and then you quiet your emotions, you quiet your heart.

00:53:32.400 | For me, I pray, I quiet my emotions, I quiet my heart, and then I can go back and I can

00:53:37.280 | start again. But with a quiet spirit, then I can go ahead and face things and I can look

00:53:41.280 | to pull the good out of it and disregard those things that are not helpful.

00:53:45.680 | So talk about, we've talked about some of these things as basically ways of saving money.

00:53:52.280 | And so the general consensus that I pull from what you've shared so far is slow down just

00:53:57.720 | a little bit, be a little bit more, have a little more what used to be common sense.

00:54:02.840 | Don't rush to the doctor for everything and just slow down a little bit and let your body

00:54:07.080 | simply work. And that is a kind of a defensive approach to cause you to not always be forcing,

00:54:14.720 | putting money out the door. But what are some of the things that we can do proactively here

00:54:19.560 | under lifestyle and genetics? What are the things we can do proactively to invest in

00:54:23.760 | our health so that we don't wind up even, so we have fewer symptoms, so we get sick

00:54:28.200 | less?

00:54:29.200 | So, you know, your body doesn't come with a manual. So a little bit of it is you just

00:54:33.600 | having to develop that sense of being in tune with your body. And I think a lot of people

00:54:39.640 | are not doing that. It's recognizing, like we've already talked about, when my body's

00:54:44.760 | under stress, what is it that I got to do to de-stress it? Is it I got to take some

00:54:48.280 | things off my plate? Maybe I got to cross some things off my to-do list. Is it better

00:54:52.880 | for me to spend these next three hours to tell my loved ones, "Hey guys, I'm sorry.

00:54:57.160 | I got to step away for a little bit. I just got to clean all these things off of my stress

00:55:01.160 | list." And once you do that, you just feel great. And that alone might create a better

00:55:06.560 | sleep the next night. It might decrease your need to eat or binge on unhealthy food. So

00:55:15.160 | I think that lifestyle, that sense about your body is really important to develop. And yeah,

00:55:22.520 | there is no good way of telling you how to do it, but if you just try, you'll get it

00:55:26.960 | right. You'll eventually figure it out. So definitely, stress, right? Decreasing stress,

00:55:33.960 | decreasing your sleep. A lot of us, I think you're in your 20s or I don't know, you're

00:55:38.600 | young.

00:55:39.600 | 30.

00:55:40.600 | Okay, 30. So we probably still need eight to 10 hours of sleep. And some of us say,

00:55:45.920 | "No, no, no, no, no. I do great on five." Yes, you do. Absolutely. Many people function

00:55:50.440 | much better. They're more alert because their body is so much more stressed that they actually

00:55:56.120 | do better with tasks and getting things done when they only sleep four to five hours. But

00:56:01.260 | that doesn't mean that that's what you need. And of course, diet. Diet's a big one. And

00:56:06.760 | I'm sure we'll get into that in a bit if we still have time. So weight loss, right? So

00:56:11.760 | weight's a big one, controlling your weight and controlling how much activity you have.

00:56:17.600 | And somewhere in the bottom of this document that me and you are looking at, I've mentioned

00:56:21.720 | you can weigh a lot more if you're very active. You can weigh a lot more if you're eating

00:56:26.600 | healthy food. So weight is becoming less and less of an issue in medicine and science.

00:56:32.960 | We're finding out that it's not as important what you weigh. It's more important probably

00:56:39.080 | what you're putting in your body and how active you are. And again, in this culture, it's

00:56:44.000 | all about running and marathons and crazy stuff. You don't need to do that. You can

00:56:48.680 | walk. You can bicycle. You can just getting up from your desk and going somewhere and

00:56:56.200 | going for a quick walk while you're doing a phone conversation, while you're reading

00:56:59.760 | something, even like walking on those stationary treadmills. That is great activity. It doesn't

00:57:04.880 | need to be this elaborate gym membership with this exercise, a bit of cardio, a little bit

00:57:10.600 | of this, a little bit of that. It doesn't need to be that.

