Written by Christopher Kelly
June 19, 2015
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Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive Podcast. My name is Christopher Kelly. Today, I'm joined by the founder of the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Training Course Reed Davis. Hi, Reed.
Reed: Hi, Christopher. How are you doing there?
Christopher: Good, thanks. I'm really excited about having you on. Normally I get into some really technical in depth health topics which I'm sure I could do with you but really this episode is more about building a life that you love and revealing some of the things that I did in order to get where I am today helping people. People seem to be really interested in that. It seems to be a really common progression. Like you go through a program and you start feeling better and you're thinking, "Wow, heck, who else could benefit from these changes that I've made?" Of course, you instantly start thinking about other people. FDN has been a really useful tool for helping me achieve those goals. Why don't you start by telling us about FDN, the problem that you saw and what solution does FDN offer?
Reed: Thanks so much, Christopher. It's about the individual and the good we do. So I got into the health and wellness business to help people. At that time, it wasn't much I could do as a lay practitioner. So I had to investigate and figure out my own way. In other words, people who came to me with a health issue and were walking in the clinic where I worked had usually already seen five or six people. I just got [0:01:51] [Indiscernible] with that. I mean, I really wanted to help them and I didn't want to be just number six out of ten or number nine out of 14 people that they see.
In other words, I didn't want them to just -- They've tried five things and, "Oh, well, I'll try yours too and then if that doesn't work I'll go on to the next person." So I said that's insane. I really wanted to help that individual. I'm glad you brought that up, that it's about the unique stories. Before I tell you some of the bad kind of stuff, I'll tell you one of the very early cases that just made me dedicate my life to this.
It was a woman who was coming in our office. This is a wellness center in Southern California, chiropractic and acupuncture and nutrition, and I was a nutritionist. Of course, we had the massage and different modalities and things, a nice happy place, wellness center. I'm the nutritionist and case manager. So I had to see every single person to kind triage and do the history taking and things. This is when I was finding out what's your main complaint, whatever that might be, and how often does it bother you.
And it's like every day. And then how long has this been going on? Five years or eight years. Unbelievable stuff. And what have you done so far to try to fix it? I saw this person and I tried that and I tried medication and I tried all these different things. It's about the individual, as I was saying. This one lady came in and she was just getting chiropractic. She really wasn't doing much else in our office.
I was just walking her back to the room where she'd get her treatment. Sometimes, I would actually do some trigger point massage on the neck or something like that and get them ready for the chiropractic treatment. I could tell she was down. "What's your problem? You look sad." She was, "Well, I am sad. I'm actually pretty depressed." "Why are you depressed?" "Well, I'm 40 pounds overweight." I didn't want to say, "Well, I could see that."
But I said, "Well, that's a problem. I could see why you're depressed. What are you doing about it?" She says, "There's nothing I can do about it." "Why not?" "Because I'm on medication that makes me fat." "And what is it?" "Well, it's an anti-inflammatory." "Why are you taking the anti-inflammatory?" "Well, because I get the hives. So I get red blotchy itchy skin if I don't take this medication." And she said that she was feeling so down because she told her doctor, "Look, I'm tired of being fat. This medication is making me fat."
And the doctor simply said to her, "Look, you have your choice. Be fat or have the hives, red itchy blotches on your skin." And that was the only choice he gave her: Be fat or -- And so she goes, "And now, I told him, 'That's depressing.' He says, 'Well, I can write you prescription for anti-depressants.'"
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I just was flabbergasted. I was just like what a system. So I looked at her and I said, "Well, Suzie, what causes the hives? Why are you getting the hives?" Which is, to me, was just logical. And she looked at me like, "What?" I go, "Why do you get the hives? What was causing the hives?" And she goes, "I don't know." And I, "Didn't a doctor look into it?" She goes, "No. He just wrote the prescription and said this will take away the hives and doesn't care that it made me gain 40 pounds."
Not only that, but she can't take a hot shower because even under medication she gets the hives. And she can't exercise to the point of perspiration. As soon as she starts sweating and all, remember she's pretty big girl, she would get the hives even under medication. It wasn't even really working for her. It just put a lot of weight on her. You know the whole point that I'm trying to make. It's just managing the problem.
When I said, "Did you ever try to figure out where the hives are coming from," she looked like I was talking Chinese. I said, "Well, we could run a test and figure out maybe why you're getting hives." So, yeah, she wanted to do that. Within nine days after getting the results back of a simple blood test and getting her off of certain foods, she was off the medication, exercising to the point of perspiration and taking hot showers, which she hadn't had in two years. A month later, she lost 13 pounds.
That's a story. Again, you started it with like it helped you, Christopher. And that's the whole point of being in this field. It's about people and helping people who are -- Again, she'd been everywhere. She'd tried everything. She was stuck in a cycle of just medication and treating the symptoms. No one was even looking for the underlying cause or condition or they always say root cause and I'm not using that phrase anymore.
There's something that needs to be identified here that's causing chaos in your body. I call it metabolic chaos. That's pretty much a phrase that I coined recently because that's what it is. We're not doctors. We don't diagnose and treat specific conditions like hives. I don't care that you got hives. I care what you're sensitive to, what's in your environment or what's causing dysfunction in your body. So, it's really what's really wrong underneath. And that's what attracted you to FDN, functional diagnostic nutrition, because it helps people almost no matter what their problem is.
