This week on the podcast, we feature Dr. Aimie Apigian. This episode is an incredibly inspiring story about her journey from general surgery residency to addiction medicine, and now to teaching other practitioners and doctors about the nervous system and how it affects addiction. Dr. Apigian was also enrolled in our Practice Accelerator program while she was in her residency. She knew that there was a different type of medicine she wanted for her future. It is an amazing story. Make sure to tune in!
Highlights include:
- Amy’s journey from conventional medicine to becoming a foster mom and changing her mindset to functional medicine
- How the Practice Accelerator helped her structure her business
- The addition of a group program to her practice and how the need for that has grown
- And so much more!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
James Maskell: Welcome to the Evolution of Medicine podcast, the place health professionals come to hear from innovators and agitators leading the charge. We cover the latest clinical breakthroughs in health technology, as well as practical tools to help you transform your practice and the health of your community. This podcast is brought to you by the Lifestyle Matrix Resource Center, who provide a range of options to help you deliver successful, effective, functional, and integrative medicine. To find out more and to get started, go to goevomed.com/lmrc. That’s goevomed.com/lmrc.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. This week, we feature Dr. Aimie Apigian and it’s an incredibly inspiring story about her journey from general surgery residency to addiction medicine, and now to teaching other practitioners and doctors about the nervous system and how it affects addiction. Really, really inspiring story of what is possible in five years, if you align the medicine that you want to do with the work that you’re doing every day. It’s also a great testament to our Practice Accelerator and the Accelerator is the sponsor for this week’s podcast. If you go to goevomed.com/Accelerator, you can find out about our signature program. We’ve been running it for five years. Aimie was one of the first people that came through the program and ultimately she has accelerated her career to have significant success. Check out the Practice Accelerator, goevomed.com/Accelerator. It’s a great episode. Enjoy.
So, hello, and welcome back to the Evolution of Medicine, Dr. Aimie Apigian. Great to have you back, Aimie.
Aimie Apigian: Thank you, James. It’s always good to see you.
James Maskell: You know, we first met when you were taking the Practice Accelerator. I think you were in one of the very first classes back in 2016, and it’s been amazing to sort of follow your journey online since then and so forth. But with this conversation around addiction and the reinvention of mental health and everything that we’ve got going on this year, I thought that it was just perfect timing to bring you in and share your journey because I know that it will be inspiring for doctors and other practitioners out there. So let’s go back. I know everyone who ends up in functional medicine or integrative medicine has an interesting pathway about how they got there. So, let’s start right at the beginning, I guess.
Aimie Apigian: Yeah, it has been quite the journey and you were right. I was one of the very first members of your Accelerator Program back in 2016, and I remember I was still a resident at that time and I would be sitting in Kaiser Permanente, that’s where I was doing my rotations at the time, and on my lunch breaks, I’d be sitting there doing my homework, James, doing my homework. You would’ve been proud of me. But looking back, what a journey and really appreciate you having helped give me the framework from the beginning of, hey, this is how you do it. This is how you can structure things. And, for me, it’s been not only a journey into functional medicine, but then even creating this very, I would say, uncommon niche within functional medicine. And so, having your support, having your framework from the beginning really helped, and yeah, it’s been a wild five years, so excited to share that with people.
James Maskell: Wonderful. Well, look, so let’s get into it. You’re a resident. What kind of residency were you in and what was the path ahead of you before that?
Aimie Apigian: James, I started with general surgery residency. That is where I started. So as conventional as you can get, as hard science as you can get. And I went through medical school at Loma Linda University. I actually also did a master’s in biochemistry while I was there, so I was very much into the sciences. I love to geek out over the biochemistry and I, at that time, even was very much not even a believer in things like yoga and things like some of these softer sciences. It was just like, no, no, no, let’s focus on medicine and the science, the hard science of it all.
