CEimpact Podcast

Transforming Pharmacy Practice with Functional Medicine

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Join us as we dive into the transformative power of functional medicine and its potential to revolutionize pharmacy practice. That’s right – we said revolutionize! Discover how addressing root causes, rather than just symptoms, is changing the way pharmacists approach patient care. Don’t you want to become a leader in this evolving field and elevate your practice site?!

HOST
Joshua Davis Kinsey, PharmD
VP, Education
CEimpact

GUEST
Josie Phillips-Ross, PharmD, ABAAHP, FAAMM
Pharmacist in Charge
Phillips Family Pharmacy and Functional PharmD Consulting
 
Pharmacist Members, REDEEM YOUR CPE HERE!
 
Not a member? Get a Pharmacist Membership & earn CE for GameChangers Podcast episodes! (30 mins/episode)


CPE INFORMATION
Learning Objectives
Upon successful completion of this knowledge-based activity, participants should be able to:
1. Explain the core principles of functional medicine and their application in pharmacy practice.
2. Identify key differences between conventional pharmaceutical care and functional medicine approaches.

0.05 CEU/0.5 Hr
UAN: 0107-0000-24-281-H01-P
Initial release date: 10/21/2024
Expiration date: 10/21/2025
Additional CPE details can be found here.

Take your pharmacy practice to the next level with our comprehensive course on functional medicine:
Beyond Prescriptions: A Pharmacists' Guide to Functional Medicine
6hr 30min  |  On Demand
Learn how functional medicine's patient-centered approach can impact the reduction of chronic diseases and how pharmacy teams can integrate functional medicine principles into daily pharmacy workflow. Course content will explain the influence of physiological processes on health and disease, and provide strategies for creating personalized treatment plans using functional medicine tools, resources, and patient case studies. Complete this course to excel in the essentials of functional medicine and lead the way in modern pharmacy care!

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Speaker 1:

Hey, ce Plan members From CE Impact, this is Game Changers. I'm Jen Moulton, president and Founder of CE Impact. If you're an avid listener, you know I've served as your host for quite some time now and the time has come to pass the reins to one of our very capable and gifted pharmacists, josh Kinsey. Dr Kinsey has been with CE Impact for more than three years now and is the mastermind behind our course content and curriculum. I'm so excited he's agreed to host the podcast because I think you are all going to learn so much from him and from all of our guests. But before I pass the torch to Josh, I wanted to get in a shameless plug for subscribing to Pharmacist by Design if you don't already. You can get CE for this podcast plus so much more for less than $10 a month. You're already listening, so there's no reason not to claim CE credit for learning. Check out the link in the show notes or go to CEimpactcom to enroll. Okay, back to the episode. Take it away, my friend.

Speaker 2:

Hey, CE Impact subscribers, Welcome to the Game Changers Clinical Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Josh Kinsey, and I'm thrilled about today's discussion. In this episode we're diving into the transformative world of functional medicine and how it's redefining the role of pharmacists. We'll explore how this approach, which focuses on addressing the root causes of health issues rather than just managing symptoms, is becoming a game changer in pharmacy practice. I'm excited myself to learn more about how pharmacists can integrate functional medicine into their practice to provide holistic, patient-centered care. And with that I'd love to introduce our guest. It's such a pleasure to welcome Josie Phillips-Ross to the podcast today. Josie, thank you so much for joining us to explore this groundbreaking topic of functional medicine in pharmacy Welcome.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely so, Josie, for our learners, just take a couple minutes to tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your practice site, and you can touch on your passion for functional medicine. But we're going to dig into that deeper as the episode goes throughout to kind of understand your start in that. But yeah, just tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 3:

Sure, so, as you said, I'm Josie Phillips Ross and I opened my pharmacy right outside of downtown Kansas City almost 12 years ago. My passion really at the beginning was customer service. So I had worked at a couple of different places that I didn't really see that and thought that I could really bring a change to the pharmacy world and bring back like the old school neighborhood vibes of pharmacy. So free delivery was a big part of that and bubble packing and just really being able to provide customer service at the most excellence that I could.