Christopher: That's absolutely brilliant story. Thank you for sharing with us. You remind me so much of a private investigator or a detective, even your voice as well. Just as you were speaking I suddenly feel, "Oh my god, it's Jonathan Banks who plays Mike in Breaking Bad." That's kind of you. That's kind of what you're doing. It sounds so elegant and simple and straightforward and you immediately think, "Why the hell is the doctor not doing this?" And the answer is I don't know. The fact remains that it's not helping.
Reed: I love that character. He's a real good sleuth. And my favorite in the day was Colombo because he was kind of disheveled and he didn't look too bright. Maybe like me. But he always got the guy. He always just kept at it and kept at it and he didn't overlook any clues and he saw clues where no one else was looking. And that's exactly how I interpret this. It's a great observation, Christopher, because we are health detectives.
Christopher: It's awesome. When I first came to FDN, I think I was pretty much out of the woods. I'm not saying that I was a completely 100% as good as I could have been but certainly I'd done most of the work and I'd achieved the results using tests like the ones which were included in the functional diagnostic nutrition training course. And so I was very drawn to your solution for that reason.
Reed: Yeah.
Christopher: But yeah, my main goal was to help other people. I knew that I'm not a doctor. Some of these tests, you need to be a licensed practitioner in order to be able to order. At the same time, I'd seen that you didn't need to be a neurosurgeon or something to understand exactly how these tests work. It was possible to do some really good detective work and to really help people without being a licensed practitioner.
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I was really drawn to the course for that reason. Is it true that everybody that does the FDN course, do they all follow that similar progression where they start off with their own health concerns and they end up helping other people?
Reed: Well, most people have something about the way they look or feel that they like to improve. We're on that quest. I'd say all FDNs are interested in walking the talk. As a matter of fact, I would consider that to be of the one prerequisites, certainly you have to want to help people. Another thing was you want to model the behavior that it requires to be healthy. Again, you don't have to be a train wreck to take the FDN course. But you do want to walk the talk.
If you have a health problem that's serious, you may just want to hire one of our graduates who has proven himself out in the field and we help them do that, of course, before you take the course. There's two ways you can get into FDN, as a client and just learn, run the labs on yourself, do the protocols, get into the behavior patterns and lifestyle, more or less, that requires to be healthy, to change your health.
Again, if there's something about the way you look or feel that you want to improve or change and you're willing to do what it takes, then you could just do it. Just hire an FDN. I mean, I have 100 clients of my own. I tell you I still practice. We're having people in the process either way. The great thing about the course is that you do both. You work on yourself and you learn how to do it on other people, how to be helpful out there even if it's just your family.
Look, if you just work on yourself and your family, that's worth the price of admission. There's an investment in the course, obviously. But the mentorship, the support, the community, besides all the stuff you learn, how about physiology and how to fix people? How do you investigate what's really wrong, do the lab work, and then the natural protocols that get results, that get people to their health goals? You learn all that, of course.
If you only did it on yourself and your family, you'd be making an amazing investment. But the fact that you then get to turn around and do it on other people and make a good living if you want, I mean, you could do this charity work too. But you can also do it and make a very, very good living for yourself. All walks come to us, Christopher. Everyone has a health challenge. Everyone has something that they could improve.
Christopher: Yeah, it's true. It's true. I think a lot of people don't even know what optimal is or what normal is. When you've been living with something for a long time, you lose touch with what things really could be like.
Reed: I love that conversation.
Christopher: Yeah. The other thing that I think has been really interesting about the way that I've done this is it's rather -- In computer science, we call this top down. Another word for it is declarative. Imagine I was building a house. Rather than building it brick by brick, I would just say, "A house, please." That's a common idiom. I'm sure it works in other industries too. But certainly, in computer science, we call this a top down approach to solving a problem.
I think FDN is very much this top down approach. When I was at school, obviously, like everyone else, I did Biology and I did Chemistry and I did Physics. Much of the syllabus there was extremely relevant to solving the health problems that I had. But I had no reason to care. For example, I've just been interviewing a doctor about oxidative stress and really that whole foundation of that understanding is based in Chemistry. But at that time, I think of the monkeys about it. I just didn't even pay attention.
Now, it's fascinating to me because I understand the implications for mine and other people's health. FDN is interesting, I think, because you run these tests on yourself or on some close family members and you see the results and you're like, "Blimey, there's adrenal fatigue. What's it all about? How does it work? Where does cortisol even come from in the first place?" You're really, really drawn to all the material. I can remember sitting there listening to your presentations that describe these tests and some of the physiology and the biochemistry that underpins them.
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And just being completely immersed in it in the way that I'd never really experienced before. It's like a fantastic experience.
Reed: Well, thanks for that. That's the same sense of enjoyment I get from learning. Learning is a pleasurable experience for most people. You could take any course. I mean, you go to school not because you need a degree. Because you love learning. Because that is a pleasurable thing. That's what makes the discovery channel so popular because we're being entertained and learning something at the same time. It's pleasurable to learn stuff. It opens up new, I don't know, brain pathways. You get some neurotransmitter flow or something that's pleasurable.
Christopher: It's rewarding.
Reed: Just in the last few days, Christopher, one of the tests that we run does measure that oxidative stress, which is what breaks the body down, sort of Chemistry of the body where it gets older faster. If you have excessive oxidative stress not balanced out by good antioxidant behavior or activity, then you're going to age quicker and things break down and it could be a specific organ or set of cells or it could be your whole body. You're just aging faster when you have excessive oxidative stress.
