Why hol+?
Why hol+?
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Dr Taz: I was tired. I was done. I was, I was exhausted. That's something that you guys tell me over and over again. You try to power through, you try to power up, you put your armor on and you go out and you hope that you're going to wake up and the next day everything is going to be better. But unfortunately, as much as we all try to ignore what's happening within our bodies or in our minds or in our homes, At some point, we have to face the music, and that's why this show, Hole Plus, is going to be the place where we come together, where we bring it all, the science and the spirit of health, wellness, and healing, where we don't fight or dismiss one another.
Dr Taz: We honor the research and the technology, but we also acknowledge the fact that the human spirit, the human experience, at the end of the day, is what matters. may actually be more important. I know that I'm not the first to say that we have a crisis in medicine and healthcare. Whether it is the doctor or the patient, it doesn't seem like anyone can get on the same page.
Dr Taz: I spent the last 20 years talking to patients, hearing their stories, and listening to their journeys. And unfortunately, many of them, and we see the statistics, are disheartened and left feeling hopeless. I know it doesn't have to be this way. And we're going to change it. And what's best is we're going to change this together on this show.
Dr Taz: We are going to bring together the best that medicine and healing and wellness has to offer. I know you guys are tired, right? You're tired of going from doctor to doctor, from practitioner to practitioner, seeing the acupuncturist argue with the physician, seeing the naturopath get dismissed and everyone at the end of the day in fighting.
Dr Taz: only to have zero results. Unfortunately, I know the story all too well and I've experienced it firsthand. But before I tell you about how I even got in to medicine or health or thinking about health differently, I want all of us to get on the same page. And that's why this show whole plus is going to be the place where we come together, where we bring it all the science and the spirit of health, wellness, and healing, where we don't fight or dismiss one another.
Dr Taz: We honor the research and the technology, but we also acknowledge the fact that the human spirit. The human experience at the end of the day may actually be more important. I can't wait for you to meet all the incredible celebrities and researchers and experts that we're going to have on this show. But more importantly, I can't wait for you to start your own healing journey as you listen to all the different viewpoints and opinions and begin to understand how we can come together.
Dr Taz: How we're divided now back to me and why I'm even doing this and I'm going to share the story, but I don't want to bore you to tears because unfortunately, many of you have the same story over 20 years ago, probably 30 years ago. I'm getting old guys, but over 30 years ago, I actually experienced my own health crisis and it was one that I didn't expect, but it set me on a path.
Dr Taz: That I also didn't expect. A fortunate accidental journey. I was about 25, 26 coming out of residency, going into my first job, which was in the emergency room in the urgent cares of our Atlanta area hospitals. And I was ready to start my life. But there was a catch. I was actually not well and I didn't realize it, or I really didn't want to admit it.
Dr Taz: And that's something that you guys tell me over and over again. You try to power through, you try to power up, you put your armor on and you go out and you hope that you're going to wake up and the next day everything is going to be better. But unfortunately as much as we all try to ignore what's happening within our bodies or in our minds or in our homes, At some point we have to face the music.
Dr Taz: And that's exactly what happened to me as I went into the ER and the year went by of night shifts and flipping schedules and not eating right. And sort of honestly, the toll of the years prior taking their effect, I began to get sick. And it got to a point where I can no longer ignore it. I had joint pain, weight gain, hair loss, acne.
Dr Taz: I could go on forever. And as it got worse and worse and worse, the people around me, started to notice. I noticed people looking at my balding scalp or staring at me and saying, you've picked up a little bit of weight there. But at the end of the day, I had so much internal shame that I didn't want to face it myself.
Dr Taz: And I did stupid things. When I look back, I would get ready in the dark. I would say no to invitations. And I started to become a different version of myself. And it finally took my now husband and my mom sitting me down saying, something's got to change. You need to figure out what's going on. You're turning into a shadow version of who you once were.
