speaker-0 (00:00.182)
When we separate acute from chronic and we don't have to demonize them, what we have to do is just define them. Very quickly, you kind of get angry if the system isn't providing the outcome that you want. And if health is what you want, then you're gonna look at an acute care system and say, they don't care about our health. When I walk in there, they just slap a medication on it, blah, blah, blah. They're not trained to get people healthy. The system isn't built to get people healthy.
The system and the curriculum and everything else is built to diagnose and medicate. So if you walk in and your LDL is high and they just have that as a marker of a cardiovascular risk, they're gonna give you a statin. The job that they are are led to do says this is the threshold, this is when we medicate, and this is what we're trying to do to lower risk to help that person stay alive. Right. And that, without anything attached to it, is
is a sustainable model for keeping people from dying, but it's not a sustainable model for getting people healthy.
speaker-1 (01:06.222)
Welcome to the Christian Healthy Lifestyle Podcast, where I help you navigate natural health so you can stay out of the doctor's office, age gracefully, and live a more purpose-driven, abundant life.
We're still on the series on the nine pillars of health, but I want to take a little break from that because I've got a great guest on the show that I really want you to hear from. His name is Dr. Dusty Hess. He's a functional medicine practitioner, he's a follower of Jesus Christ, and him and I are very like-minded. I think you're gonna really enjoy listening to what this guy has to say. We talk about the difference between standard allopathic health care, where you just get drugs and surgery that treat your symptoms, and real health care the way God designed it.
So, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. Today we have in the show Dr. Dusty Hess. Dr. Dusty is a nationally recognized functional medicine doctor, author, speaker, and founder of Upstream Health, a transformative movement helping Christian families reclaim their health by returning to God's original design. Dr. Dusty, welcome to Christian Healthy Lifestyle.
speaker-0 (02:13.806)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, David. I'm excited to be here. I mean, we have so many different we align on so many different levels. You know, we're gonna have a great conversation. So looking forward to it.
speaker-1 (02:22.262)
Yeah, I've been looking forward to this conversation as well. So first let me start off with I love your name, Upstream Health. I think I understand it, but how did you arrive at that and what does that mean?
speaker-0 (02:33.004)
Yeah, there's so many people that are in this splay of health, right? They're either broken and they're downstream and they're dealing with a lot of disease or dealing with a lot of chronic disease or acute disease or whatever it might be. but then as we move towards health, it's not like we just get healthy right away. We're in this sense of whether we're somewhat healthy or a little bit sick, we're kind of living in that and that's right in between, or upstream.
We're fully healthy and we're working to keep ourselves in that position of health. So in that splay, it's trying to f it's trying to breed healthcare that's not just downstream focusing on broken, but building healthcare models that are upstream actually working to keep people healthy.
speaker-1 (03:18.488)
okay. I actually that's a different definition than I thought. So that that's really good. Thank you for sharing that. So what I was thinking was, you know, we need to kinda buck the trends and and just kinda be a be a salmon and swimming upstream to do things a little differently. but but I like that, you know, yeah. So
speaker-0 (03:37.09)
What I would I would agree with that, David, actually, 'cause I mean when you're when when you're talking about a salmon swimming upstream, when people are trying to stay healthy, they are swimming upstream. It is a current. There's like families that are doing things differently. They're saying no to certain things, they're they're acting a little bit different. They're thinking that they're they're separating themselves from the world and that's kind of like a foreshadowment of what we're gonna get into in our conversation.
But you have to do you have to you have to have resistance and swim upstream and do something odd in this modern era in order to stay healthy.
speaker-1 (04:08.258)
Yeah, yeah, totally. Because I there's an onslaught of things that will impede our health. And we've got to be proactive and and just, you know, waiting and crossing your fingers and waiting, hoping you don't get sick and when you do go to the doctor and walk out after a five minute visit with a prescription in hand that's only gonna treat your symptoms. that's not healthcare. I would call that disease management. you know, so really they're great with emergencies and acute conditions. Our emergency rooms here in the US, second to none.
They can save your life. You're having a heart attack, man, the emergency room is the place to be. Get busted up in a car accident, they'll put you back together again. And I've had that happen. I've had I had some accidents and I had to have Humpty Numpty put back together, but they're great at that. but after the emergency's over, we're better served with natural health principles that are in alignment with our God given natural design. So can you speak to that a little bit about the difference, the contrast between what we call health care here in the US and
and and building real health.
speaker-0 (05:10.134)
Yeah, that is a the topic that so many people feel disenfranchised with. That this topic I talk about
across the nation, all all over the place. I was just giving a talk on this last weekend in Ontario, California, and I call it the Cultural War on Health. And when we step inside the world of healthcare, we have to understand that there's a lot of different categories of healthcare. And a lot of people haven't really heard what those categories are or what they're dealing with and how to
really leverage them to the benefit of what they're trying to do with their health. And not everybody's gonna have the same priorities. Not everybody's gonna have the same values of health in their family, in their spiritual life, or in their own life. And so when we're looking at healthcare, everybody's gonna have a different outcome and a different
Let's say some might invest a lot of money in their healthcare, some might invest a lot of money in building more money, some might invest a lot of money in comforts and other things. And so, what is it that defines healthcare to an individual? The acute healthcare model is built for just that. It's when we're looking at when we're looking at the acute healthcare system, when we separate acute from chronic.