Last year, one of the labs quit running one of our tests for oxidative stress and they just recently rereleased the version. Now, I don't think anything a lab says for granted. I do my own independent research on what they're using for the marker and what it really identifies. It was pleasurable. I mean, it was a lot of work. But writing up the technical bulletin for that lab is better than the one the lab has and they're now going to use my writing for the technical bulletin.
The lab had its own, "We're rereleasing this test. It's a new improved version and here's our technical bulletin." I did my own research and wrote a much better technical bulletin and I don't say it to brag. It's unabashed saying, "Look, my definition is better. I explained better what that test looks at and how it's useful to an individual." But that was a pleasurable thing to do. I love just researching that out and lining it up and then, I think, you say one of my crafts is that I can take very complex information like that and make it easy to understand. That's what I love to do. I want to make that a point, I guess.
Christopher: It's a good one. It's a fantastic one. And you on the Board of Advisors for BioHealth Lab?
Reed: Oh, yeah. They're always coming to me for something. I used to do more of it but I still give them two hours a week of straight clinical expertise time. I talk to their doctor clients and their other clients about lab results. We look over the lab results and then come up with protocols. I'm constantly always fine tuning my communication skills and interpretative skills on labs and dealing with individual physicians. Or, again, there's a lot of non-licensed practitioners, which I teach.
Just explaining how this really works, explaining how not to diagnose and treat a specific disease but to use the labs for insights into healing opportunities, what the person really needs to fix to get better and permanent resolve or get close to as possible, permanently resolve those health issues there that they came in and get tested for in the first place.
Christopher: Okay. Let's say I'm an athlete. Let's take my own example. I'm a mountain biker and I think I might be over training. There's been some sort of signs and symptoms. Like I'm feeling tired during the day all the time. I went on to Amazon.com or wherever else and I ordered an adrenal stress profile. It showed very low cortisol, low DHEA, low testosterone. So, I think I might have adrenal fatigue. I found the FDN course after doing some Google searching and it looks like it might offer me the training that I need to understand what's causing my result. So how does the FDN course work? I sign up and then what happens next?
Reed: Well, you sign up and now we got you in our group. We get our arms around you. The mentorship and the lessons and everything is there before you. You have full access to our stuff. The first thing, obviously, is an orientation into how we think about health. No, we're not physicians. That actually works to our advantage.
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Because we can't just quickly write a prescription, "Here's something for your symptoms." And we also refuse to just give someone supplements. Because that's just like replacing medicine with supplements. Even though it's safer and better, you haven't changed your mentality yet. So we get the mentality straight of how we work and then you go into the labs and you get full access to the adrenal profiling, saliva testing, the hormones.
We look at maldigestion, malabsorption, the immune system, the liver function, the detoxification. We look at the gut. We look at leaky gut and all these things. Pathology, there's bugs and bacteria. There's fungus. All that stuff that contributes to that metabolic chaos that is breaking your body down needs to be looked at, identified, eliminated or resolved in some way. And the beauty is that it can all be attributed to basic lifestyle and behavior patterns.
Because again, we're not going to write a prescription. Even though we do have supplements, I don't have my own line of supplements. We do use them because they're important for support. It's really just about what the person goes and does on their own with their coaching and things. I probably wandered a little bit there. But the course is, once you sign up, you're in. You can start taking the lessons within five minutes if you're registered. You're looking at the orientation. You're starting to watch the lessons and you're going to get communicated with by our office, customer support, your mentor who's going to be mentoring you through the whole process.
You're also going to get a couple of kits in the mail. Remember, I said that you're going to do this on yourself first. So you start taking the lessons and within a day or two you're going to receive two small kits in the mail. They're going to be a saliva test and a urine test. You're watching the lessons and you can print out the slides and make notes and lots of support, the audio version. We got the technology all straightened out.
But you're actually going to run a couple of labs in yourself. You're watching these lessons on the saliva and urine testing and making notes and be able to go over that with your mentor. But then you're actually going to run these on yourself. There's some quizzes and things at the end of each lesson, make sure you're progressing, grabbing the concept. When you run these labs yourself, it's like you're the client and the trainee. You're our client and you're learning also how to do it.
Then you're going to duplicate it. One of the assignments after you've had your own results and recommendation sessions and you've been through I think the first five lessons, then you're going to do a mock up where we're going to say, "Okay, here's Mrs. Smith or Frank Jones and here's their test results. Here's their history and here's their complaints and here's the case. Now, turn around and teach us, feedback what you just learned from the lessons and from your own case."
Because you sit through the results and recommendation session. Therein lies the beauty of the FDN because you're going to be working on yourself and turn around and start working on another people right away, first a mock up and then you're going to find two people, it could be your mom and your brother or sister, whatever, but two people who really need help hopefully that you can actually take on as clients. And you could charge them, start getting some of your tuition back right away. We're going to hold your end through that all the way up to the end.
Of course, then there's other labs and we only make you do two. So in addition to tuition, there's a couple hundred dollars in lab fees that you pay. There's no other expenses, no books to buy or anything. You go through this whole experience. It takes four to six months because it's self paced. If you want to go faster, we're not going to slow you down. If you're not working right now and you can do this full time, you could be through in four months. If you are working, keep your day job and definitely don't stop working. You could do this in your spare time in six months or maybe seven.