And then what happened is that I actually started becoming a foster parent and I adopted the first child that they put with me. So Miguel came to me when he was four years old, had had a very rough early four years, and I thought that I knew what to do. And so I took him in, adopted him five months later, and that really rocked my world because everything that I thought that he would respond to, he wasn’t responding to at all. The therapies, the conventional modalities just weren’t even touching him, and some of them were making his behaviors and his emotions worse. And so it really, really took me down a path of trying to figure out what does he need? What is going on in that brain of his? And it took me out of these hard sciences and really landed me squarely in, all right, this is now a very personal experience, right?
And so, during that time, I was still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life, ended up going into a general surgery residency, where I was there for three, four years, and then had a huge health crash, and my body just shut down. And I went into some pretty severe chronic fatigue. I had labs drawn at that point. This was all still conventional medicines. Didn’t even know about functional medicine yet. And my autoimmune markers were high, things like my ferritin were really low without an explanation and not responding to iron treatment. Vitamin D was really low and not responding to treatment. And so all of these things started to come up that didn’t have answers. Didn’t have answers at least with the conventional medicine.
And during that process, though, I was so sick that I had to take a medical leave. So, for about four months there, this was all I did was just throw myself into trying now to figure out what was going on in my body, and that’s how I discovered functional medicine. So I discovered functional medicine, not in terms of, hey, this is the type of work that I want to do, but hey, I’m trying to find answers for myself. And so even when I went to that first AFMCP, I did that in Atlanta, that was all just to help myself. It was not yet, because that’s what I wanted to do, I was still very much a general surgery resident.
James Maskell: Yeah, it’s such an amazing story, and it captures so many other stories that I’ve heard over the years. Like one is, either yourself or a loved one breaking down to a point where nothing works and having to search for other ideas. But, as I would go to all conferences, I went to every year, for 10 years, went to all kinds of conferences, I would meet so many doctors and I would say they were loving it. They were really feeling like they were learning so much, and yet when I asked them what they did, they just still had that conventional job, and they still went about doing that conventional medicine work. And that was actually at the beginning. The sort of the purpose of the Accelerator was really to start to think like, how could we get people into aligning the medicine that they know is the right medicine for them with the patient population?
Because I think even back then, it was very difficult to make the switch from conventional medicine to functional medicine. There were fewer doctors that had done it. There was like, not as many…it was harder. It required a lot more capital back then because technology wasn’t what it was. And we were just sort of coming over the edge, where now you could actually maybe run a practice off a laptop and you could schedule people with an online scheduler and you could do telemedicine. So I’m really grateful to hear your story and not surprised. And if I had been at that AFMCP and we would have met, it would have been actually kind of a classic story, which is someone who went to go and look for new ways of recovering their own health, and then as Dr. Bland would say, once they’re infected with the virus of functional medicine, it’s hard to shed.
Aimie Apigian: It is. And that’s exactly what I found, where it’s like my health changed so much as a result of applying the functional medicine principles that it’s like, this is what I want to share. This is where I’m seeing results. And, at that time, I tried to go back into general surgery and realized that the schedule, the hours was not conducive for my health, for the symptoms that I had, and so I needed to leave surgery. So for me, it then became, okay, well, what am I going to do? And that’s when I started to apply some of the functional medicine principles that I had learned to my trauma work. And by then, I was helping other families who also had adopted their children or who their children had had some early attachment disruptions, and so had some behavioral and emotional dysregulation. And it’s like, wait a second.
I’m finding when I bring this over to trauma work, we’re getting faster results with the actual attachment and bonding process that I’m facilitating between parents and their kids. Interesting. So that’s kind of what started me then, on this new niche that I landed myself in, in terms of trauma and addiction and how to actually accelerate that healing process through the use of functional medicine principles.
James Maskell: Yeah, it’s really interesting, and I’m glad you mentioned the niching part of it, because I think once practitioners and doctors get into functional medicine and they see, look, the principles are pretty universal, like you can really improve a lot of different diseases with applying this sort of systems-thinking root cause lifestyle first approach, and in the Accelerator, we really try and encourage practitioners to find like, who are the first hundred people that you’re going to help, right? You’re going to really build your skill set. You’re going to learn a lot about one particular area of physiology. And so, a lot of times doctors are kind of like resistant to that because they’ve just got this amazing toolbox and they can help everyone. Was it really the foster care experience and that journey that led you to want to apply it in that little niche?