It's very easy to see how they're trained and how they're brought into that position of what they're caring for. And we don't have to demonize them. What we have to do is just define them. And if we can do that honorably, especially as Christians, we're going to feel a bit of a tug on our heart because very quickly you kind of get angry if the system isn't providing the outcome that you want.
speaker-0 (06:58.946)
Then you're gonna look at an acute care system and say, they don't care about our health. When I walk in there, they just slap a medication on it, blah, blah, blah. But what we have to do is position our hearts a little bit more meek and a little bit more in a position where we realize they're not trained to get people healthy. The system isn't built to get people healthy. The system and the curriculum and everything else else is built to diagnose and medicate.
And that is to find something that is is broken or off and medicate it. So if you walk in and your LDL is high and they just have that as a marker of a cardiovascular risk, they're gonna give you a statin because there's a protocol for that, there's this, that, and the other. And the the diagnose and the overall curriculum and how the job that they are are led to do says this is the threshold, this is when we medicate, and this is what we're trying to do to lower risk to help that person stay alive. Right. And that
without anything attached to it is is a sustainable model for keeping people from dying, but it's not a sustainable model for getting people healthy. So that's when we come in with a different culture of do we call that stewardship or not? Some people in some cultures would say it would be. Others would say
No, I think that there's something else that's going on that's actually creating dissonance within the insulin and the processing and our and our liver being able to produce ketones and taking in food and other environmental factors that it's affecting our insulin that leads to lipid fractionation issues, and then it leads down to a problem where we have high LDL and we have inflammatory environment around that that can create oxidation of that LDL within the arterial walls, and next thing you know, we have plaque.
And now we have cardiovascular risk, but it doesn't mean that just straight high DLDL means plaque and our athro athro risk.
speaker-1 (08:54.688)
Right. Totally, totally. I mean, it was you said a lot there. yeah. So yeah, so blaming LDL cholesterol for the plaque buildup in your arteries is kind of like blaming the firemen for the fire. They're there to clean up the mess, but they didn't cause it. Or blaming the policeman for the for the car accident. You know, they're there to help, but they didn't cause it. and the same idea. There's so much more going on than simple LDL. I mean, we could do a whole episode on it.
speaker-0 (09:07.148)
Exactly.
speaker-0 (09:22.601)
Absolutely.
speaker-1 (09:23.274)
That for sure. which brings up another question that I had for you, Dusty, and and that is you're a functional medicine practitioner. define for the for the natural nation, the listening audience, what is functional medicine?
speaker-0 (09:35.522)
So functional medicine focuses mostly on chronic disease. So we're kind of like experts in multiple different organ systems. because when God's design gets disrupted, all of those organ systems communicate. So it's kind of like a spider web, right? If somebody gets diabetes, right, it's not just an insulin issue. it's going all a whole mess of organ systems are going to be communicating and creating symptoms. And so,
What a functional medicine doctor does is it comes in and tries to look at environmental behavior lifestyle patterns, look at the whole person, the all the interactions that can affect that physiology and help realign it back to its original design so that it can function optimally again. And in a chronic disease model, all of those organ systems matter, all of the environmental behavior lifestyles, lifestyles for that individual matter.
For the acute care model, what's different when you see like straight allopathic physician, like a medical doctor, is they're gonna be focusing on a symptom or an issue, and they're gonna be an expert in that area. So as you move up the chain there, you're gonna find specialists. And when you have a brain issue, you want a neurologist, like because a deep brain issue that's
literally hindering your health, a neurologist is there dealing with that particular tumor in your brain. Don't come to me. I will kill you. But if if in those situations, if you try to put them into an acute care model into chronic disease, and this is going to be a theme here of like upstream health, downstream health, or like acute versus chronic, or the acute care system versus more holistic
Is when you're dealing with chronic disease, which the vast majority of America is, a functional medicine doctor is going to treat all of what is contributing to that chronic disease. The acute care you're gonna find, and a lot of people can relate with this, is they go into the hospital and they have different symptoms, and so they were are with their PCP and then they realize they have gastrointestinal issues or like stomach stuff going on. So
speaker-0 (11:41.922)
They end up going to the gastroenterologist. And then the gastroenterologist realizes, wow, there's, you know, there's some stuff going on with your kidneys. And and so now you're at the nephrologist. And and so then the nephrologist is like, wow, you what? There's some neurological stuff going on here. Now you're with the neurologist, right? And then all of a sudden you're realizing, wow, now my thyroid's involved. So now you're at the endocrinologist. And you're going to all these different specialists. Why? Because in chronic disease, all of those organ systems are communicating.
They're all interconnected. Your hormones are talking to multiple organ systems, your thyroids talking to everything, your gut's talking to everything, your kidneys are talking to them. All of the organ systems are working together because that's God's original design. So as a functional medicine doctor, when we're trying to get in front of chronic disease and other things, it's really trying to get to the root of what is pushing and pulling these different things and how all those organ systems are working so we can get that realignment and attach back to health the way that God's designed it. Yeah.
speaker-1 (12:35.736)
Yeah, that's that's totally true. You know, we are a spirit, we have a mind, and we live in a body. So it's it's not wrong to treat a particular body system. It's just limited in its scope, right? And can be very useful with with acute conditions. but when it comes to chronic degenerative diseases, we've got to look at the old person. We really do. You know, that person you just described with the hormone issues and the neurological issues and all this coming together, maybe that person's gut
a problem with anger. Or maybe that person has a problem with forgiveness. And that unforgiveness is leading to resentment and bitterness. And it is literally eating them alive from the inside out. So the doctors are focused on what they can observe, you know, the the Newtonian physics, the physical side. But w human beings are more than that. We are a spirit, we have a mind, and we live in a body. so could you speak a little bit to the the holistic aspect?
to a natural approach to health.
speaker-0 (13:38.966)
This is this is where some people, even in the Christian community, will downplay this. they it's it's so important, you know, in my years of study, you know, you know, going through university and then getting going through four years to get my doctorate and then going through four plus years to become a doctor of functional medicine and continually now in school and
more and more certifications. we have to understand, especially as Christians, that the more we know, the more we know nothing and stay humble. number one. Number two, that the more we we can intervene and and support and align as much as we can the side of eternity, but we still have to believe that we can pray and and God will intervene because it's his creation to begin with.