If you took eight, it wouldn't bother us. Remember, it's self paced. I don't want to sound too much like I'm selling this thing but you asked me what it's like to be a student and you're going to experience this. It's an immersion system. So if you're an athlete and you want to get better, just improve your performance and slow down the aging process.
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Because you are probably over training, Christopher. I could give you the exact test that would tell you, what the physiology is behind it and what to do about it. But you might not like some of my answers.
Christopher: Right. I'm like, yeah, continuously making sacrifices. You have to consider your goals. What is it you want to be? Do you want to be the most competitive athlete? I think they're some of the -- They're almost orthogonal, those goals, health and longevity and performance. But no, I love that about the FDN training course, the fact that you get assigned a mentor. There's plenty of online training courses out there but very few of them assign you a real human being that can answer your questions and help you interpret the labs. I think that's such an amazing part of FDN that I really, really enjoyed.
Reed: Yeah, I bet you did because you got to work on yourself and improve as you're learning how to help other people. I mean, it really is a neat thing.
Christopher: And then you know from the start there's none of this -- Bryan Walsh mentioned when I interviewed in a previous podcast that he finished up his education and became a naturopathic doctor and he set up his office and day one people start coming into his office and he's like, "I don't know what to do with these people. I've got no clue." So you've been through this education process. I guess, the same thing -- I'm now partnered with a medical doctor. She's the CEO of Nourish Balance Thrive.
The same thing happened to her. She finished up her residency and started a new job and her day was divided into 20-minute time slots. At the end of that time slot, she's supposed to write a prescription. She was thinking, "Screw this. This doesn't work. How am I going to help this person with their diet and lifestyle in 20 minutes?"
Reed: Well, they're not.
Christopher: They're not.
Reed: That's why people get so frustrated, Christopher.
Christopher: But the beauty of FDN is there's none of that. There's no waiting. You don't have to be eight years in education before you find out the damn thing doesn't work. I mean, even if it didn't work, which is not true, it does work, how much have you really lost if that were to turn out to be true? I think it's just a much, much better way of doing it. I've actually seen it, just hints of it in -- I've bought a couple of biochemistry textbooks and they've tried to do it.
They try to insert interesting cases. Rather than just being all completely theoretical, they invent these fictitious patients that have turned up in an emergency room or in a hospital or in a doctor's waiting room or something and you're supposed to somehow relate the biochemistry to the person's story. They walk you through it. It does kind of just makes it a bit more real, makes it more interesting, makes it more compelling. You just kind of really get into the learning more. Tell me about -- Sorry.
Reed: Well, I was just going to say that that's interesting they had to make up cases if it's true because there's no shortage of cases. We don't have to make up anything. I'm going right to the file and pull -- I have 10,000 cases. 10,000, I mean, I did more of this than anybody. The lab [0:28:00] [Indiscernible] our teaching is the labs and the people I did business with and my customers too, my clients were saying, "You should be teaching. You have something going here. You should be teaching." So there's no reason to make up cases and that might actually be a disservice. But go on. I didn't mean to cut you off.
Christopher: They'd have name like Diana Betes and some really cheesy, like presenting with ketoacidosis and stuff that's kind of funny. Since you mentioned that, I'd really love to talk to you about that. It's a really interesting concept. Sometimes people think that the solution is on PubMed. If I can only find the paper that shows the efficacy of this new supplement or this new medicine, that will be the one. That will be the one true solution for me.
The thing I think which is so interesting about you is a lot of what you recommend I can't -- When someone says to me, "Oh, so this meditation--" Actually, meditation is probably a bad example. But there are other examples like, "Can you show me a double blinded crossover trial or systematic review on the Cochrane report that shows that 300,000 people did this and they got good results?" And the answer is absolutely not. Like who would pay for such a study? So tell us about some of your experience and the data that you've been collecting over the years?
Reed: Yeah. Good question. It's pretty simple answer and that is that experience is the best teacher. Also being a good observer is important. I brought into the health and wellness field a research, an analytical mind. My previous career was environmental law issues. In law, you learn to be a good researcher and writer, at least that was my strength. It was research and writing. And the research you do in law is very complex. The complexities of it reached esoteric levels.
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So it's very complex stuff and you have to make it simple. Because I have a simple mind, I guess. I brought that analytical background and research. I'm a good writer. I brought that mindset to the health alumnus field. I knew how bad the environment was. I knew how much stuff. I studied the lakes and rivers and streams and rocks and trees and animals and fish and all that stuff and how we're killing the planet.
I don't think it's as bad as some people are not political or anything like that. I'm just saying there's bad stuff out there and it affects the entire planet including people. So I just simply left a certain position and needed something new to do. And I was really convinced that wellness was a great idea. I really wanted to work with companies to improve the health of their employees. I started the corporate wellness program back in the '90s when no one even heard of corporate wellness.
Then I realized, "Oh, yeah, I better learn something about wellness." Because I knew I wanted to help people. I wanted to help people and I thought that because I'm good in the world, I could figure out a way to make a living doing it. I have kids to put to college and all that stuff. So anyway, I went back to school for some nutrition classes and started working in the wellness center that I've told you about.
It's really great that I didn't have any preconceived notions. I wasn't a physician. I didn't have a standard of care. I didn't have a board to answer to like physicians do. And the nutrition course that I took was just enough to sort of get me in trouble. And thank goodness, the wellness center liked me as a person. They liked me as a business person, very good leader and organizer. They made me the case manager and nutritionist. I quickly found out that the nutrition model I learned wasn't working.