Speaker 3:

And that's why I opened and then, with opening, the pharmacy opportunities kind of presented themselves. We started compounding. Two years in, at the request of, actually, other practitioners were looking for a compounding site and so we started that. And then five years ago is when I got into functional medicine and really have a passion for women's health and hormones, not only me and myself and my family, my friends, but actually being able to fix and help patients as well.

Speaker 2:

That's great. That's great. And just a side note. So I know I don't know if many of you listeners out there know, but I lived in Kansas City for a few years and I'm very familiar with where Josie's store is located, and it's in this fabulous store called Red X. And it's just, it's such a treat. So if you're ever in the Kansas City area, visit Josie's store inside the Red X. You will not regret it, I promise. Actually, I wish that they could have experienced the original Red X. I know you guys just moved to a new store because the original is something special, Nostalgic for sure.

Speaker 3:

That's a great word store, because the original is something special I tell you nostalgic for sure, yeah, for sure, that's a great word.

Speaker 2:

So thanks again, Josie, for taking time out of your schedule today. I really want to jump in. This is something that has been on my radar for a few years. It was really not on the radar back when I had my store, so it's not ever something I dipped my toe in, but I do feel like if I had a store. You know, currently functional medicine is a space I would really want to be in. I just I find it fascinating and so I'm so excited to learn more about it for me today. So really briefly, let's just talk about the background. So if you could just give us an overview of functional medicine at its core, like what are the core principles? And really for those learners that maybe don't fully understand what it is, just give us just a brief overview. And really for those owners that maybe don't fully understand what it is.

Speaker 3:

Just give us just a brief overview. Yeah, okay, so in conventional care right now, we really treat symptoms and signs and we have diagnoses and we manage. We manage care is what we do as pharmacists, as anybody in the healthcare industry. We manage disease. Functional medicine is getting what we would call the root cause. So why do you have blood pressure? Why do you have diabetes? Like what things cause this and what can we do to mitigate these issues or prevent them in the future, so that it really gets it backpedals a bit, you know, to get to why things are happening and then stops them or prevents them from happening.

Speaker 2:

That's great. I think I've mentioned before on a podcast and, if not, I'll mention it many other times in the future. But I'm a huge murder-she-wrote fan and so I love, I love JB Fletcher and the fact that she's always a sleuth and I used to teach my students like you have to be a sleuth as a pharmacist. You've really got to dig deep. You can't just be like, okay, you have this, I'm going to put a patch on it. You've got to dig deeper and really find what is the root cause of this. Otherwise, you're just going to end up treating one side effect with another drug to treat, something else with another drug to treat and it just is this terrible ripple effect. So I love that you put on your JB Fletcher outfit for your day job and you're always sleuthing around trying to find the root cause. So that's great. Tell us a little bit about its evolution into pharmacy practice. Like how has functional medicine, kind of you know, creeped in the door of pharmacy practice?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean a couple of years ago I was pretty alone in this space, I must say I I didn't have any mentors and I was like one of one. That was hard for me to like create. You know the avenue for other people to go through, but it's gotten easier over time. I think the reception of functional medicine is literally getting out there and people are understanding that we need to look at these other things and maybe look at some environmental and dietary factors that are causing things. You know what I mean Getting down to the root cause, like I said. But you know, people are wanting help, they're wanting to be healthy. They don't, they don't want to have diseases. So that's where I come into play and actually logic problems are one of my favorite things to do, and so I treat every single patient like a puzzle, like I put. I lay it out like a puzzle and then I put the pieces back together and that's how I treat every patient.

Speaker 2:

That's great. That's great. I just find this whole topic and just this whole practice so fascinating I really want to talk about for those listeners out there. Obviously this episode is to kind of whet your appetite on the idea of functional medicine, to really kind of get it in front of you and to make sure that everybody understands the role that it's playing in pharmacy practice. I will plug really quickly.