Dr Taz: So I did what you guys do, right? I made the appointments. I blocked time on my calendar. I set aside funds and I went from doctor to doctor to doctor only to be told at 28 years old that I was stressed. I was anxious. I was depressed. Here's a medication. Here's an antidepressant. It'll all go away. And I only got worse.
Dr Taz: Couple months went by. Six months went by, a year went by, and I still didn't have answers. And everything going on with me was only more and more noticeable. Well, finally, I went to the most well renowned hair loss specialist in the area and was given a medication and was told with a finger in my face, young lady, if you don't do something, you will be bald by 30.
Dr Taz: And so I did. What many of you told me you do. I took the medication. I didn't read and I don't know why. I can't tell you guys why I didn't read about the side effects. I didn't sit and research it. I didn't sit and think about it because I was tired. I was done. I was, I was exhausted. And so I was like, okay, fine.
Dr Taz: Who wants to be bald at 30? And so on a certain morning, I got in my car, went to go work out, because remember I was gaining weight, so maybe that was going to turn things around. Went and did my workout, had not eaten that morning, took the medication, got in my car, well it's a medication, and in fact I prescribe that medication nowadays, but with a lot of thought and deliberation and conversation with my patients.
Dr Taz: But took the medication and proceeded to pass out as I was driving. Because the medication bottoms out your blood pressure and historically my blood pressure is always low Well in that moment as I'm sitting there Realizing that I could have hurt myself or I could have hurt somebody else I realized had to do things differently and I'm only telling you guys the story so that you don't feel Alone that you understand that in our journey to get answers and to get advice You Again, the infighting, the arguments, the, the, this person's a quack, this person's wrong.
Dr Taz: All of that never serves any of us well. No one asked me over this year, almost a year and a half now of trying to get answers. No one asked me about my diet, about my sleep schedule, about my nutrition. No one checked my hormones. No one asked about my childhood trauma or what I might have gone through.
Dr Taz: It was just an assembly line approach moving me through, trying to get me to take something and move on, which I did. And I know it's not working for you, and we're going to change that on this show. Well, let's fast forward a little bit. I decide that I need to heal myself. And so I did, we didn't have Google back then.
Dr Taz: I'm getting old guys. We didn't have Google the way it is in its glory and magnificence right now. And somehow I found the board of holistic medicine. I didn't even know what holistic medicine was. I hadn't even heard the term holistic to be a hundred percent honest. And I was like, huh, this is interesting.
Dr Taz: What is this? What is this all about? And so I'll never forget, they had this weekend conference in Denver, Colorado, and my sweet now husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, was like, let's go, we can't hurt anything. And so the two of us went off to Colorado, and I sat in this conference all day long, two days straight, I don't know what he was doing, but I started to learn words and terms and language that I had never heard before in all my conventional training.
Dr Taz: Right? Remember med school is a long road. Eight years to, to just get to residency, another three or four after. I heard about things like leaky gut. I heard about the fact that there's something called estrogen dominance or that there's a mind body connection. I'm laughing now because it seems so silly that I didn't know that.
Dr Taz: But these were ideas that I had not ever thought about. I learned about, you know, the impact of certain foods on our diet. And I learned about these older systems of medicine. like Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, homeopathy, and so much more, which we in medical school were taught to dismiss. As I continued to listen and to learn and to alternate between being shocked and bewildered, I realized I needed to learn so much more.
Dr Taz: And at that conference, I actually met a Chinese medicine practitioner. And I told him a little bit about what was going on with me. And I'll never forget his reaction. Those two days, by the way, were probably game changing, life changing days for me. But he looked at me, again, I got the finger in my face, but this time it was different.
Dr Taz: It was with a lot more compassion and concern. And he was like, Oh, very bad, very bad chi. You have very, very bad chi. And I'm like, What, what does that mean? What is chi? What is bad chi? What does that mean? And then I decided that I would learn from him and work with him. And what he was trying to tell me in the language of Chinese medicine is that I was completely depleted.