So we also humble ourselves there and realizing that prayer is a huge part of our health journey. Yeah. and number three, that we have to realize that his design, his design, is incredibly miraculous. It is in everything, is in everything, which w what I'm trying to convey here, it's really simple. So when we're when we're reading about
how how we come from the dust of the earth, right? And in Hebrew that's well we see Adam, right? And we see Adama, meaning the land, right? So the earth and man. It's basically the same. And in Latin we have humus and human, right? And it if we take Adama, but we also take the the topsoil from the dust.
That's afar. And afar in Hebrew is that that loose topsoil. And that loose topsoil is what we came from. It is we ultimately are the microbes, the topsoil, the life of the earth. And if we see the detail within our agronomy, and we see the detail of our ecology and our biology and how that all fits into our physiology, and understand that emotions can actually change our physiology.
speaker-0 (16:05.248)
And our relationships and the environment around every single thing we surround our bodies with, put in on and around our bodies. Even emotions, even the temperature, everything affects us. That is mind-blowing. Yeah. The way, and it's it's so intricately connected and beautifully designed. We have to stop believing that in this Newtonian theory, like yeah, this this red.
Reductionist kind of model of understanding that God's design is so much bigger than that. Yeah. And when we do that, when we respect that, we realize that there is no other way to r to help understand how to realign it than seeing it all and help bringing it together. And that might be cleaning up our air and our water and stop tampering with our soil and stop tampering with our animals. But it could also mean
It could also mean
That the responsibility for us to be able to see what our stewardship of our environment has to do with our stewardship of our health. Yeah.
speaker-1 (17:20.268)
Yeah. I I couldn't agree more. I well said. you know, when I do speaking events, sometimes I'll I'll use this metaphor and I'll say, you know, most cellular biologists would agree that the adult human body has about seventy-five trillion cells. And that's a lot of cells. And they're all constantly interacting and communicating with one another. So I'll ask the audience, if I started counting seconds, how long do you think it'd take to to count seventy five trillion seconds? Somebody raise their hand and say,
A hundred years. Like, no, it's a lot more. Somebody raise their hand. Ten thousand years. Like, well, you're getting closer. But I've run the math on this because I'm a geek. It would take 3.2 million years to count 75 trillion seconds. That's how complex the human body is. And and to think that we can outsmart God with with medications. you know, again.
Useful for acute conditions, can save your life at times. but over the long haul, we're not gonna outsmart God. We are better off aligning our lives more fully with God's natural design for spirit, mind, and body and coming alongside those natural processes and living our lives in harmony with that design and allow our bodies to heal themselves. In naturopathy, we call it vitalism. vitalism is the life source.
the verse you were referring to earlier about holism, I believe it's Genesis two seven. Then the Lord God forward man out of the d man out of the dust of the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The word for breath is pneuma or wind or spirit. So that's our energizing energy, those our spirit. And the man became a living being. And that word for being is soul or mind. And that's the three parts to human being right there in the beginning, right there in Genesis two.
gives a very graphic description of who and what we are. and we we do well to honor that. We do well to live lives in harmony with that that natural design. And when we do, got that God given built-in intelligence we call vitalism or the vitality that's inside of us, our bodies know what to do. we don't have to teach ourselves how to do their jobs. They know how to heal. If I cut my finger with a kitchen knife, I don't have to tell my blood my blood to release
speaker-1 (19:42.392)
Clotting factors to stop the bleeding. I don't have to tell my my body to release cellular repair proteins like cholesterol and heal the laceration. It might form a scab if it needs to. I don't have to tell my body when the scab's not necessary anymore to dispatch enzymes to get rid of the scab. All that happens underneath the surface through that God given built-in intelligence. And it's there, and we need to lean on that when we when we're truly building health.
And when we get the obstacles out of the way, our body's default setting is health and vitality.
speaker-0 (20:17.9)
Yeah, that's it's just found in the design. And it doesn't require any convincing. so this isn't hocus pocus stuff. Right. Getting back to the the other question that you were talking about, David, is like, you know, how much do like emotions and all these different things play a role? It's like we we cannot play this off. Like this this stuff is really important. A whole a holistic way of approach to health isn't alternative. It isn't even holistic. It's just
the way that God's designed it. Right. And so when we see God's God designed the body exactly like what you're saying, is this incredible capacity for renewal. Yeah. You know, the the the gastrointestinal lining the cells of the lining of the gastrointestinal tract are are replaced every three to five days. It's just nuts. And that we don't we're not thinking about that's just one thing of millions of things that are going on inside of our bodies. You know, I show this video when I give talks about
speaker-1 (21:05.624)
Crazy.
speaker-0 (21:16.62)
DNA replication and you actually see it in real time in in a video. And you're like, that's alien. Right. No, that this is God's design that if we saw what's going on every millisecond in our body, we would our we would drop our faces to the floor and weep. Yeah. And if we saw what we did to our air, our water, our environment, our animals, the our food, we don't even have the vast majority of food is fake food. Right.
And then we get so overwhelmed, right? We get so overwhelmed, you know, where we're like everything in moderation. And this is where we plead to people to help them understand that the devil can't create anything new. He just changes things by one degree. And here we are, thousands of years later, with we don't even know what an apple is anymore.