Speaker 2:

Josie just helped out build a very, very robust course on building a functional medicine clinical service at your practice site. So if you're interested in this, if this episode really does whet your appetite, I encourage you to check that out in the course catalog as well, because it is something that can really change your practice model. But let's talk a little bit about what are some of the opportunities. So why would someone really want to focus on functional medicine and look at implementing that service? So tell us a few of the outcomes that you've experienced with your practice site and maybe some of the other ones that either you're hoping to or that others might could you know could see at their practice site.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So for me it deals down to like actually healing and helping patients. On the pharmacy side, I saw people, you know, getting prescriptions and taking more and more and more and coming to the counter and actually looking more unhealthy every single time they came in. And it was actually devastating because one of my first patients that I had, you know, almost 12 years ago like five years in, he went from zero medications to like 15 and literally developed early onset Alzheimer's and all sorts of stuff and I literally saw the progression over time and I was just like we have got to make some changes. Like as a society, as a nation, like we have to make changes. We have to figure out why everyone's getting sick, why is everyone obese, why is diabetes projected to be like 80% of our population soon? Like we have some severe issues that we need to, like as a united front, get to the bottom of. Like that's why I'm so passionate about it is because they're all there's always going to be two subsets of populations. There's going to be ones that want to take the pill and not do the work to actually find the root cause Right, but majority of people want to put in the work and get rid of symptoms and get rid of all of these things that they're feeling on a daily basis. And I don't feel like they're getting answers for an unconventional care model because they have short amount of time. They're treating you know a million things in five seconds and they're trying to write scripts as fast as they can. It's just the the model that is insurance has, you know, provided it does not actually give you healing, techniques like functional medicine can, like my consults are anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours and we take that time and we really peel back layers from birth, actual birth, um, to childhood traumas, to many things that have outlined and are added to their cause of symptoms to a degree. Then start peeling back the onion per se of like okay, this is affecting you, this is affecting you. Let's test this. There's so many opportunities for us now to really change the whole healthcare model in the next 10 years.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for sure. So as someone who's hearing you describe this, I'll be the naysayer and say, oh well, pharmacists aren't in psychiatric care, like we're not supposed to be there, they're shrink or whatever. But I mean that's not what you mean when you're saying like you're dealing with childhood traumas per se. No, but I mean right.

Speaker 3:

Every part of your like, even childhood like, comes back to play in adulthood. So, whether we do need to send you for that kind of care or not. Like those are things we got to work through. Diet is a main part of it. Movement your environment, like what you're doing on a daily basis. As far as toxins, those those are a big part of our conversation every single time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I mean you know you think about it. Obviously you know someone is a stressed or clinically depressed person that weighs on every, every other function in our body and you know I can speak from the experience that additional stress causes additional weight gain for me and just throws everything off balance. And then then I become depressed because I'm gaining weight and you know it's just. It can be a terrible cycle. So you know, if those things, like you said, if even if the root cause of that was bad habits and diet as a child, then you know that could be something to uncover, because then you know like, okay, we need to tackle your eating habits or we need to tackle your coping mechanisms or whatnot.

Speaker 3:

So yeah, and I feel like in conventional care, right, you have all these specialties, so you're sent to cardiovascular endocrine, but the body works as a whole so it's giving you flags, like and red flags every time you have symptoms. You really just have to correlate and put them all back together.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, correlate and put them all back together. Yeah, and that, I feel like that to me, makes me think of a course that we also recently did on polypharmacy and the fact of, like, does everybody know what's going on with you as a patient? Is everybody talking or are we just, is this specialist adding a medication and this specialist adding a medication? And they never talked to each other and maybe you didn't need either one of those in the first place, you know Right?

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, I love again just looking at this holistic approach of the patient and really trying to find the root causes. And you know, again I'll speak to the naysayers that are out there You're not like healing in the healing business. You're not healing people, you're trying to find the root cause. Someone may still, even after the root cause is found, may still have diabetes or high blood pressure, but then at least we're controlling some of those symptoms. We're hopefully getting them off of some of the medications you know and so that they're not on six different blood pressure medications you know.

Speaker 3:

I think pharmacists are actually in the best profession for this to advance their career, because we're realist, right?

Speaker 3:

Like we most pharmacists are realists, so we know that drugs can help things. We know that side of the world. But when we say healing, we're not like going all organic and herbal and all of that, Like we're really being a realist, Like I still want you to get a flu shot. But when I say healing I mean like symptoms, like I go for your core symptoms, Like how are you feeling on a daily basis? Those are the things that I go after.

Speaker 2:

Like quality of life, healing, like how, absolutely Like, don't you want to age?

Speaker 3:

like, with great vitality, I do.