00:57:13.600 | I'm convinced some of that stuff is really damaging. I was about to say I keep that opinion

00:57:19.960 | quiet and here I am broadcasting it on a podcast. But it's a little hard from a non-athlete

00:57:24.960 | perspective to be taken seriously when you're criticizing other people who are very active.

00:57:32.680 | I have a friend of mine who was just a committed triathlete, Ironman. He was just so committed

00:57:38.600 | to it. I love and admired his character and his dedication and his discipline. But when

00:57:44.840 | I look at the effect on his body, his body just seemed to be breaking down. He had all

00:57:49.240 | these damages from overuse, knee issues and whatnot, which significantly impacted his

00:57:55.200 | life. It seems to me that just a more reasonable perspective is a healthier approach, not being

00:58:02.760 | so extreme. Now, that type of person, it seems to be connected to their character where they

00:58:08.480 | just have an extreme personality and that's where they find their outlet. Again, I have

00:58:12.600 | no place to criticize someone who goes out and does that. But it doesn't seem to me to

00:58:16.080 | be the most healthy thing.

00:58:17.920 | I'd say as objective as possible as a physician, I see both sides. I see the person who's just

00:58:25.000 | destroying their body with way too much exercise, lowering their immune system to the point

00:58:29.320 | of catching pneumonias and meningitis. I see the other person who's so busy and involved

00:58:34.560 | in building a business, running their business, dealing with situations that they're so sedentary

00:58:41.240 | that they themselves are destroying their life. Somewhere in the middle, and it doesn't

00:58:46.360 | have to be perfect. That's the thing. Our bodies are amazing without it. You don't have

00:58:50.960 | to be perfect. You just got to do a little bit more. You just got to decrease the time

00:58:56.800 | you spend around the kitchen table a little bit, or at least take the food away, bring

00:59:00.360 | in some tea, bring in some vegetables, bring in some fruits, and then go for a walk together.

00:59:06.720 | Just increasing your activity every single day in little steps makes a humongous difference.

00:59:13.240 | I think that's such an easy thing to implement.

00:59:15.560 | Talk to me about some strategies of actually navigating the medical system. Pretend I actually

00:59:24.840 | have some problems, I have some issues, and I need the input of a physician. Now, what

00:59:29.640 | are some proactive strategies that I can implement to control the financial cost of that while

00:59:34.920 | getting the medical help that I need while controlling the financial outlay?

00:59:39.400 | A few things. A lot of insurances now, I'm a big advocate for HMOs. I don't like PPOs,

00:59:48.320 | and I know there's a lot of different types of insurances out there, but HMOs are nice

00:59:51.920 | because everything's under one roof. For the most part, you do save money. People are worried

00:59:57.280 | that they're not going to get a good physician, but I think you can always spot a good physician,

01:00:01.480 | and you can certainly change physicians to find that.

01:00:04.480 | Back to your point, I think when you get a symptom, when you get something, look it up.

01:00:09.520 | Don't be afraid to go online. Look things up, but recognize that there's a lot of sensationalism

01:00:14.340 | out there on the internet. If you have a headache and you're worried about something, take a

01:00:19.600 | look. If you have a rash, go online, look at some rashes. Describe the rash, and look

01:00:25.000 | at pictures on Google. When you see that, you kind of get a good sense.

01:00:29.800 | Almost all good health insurances now, you can email your doctor for free. You can do

01:00:35.440 | video visits or telephone visits for free. I do telephone visits once a week or so. I

01:00:41.360 | talk to about 50 patients in 10 hours, and it's all free. Our medical group does not

01:00:46.120 | charge for it, and I love it. Patients love it. I can chat with them online. I can see

01:00:50.560 | their face. They can send me pictures of their rash, of their kid's rash. They send me pictures

01:00:55.960 | of their poop and their vomit. Fine. No big deal. I'm happy to look at it. It's great

01:01:02.120 | because I can say, "No, look. That's all that is. Don't worry. It's probably just this.

01:01:06.120 | It's probably just that." That's a really good way of cutting your cost. Just running

01:01:10.240 | it by someone. See if that doctor's eyes bulge out. If they bulge out, you're probably dealing

01:01:16.600 | with something a little bit more problematic. If not, then don't worry about it.