It really was just selling supplements and I didn't want to be a supplement salesman. I wanted to really help people. So I started doing -- I brought that research and the analytical mind to the situation. I said I'm going to find out what's really wrong with people. To heck with this I'm the fifth person they're seeing or eighth person and they've already spent $5,000 or $10,000 on a bunch of stuff that didn't work and that kind of a thing. I'm going to figure out what's wrong with you, the individual Mrs. Smith or that Suzie or all these other cases.
Now, I've utterly failed sometimes. But what I did know is that the nutrition model that I was trained in wasn't working. In other words, what are you complaints? Oh, here try these supplements. And they had software that I bought that have them fill out these questionnaire and the software is going to spit out the supplement they need to be taking. And even there are some systems I had to be wary of and learn the hard way.
Like here's a blood test. And it's going to tell you all the supplements they need to take. And that didn't work either. Because in every case, with those simplistic sort of diagnosis streak kind of software or kind of systems, the bottom line is that people would take their supplement for a month. If they felt better they continue for another month and then they would feel better so, "Well, I don't need to take them anymore." So they would quit.
Or if they didn't work for them or if it wasn't getting them any results, they would quit sooner. Bottom line is they quit after a month or two. They really didn't change their lifestyle. They didn't start eating better. They didn't start getting a better night sleep. They didn't go to the gym. They weren't reducing stress in every way. And they weren't taking the right supplements. It was just based on symptoms.
But it took me eight years and seeing 10,000 people to figure all that out, to actually come up with a system. Sometimes you have to know what doesn't work. If you think that that's not the case, ask Thomas Edison. He's the genius that invented the light bulb on his 10,000th experiment. He's the genius that failed 9,999 times before he figured it out. And so it was that kind of a thing. Just thank goodness, I had an opportunity. I was in a great position to see a lot of people and I also had the mindset to want to know what's really wrong and to pursue that.
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I had to finalize it by saying thank goodness I wasn't a doctor. Because I never would have done this. If I had just gone to med school, learn how to write prescriptions, I would not have figured this stuff out. So the fact that I wasn't a doctor was good for what we do.
Christopher: That's funny you should say that but it's something that comes up a lot. I say to people I always make it clear, "You know I'm not a doctor, don't you?" They say, "Yeah, of course, I know you're not a doctor. That's why I'm working with you." Which is, I think, interesting. But you just, you said something then. You just almost glossed over it. You said 10,000 people. How long does it take to accumulate that type of experience and that much data?
Even I'm starting to notice, I've been working with people, running tests on people for about 18 months now and I'm accumulating a huge corpus of data and experience and knowledge of what works and what doesn't work for each individual person. You can't just say, "Well, this supplement works because I've seen it work ten times." it really just depends on the individual and their test results. But, yeah, that's such an incredible thing. I think it's amazing that you've taken the time because you could have died with this. I mean, I will be tempted to be more protective of it if I had all this experience and information.
Reed: Well, I'll tell you, most the other thing I think I bring is a workaholism. I work really hard, Christopher. Even now, I still work very hard. Again, I said I had to make a living and put kids through college and stuff. So I worked really, really hard. This is where I diverge a little bit from some of my trainees. I train them to do it and then they also want to go build their own businesses. But they maybe don't want to work as hard as I was willing to work. And this is in the day before there was the internet pretty much.
There was the internet and I had a website but I did it all myself. I built my own website. I didn't have a lot of assistants. But what I was great at was pounding the pavement. So I did usually two screenings a week. I was out in grocery stores and health centers and health stores and all these different places two days a week doing screening. I bought a little bone density testing machine. And I met thousands of people. I did that two days a week for five years.
The clinic was only open Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And I was out on Tuesdays and Thursdays screening. I also lectured. I learned to do some lectures. I created these lectures on my own, just explaining my mindset and how I work and how I loo k for underlying causes and conditions. And I met thousands of people that way. I lectured sometimes two, three times a month. So if you're out there screening six, eight times a month and you're lecturing two, three times a month, and sometimes more.
I always double up during January and February. And then in the fall I did another sort of double up thing. I was very consistent in my outflow of contact, like making sure I was out there beating the pavement. When I was like 12, I was a Boy Scout and earning my merit badges and things like that. It was time to sell Christmas cards to raise money for our troop. And so I went to my dad, "I got to sell Christmas cards." He basically made me walk around the neighborhood banging doors and say, "Hi, I'm Reed Davis. I'm a Boy Scout. I need to sell you some Christmas cards."
And he said, "Reed, the worst thing people could do is say no. Can you handle that?" "Yeah, I could handle that." Okay. I won the prize for Christmas card sales when I was 12 because I wasn't afraid to go pound on doors and get my -- You put on your walking shoes and you work hard. That was my technique. I didn't even use the internet, like hardly at all.
Christopher: I can't imagine that. I mean, we've tried that. We've done some, back in the day, we did some presentations at a local hippie supermarket that had a really nice kitchen and Julie, my wife, she's the food scientist and she does all the nutrition coaching, she prepared this wonderful meal with all these amazing organic and grass fed ingredients from the supermarket. And I think like three or four people turned up. We did like a series of these and we didn't get any clients at all out of that. It's so different from the internet. I'm not saying that this podcast is now work but in comparison it's like very little effort compared to actually pounding the pavement. I think that's hard.