Speaker 2:

Yep, exactly, yeah, totally understand. Okay, so how do you so? The opportunities here again are enhanced patient outcomes. They are that personalized care. Tell me how that resonates with your patients, like how have they accepted or embraced that, that feeling of personalized care?

Speaker 3:

And I feel like it's a whole nother level, Like most of the consults that I have. Like the patient will always tell me they finally feel heard.

Speaker 3:

And that is a big thing in our conventional care world, like it's not possible. It's not the time model, is not possible for a patient to feel heard. So I tried to let them speak as much as possible and then actually retell their own story back to them to make sure I didn't miss anything, just feeling hurt like somebody actually listened to you and is is going to approach these problems and give you an avenue for change and give you some things that you can do on a daily basis, not only with labs and supplements, but with your diet and your environment and all of that as well. So it's it's a different, it's a whole different care model. I would say like I love all of my patients but, this is way more intimate, way more.

Speaker 3:

You have a lot more control over all of the ancillary factors.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Again. So just elevated personalized care, I think. I mean, I don't think there's a single pharmacist out there that would say, oh, I don't want to personalize the care for my patients.

Speaker 2:

You know like I don't think that's any path we want to go down. If anything, we're looking for ways to make more personalized, because people don't like feeling like a number. You know they like to feel her, they like to feel seen, they like to feel like you know them and you appreciate them and you're there to help them and not just increase your numbers or increase your counts or whatever.

Speaker 2:

So, it's so great. Tell me how this feels. We've looked at that from the perspective of the pharmacist or from the patient. I want to hear how it feels for you as the pharmacist. How does it feel to be in that different role, that elevated role, really practicing at the top of your license and using all of this knowledge that you have to really, kind of you know, find the root causes? How does that make you feel as a pharmacist?

Speaker 3:

I feel like it's a completely different feeling when you are handing out a medication for infertility and you are actually healing somebody healing per se and and getting them pregnant without medication, mind blowing. Or if you have somebody on diabetes or you have an A1C of like even eight and bringing it back down to a 5.1 by just monitoring their blood sugar on a CGM. It's unheard of of what you can do in functional medicine practice. Gi is another place that you get outstanding results because you can do a stool sample and really look at what's going on and fix it, as opposed to people been going to GI doctors for 20 plus years and not getting answers and you can actually give them answers to what, what's been happening and why and fix it. It's very rewarding more like is that?

Speaker 2:

oh yeah, I'm sure is that getting into more like gut health and stuff like that?

Speaker 3:

oh yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah, stool samples. Yeah, you go into gut health for sure yeah, that's great.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay. So I kind of cut you off there because you got me intrigued with that. So, for those that didn't hear it, what does it do to you as a pharmacist?

Speaker 3:

I'm just saying it's very rewarding. It's very rewarding as a pharmacist. That's great and even doing my, my parents I literally helped them first. My whole family is who I helped first and got off medications. I'm like, okay, this works. And even did myself like I helped heal myself and my friends. And that's when I was like everybody needs to know these concepts, everyone needs to learn this education.

Speaker 2:

And if they truly want to fix and help themselves, then they need to learn this. Yeah, that's great. Okay, so we've talked about the rosy parts of it, right? So there's always the downsides, the negatives, the whatnot.

Speaker 3:

So what are some of the challenges? Cost is a challenge, yeah yeah, Testing. Testing is not cheap and typically it's a preventative. Measures are not covered by insurance. Now I'm in functional medicine isn't covered yet. So the cost that's where I typically present my patient like different care models based on what they can budget, Like I want to give.

Speaker 3:

I want to give everyone the education they need, obviously, but I want to give them what they can budget as well. Costs are always a concern and I feel like, since it's a newer topic I mean, I've been doing this for five years now, but it's still a very new space for not only patients but providers and practitioners to learn more. There's a lot of misunderstanding. There's not, there's not like one school of thought for it. There's not standardized guidelines there. I have three degrees now in functional medicine because I want to cover all my bases and learn all the education that is out there to offer for functional medicine, but that's also a drawback.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so do you. So these are pass through fees for your patients. So your patients are paying, you know, like a cash fee for service type thing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, all of it's cash. Yeah, um, and, but they got to pay for the testing and, and that sometimes isn't cheap. I'll always give options without testing as well cheap.