Aimie Apigian: Yes, and I would say that it wasn’t intended at first. It was just like, hey, I’m learning all this stuff over here. I’m realizing that it’s helping my own physical health, but also James, like I started realizing, wait a second, this is also helping my emotional health. This is also helping my mental health. I wasn’t expecting that. At the time, I was on two antidepressants, and I’m realizing that, wait a second, I’m feeling more emotionally and mentally stronger and more resilient, that I’m working on getting off of these medications. This is stuff that I can totally apply over here to my trauma work with families. And then what I did at that time was when I left surgery, I decided that I was going to become board certified in addiction medicine.
So at that time, James, I was still like, I don’t know if I can be full-time functional medicine. I don’t know if I can make trauma my niche. No one else has forged this path yet, and so I don’t know if I can do that, so let me kind of have my security blanket and let me still do the conventional medicine thing. And so I left surgery and went down to Loma Linda, where we actually finally met. I think I went out to one of the conferences in Santa Monica, one of the functional forums, and we met there in person. And so I became board certified in preventive medicine and addiction medicine. And now I just incorporate my functional medicine into those things. So it’s very much a nervous system focus for my niche, with how I use functional medicine. Everybody else can have all the other problems. I’m going to focus on the nervous system because, for me, that’s what I see as the root of people getting stuck in trauma patterns and also their addiction patterns.
James Maskell: Yeah, it’s an amazing story, and I wouldn’t imagine there were many general surgery residents that followed you into preventive and addiction medicine, but that’s amazing.
Aimie Apigian: Not ones that I knew of, yeah.
James Maskell: You know, it’s just amazing how our own life experience ends up guiding our path. So for practitioners who are seeing people who are addicted, and maybe you could just share, what are some of the lessons that you learned from functional medicine that you’ve applied to addiction medicine that you feel are critical to unwinding these kind of cases in an elegant way?
Aimie Apigian: Absolutely. So when I look at the nervous system, I look at everything that will keep it stuck. And, in my work with trauma, I look at people who are stuck in what I call either a sympathetic response and they’re chronically stressed, or they’ve gone into what I call a chronic freeze and especially like a functional chronic freeze, where they’re constantly in overwhelm. And then many people go back and forth between overwhelm and stress all day long. And those are patterns in the nervous system that get wired in, and they are really the root cause of so many diseases. I mean everything, right, because the nervous system really drives the immune system, it drives the cardiovascular system, it drives the adrenals.
So the nervous system I see as the root cause of so many physical conditions, chronic pain, especially chronic fatigue, as well as then the emotional, mental, and all of the addictions. Addictions are all about regulating the nervous system, and people just are finding coping mechanisms to self-medicate their nervous system. And so the nervous system is really the focus of all of my work. So when I look at the principles from functional medicine that I’m applying, everything is through that lens of how is it affecting the nervous system? So one of the places that I start with often is…I mean, I do a lot with the gut, but also one of the first places that I start is the mitochondria and the whole energy system.
Because for people who are in this chronic freeze and overwhelm state, the body goes into overwhelm because it does not have enough energy to meet that stress. And so one of the first things that can be helpful for people is bringing in more energy to that system, just so that we can decrease the overwhelm and they can actually do some of this other work that’s needed to be done. And so then we look at everything that’s affecting the nervous system. What is everything that’s draining the energy? And we look at inflammation, we look at the gut, we look at the digestive system because that’s a big source of energy drain on the whole system. So I do a lot with food sensitivities. I do a lot with actually looking at how is your absorption? How is your digestive system?