01:01:22.400 | I think this is a good one. Find a doctor friend. Find even a good nurse friend. This

01:01:28.960 | social capitalism thing that ... Social capital, not capitalism. Social capital thing that

01:01:33.780 | you talk about is huge. Find a friend that's a doctor or become friends with a doctor and

01:01:39.840 | run something by them. No, I'm not going to give you a diagnosis on the fly. Of course

01:01:43.080 | not. I don't want to get sued by you later, but I'll gladly tell you that, "Nope. That

01:01:47.080 | doesn't look concerning. I just weighed it out." That's another big one.

01:01:52.240 | Imaging, surgeries. Those are my two big, big, big pet peeves. We do so many MRIs and

01:01:58.200 | CTs and x-rays. Yes, we're picking up a ton more diagnoses. The fact that we have more

01:02:03.200 | cancers now is probably just because we're diagnosing them more. We do them, but they're

01:02:07.880 | not necessary. This ties into breast cancer and prostate cancer in older patients. They

01:02:15.000 | can be left completely untreated and that patient will probably not have any issues

01:02:19.720 | with it. They will die gracefully at an old age before they die from those cancers. That's

01:02:25.560 | how a lot of really good surgeons are managing cancers these days. They're saying, "Sir,

01:02:30.120 | you're 75 years old and you're in great health. That prostate won't even bother you. Yep,

01:02:34.400 | you got cancer in it. Don't worry about it. Leave it alone."

01:02:39.680 | The last one is specialists. If you go to a specialist, if you go to a cardiologist,

01:02:45.000 | if you go to an orthopedic surgeon, and I don't want to get killed by one of your subscribers

01:02:51.360 | here, who is a specialist? There's nothing wrong with going to a specialist. When you

01:02:55.040 | have the option to go straight to a specialist, my orthopedic surgery friends, they're trained

01:03:02.280 | to fix you surgically. They're less inclined to tell you, "Well, this is what I would do.

01:03:07.080 | I would go lose 30 pounds and I would do these exercises and you should be fine." No, they're

01:03:10.840 | like, "Dude, I can take you in the OR tonight at 6 p.m. and I can shave that stuff off of

01:03:16.720 | your meniscus and you'll be great. You're going to walk perfectly." When you get that

01:03:22.040 | surgery, unfortunately, later on in life, you're going to get arthritis. There is no

01:03:25.440 | knee surgery that I've ever heard of that you can get done. No intervention into your

01:03:29.360 | knee that's not going to cause you arthritis down the road. Is it worth it? I don't think

01:03:34.640 | so. Same with cardiologists who may say that, "Yeah, you probably need a treadmill stress

01:03:40.200 | test because we got to make sure this is not coming from your heart." Oh, it is a little

01:03:43.440 | bit abnormal. Let's go into your groin and go into your heart and see what's going on.

01:03:48.920 | Oh, sorry, when we did that, we also knocked off this little plaque that went into your

01:03:53.200 | brain and you got a stroke, but your heart was good. Sorry about that.

01:03:57.120 | And Mohamed, what you're focusing on here is my biggest, I was going to say beef, but

01:04:03.040 | my biggest, I guess, frustration is it seems to me that if I go to a, like I said, if I

01:04:10.000 | go to a surgeon, there's a higher likelihood that the surgeon is going to diagnose surgery

01:04:13.840 | to improve my ailment. If I go to a physician who is primarily dispensing medicine, there's

01:04:21.600 | probably going to be a prescription that I go out with as the initial stage of treating

01:04:27.280 | my ailment. If I go to a holistic natural health doctor, there's probably going to be

01:04:34.200 | some system of vitamins and natural foods and whatnot that are going to be my primary

01:04:39.600 | basis of treating it. It leaves me as an interested layperson trying to be careful on both sides,

01:04:47.400 | trying to be prudent, but also cautious. It leaves me often in a place of not knowing

01:04:52.960 | who to trust or how to trust anybody. And it leaves me, I guess, not knowing who to

01:05:00.160 | trust and how. Any suggestions for dealing with that?