Speaker 2:

I'll always give options without testing as well. Okay, yeah, so it does sound like training gaps are one of the, probably one of the biggest things. And and again, you know, for those that are listening, that their appetite is being wet and they're like this is very interesting and something I want to, you know, consider and go down the path of. You know, I think that that would be, for me, at least a rate limiting step in the beginning is that I don't feel prepared for this, and so you know, understanding that there is a little bit of effort that needs to be had on the pharmacist part to learn a bit more about it.

Speaker 3:

So that's what I say a little bit. It was a lot of it. It was a lot, a lot of it. Yeah, I mean a lot of going back for three different degrees.

Speaker 1:

That's a that's a lot of it. It was a lot of it. Yeah, I mean going back for three different degrees that's a.

Speaker 3:

That's a lot, a lot of it. Yeah, it was, but when you find something that you're so passionate about, like you, just you're never going to stop learning, and that's one of the great parts, too.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's exciting. So again I'll plug the course that Josie really had a hand in helping create in the catalog again on functional medicine and really kind of giving pharmacists those core principles to kind of start out. So again, obviously she can't impart on you her three degrees in just a course but can certainly help you kind of slowly dip your toe into the water of functional medicine and really kind of build and start a service at your practice site.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, so that's a way to get around that challenge of lack of training or the training gaps. So something to consider there. So for those individuals, again, I feel like that, since this is such a new space, there are going to be again those naysayers. So for those that say this is not traditional pharmacy practice, like this has no place in pharmacy, what would you say to that person?

Speaker 3:

I would say that, as a pharmacist owning your own pharmacy, you have to make a change and obviously, with reimbursements the way it is, there's so many things that are not in our favor as a community pharmacy. I know you have pharmacists from all different walks of life, but I know there are time constraints and there is tons of stress in this industry right now. I know we're going to be impacted by even low amount of pharmacists in the market. I mean the schooling is not taking in enough to actually produce and maintain the amount of pharmacists we need. So that's going to impact everyone's job, like everyone's going to be busier and not getting as much vacation. So I mean there's there's so many ways.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I I'd say like I mean healthcare as a whole, we have to make a change and pharmacy in particular. We have to make a change Like we have to pivot from where we're at in the healthcare industry and we have to make a change Like we have to pivot from where we're at in the healthcare industry and we have to make changes for good. We just do.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean it's a known fact that that we can't continue to practice as is. I mean, everybody would agree with that. Everybody would say, yeah, the model can't continue as it currently stands. So, you know, I think embracing other opportunities and other ideas is important, and if this is one, that is it. Just, it just makes sense. Just because we're a pharmacist and we deal with medications doesn't mean that that should be. The only thing we do is dole out medications. You know, be trying to help our patients and the overall outcomes should be improved. And and I mean yeah, we as a community should be fully embracing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and I think as a whole, like most pharmacists, got into this profession to help people right. There was a point in my pharmacy like I knew I was providing excellent customer service. Like excellent I would even do deliveries. And like help people take out their trash. The customer service was unparalleled. But there was a point where I was like I'm not helping people, I'm not healing, I'm not helping them get better, I'm just giving out more and more and more prescription and watching people decline. And I just couldn't do it anymore. For my own livelihood, I want to be healthy, I want to be vibrant, like selfishly, I want my whole family too, and so I had to find a different way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, that's great, great feedback and great, a great perspective on it and for people to kind of really take a step back and to see where, where are you and your journey and are you ready to to embrace something different and make a change.

Speaker 2:

So, let's talk just quickly and a few minutes that we have left, just a little bit about implementation. So, again, the point of this episode is not to like produce functional medicine pharmacist after hearing about it for 30 minutes, but to whet their appetite, to make them excited about it, to dig deeper, to hopefully take a course on it and and you know what are what is like, what is the the first few things to think about from implementation standpoint how do you even, how did you even start this? How did you? You said you started with your family, but then how did you transition that to your patients at your practice site?