Anytime that people have had what I call stored trauma in their body, and I think at this point kind of everybody has had some degree of stored trauma just from life in their body. It affects the vagus nerve, and so it affects the digestive system. And so depending to the degree that it has affected that, that’s where a lot of the energy drain comes from, either because of inflammation or because your body’s just not even able to really absorb the nutrients that you’re taking in. But then there’s this whole category of toxins and imbalances. And so copper excess, or zinc deficiency, micronutrients.
And so there are so many things that fall into these categories of what is actually affecting the nervous system and really pushing the whole biology system closer to that line of overwhelm, that we’re just going to shut down rather than being able to stay in parasympathetic, relaxed, connected, calm, at our best physical health, best mental and emotional health, and certainly out of that sympathetic and stress. But overwhelm is such a strong state that so many people are in these days, that addressing the overwhelm first is usually what I start with and using the functional medicine principles to specifically look at what is causing overwhelm in the system, is what I’m doing.
James Maskell: And so, are there any special tools that you lean on early on in the process to kind of understand where the overwhelm is being driven from? And obviously, there’s the timeline and the matrix and so forth, but are there certain things related to nervous system overwhelm that you’ve either created, developed or thought through that would help other practitioners who probably are seeing people like that, but it may not be their first port of call?
Aimie Apigian: Yeah. And this is where I’ve kind of taken the functional medicine principles and then made it work for my people in my work. Because when people are coming to me and they’re in overwhelm, giving them a timeline is not going to work, right? They are going to be overwhelmed just by that work, but also overwhelmed when they look at their whole life and all that has happened in their lifetime. So I actually don’t do that right at the beginning. When I’m first seeing them, I need to give them relatively a quick win and bring some energy into that system, into the overwhelm, so that I can pull them out of that overwhelm enough for us then to be able to do the timeline, then to be able to do all this other stuff. So, in that sense, this is kind of how I’ve taken those and made it my own.
And so the quick wins really are bringing in energy to the system. So I’m looking at, are there specific things that are obvious, right, like their diet, their sleep, their lifestyle, those are some big obvious ones. It’s like, hey, let’s get you on a regular schedule. Let’s get you a sleeping. Let’s get you getting the sugar out of your diet because those are big energy drains. But then also bringing in maybe some CoQ10, maybe some NAD, maybe some things into the system that we can give you enough energy to pull you out of the overwhelm, that then we can actually start the process of breaking everything down, seeing which categories are the most important ones for them to address first that are affecting and keeping their nervous system stuck in that overwhelm state.
James Maskell: That makes a lot of sense. You know, I would imagine that once you deal with that overwhelm, and once you get the nervous system a bit reregulated, there’s downstream impacts on, let’s say, the digestion. I mean, certainly—
Aimie Apigian: Exactly.
James Maskell: Speaking to chiropractors over the years, they really are focused on the nervous system and the regulation of the nervous system. And yet, sometimes like I’ve seen it with my six month-old daughter, if you get the nervous system regulated, they start pooping, where they weren’t before.
Aimie Apigian: Exactly, and that’s what I find, in that when we do this for about the first three months, and I’m also introducing some body-based, what I call somatic body-based tools and exercises that work directly with the nervous system as well, when we do all of that for the first three months, they are at a new baseline. And so now we’re really just identifying, okay, now that things have settled, what is the next best step for us now? And for some people that’s looking at some of the biochemical imbalances. For other people, that’s the gut stuff. For some people, it’s brain inflammation. For everybody it’s different, what seems to be the next best step in addressing their biology, even though for most people, it’s kind of everything. But what is the next best step? And when we do this work first for about the first three months, their nervous system is at a new place, which means that their whole system is just at a different baseline than when they first came to me.
James Maskell: That’s great. I’d love to just switch paths a little bit here, because it’s obvious that by taking the functional medicine principles and starting to implement them in this niche of addiction medicine, you’ve learned a lot clinically, and I’m sure there’s so much more that you can share on what you’ve learned, but I’d love to just take a moment to just reframe and talk about your practice journey, because I know that you were a resident during the Accelerator, and then you started this addiction medicine practice. And then, more recently, you started to share a little bit more broadly with the general population what you’ve learned.