01:05:04.720 | And Josh, I feel like this is how we layperson feels when it comes to a financial advisor,

01:05:13.760 | somebody who can give us financial advice because we go to somebody. I've talked about

01:05:19.440 | this before, but I've had about three other financial advisors at first who were really

01:05:24.440 | just more keen on selling me something. And I'm not saying they were bad. They probably

01:05:28.600 | weren't bad, but they just kept wanting to sell me on stuff. And they didn't sell me

01:05:32.320 | on good stuff. I've made my mistakes in the past, but I learned from that. I learned and

01:05:37.080 | I made mistakes and I researched it and I listened to good podcasts. I went on good

01:05:41.280 | websites and now I have an awesome financial advisor who is great, who gives me very objective

01:05:48.080 | information. He gives me options and he's like, "Hey, dude, it's your money, man.

01:05:52.840 | You got to decide. But these are the things that I know and these are the things that

01:05:55.960 | I'm good at and this is what I recommend. But you should do what you do."

01:06:00.000 | And so I think it's the same for you guys out there. When you go to your doctor first,

01:06:05.240 | get the sense. Is this person just burnt out and just wants to get out of the room and

01:06:08.960 | is going to throw an antibiotic at you? Or is this somebody who really cares and is going

01:06:12.480 | to give you a lot of options? Now, if you put that physician in a bad situation, yeah,

01:06:17.600 | they're going to just say, "You know what? Sorry, man. Go see the surgeon, dude, because

01:06:21.600 | you're just being a big pain in the ass and you're not working with me and I'm having

01:06:27.160 | a hard time with you and I got 30 other patients to see." And recognize that if you go to an

01:06:32.560 | orthopedic surgeon, the orthopedic surgeon makes money doing surgery. I mean, we're human.

01:06:39.480 | If I can make $750,000 doing a few knee replacements versus make $350,000 just doing a bunch of

01:06:49.720 | crappy office visits, I'm sorry. I would do the knee surgeries. I would do the knee replacements

01:06:54.720 | because the patients want them. They're begging for them. They're fighting for them. It's

01:06:58.240 | really tough as a surgeon to say, "No, ma'am. You don't need it." No, of course not, because

01:07:03.080 | you got $300,000 tied to it. You're going to do it.

01:07:05.600 | Right. Same conflict of interest in the financial advisor space. People don't – and I would

01:07:11.240 | imagine at least what I have observed is you get a little bit callous over time. No matter

01:07:16.280 | how much you care in the beginning, when you tell people – so let's say that somebody

01:07:20.600 | comes out and they become an orthopedic surgeon and they know that weight loss and walking

01:07:24.880 | is the primary thing that they should prescribe, they prescribe weight loss and walking again

01:07:29.720 | and again and again and again and people come back again and again and again and don't

01:07:33.000 | take their advice. So finally, I said, "Fine. I'll do the surgery," because you get a

01:07:36.520 | little jaded. I think the same thing happens in the financial advisory business where no

01:07:39.960 | matter how many times you prescribe budgeting and saving, your clients come back again and

01:07:44.920 | again and again and they have more credit card debt. They don't have any savings and

01:07:49.200 | they're not doing any budgeting. So finally, you say, "Okay, fine. I'll just sell your

01:07:52.240 | products and at least you'll have something," and you start to justify it. Right, wrong,

01:07:58.760 | it's tough. Every profession has those challenges.

01:08:01.160 | - And I think as patients or as people, humans, whatever, this is what we can do for ourselves

01:08:08.000 | is let's think ahead. What's the most expensive thing in people's lives later on down the

01:08:14.560 | road? It's probably either divorce or medical expenses. So the divorce, I can't tell you

01:08:20.040 | what to do there, but medical expenses, start eating right. Start being active. Again, you

01:08:25.960 | don't have to go crazy exercising. Just start eating a little better. Avoid those really

01:08:30.760 | rich foods. The foods that are probably the worst for you is anything that's processed.

01:08:37.160 | Anything animal-based is probably bad for you. Anything that's dense is bad for you.