And instead of being hard on ourselves to say everything in moderation, whatever, just I've thrown in the white flag or the white towel, is we step up and say, No. Like this is God's creation. We need to honor it. And if we honor it, it will honor ourselves and it will honor his design if we can see it. That's the that's the key right there. Because what if the goal wasn't fixing a broken body, but removing the obstacles, preventing God's design from expressing itself to begin?
speaker-1 (22:41.426)
Amen, brother. Amen. I couldn't agree more. You know, the point I'm trying to make here that I I think we're we're both making here is that God has built an amazing machine in our bodies. And when we can w we come alongside those natural processes, we can expect some pretty good things to happen. You know, let me let me give you one verse, one of the verses that I like. What's it's a passage here.
I'm gonna read this one. Proverbs chapter four, starting in verse twenty. My son, give attention to my words, incline your ear to my sayings. Do not let them depart from your sight, keep them in the midst of your heart, for they are life to those who find them, and health to all their body. So God's word has plenty of instructions for health and wellness, you know, because it's my contention that when God gives us an admonition and he tells us to do something.
He has our well-being in mind. He's our heavenly Father. He knows everything. He knows the outcome our choices are going to have before we make them. So therefore, if he tells us to do something like any loving father would do, he has our well-being in mind. And if he tells us to avoid something, it's for our protection. And what he's saying is, hey, look, guys, do it my way. You're not going to be sorry. Right? and when we do that, when we surrender to God's goodness, we believe in his trustworthiness.
And we, you know, start to start with surrendering our lives to him as a and becoming a born-again believer would be the start of your natural health journey as far as I'm concerned. and then when we continue to surrender more and more aspects of our lives to his loving kindness and his goodness, we can see some good things happen. another another similar verse here that goes along with that is Proverbs chapter three. You can start reading in verse one, but it gets a little wordy for a podcast episode. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna read, I'm gonna start in verse one, because this is some good stuff here.
All right, I'm in Proverbs chapter three, verse one, and really this is all about health. Let's listen. The word of God, my son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, for length of days and years of life, and peace they will add to you. Do not let kindness and truth leave you. Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, so you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man.
speaker-1 (25:05.322)
And this here's the verse that people start reading at that's very familiar. Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding, and all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight. So in context, straight to where? Straight to health and wellness. That's what this passage is talking about. Then at verse 7, do not be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord, and turn away from evil, it will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones.
speaker-0 (25:35.182)
Yeah.
speaker-1 (25:36.108)
So God wants wellness for us. It's right there in His word. this is not aim it and claim it. You know, this is just a matter of surrendering to God's loving kindness and saying, God, I'm gonna do it your way, even if I don't understand.
speaker-0 (25:50.126)
Yeah. So many people in this broken, distracted, disconnected world can really feel like it becomes legalistic really quickly. Yeah. and let's just say, like, if somebody tampered with something that I built and they did it unknowingly or knowingly, either way, it's a tampering to the design. Yeah. And it's not necessarily it's
the we have to look we if if we're gonna change the trajectory of the health of the church, the health of the of the Christian family, we have to understand that what we value is different than what other people value. And there's gonna be different cultures in the world that will do a lot of different things to God's creation. we have to be able to wake up and realize that what we what we as people
This side of eternity have done to God's creation has created a disconnection between God's biology and our genetics. And the way that we express ourselves with that disconnection is causing a myriad of different disconnections that lead to a myriad of different diseases and other issues. Whether it's nutrient malabsorption or gut issues or neurological inflammation that leads to a cascade of other things, of
Autism and ADHD and a lot of other things. It's not that we start with the disconnection and try to intervene with our own intellectual minds that try to fix it. It's starting to look at the big picture. And if we can do that, it's no longer legalism, it's stewardship. Because if we can create a place that is suitable for his presence, then we have to h
to do our best to hold it in alignment with the way that he created it. And if we're manipulating our soil to be able to have better production, I'm seeing, you know, we we moved, we spend we spend a lot of our time all over the place. So we don't have we have home bases. We don't necessarily have a home in one place. And we spend more time in farmland recently and talking with different farmers and totally understand
speaker-0 (28:13.954)
the complexity of what it's like to have a family farm and realizing all the conglomerates moving up around you. And in order to be able to survive, you have to be able to make sure that you produce. Yeah. And with the adaptability of weather and everything else, and you have to make sure that the bugs aren't going to gonna get to your crops and you have to be able to produce and yield enough to be able to survive. Right. So then you have to kind of manipulate that in order to cr to create whatever. And I don't say you have to
Just saying more and more farmers are realizing that they can switch over to organic, they can switch over to other ways of farming, they can be regenerative, and it might take a little bit more effort, a little bit more creativity, this, that, or the other, but it's possible. And if we can be able to see more honorable ways to nourish and to be able to find that creativity in no other place other than the United States, you think about what we have in a free enterprise.
Marketplace that we have here, that we can be able to show up and be innovative. Yeah. Like we can do this, guys. We can do this. But as Christian families, we have to realize that's where health starts. And it's stewardship of our environment, our behaviors, and our lifestyles that are in alignment with his design so that we can then cultivate.
Yeah, th this is this is where the whole thing should start. I mean, we shouldn't be talking about infertility. We could talk about that, but it's not about solving infertility. It's about solving where we've come from in the alignment to allow for us to be fertile. If we're gonna be image bearers of God, we have to be able to allow for the environment for our physiology to bear.
speaker-1 (29:58.168)
Right. Yeah. Well, you know, I think the best farmers are ones that honor that God given natural design and the best healthcare practitioners are the ones that honor the God given natural design. because when you're when you're alignment with God, you're embracing truth. And you know, you might be able to make some quick profits, and many corporations today are putting profits before people. And that's that's just the way it is. And we're gonna have to declare our independence.