[0:40:00]
Reed: Well, just saying it is work and I didn't know what else to do. I mean, I literally do some of these things by default because, again, you have drive, you're driven and you do what you know how to do. And again the background, the Boy Scout stories, very true. And I just sort of, in everything I've done, I've been not afraid. I did go to the grocery stores and say, "Hey, I want to set up my little bone density testing machine and test your customers. I'm going to charge them $25 a piece and give them a little bone density test. Is that okay?" And they go, "Yeah." "Okay, great."
And so I set up a route where I had 30 stores and I was doing bone density testing. I had a machine that weighs 70 pounds, set up your little table and two chairs and your table cloth and put the machine there and plug it in and warm it up and you do that two days a week for five years. Yeah, that's a lot of work. But guess what, people were lined up for my bone density test. I started doing that in 2001 right when the big scare of hormonal replacement therapy came about.
We know hormones, we need them for the bones and then hormones kind of went off the market for a while. I could explain the whole story. I was right there at the right time and the right place with my bone density testing machine and the ability to follow up with hormone testing, simple saliva test. So while I was in the stores doing the bone density testing, I was meeting people, talking to them and I didn't try to sell any supplements or anything like that. That was the store, like, "Go talk to the clerk about bone density supplements. I'm not here to sell you supplements."
But one of the factors is your hormones and your digestive system, by the way. I could basically engage those bone density screenies into my practice by saying, "Look, your bones, here's where they're at. If you want to keep good bones or if you want to improve a little bit, why don't we look at your hormones and your digestive system and a couple of things?" I was able to get people to do -- And that's how I did 10,000 clients by being people call it hustling and working hard.
Christopher: Right. What tests are included in FDN now? I mean, you mentioned the saliva test, which looks at the adrenal hormones. I think a lot of people are familiar with. What else comes as part of the training course?
Reed: What a fantastic question, I know, because that's really important. What labs do you run? Again, remember, I said everything begins with your mindset. If you think you're going to run one lab based on symptoms then what you're going to end up doing is treating the paper. So what we do is want to run a series of tests of a group of tests that would tell us an awful lot about you. The secret formula, you could write this down is, HIDDEN -- hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification, energy production and nervous system.
There's four or five labs that you could run that give us a constellation of clues of what's really wrong and where we need to focus our attention. Again, we're not going to diagnose or treat a specific thing. That's what you do when you run one test. Like thyroid, "Oh, look, little thyroid, here's your prescription." That's not finding out what's wrong with the person. That's on finding out how you could temporarily relieve some suffering. Not a bad concept but not good enough for most of our mentality group.
We want to find out what's really wrong. There's no one test that can tell you what's really wrong. You want to look at -- Again, I call it a constellation of clues or factors that will allow me to form an impression about you. As a trained clinician and this is what we do in the course, we train you to be a good observer and do the history taking, find out what the complaints are and then at some point it almost doesn't matter what they are.
Here is the ways the body breaks down. This is the constellation of clues that we need to find out. We run saliva, urine, blood and stool. We look at hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification, energy production and the nervous system, HIDDEN. These things are hidden. Like you mentioned, adrenal dysfunction and hormone imbalances. You mentioned oxidative stress. Then I could throw in immune system over or under activity.
[0:45:03]
And detoxification capacity. Things that break an athlete down, those are the things that are a result of your behavior but end up having a life of their own or they just continued to break down. Oxidative stress from over exercises affects you in a lot of ways. One of them is it shortens your life span. Because what dictates death is the length of the telomeres in your cells. There's DNA. We know that we replace our cells every day. You replace billions of cells.
The body you have now is not the one you had a couple of years ago. Every cell has been replaced. But the reason it isn't exactly like you were years ago is because of the length of your telomeres, the little parts of your DNA cells. Every time a cell reproduces, this telomere is a little shorter. What accelerates the shortening of the telomeres, in other words, ages you faster, is oxidative stress and over exercise is a big factor in oxidative stress levels, which we can measure in urine. It's called lipid peroxide.
It's neat how we can look at these things at the -- Again, a constellation of clues. Again, we look at hormones, immune, digestion, detoxification. Those are the main four. Those are the four square corners, the pillars, if you will. Hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification. Just a few labs, just two, really two. Now you want to also look for I'll say major blocking factors, like food sensitivities. They won't break you down fast. They will just cause hell.
Again, there are tremendous contributors to metabolic chaos in the body. And so are parasites and bacteria and fungus. You will have a little bit. They're very opportunistic and they take advantage of weaknesses. So if you've got, again, any kind of weakness, hormone imbalances, immune system over, underactive, you got digestive issues, you're not really breaking down and absorbing food properly, it's not assimilating into the body, and if you're not detoxifying on a cellular level, tissue level, organ level, especially liver and kidneys, the colon, the lymphatic system, in your skin.
So you got hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification. Why don't you let us look at those things on some paper, if you will? We're not going to treat the paper. We're going to assess what you need to do behaviorally. Again, you need to just stop me because I'll keep going. But other system that you run into doesn't work. That's the one test based on symptoms and then they treat the paper.
You get someone with low thyroid symptoms which at the top of my head would be fatigue, you got the blues, you got thinning hair, you got your cold, cold extremities, numbness or tingling, you get constipation issues. You got these classic thyroid symptoms of slow thyroid which means slow metabolism. And so, you might go see a practitioner who is going to diagnose that as thyroid. "Oh, it sounds like thyroid."