And I’d love just, for practitioners, we’re here certainly at the Evolution of Medicine to provide inspiration where practitioners see other doctors that they think, oh, I could do that or that looks like a journey, a path that I want to go on. But also, that the models, the models by which you escape conventional medicine, you start something that is really in alignment with what you want to do in the world. And then the model that then can be a foundation for where your career goes after that. And there’s many different paths that you can go down, but our thesis with the Accelerator was if you had this education infrastructure that you built, then it could lead you to one clinic, a series of clinics, a celebrity sort of journey in writing books and making podcasts and doing content. So can you take us through sort of like the business model from the clinic and then sort of where you’ve gone since then?
Aimie Apigian: Yeah, so when I first started, I was very much still in conventional medicine. So what I did when I was going through the Accelerator Program, I started to create this educational curriculum that you’re talking about, and then start to implement that with my current patients in the conventional medicine clinic. And I found that really helpful, not because they all responded to that, but because it started to help tease out for me, what was actually helpful, what was actually useful, and what I needed to redo entirely. What was landing for people and just what was too complicated or they weren’t ready for that. And so that really helped me, not only learn that process of listening to my patients and being able to make some pivots when I saw things that weren’t working, but then really solidified my ability to teach some of these principles in a setting where they weren’t necessarily expecting it. And it’s not like I was getting extra compensation for that. It was more just the experience at that point of how to do this.
And so then what I did was start to write blogs. So I started to write blogs, started to do some videos, and started to take what I was learning and how to explain this stuff to people in my clinic, and share that with a broader audience. At that point, I still was not even offering consultations or anything online. It was just let me start this experience of building an audience, building a list, and doing it through writing blogs and starting some videos on YouTube. And then what has developed is then moving into, all right, now I’m going to offer some online discovery calls and I’m going to start moving into telemedicine. And I did that at the same time as trying to kind of share some space with a local functional medicine doctor. And I was focused just on the addiction piece. I was just focused on maybe like some stress and trauma piece. She was doing more of the general stuff.
And so that was a great way for me to lower my expenses for having to start a whole clinic myself. And yet, again, be able to start to do work that I enjoyed and be able to leave some of the conventional addiction medicine stuff behind and really just see what lands for people, what works for people. What is the process that I need? What’s that customer journey that I have to walk them through? And you think that you know all this stuff going into it, but when you actually start implementing it, you realize, ah, I forgot this piece, or they’re actually not ready to move along as quickly as I thought. So I’ve got to change the way in which I do things. So helpful in that process as uncomfortable and awkward as it can be, right, how useful it is to start small for me and implement and be able to change things when I was still building up to it, and hadn’t left my conventional medicine job yet, but was still doing this half and half at that point.
James Maskell: Yeah, it’s such a great point. I just wanted to just focus on that for a moment, because I know that when practitioners are trying to make a switch from their old world to their new world, a different clinical operating system and a new practice model, doing both of those simultaneously is a recipe for failure and burnout, honestly. And so it’s really smart to be able to create a low overhead environment, learn as you go. We’ve seen so many practitioners in the Accelerator renegotiate their conventional medicine contracts so that they can keep some money coming in and then go and learn and learn clinically, but also start to learn operationally, because when you’re empowering people to make behavior changes, it’s a different system.
Aimie Apigian: It is.
James Maskell: You need to build systems that you don’t need in conventional medicine when you’re just having appointments and making prescriptions.
Aimie Apigian: And especially having a niche like I had, it was hard to do some of the group visits for the functional medicine piece, because I didn’t have enough people that were interested in addictions. And so, again, just kind of taking everything that the Accelerator Program taught me, but having to make it my own and tailor it to the niche that I had chosen and my people. And you learn so much along the way. You learn so much from the actual process of implementing. And that was hard for me at first to make that jump from just writing blogs, doing some videos, still kind of staying behind the curtain to actually, okay, I’m going to actually start opening doors and seeing people. There was some fear in that step, but that’s where I learned so much and really then was able to start making this my own and learning from my people, from my niche, what was needed, what was the most helpful?