From that system. You know, I call it opting out of the medical matrix. You know, the medical matrix, I think, is a is a complex web of health insurance companies, medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, big corporations that really don't give a rip about our health. then they they're concerned with their profits. and then, you know, also from the farming side, from the nutrition side, you know, just eating food as close to its God given natural form as we can, you know, you know
It mean it sounds radical to people, but you know, a hundred years ago it wasn't so radical. You know, most 150 years ago, everybody farmed organically. They didn't call it organic, they just called it farming. You know, and these these pesticides and fertilizers and chemical this or that that we use today, you know, glyphosate on the wheat and you know, you name it. they're modern inventions. And and we put obstacles in in the way of our
our healing and our vitality when we just as you say, just kind of drifting downstream with with the rest of society. So we gotta we gotta opt out. You know, chronic disease is on the rise. Everyone knows that. it's scary. There's a lot of cancer and a lot of heart disease that wasn't wasn't around a hundred years ago. and and I I like to say this and it's it's a strong statement, but it's true. If we eat the standard American diet and we embrace the standard American sedentary lifestyle and we go see the standard American doctor
We can expect to suffer and die from a standard American chronic disease. That's just the way it is. So if you don't want that, and I gotta tell you, and my personal experiences, my both my parents, my dad died with Alzheimer's, and my mom died with severe dementia. And the last ten years of their lives, not only was it not fruitful, it was painful. It was painful to watch, to see your loved ones slip away that way. and I know that's not part of God's design.
speaker-1 (32:21.474)
God does not want to see us spend the last ten or fifteen years in assist living facility. That's that's not his design for us. you know, no, this is not Eden. We're all getting older, these bodies will wear out. but I believe we can age gracefully. And that's that's one of the one of the the tenets of my my introduction to my show. You know, I I tell people I want to help them navigate natural health so that they can age gracefully, stay out of the doctor's office and live a more purpose driven, abundant life.
Because that's what I think God has for us. You know, in I think it's is it first or second Timothy three sixteen says the word of God is profitable for teaching rebuting for training in righteousness, then it says, so that the man or woman of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. So God wants to equip us. Ephesians two ten, he he he has knows the the plans he has for us. that's Jeremiah twenty night.
Plans not to prosper to prosperous, not to harm us. But Fijius two ten is we are his workmanship, created four good works that God prepared beforehand. So if we're gonna walk in those good works and find the abundant life that Jesus pro Jesus promised us in John chapter ten, we're gonna need all the spiritual strength, mental emotional fortitude, and physical vitality we can get because this world is tough. There's there's there's a lot set against us living and finding that life.
Thoughts.
speaker-0 (33:48.638)
Yeah, I I think that it's very easy to feel overwhelmed and to feel pessimistic, you know, and to kind of like burrow yourself and even like separate yourself from the world. I see so many Christian families wanting to get a plot of land and be homesteaders in the middle of whatever Kansas. but there is so much hope. There is so much hope.
You know what we have that we can lean on beyond any other is his design, the original design, the the objective truths that we're talking about here. If we come back to that, then we know where to we know the template, we know the blueprint, right? And that's what that's why I believe that Christian families are gonna be the healthiest, happiest, most impactful families this side of eternity. Simply because
We know the template. Look, when I went to when I was you know going to school to become a doctor and I was in radiology and I was looking at radiographs, we don't go through and look at this is what this cancer is, and this is what this that when we do that, but that's never where we start. When we're looking at a radiograph, we have studied what right looks like long enough to know what is off, and then we look to see.
what that might be. So when I'm going through a radiograph, I'm going through the the different sections and just making sure that everything looks right. If I study right enough, then I know what right looks like. If something's off, I come back to that and then I use my deductive reasoning to try to figure out what that is. So when we as Christians know what objective truth and right is
And then all of a sudden something pops up where we have some processed hamburger or this, that, or the other, and we realize that's not right. What is that? Yeah. And we have to understand the details. You know, a lot of see people say devil's in the details. God is in the details. Right? And as we go down to the objective truths of what we're looking at, when we're looking at, for example, this is where it gets so overwhelming. It's like, now we can't eat juice and we can't drink juice. Juice is bad now.
speaker-1 (36:02.254)
Amen.
speaker-0 (36:14.082)
Well, when you strip the fibers outside of the fruit and you don't have something to slow down the absorption of that glucose, then you're gonna have a huge insulin spike and it's dysregulating. So just eat the fruit and be careful that when you take all of the juice out of it and you don't take the fiber, you've got to understand that the way that God's designed everything to interact with each other and interact with our physiology, just careful how we're tampering and intervening, especially with our taste buds that are trained to be sweet in America.
Careful how we're tampering with that. And when we have that, it's not that we're like, shame on you for drinking juice. It's like the everything is a learning, a learning opportunity. And the more we learn about the objective truths of his design of his vegetables and how fruits are in season different times and not available all the time. And just the way that he's designed it, the more we should celebrate of how we can be able to honor that and how it honors our physiology.
Mm-hmm. And that right there is so freeing because then we can come into honoring the way that it's built and designed instead of waiting for it to break and then celebrating these intervention models to try to fix it. You know, we celebrate the design, not the cure. Yeah.
speaker-1 (37:29.794)
Yeah, I love it. You know, one of the one of the what came to mind when you were talking about recognizing the the scans on what a what a x-ray should look like is bank tellers are trained to load to know what a real bill looks like, a real dollar bill looks like. And they know that well. And then when they see a counterfeit, they say, that's not right. There's something amiss here. They're not taught what every single counterfeit might look like. They understand the real deal.
and that's that's the point I think you're making here is if you understand what real food is, it's not hard at all to recognize in imitation food. Right. Yeah. There's there's really no such thing as junk food, right? There's food and there's junk. There's nothing in between. There's no s no such thing as junk food.
speaker-0 (38:11.958)
Yeah. And what I would what I would put on that is it the for the all you listeners out there that are feeling overwhelmed and feeling like now you have to figure out where your food came, what soil and what the you know, how much nitrogen was in there and how w that's not the point that we're trying to bring across. It's it's just realizing that when you have a lot of voices out there telling you different things of what you should eat and what you shouldn't and what you should put in your body and what supplement and what this, that or the other, it's like that's not the big idea.