Speaker 3:

So I truly started with. A doctor, reached out to me like 10 years ago and said if you can have your compounding site up, I will send you all my compounding patients for bioidentical hormones. And then he also requested that I get a bioidentical hormone degree. And sure, why not? At that point I was young and, you know, ready for anything, and so I kind of started with that. And then, once I learned how to maneuver and manipulate hormones and got people to feel better and have less symptoms, they started asking me about other things. They were like hey, you fixed my hormone, can you fix my gut? And I was like I don't know, I think I could try. Let me figure out what I need to do next in order to do that. And so that's kind of led me down to this rabbit hole of functional medicine and the training and then being able to help them in different ways. It was really brought on by my community asking for it. So people were asking for that kind of help.

Speaker 3:

Other ways that pharmacists can implement and find ways to implement it in your already everyday pharmacy life like easy ways are, you know, nutrient depletions like micronutrient, depletions from drugs, or even different things like caffeine. Educating patients. That's a that's a great avenue to start with. Or or get some more education on nutrition and just start talking to your patients about that Whenever it comes up. If you have a pre-diabetic patient coming to pick up a medicine, maybe, start talking to them and start the ball rolling on. You know, nutrition and lifestyle changes and stuff like that. Those are easy ways to start implementation into what you're already doing.

Speaker 2:

I was going to say that. I mean, that almost sounds like what we're already doing. You're, it's just, or. What we already should be doing is seeing that, you know, a patient is headed down a prickly path and we need to try to help them get off of that path. You know, if they've been diagnosed as a pre-diabetic, or if they've been, you know, cautioned, that their weight is getting out of control or whatnot, or their blood pressure is being affected by their weight gain, and so forth, yeah, those are. Those have always been those points where we, as a pharmacist, should say hmm, let me help you, not just well, can't wait to see you when you get on a blood pressure med next time. You know, like that, that shouldn't be our response to that. So okay that's great.

Speaker 2:

That's great feedback and great tips. So we talked a little bit about, even previously, how this has impacted your patients and how you know their quality of life and how they tell you that and they finally feel heard and seen. How do you, how does that word, does that spread by word of mouth? Are you heavily marketing this service or are you relying on your patients to tell their friends at bridge club and whatever you know? How are you getting this word out? How are you building your practice?

Speaker 3:

I mean for me, when I was sitting through most of the education it, it really made me think, like, how do I want to evolve my practice in this? Most of it was the education piece of the puzzle is I wanted to. I wanted to be public knowledge. We're living in this era where we do not know these things and I need everyone to know this. I need to know.

Speaker 3:

You know endocrine disruptors can actually change puberty and make it go. People need to know this stuff and what is changing in your environment, what is changing your body, what is going in, and you know, people need to know it. So, first and foremost, education was top for me so social media was an easy way for me to get out education for people.

Speaker 3:

Um, it was free, so that is where I started, and typically I do emails now for education purposes, but for most of it is trying to get the education out that we need to change and how we need to change. As far as marketing, nope, I do barely any zero.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so if I'm paraphrasing, but it sounds like what you're saying is that you are providing these like tips, and tricks and education tools for your patients and then basically it's making them say huh. Let me ask you more questions.

Speaker 2:

And then you're able to move into the fact that I can help you, I can service. So I think people just understanding that, rather than approaching it as always marketing a service, it could be simply the fact of marketing your expertise as a pharmacist with great knowledge, with vast amount of subjects, and then having your patients realize that and ask you questions. So it doesn't have to be. You know, I've got to set aside $5,000 a month to market and buy ads on Facebook and ads, and you know, whatever you know, it could be something as simple as, like you said, educating your patients and then having them think about it and then ask you additional questions. So yeah, that's fascinating, so that's great.

Speaker 2:

I feel like I've said the word fascinating 20 times, but that's exactly what I would sum up Functional medicine is fascinating, so, yeah. So impact then you know you had mentioned even your community is who asked for this and who continues to ask for this. Do you see that you are going even beyond your borders of, like, kansas city? Do you have patients that come in from rural?