And so from there, it was a matter of building as my audience built with my list, then now there was a need for a group program. And so that’s the next piece that I brought in. And my first program was called Take Charge of My Trauma. And even with my addiction medicine things, like I start with the nervous system. I start with the trauma piece, because that’s fueling the addiction. And so once we calm down the nervous system, once we have the tools to regulate the nervous system, the biology is in a better place, now we can look at actually, okay, let’s take you off of the pain pills. Let’s take you off of the benzodiazepines. Let’s take you off of the alcohol. But we can’t start with that without building the system up first.
And so having that group program was the next best step for me. And, again, you start into this and you’re like, James, what am I doing? I don’t know how to do this. Okay, you’ve given me a framework. Okay, let me do this. Let me start implementing, let me start slow. So I started with only a group of eight people in my first online group course and was able to troubleshoot. Okay, this is working. This is not working. And because it’s such a small group, I could make pivots along the way and really invest the time and not need it to be perfect before I got started with it. And then slowly, that has merged.
And now, five years later, this is a huge biology of trauma course that involves both people in it for themselves, but also a certification course for providers who want to learn more of the biology of trauma, this biology of overwhelm and how they can implement it in their practice. So what started out as just a very small eight person online group has now turned into this several hundred Biology of Trauma course that I get to help people, but also providers as well learn the material.
James Maskell: That’s amazing. So at first I just want to acknowledge the journey that you’ve been on. I think one of the things about what we’ve seen from people coming through the Accelerator is that it’s actually some parallels to clinical care, but you start to build that entrepreneurial muscle and then you get some wins and you pivot and you learn, and then it’s like, well, what else is possible? And to see that journey where it hasn’t really looked like everyone else’s journey, and you’ve created this group program, you started to help other clinicians, it’s just a wonderful journey, and it’s been exciting to watch along the way.
I guess for other clinicians that are watching, who are either stuck clinically or stuck in terms of their own practice and shifting that model, what advice do you have for other doctors along the path who are looking to make a shift into aligning the way their heart speaks to them about medicine and their day-to-day jobs?
Aimie Apigian: So I think that one of the things that made the most difference for me, was getting really clear on my vision for what I wanted for my life and my practice. And that did not come easily. I just knew that, hey, this is what I enjoy doing, but in terms of, did I want to actually run a clinic? Or did I want to just do all online? Did I want a combination of both? I really wasn’t clear on that at the beginning. And getting clear on that has really helped me make decisions based on how to grow my business that are going to get me to where my ideal life and practice are going to be. And so looking back, being given advice over the years in terms of, well, this is what you should do, and these people over here, this is their model. So you should do their model.
And realizing at that time, that those things, that model would cause me a lot of stress and would not be what I would enjoy doing. And, again, kind of having that fear of, well, they obviously have more experience, they know more than me, so I think I should do what they’re advising me to do and not being able to stay true to my vision of, but that’s not going to get me to where my ideal life and practice would be. So, that would be something that, looking back has made such a difference for me and being able to see just in the five years that I’ve been doing this, going from I mean, where did I start, less than a thousand dollars for several months in my functional medicine practice to this year, with all the stuff that I’m doing, looking at bringing in over a half a million dollars for my business. And being able to have done that because I got really clear on my vision of what my ideal life would look like.
And for me, that is both the combination of online stuff and then retreats. I don’t like doing one-on-ones. I don’t like doing concierge medicine. That actually stresses me out quite a bit. I really thrive with group programs, online group programs, and then live intensives and retreats. And so everything, being able to focus in on doing those things that I really enjoy, because what I find is that when I really enjoy something, it shows. My energy shows, my enthusiasm shows, and so people are going to come to that just because they can see the amount of energy and time that I’ve invested in that. When I show up and it’s not really something that I enjoy doing, I haven’t gotten as much response, even though that’s technically what I am supposed to be doing, based on what is working for other people’s models.