It's not that's that's downstream. Yep. It's realizing that this isn't hocus pocus, that the if we're gonna sacrifice what we put in on and around our bodies, it better be in alignment with the way that God designed it, right? Because from there that philosophy will help you understand that this like what the world is saying about this type of healthcare of like it's alternative, it's holistic, it's like this unique little fringe thing over here. But like if you
You know, you really need this over here because this is way more important than that. There's no such thing as this hierarchy of way more important that we're all in the same playing field and trying to honor that. This doesn't mean that the medical doctor is more important than the the naturopath or the doctor of functional medicine or this side. There's no there's none of that, right? They're all playing as a team for the common goal. And if we can get on that, that's good. But the the point that we're trying to make here is that.
When you see the original design and you walk it through all the way from whether it's the soil or the air or the creator the overall ecosystem that he designed in Genesis and where we're at now, then we understand there's no such thing as holistic or alternative or allopath i it's it's just the design, it's the truth. Understanding that that your emotions can affect your physiology and a psychosomatic and sem somatic i connection. Like
This exists because of the fact it's the way it's designed. And so then people can have a more relationship and conviction over trying to steward not only their health but their environment that's affecting their health. And they they can have more conviction over what they put in on and around their body because there's so many pieces to that pie. And if we're only looking at nutrition and exercise, we're missing the big idea.
speaker-1 (40:37.11)
Right. Or even worse, eat less, exercise more. Yeah. I mean how long have we been hearing that and how long h how obvious is it that that's not working? Right.
speaker-0 (40:47.202)
Yeah. Or the you know, y like you talked about, I remember I was listening to one of the other podcasts, David, on on nutrition. And there's so many people that in a very nutshell, like they're trying to find the perfect diet. Yeah. But in r in reality, it's just studying what right looks like. Yeah. And then just aligning that. And then for seasons it can be therapeutic. Like for seasons, if you're dealing with let's say
osteoarthritis, or you're dealing with, you rheumatoid arthritis, like an arthritic condition or something like that, you want to reduce inflammation dramatically and changing like NF kappa B and and working on those different pathways, you can be carnivore. And sometimes that might be very beneficial for that. Yeah, for a period of time. And that's personalization of of food can be medicine, but ultimately the root of where it all comes from is God's design of how he's designed
speaker-1 (41:23.544)
Yeah, personal. Right.
speaker-1 (41:34.046)
Yeah, totally, totally. You know, I wanna I wanna touch just a little bit before we wrap up things up here today, is I wanna touch a little bit on the mind body connection. You know, if you talk to a medical doctor who's trained in the medi someone who's trained in the medical field about the mind body connection, they'll just say, Well, you know, most of that stuff that you natural health guys are talking about is just placebo medicine. It's placebo. well, the placebo is real and and what people believe does matter because every
pharmaceutical company that's trying to get a new drug approved, they have to prove that their drug is more effective than placebo. Because about a third of the time the person taking the sugar pill or the saline injection during a clinical trial, double blind placebo controlled, you the gold standard, about a third of the time they experience the benefit that that drug is purported to have. And not only that, there's a nocebo effect that says if you take the placebo, you may experience the side effects that that drug is purported to have.
It's the nocebo effect. And it's always there. The researchers would love it if it would go away, but it won't. it's there, and it has to be accounted for. So, and that a third is a powerful, powerful number. That's a big number. and then what if this study would never be done? But what because it'll be medically unethical. But what if the researchers told the person to get in the placebo, look, it come here, listen. I know that this drug is super effective, it works incredibly.
And you know what? You're getting the real thing. Don't tell anybody, I told you, but you got the real thing. What would happen to the placebo effect then? It would have to go up, right? so there there's a connection there. And then it works the other way around too. Our body can affect our emotions. if you had a pebble in your shoe and I made you walk around all day with the pebble in your shoe, would that affect your mood? You bet it would, right? So there's a connection there.
that doctors don't like to talk about because they're stuck on this nec Newtonian physics. you know, I'm stuck on the the double blind placebo control trial. But as you was saying earlier, if we understand the the design, if we understand the way things are supposed to be, it's then it becomes a lot simpler to recognize the counterfeits and what's what's really building health and what isn't.
speaker-0 (43:52.736)
Yeah. And if we lead with that heart as Christians, if our goal is to to really just get our families healthy and steward that well and understand the counterfeit and and and really just honor that, honor his design, and get the proper leadership to allow for that to happen. it's not demonizing the medical doctor that's trained a certain way. It's really just leading out of love.
In helping them understand what you're trying to accomplish. So if it forces somebody to put them into a position, if if if you walk into the hospital and that doctor is trying to convince you that they're trying to get you healthy, then allow for them to prove it. The the the system there isn't designed for that, but give them the opportunity to do it. But that doesn't mean that your role to be able to do all those things is negated. Don't be apathetic.