01:08:41.440 | So pasta, bread, it's probably not good for you. You can have a little bit, sure, but

01:08:47.520 | only if the majority of what you're eating is really healthy. Do you need organic, not

01:08:52.240 | organic? That is such a tiny, tiny factor that I would say once you get eight to 10

01:08:58.800 | hours of sleep, once your stress is minimal and once you have some activity, sure, then

01:09:02.560 | you can worry about organic, not organic. But the conversation around that is just silly

01:09:07.760 | right now. So lose some weight. Lose enough weight that you feel good. And you can sense

01:09:16.280 | it in your body. When you have a little bit less weight around your neck, you're breathing

01:09:20.000 | better. You're sleeping better at night because your pharynx isn't collapsing on itself and

01:09:24.960 | making you get sleep apnea. Your belly doesn't feel as much pressure. So then when you're

01:09:29.400 | sitting, you don't feel so much pressure against your heart. So get a sense of that in your

01:09:34.160 | body. And I think these are the things that if you start doing now, if you build a little

01:09:38.400 | bit of muscle mass, if you build a little bit of elasticity in your tendons and your

01:09:42.680 | joints, fine, no big deal. Your knee gives out later on in life. It's okay. It's still

01:09:46.960 | going to go for a long time and you can probably avoid a lot of surgeries.

01:09:50.800 | Paul: Two final things and then final words. One, on the topic of losing weight, do you

01:10:00.520 | recommend to people a certain way of doing that, a certain particular style of diet?

01:10:04.200 | Do you take a general approach? How do you advise people to consider that?

01:10:07.920 | Dr. Seheult: I mean, I usually sit down and I ask them what is it that they're already

01:10:12.320 | doing? And then I tell them, you know, diversify it, right? That's what you would tell your

01:10:17.360 | clients probably is just try a bunch of different things. Not only be more active and get more

01:10:23.080 | sleep, but also change your diet to a little bit less meat, to a little bit less bread

01:10:28.480 | and rice. And that alone is going to make you drop a lot of weight. So I usually tell

01:10:34.000 | them to just start doing the diet more than the exercise because no matter how much you

01:10:39.320 | run, I mean, you can run on a treadmill for an hour running from the police, you know,

01:10:43.320 | you're not going to, you're going to get maybe 200, 300 calories out of that. But diet, that's

01:10:48.920 | huge. You can lose, you can get a lot more bang for your buck just focusing on your diet.

01:10:55.760 | So that's my big one. I say, do your diet, be active. And with diet, I usually just ask

01:11:01.560 | them what they eat and I identify like two or three things that are bad for them. And

01:11:05.680 | I'm like, that's it. You're done with that. You know, if you're going to have it, you're

01:11:09.000 | going to have it once a week in a very small amount that way you're not withdrawing from

01:11:12.760 | it. But that's my big one. And that's what I think has worked for my patients that have

01:11:19.440 | followed through.

01:11:20.440 | With regard to sleep, I've seen people advocate just simply the sleep diet. I don't remember

01:11:26.080 | the name of the book. I didn't read it. I just read the, some reviews of it. But the

01:11:30.560 | whole point was if you just start sleeping more, you'll probably result in a lost weight.

01:11:37.840 | I know for me, this has been a big one where I've learned I've wanted so, I want to be

01:11:44.560 | productive. I want to be, I want to have a high degree of output, but I've learned that

01:11:49.200 | I can't get by on six hours of sleep. I need more. And so I had to be really, really diligent

01:11:55.760 | about getting to bed on time. And I want so much to produce things, but I just get run

01:12:00.720 | down and I get run down. I get my brain stops functioning. I lose my creativity and my sense

01:12:06.620 | of sharpness. And then over time, give it a few days. If I give it a few days, then

01:12:11.920 | I get physically sick if I don't sleep. And so I've told my wife, I said, "Honey, don't

01:12:17.840 | ever let me stay up late because I'll get excited about a project." And I'll say, "Oh,

01:12:22.160 | miss this once." And then I go ahead and push through and then I regret it. So we've got

01:12:26.360 | a deal. I'm never allowed to stay up late. But just a couple more brief comments on the

01:12:31.240 | value of sleep.