So one of the biggest advice that I would have for people is just get really clear on the type of life that you want. What is your ideal life? And if that’s running a clinic? Awesome. Then, move towards that and make sure that all of your decisions and your activities, everything that you’re doing for people is aligned with that. If you’re more online, well then move towards that and make sure that you’re meeting people’s needs based on also what is aligned with where you will have your most passion and your most energy for the work that you’re doing.
James Maskell: Yeah. I think that’s such great advice. And I think part of it is just that there weren’t really any choices before, right? You had to have a clinic. If you’re a doctor, you’re in clinic. You either owned it, or you’re an employee. You can choose those two choices, but now with the internet and the way that the world is opening up, there are way more choices and, ultimately, having that foundation of having people opt into your content, getting to educate them consistently, it sets you up for whatever journey you want. And it’s been amazing to see that. Well, congratulations on all the progress. One final question. The reinvention of medicine this year is our theme in the Evolution of Medicine and, particularly, we’re talking about the reinvention of mental health this summer, and obviously we’re talking about addiction. So if I had to ask you, what is your idea of the reinvention of mental health, what does it look like?
Aimie Apigian: There’s all the work that I’ve been doing this year with my whole Biology of Trauma Summit. And for me, what has been really frustrating is seeing how mental health and trauma has been all kind of labeled as something psychological over the years. And what I would love to see as the reinvention of medicine, reinvention of health, is this bridging of the two worlds between actual trauma recovery, trauma work, and functional medicine. Because, for me, it is all about the biology and the health consequences, the addictions, everything else is just kind of the downstream effect of what’s going on in the biology. It’s not our thoughts. It’s not our childhood. It’s the fact that our nervous system is still stuck in those patterns from childhood, and that’s our biology. And we can shift that. We can change that through these functional medicine principles and actually learning how to work directly with our nervous system, identify, and then remove those things that are keeping it stuck in those survival patterns, in that stress and overwhelm.
So when I think of reinvention of medicine, and especially with mental health and addictions, how needed this is right now. Looking back over the last year, there have been very, very sad, very sad and overwhelming trends in the addiction space, in terms of the number of overdoses, the number of people who have relapsed on substances, or have developed a new substance or habit, or even behaviors in order to cope with the anxiety, cope with the stress, cope with the fear. Social media is a big addiction right now. I mean, it’s a huge problem. And so being able to understand, look you guys, this is not just a psychological problem, this is actually a biology problem, and there are so many tools that we have to shift your biology so that we can truly effectively address this and save people years of heartache and years of therapy.
James Maskell: Beautiful. Well, doctor, thanks so much for being here on the Evolution of Medicine Podcast. So excited to see that journey. If clinicians are interested in taking your training on the nervous system, where’s the best place for them to go?
Aimie Apigian: Yeah, they can head on over to my website. They can either find me at draimie.com. I spell my name A-I-M-I-E. Or they can find the information on traumahealingaccelerated.com, where they can get on the interest list for the certification course.
James Maskell: Beautiful. Well, thanks so much for being part of the Evolution of Medicine Podcast and thank you for being such a great living example of the Practice Accelerator. You know, twice a year, we open the doors for new clinicians and new doctors and new entrepreneurs to come into the Practice Accelerator. Hope this has been as inspiring for you as it has for me. And it’s been wonderful to be here with you. Thanks so much for tuning in. This is the Evolution of Medicine Podcast. I’m your host, James Maskell, and we’ll see you next time.
Thanks for listening to the evolution of medicine podcast. Please share this with colleagues who need to hear it. Thanks so much to our sponsors, the Lifestyle Matrix Resource Center. This podcast is really possible because of them. Please visit goevomed.com/lmrc to find out more about their clinical tools like the group visit toolkit. That’s goevomed.com/lmrc. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.
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