Speaker 3:

areas or other cities for functional medicine most of my consults are virtual and um from out of state. Most of them are and I even have some canadians too wow, wow, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So for anyone on the call that would be questioning, because I would have the same question if you are doing out of state, how does that play into your license and being licensed in Missouri or whatnot?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so you're technically not prescribing. You're talking about lifestyle changes and supplements and things like. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

So basically, you're not practicing as a pharmacist in a sense of mailing medications or even anything like that. So this mail order issues or anything like that, it's typically consultations, and you said in the beginning, being that sleuth, digging deep, finding the root cause, recommending products, changes, yeah, okay, great, this is also enlightening. I love it. All right, so tell me just a little bit about again, because I want to be sure that people are hearing it how one of the biggest impacts for you is on yourself as a pharmacist, and maybe because you said it's very rewarding and it's very. It's allowing, obviously, your business to stay open even in these hard times of reimbursement issues and and PBMs attacking and all that kind of stuff. So tell me a little bit about. Then. You've said a lot of people have reached out to you. So have other pharmacists reached out to you and have they taken this journey? And then what is their kind of feedback been? Have you ever had anybody be like?

Speaker 3:

thanks, wasting my time, josie, this was no, I've actually treated a lot of pharmacists, so a lot of pharmacists have been my patients. I know that their adrenals are mostly shot and their cortisol levels are all over the place uh from the stress that we and obviously after COVID, everything got more stressful.

Speaker 3:

I feel like, um, more demanding, our job is more demanding and more stressful. I feel like more demanding, our job is more demanding. And yeah, so I feel like feedback from most people that we've gotten. I mean, I like to preface that the process is not a one size fits all quick fix.

Speaker 3:

It's not it's just not.

Speaker 3:

When you're treating gut bacteria and doing gut dysbiosis protocols, when you're treating gut bacteria and doing gut dysbiosis protocols and it's going to take months and I tell everyone that up front, I say, well, what we're doing is we're making small changes over time and it's going to snowball into a great effect.

Speaker 3:

So even with hormones and fixing your hormones, I track hormones in cycles for months and then we make changes and fix things and figure out what each bio individual you know needs and then go from there. So I feel like it's transformative in the way we look at health care because it's so individualized. We are our own unique beings, like we're made up genetically, and one thing is not going to fix everyone. One thing is not going to be and I'll be all and fix you to fix everyone. One thing is not going to be an end-all, be-all and fix you. So that's why, where the testing comes in and the consultations come in and everything from that standpoint comes in, because you can treat them individually Like no one's plan is the same. I don't ever put out the same plan and protocol for anybody.

Speaker 2:

Sure, yeah, that makes sense and I love that. That's kind of how we're ending here is really circling back to the idea that this is very individualized, personalized care for your patients. Yeah, that's great. Well, before we wrap up, what I always like to do is kind of circle back to the game changer, obviously, since that is what our podcast is all about is talking about the things that are really changing the landscape of pharmacy practice. So summarize for our learners, josie, what's the game changer here? What do they need to walk away from this episode? And you know, what do they need to think about or to do in this?

Speaker 3:

space of functional medicine. So tell us about the game changer here. Yeah, I think the game changer for me is being able to change how we look at health care and how we look at being healthy and really look at root causes and fix those in patients and provide key education for each patient to fix it, no matter what their budget is. The game changer is to help fix diseases without medications and it's crazy, coming from a pharmacist, that owns a pharmacy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that sounds super wild, being that this is a pharmacy podcast, but, yeah, I hear you. I hear you.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but, you also have to think the way we're going, with our disease rates and obesity rates and all of that, the way we're going is not sustainable. The industry of healthcare is not sustainable. There's going to be a breaking point. There's not going to be enough healthcare workers, or even healthy healthcare workers, to provide service to patients. We're going to reach just a crisis level. So we have to make changes now.

Speaker 2:

We have to. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree, wow. Well, as again, I'll say it one more time Fascinating stuff. Thank you so much. That's all we have time for this week. Josie, again can't thank you enough for giving time out of your busy schedule. I'll plug one more time the functional medicine course in the catalog if you're interested in that, if Josie's fascinating episode today has really whet your appetite, please check that out. Thank you so much, josie, for your time.

Speaker 3:

No problem, thank you.

Speaker 2:

So if you're a CE Plan subscriber, be sure to claim your CE credit for this episode of Game Changers by logging in at CE Impact and, as always, have a great week and keep learning. I cannot wait to dig into another game-changing topic with you all next week. Thanks so much.