01:12:32.240 | - I'll say one last thing about sleep. And it's great, the fact that you're relating

01:12:37.400 | that personal experience from it. It makes so much sense, right? Restful sleep is so

01:12:43.480 | much more important than how many hours you get. So making sure that right before you

01:12:48.080 | go to bed, you don't want to be dealing with something really complex. It's just not possible.

01:12:52.320 | You need a wind down time and a wind up time, right? When you get home, go crazy, do your

01:12:58.320 | work, do whatever you have to do. And right before sleep, really wind down, start having

01:13:02.960 | positive thoughts. And just especially when you're dealing with a big problem that you

01:13:07.640 | really need to solve, the best thing you can do is just completely forget about it. Don't

01:13:13.120 | let those intrusive thoughts in, sleep on it, and your mind can do so much more with

01:13:18.560 | it than you can, than you could ever do. And when you have good restful sleep without that

01:13:22.680 | stressful state, you'll do so much better. Even six hours will go a lot longer than eight

01:13:30.040 | hours of crappy sleep. So just that's my part on sleep.

01:13:34.420 | - Final words of advice.

01:13:36.880 | - Final words of advice. Use your doctor as a consultant, not your crutch. Stop going

01:13:44.040 | to the doctors for most things. Really start taking care of your body. Start investing

01:13:49.960 | in your body. And I think you'll get a lot more, you feel more independent. And when

01:13:56.920 | you do go to the doctor, get as much information as you can online, everywhere. People are

01:14:01.440 | worried that us doctors hate when you come in with articles from Medscape. No, bring

01:14:06.120 | it, dude. I'm not, shoot. I love looking at it and say, "Oh, I didn't even think about

01:14:10.200 | that." But no, you definitely don't have Chagas disease. You're fine. And yeah, exercise,

01:14:17.400 | diet, sleep, of course. That's it. That's all I got.

01:14:22.280 | - Mohamed, I thank you for coming on. You are building a website at urgentcarecareer.com,

01:14:27.520 | so you're sharing a little bit more about your own personal experience. So if people

01:14:32.720 | want to check that out, urgentcarecareer.com. Are you optimistic about the future of medicine

01:14:37.320 | as a professional career?

01:14:40.240 | - I think so. I'm seeing a lot more people being drawn to more holistic type of medicine.

01:14:46.040 | I feel like we're making disease less of an enemy. So I do. I feel very positive about

01:14:53.120 | it, actually.

01:14:54.120 | - Awesome. Thanks for coming on.

01:14:56.400 | - Absolutely.

01:14:57.680 | - Thank you for listening to this episode of Radical Personal Finance. If you're interested

01:15:01.160 | in building financial freedom for yourself and your family, please subscribe to the podcast

01:15:05.920 | with our free mobile app so you don't miss a single episode. Just search the app store

01:15:10.400 | on your mobile device for Radical Personal Finance and download our free app, which also

01:15:15.120 | contains an archive of every past episode of the show. If you have received value and

01:15:20.520 | financial benefit from the content of today's show, please consider becoming a supporting

01:15:25.640 | patron. Radical Personal Finance is listener supported, and it's your direct financial

01:15:31.360 | support which enables me to bring you this content. In addition to your voluntarily paying

01:15:36.800 | for the content you've just heard, as a supporting patron, you will receive a number of member-only

01:15:41.880 | benefits, including a private Facebook group, access to our weekly Q&A calls, and discounts

01:15:46.840 | on future products and services. Details can be found at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:15:51.280 | Again, radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

01:15:57.040 | Don't just dream about paradise, live it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with Fiji

01:16:03.200 | Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale. Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep

01:16:08.960 | into coral reefs. Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and

01:16:14.960 | just $798 for value. Discover your tropical dreams at FijiAirways.com. That's FijiAirways.com,

01:16:22.920 | from here to happy, flying direct with Fiji Airways.

01:16:26.080 | (upbeat music)

RPF0327-Mohammad_Ashori_Interview