And they'll even run a thyroid test. So, yeah, pat myself in the back. Here, I found your problem. It's low thyroid output. So you've low thyroid. So here's your thyroid prescription. That, in my mind, is treating the paper. And they'll even have you coming back in a month or two, usually two months, 60 days on thyroid prescription and then let's check the levels again and titrate accordingly. In other words, adjust the dosage accordingly.
"Oh, we've given you too much. We're going to back it off." Or, "Oh, we need to up your dosage a little bit." What are they doing? They're treating the paper. They're keeping the reference. You're keeping your numbers in the reference range but they're not addressing you as an individual. They're not looking at why here's your thyroid low functioning. We call that a secondary thyroid issue. That's the one test diagnosis treatment model which it doesn't work.
Because even if you feel better on the thyroid medication, if you don't address the underlying conditions, the symptoms will come back or they will reappear or appear as new symptoms. And so you say to the doctor, "Yeah, that thyroid. I guess that helped because I have a little more energy and I lost a few pounds. That must have worked.
[0:50:07]
But now, my libido is low. I can't maintain any muscle tone and I have foggy thinking and I'm not sleeping well." And so, "Oh, a new set of symptoms. That sounds like hormones. So let's run a hormone test. They might be involved. Yeah, look, your sex hormones are out of balance. You've got your high in this, your low in this, you're low in testosterone like you mentioned. Here's your prescription."
So what you have is a cycle of one test for one set of symptoms and one solution. And then a new set of symptoms appears, "Oh, here's another test and another prescription." That's what we find people -- I'm in my 60s. Most people in their 60s are on at least three medications and some of them are nine. It's because they've used that model of symptoms, run a test, yeah, here's your problem, here's your prescription. I hope you do well, good luck with that.
Christopher: It's a really interesting point you're raising. You've made me feel slightly better about myself. I sometime think, "Oh, well, these tests, they cost so much money and do I really need to be running all of them on every single person?" I guess, an analogy could be if your car was -- So the only complaint is it doesn't go when you press the gas pedal. If you were to bring that car into the garage and say to the mechanic, "It doesn't go when I press the gas pedal and you can only look at the gas pedal and I want you to fix it."
Maybe there's something he could do but probably not and he's going to have to look at everything, like plug in the computer, run the four diagnostic, and then be a good detective and figure out the cause of the problem and solve that. And he's going to have to run a full diagnostic. I mean, afterwards, once you solved the problem, it's likely that he could say, "Yeah, no. with hindsight, I didn't need to do that test but in the beginning I did to rule it out as a potential cause of these issues that you're having."
Reed: Again, that's a good point. I like the automobile analogy. Because symptoms are like the red light coming off.
Christopher: It's like your engine check light.
Reed: Yeah, the check light comes on and you can just go disconnect the wires or you could put a piece of tape over it. Problem solved. And really know that that's not -- So these symptoms that we have whether it be headaches or allergies or sinusitis, fatigue, you have moodiness, irritability, digestive issues, aches and pains even, so you have symptoms and there's always something you can take to mask the symptoms. Or there's looking at what are the underlying causes and conditions.
The issue that we and the reason that why we want to look at the constellation of clues is because the symptom can be quite far removed from that causal factor. Who would think, for instance, that depression and foggy thinking could be a digestive issue?
Christopher: Right. It's very far removed.
Reed: Because part of moody, part of being in a good mood is being well nourished. And some would say, "Well, I'm eating great food." But if it's not getting broken down and absorbed, assimilated properly, then you're really not getting good nutrition to the cells and you're not creating the neurotransmitter levels, you're not getting the function of things up. And so you could be eating great food, you can even be exercising and you're still not better. The reason is that there's dysfunction in your body. Symptoms are just -- Everyone's got them. But we know that they're not what's wrong with you. They're a result of what's wrong with you. We use just a more comprehensive approach. Your question was what labs do you run?
Christopher: Yeah, of course. I forgot.
Reed: Someone says, "Hey, I have a client with this and this and this, what labs should I run?" If they're an FDN trainee, they're going to know the answer. Which lab wouldn't you run? Don't you want to know what's really wrong with the person? Or do you just want to run a test that tells you how much thyroid to write him a prescription for? That doesn't fix their problem. So anyway, you get the idea.
Christopher: I do. Yeah. I think this is fantastic thing. Like I said, I've done the training course. I completed the certification. It's one of my most frequently asked questions. How did you do this? You're not a doctor. You haven't been to medical school. How did you get to this place now where you're helping other people? I see FDN as one of the most important things that I did. It's not the only thing that I did but I see it as one of the most important things. And it's this whole philosophy of being a detective and sleuthing and diagnostics and some of the coaching techniques that you teach have formed the foundation.
[0:55:09]
I always keep that. And another one your acronyms DRESS, that's never more than a microsecond away on my thoughts. Whenever I've got someone on the phone, I'm thinking right away, "Is this person, are they thinking about their diet? Are they getting adequate rest? Are they over exercising? Are they doing something to reduce their stress? If they got a problem, they need to fix it with supplements. Are they taking the supplements? It's like always there like the tip of my tongue.