Dr Taz: I was depleted from a nutritional standpoint. I was depleted from an emotional standpoint. I was depleted from a lifestyle standpoint, right? With not sleeping and not eating and all these other behaviors that I had been engaging in. And if I wanted to get better. If I wanted to heal, then I had to fill the tank back up.
Dr Taz: But how do you do that? What do you do? What's your first step, your second step, your third step? And this is where that, again, aha moment for the second time went off. These older systems of medicine merged science with the human spirit. They didn't see it as separate. They embraced this idea of the five bodies, that there was a physical body, a mental body, an emotional body, an energetic body, a community body, and it all got mixed up in this pot of you.
Dr Taz: And really determine how you would present yourself into the world. Did you present with vitality and energy, chi or prana, different words, all trying to say the exact same thing? Or are you going to present in a state of isolation, feeling shame or guilt or embarrassment, a low vibration state, as many of these systems of medicine do?
Dr Taz: Many of these systems, as I came to learn, were actually rooted in agriculture, right? So they talked about things in terms of the earth and elements and seasons. Or they were rooted in assessing and determining energy. What was the energy of your face, your tongue, your pulse, but at the end of the day, they had a methodology, they had a system for evaluating their patients and one that recognized each person as unique and individual, not as a data point.
Dr Taz: or a lab value or a research study. This was life changing game changing for me so much so that I wanted more. So I became a licensed acupuncturist. I studied Ayurveda and got certified in Ayurveda. I became a nutritionist and the whole time I was kind of looking off in the periphery. And a fellowship in integrative medicine led by Dr.
Dr Taz: Andy Weil out in Arizona. And I was like, I think I need to do this. I need to do this. And I enrolled in that fellowship, I believe it was 2006. And again, the Pandora's box of information coming at me, but here's what happened in those two years of doing that fellowship. And to this day, I'm so grateful for that.
Dr Taz: I was able to take all this isolated knowledge that I had been gathering, right? Nutrition knowledge, Chinese medicine knowledge, my conventional Western training, Ayurvedic knowledge, homeopathy, and so much more, energy medicine knowledge. And I was able to bring it all together and think about patients in a strategic, very linear way, even though it was a holistic approach.
Dr Taz: And that's really what I want for everyone. As I continued to dig into this methodology, people around me started to notice. So friends would ask me questions, family members would ask me questions, patients in the ER would ask me questions. What do you do for this? I heard you're studying this stuff.
Dr Taz: What's the right tea to take, the right supplement, the right herb, or do I really need a medication? And as I'm doing this, my husband's over here, we're married now, watching all of this evolve and all of this unfold. And he looks at me and he says, I think you need to do something with this. And we did. He was starting his dental practice.
Dr Taz: And as the kind and loving person that he is, he's like, take the back two rooms. You don't have to worry about overhead. You're not running a business. You're simply doing. The work you love and the work you're so passionate about, you never even have to quit the ER and that's how we started the clinics and what happened next and what continues to happen to today was this yearning, this desire for information, for answers, for solutions that everybody was seeking.
Dr Taz: What was supposed to be a tiny consult based hobby practice with me doing eight to ten shifts in the ER and maybe four days in this tiny little practice turned into a full fledged calling because patient after patient was walking in the door with complaints and issues and symptoms that had been dismissed, denied, or they were simply not getting better.
Dr Taz: I have so many stories I could share and many of them still sit with me to this day. There was a patient who came in, maybe day two, I believe it was, and she had decided to stop seeing physicians. And her reasoning was because she had been mistreated, she had been gaslit, she had been dismissed. This is something that we are talking about still today, 20 years later.
Dr Taz: And it's real for women and for many people of color in our exam rooms. As she continued to explain her symptoms to me, she talked about having a lot of breast pain. And she said she'd been dealing with this breast pain probably for the last 18 months. I asked her why she hadn't gotten this checked out, and she said, I just don't trust anybody.