Like stand up and realize what counterfeit is and work on your health and work through that stewardship and get other leadership. So we put them in a position to do that. But it's but if they don't, we have to take the responsibility. So we lead out of love in realizing that what their limitations are and what their roles are designed to do. But we don't allow ourselves to react or have a different expectation.
over what their roles are there for.
speaker-1 (45:23.918)
Totally, totally. What what I tell people is look, a medical doctor is trained to name it, blame it, and tame it. You go to them, you describe your symptoms, they take your collection of symptoms and they call it a disease. Then they blame your symptoms on that disease, and then they want to tame it with drugs and surgery. That's what medical school teaches them. Does not teach them about holism, does not teach them about you know, spirit, mind, and body, it does not teach them anything about nutrition.
speaker-0 (45:53.4)
But it and it shouldn't. It should.
speaker-1 (45:54.822)
Because that's not what they do. so if you have an acute condition, man, go to the medical doctor. Use use allopathic medical care appropriately, and it it can be very useful.
speaker-0 (46:07.982)
Well there's and there's David, there's there's other options than that too. You know, there's there's a more holistic side to that too, that can you know, like people are using Kaiyan Pepper for the there so the you can get different leadership even in that sphere too. It's just it's it's it's helping people realize that there are a lot of different people trying to show up in the healthcare space. And if we can show the thirty thousand foot view within the healthcare arena that there's choices.
Mm-hmm and you know what that does in America, in a free market enterprise, in a capitalistic environment, is it forces competition. What f what we're feeling right now, especially post COVID, is we're feeling this sense of we need to shake it up. We hear of Maha, we hear of and this should not go political. Look at w our health care should not go political at all. That's a very, very bad idea. I I worked in Norway for a while as a as a doctor in
speaker-1 (46:45.302)
And it rewards what works.
speaker-0 (47:07.724)
I tell you right now, not a good idea because if you're putting all your chips in politically to have an acute care model take care of your health, as soon as your population starts to get riddled with chronic disease, what what is the government gonna do? It's gonna try to propagandize a culture that is gonna try to change that to be able to save the money, to be able to make sure that we can keep and that's the future of that.
Yes, it will lead to rati it will lead to the change of what what taxes will be on on on processed foods and this and then it will create this whole calamity. So and that's not the whole point of it. The point is is that you need to see the thirty thousand foot view and not see either or. Right. It's not either this model or this model or this model. It's seeing the limitations and then what that does is it forces
the healthcare model to have to diversify with the problems that we have in this modern era. And what separates the Christian in that scenario is I see the options now, but which one is giving me the leadership to help realign God's original design and steward that well and not only put my own health first, because that's usually where people start, is they put my family's health first. And on top of that, guess what the better rock of that is?
Their spiritual health. There's no different between your spiritual disciplines and your family disciplines, your health disciplines and your financial disciplines. But we gotta make sure that we keep those in order and prioritize our spiritual disciplines first, and then we prioritize our family disciplines and make sure we're right there. Yep. And then we can start prioritizing our families' health, and then we can start prioritizing individuals' health and then our financial stability. So so man we have to make sure that the hierarchy isn't in in order.
speaker-1 (48:56.706)
Yeah. I mean hierarchy. I I could go off on that, but we're we're running out of time, I think. But yeah. So, you know, when you when you talk about the whole person, it could get a bit overwhelming. But you know, I just want to say to people, you know, hit pick the thing that sounds like it's gonna give you the most bang for your buck and go after that. And just start cutting down trees. And when you start cutting down trees, eventually you'll make your way through the forest. And but it has to be one one bite at a time, one step at a time, one little baby step at a time.
but I think, you know, listening to a show like this and listening to our discussion here is a great place to start. You know, if if this message is resonating, man, share with some friends that that seemed like they're they're in this merry-go-round of visiting the doctor and getting on more drugs and then polypharmacy kicks in, you need another drug to relieve the symptoms that that drug has given you, and now you have more side effects and you get on the third medication. You know, that's not God's design. That that's not what God wants for us. And that's not real health.
So anyway, I any parting words or do you have any low hanging fruit that you'd like to share with the audience?
speaker-0 (50:03.278)
I'd say with that too, one of the and I know this is I whoever has stayed with us this long, I just applaud you. I I love it. but this is this is a big topic that I think needs to be talked more about in the church and unfortunately it's not. And I wish we could crack that as if as if health is so taboo, as if you know, we have to choose certain pathways. We we have to break out of that because the trajectory of the Christian community as far as health is not looking good.
Not looking good at all. And instead of looking for solutions of fertility, we have to look for the the solutions that actually matter of the array alignment of his original design. But I I've talked about that. But I think I think there one of the subgroups that really scares me the most, David, and I tell me if if you agree with this, that you what you've seen as far as your experience on this, are the people that don't realize
the dramatic separation that's happened over the course of the several year several thousand years of the devil's manipulation at one degree. That we can try to pull ourselves away from the big cities and have a homestead and grow our grass fed, grass finished beef and have our chickens and have our our organic produce that we have from our own garden and and yet they're still dealing with chronic disease. Yeah. And and this this sense that
We have, but if we have high blood pressure here, it's we just take our cayenne pepper, or if we have this, we just take this remedy, or if we have this, we have this thing. And and they call that good stewardship. And I just want the big, big idea here to be good stewardship is realizing what we need to do to help realign from the inside out.
And in this modern world where we are so separated, our genes are so separated from the biology and what the way that God's designed it, we test, we don't guess. So if we deem if we if we look at the healthcare model and say, There's nothing there for me, but you don't have a leadership that will help you understand how healthy you are from the inside out and how disconnected that is, we don't have to live in fear anymore in a way of understanding what our physiology is saying.
speaker-0 (52:19.746)
We can do all the things that are right and still get dis-eased and have a lot of issues. It's just making sure that the leadership is there to be able to help you navigate that. And it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Look, I I I can fix a a leak on a toilet, but I'm not a plumber. Like I didn't go to school to become a plumber. Like so many people out there are trying to be their own doctors. Yeah. And what I'm trying to say is not smart.