I found that such a useful framework to build a practice around. So I really can't recommend the FDN course strongly enough. If you listen to this in the car, I've set up a link. If you go to nourishbalancethrive.com/fdn, that will redirect you to the FDN site where you can sign up. I guess the question is: How much is the FDN training course now? I bet it's gone up since I did it. Surely at the moment.
Reed: Interesting. We're recording this around the middle of June. Hopefully, people will be listening around now because the price, basically it keeps going up, Christopher, because we keep adding more and more to it. And most of that support. It's the amount of time that we spend with you. So the course is $3995. That can be broken up into payments. People go to that nourishbalancethrive/fdn, you'll learn all about it. I mean, I hesitate to put a price out there because by the time someone listens to this, it might be in your archives. It could be next year when they're listening to this.
Christopher: Right.
Reed: Right now, it's $3995. But if you are listening to this and you go to the website and it's $4995, it's because we keep adding modules and more support and more things to, might be more business training or different things. The course right now is that and hopefully it matches up when you visit the site. But don't let the -- I mean, I'm told that I'm giving it away at that price, that there's other courses that are twice as much and deliver half what we deliver. I mean, we really are taking you by the hand and teaching you a model.
What you said about Walsh, Dr. Walsh, who is an impressive guy and a friend of mine, is that he got there. He was fully trained as a licensed naturopath and was sitting there in his office, people walking and he didn't know what to do. So I've heard that many, many times from our trainees who went through the program who were licensed naturopaths or certified nutritionists or others like that who'd been through a few things but still didn't know how to pull it together.
This is the most practical course you could take that would pull it all together and give you a model to -- It makes every client a step by step. If the clients want to come in and they engage you in a step by step system, you've got the system. The system is there. It's just matter of you duplicating it. And the course is designed to teach you exactly how to duplicate it. And then afterwards, just like you have, Christopher, like I continue to do, is I take other lessons and courses and study.
There's new stuff coming out. There's new labs. There's new products. There's lots of neat new things to learn. We're all learn freaks. You and me, we're learn freaks, that's what I'm calling. And I just call an enthusiast and with a curious mind but I want to keep learning and I do keep learning. And I had all this -- I glean it. I purvey it, if you will, and vet it out, make sure it's not some crap. And then I'll put it in the course. And then I have to teach the whole staff how to teach it and it's more time involved than teaching you and so that way we do have to raise the price of the course from time to time.
Christopher: Let me do a slightly silly price comparison for you. And I say slightly silly because it is. Jamie, she has $270,000 worth of student debt from getting her medical license. Hopefully, she won't hear this because she will punch me if she does. I'm kind of wondering who does most good in the world, her in the primary care practice writing prescriptions at the end of 20-minute time slots, or anyone that's completed the $3995 FDN training program? It's absolutely madness that I should even suggest that. I'm not saying that Jamie's education is worthless, not at all.
[1:00:03]
For the practical helping people part, yeah. I really do believe that. It's kind of crazy but true.
Reed: I have to say, we're not that program and we're not $270,000. But we do an awful lot of good. I'm told by our medical -- I mean, on my team, I have a DO, a medical doctor. And he tells me every day that we're doing such good work the physicians can't do and they don't do. But don't mistake. They do some important things but it's not what the average individual needs to build health. They save lives every day. They're there to make sure that things don't take a turn for the worse real quick.
They can really save you. They're amazing to have around. And if you want to go do that, then invest money in a medical degree and internship and residency and all the things you have to do. But if you just want to help people and really do some good, you don't have to do all that. There's courses like mine. And again, the mentality that we have is just the real trick. With that, I'm happy to talk to anyone. Go ahead and follow that link that Christopher just gave you. You'll get to me. I actually answer my phone, believe it or not.
Christopher: Yeah, I know. I don't. It's so hard to answer the phone.
Reed: I can't believe it's Reed Davis. Yeah. This is just a guy working hard, trying to help people. Call me up.
Christopher: That's cool. I mean, the other thing I would say about the price is I did -- When I was working as a computer programmer at a hedge fund, I was definitely not as happy as I am now. I was nowhere near as fulfilled in my work. Recording an interview with somebody for the podcast is how this amazing transformational experience that's possibly even saved their life or at least extended it, not just improve their performance as a runner or as a swimmer or as a cyclist, is the most fulfilling thing I've ever done in my life.
This is one of the steps that I took to transition out of that job where I'm sat at a desk programming a computer, working on something that no one really cared about into a new career that was part of a life that I love and gives me the independence to work from anywhere. Yeah, it's good. Like I say, I can't recommend it highly enough.
Reed: Well, thank you. I like to say that it's not just information, which is fine and dandy, entertaining and enjoyable information. But this is about transformation. It's about really letting you transform your own health, helping you to transform your own health and well-being and to transform other people. So we can take someone who's a practitioner, really isn't doing enough good in the world and transform them into one that's doing an amazing amount of good in the world or more of it, more of the good work they're already doing.
Christopher: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Reed. It's very much appreciated. It's been a fantastic conversation. I love talking to you. I love hearing you speak.
Reed: You too, Christopher. You're right at the top of the class. If you weren't before, you are now. All right. So good job. Thank you for having me on and you have a fantastic day and everybody just keep -- I would say keep working. On my day, I just say keep plugging. Yeah, you keep yourself heading in the right direction and it matters. What you do matters. How you think matters. That's all I was going to say.
Christopher: Excellent. Thank you, Reed.
Reed: Okay. Thank you. Bye, Chris.
Christopher: Bye.
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