Dr Taz: But I've heard you're different. I've heard you blend together different systems of medicine, but you're still conventionally trained and you're an MD. So I listened to her story. I put her up on the bed. I did a conventional physical exam that we were taught to do in medical school, which includes a breast exam.
Dr Taz: Nowadays, by the way, doctors are often not touching their patients. And I was shocked and horrified to find a rock solid right breast. Guys, it wouldn't move under my hands. And I looked at her. I'm going to get chills. I looked at her and I asked, how long has this been there? How long has it been like this?
Dr Taz: She said, for about a year. Well, needless to say, she had breast cancer. And over the next few months, we worked together to support her fight to beat breast cancer. She survived for another 18 months and we tried to improve her quality of life using Nutrition and acupuncture and the knowledge about gut health and really helping her embrace her spiritual health in her community She fought a good fight, but she eventually died after all was said and done her partner came to me and Told me that she was so appreciative of the way I approached her how I guided her and how I was a source of support to her and her journey in fighting breast cancer.
Dr Taz: Now I'm not here to brag about all the things I did. That's not the point of the show. It's not the point of this episode by any means, but what I am trying to say is that the journey of getting well and getting answers and having someone you trust should not be this hard. or difficult. And it shouldn't keep people out of our exam rooms when they're getting into trouble.
Dr Taz: We have to change how we deliver health care. We have to change how we think about medicine and wellness and healing. And she's only one story out of the 50, 000 patients we've seen over the last 15 to 20 years. And we know that we have to do something differently. And that's why this show is so important.
Dr Taz: As time went on, the practice, the baby practice, the hobby practice, right? My fun little practice just got busier and busier to the point that my poor husband was now stepping over my patients, moving acupuncture needles from dental chairs. And honestly a little frustrated with me. I'll never forget the day he came through and there were people waiting outside our door, sitting on the waiting room floor.
Dr Taz: And he's looking around. He's like, We're done. This is over. You need your own space. And he was right. I think between all the patient stories and how I would deliver information and then they would go back out into the community and be told that I was a quack or I didn't know what I was doing, to the desperation and the yearning in these patients coming in from all over the place, driving, flying, you name it.
Dr Taz: Searching for answers. I knew this was no longer a hobby. This is something I had to throw myself into. And we couldn't do medicine light. It had to be a one stop shop for all. Today we spend a lot of time talking about integrative medicine, functional medicine, conventional medicine, you know, you name it, there's a term for it, right?
Dr Taz: But we're still chopping up medicine and health and wellness into tiny little pieces and then assuming everyone's talking to each other, which they're not, and they're still arguing about what's right and what's wrong for you, the patient. As I determined that this is my life's work and this is my calling, I moved out of the little baby dental space.
Dr Taz: We got our own building, we grew up, we did our own thing, and I started to build a team. And over the years, we slowly built teams, we added locations, and today we have over four locations, a telehealth platform, a team of about 12 providers, and a staff of over 50. And again, I'm telling you this not to brag, but I'm saying that we have built something that you, the patient, needs.
Dr Taz: And now, with this show, you We want to help the world understand how to bring medicine together. How do we merge Eastern and Western medicine? How do we merge the best that integrative medicine, functional medicine offers with what Western medicine can actually deliver? How do we make the exam room a better experience?
Dr Taz: How do we honor both the science and the spirit of each of us? And how do we finally establish so much. A consensus that the human experience is not a clinical trial or a single data point, but the merging, the melding of all of these different things together to make us whole. All of this is why the Whole Plus show is going to be the place where conversations change, evolve, and move to consensus.
Dr Taz: And I'm so glad that all of you are here. So if you're wondering why there's yet another health podcast or health show, we need it. We need one that brings people together and we need one that thinks about the human body holistically and brings together the idea of five bodies or probably more, but you, the person, the patient is having a human experience and needs a guide, a mentor to walk you through it.
Dr Taz: And I can't wait to introduce you to all the incredible people who are going to help us do just that. Welcome to Hole Plus.