Find people in your sphere that you can be able to get leadership from. And you have more options than ever before online, remote areas. I deal with people that are super remote, but the the idea that what you're doing is enough, that like you feel good, therefore you're healthy, or you look good on the outside, therefore you're healthy. I can tell you there's a lot of people that look super healthy on the outside that are riddled on the inside. Right. So
Just we have to make sure that we get the proper leadership, even though we're outside of the the system, the proper leadership that's gonna honor and steward our bodies from the inside out so that we know that what we're doing is actually getting ourselves healthy. Yeah.
speaker-1 (53:25.57)
Yeah, love it. I love it. That's so good. So Dr. Dusty, if someone wants to if this message is resonating with them and they want to get a hold of you and talk to you more about what you do as a practitioner, what would be the best way to do that?
speaker-0 (53:39.084)
Yeah, so I've founded a company that is called upstreamhealth.com. And what we do is we pair Christian families with health coaches, with functional nutritionists, and doctors of functional medicine to help them steward their health from the inside out. understand that this side of eternity is simply this side of eternity and shouldn't be defined by your health, but defined by God's calling in your life to make impact.
And it's not about longevity and trying to stay alive as long as possible, but it's just knowing what you're doing is keeping your health, keeping you healthy and on the trajectory of good stewardship, and then focus on everything else that God has in store for you. And with that, it's not trying to it's it's really just trying to come alongside the Christian community and in a non-biased way.
And be able to reconnect God's original design and create awareness. I want pastors to be behind the pulpit longer. I want I want missionaries to be in the field longer. I want Christian families to be healthy and whole. These people are gonna impact this side of eternity for the better. And the big idea here is spreading the gospel. The big idea here is getting the big idea out. But if we can't it the the the number one thing keeping people from serving in the church is that they're getting sick.
Right. And if we can't figure out a leadership model that can step in there to help get them healthy from the inside out and just realign that what the X-ray looks like, the truth, the objective truths to the ecology, biology, and physiology to help that happen, get good leadership and we and and allow for the rest to just realign. And the outcome is going to be so impactful when we start to get people back in the pulpits.
have more energy to speak more passionately, get people out in the mission field and keep them out there, keep them emotionally whole, physically whole, spiritually whole. Keep people, keep families that are out in the community, in their own communities, and being a good example for stepping up in their communities and having the energy to be able to clean up the local park or have more interaction at the local food banks or what we need Christian families to be healthy and whole to be a great example for God's original design.
speaker-0 (56:04.098)
That's the template. And we need them healthy and whole so that they can actually have kids. How many people are listening to this that have had peop have have just the past week had a friend that had a miscarriage or had a friend that is that has that can't have kids that are doing i f fertility treatments? Like this cannot be within within God's people. Like we have to be able to be image bearers to be able to live out that command. So
That's where we try to step in the fray to see to create a business that will be affordable for Christian families, but also create the outcome of what we're trying to do this side of eternity to allow for the impact that we're trying to that God that God's trying to move and create.
speaker-1 (56:47.68)
Amen. Amen. That's a good word. I love it. Well, Doctor Dusty, thank you so much for being here. I I really appreciate you. Let's stay in touch and I'll have to have you back on. We'll have we've got to do this again.
speaker-0 (56:59.486)
I love it, David. This is I I love that we share so many different commonalities. I love what you're doing too. And yeah, I just I'd love to just take a moment and just pray. Sure. All right, dear Lord Jesus, we just thank you so much for this ability to have such a great conversation. We thank you so much for David's work and the way that he just brings in faith, family, and health and he incorporates that. we just pray that what we talked about today and what we've done has really just honored you and honored your design.
speaker-1 (57:08.526)
Absolutely, let's do it.
speaker-0 (57:29.018)
And and is honorable to your ears. And we just pray over all the listeners today as they listen to this that that they're all going to be touched in different ways, Lord Jesus. That it that it pulls on heartstrings and pulls on different aspects of them that really just helps them get the big idea, that aligns your design, that it doesn't have to be anything aligned with legalism or anything like that, but in alignment with great stewardship and and just the understanding of how you designed everything, Lord Jesus. We just give you all the glory and
we thank you so much for all of the blessings that you've poured out on us and all of the challenges and hardships for us to learn from. We just pray this in your holy precious name. Amen.
speaker-1 (58:06.17)
Amen. That was that was a great great conversation. Loved it. I'll I'll I'll talk with you soon, okay?
speaker-0 (58:13.578)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, buddy. You just take care of yourself and there's anything what we can do, we just stay in contact and and I just love what you're doing.
speaker-1 (58:21.038)
Absolutely, we'll do it. So that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed listening to Dr. Dusty. I sure enjoyed talking with him. He's a great guy, super knowledgeable, and I'm definitely gonna have him back. I think he's gonna add a lot to the show. I think he's probably gonna become a regular guest. You know, natural and holistic health from a biblical perspective is pretty hard to come by. And to have two people talking about the same thing is even more rare. So if you enjoyed this episode and you know of a like-minded friend you think might benefit from it.
If you would share the show with them, I would appreciate that. So I appreciate you. Thank you for listening. Thanks for hanging in there to the end. I know this episode was a little bit longer than most. So next week we're going to be getting back to the nine pillars of health. We're going to be talking about pillar number three, self-love or love for self. It's going to a great topic. you don't want to miss that one. So once again, thank you for listening. I appreciate you. Go out there and live abundantly. Be blessed. I'll talk with you next time.
