How can functional medicine improve the health, resilience, and performance of military personnel?
In this live episode from the Institute for Functional Medicine Annual Conference, James Maskell sits down with Dr. Bryan Stepanenko and former Green Beret Geoff Dardia to discuss how functional medicine is transforming healthcare for warfighters and veterans.
They explain the unique physical and psychological demands of military service, including blast exposure, traumatic brain injuries, chronic sleep deprivation, toxin exposure, and repetitive physical stress. Rather than simply treating symptoms, they demonstrate how functional medicine identifies and addresses the root causes of dysfunction to improve recovery, optimize performance, and extend long-term health.
The conversation explores innovative concepts such as Personal Protective Nutrition (PPN) and Personal Protective Lifestyle (PPL), as well as the growing role of wearable technology, shared medical appointments, and performance biomarkers in motivating military personnel to take ownership of their health.
Dr. Stepanenko and Jeff also introduce the Institute for Military Functional Medicine, an initiative dedicated to training healthcare providers and establishing standardized care pathways for military populations. They also discuss Allo Performance, a virtual practice focused on comprehensive assessments, accelerated recovery, and personalized functional medicine care.
Whether you’re a clinician, first responder, athlete, veteran, or simply interested in improving your health, this episode offers valuable insights into how performance-focused, root-cause medicine can benefit everyone.
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About the Guest:
Dr. Bryan Stepanenko is a leader in military functional medicine and has spent years educating military healthcare providers on applying functional medicine principles to improve the health, resilience, and performance of active-duty service members and veterans. His work focuses on understanding how military operational environments affect physiology and developing practical, evidence-informed strategies that optimize readiness and long-term health.
Geoff Dardia is a former Green Beret and educator who transformed his own health journey through functional medicine after experiencing the cumulative effects of military service. He now works to educate military communities and healthcare professionals on performance optimization, resilience, and root-cause healthcare, helping service members better understand and improve their health through practical, actionable strategies.
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About the Host:
James Maskell is a healthcare entrepreneur and founder of The Evolution of Medicine. For over 20 years, he has worked to scale functional medicine through community-driven models, group visits, and practitioner infrastructure. His work focuses on moving medicine upstream – toward prevention, lifestyle intervention, and systems-based care.
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Transcript:
Well, the number one job being a Green Beret is teaching. And so all I did was when I found out my health was in struggle and not doing well, I just applied what I knew as a Green Beret to health and wellness, solving problems, and got, you know, in touch with Mark Hyman at the Cleveland Clinic. He became my provider.
You know, we started a program looking at other people, and then it all grew from there. Yeah. That’s how I met Brian. So we’ve been attached to the hip since. It’s been 10 years, literally a full decade that we’ve been educating together. Hello and welcome back to the Evolution of Medicine podcast. I’m your host James Maskell.
We are here at the Institute for Functional Medicine’s annual international conference. We’ve been speaking to leaders, innovators, and the forefront of the evolution of medicine, and nowhere is that more true than with my guest for today. Um, Dr. Brian Stepanenko has been a repeat guest on the Evolution of Medicine over the years, talking about the cross-section of the military and functional medicine.
We’re gonna get into some of that. Jeff Dardia is here as well, and you guys have been the busiest guys here all weekend. I’ve seen you guys on the schedule a bunch of times. Tell us what you’ve been up to. Uh, we did a co-lecture on, um, functional medicine approach to pain in the war fighter. So we had a chance to expose the audience to what it means to, uh, be a military, um, active duty service member and operate in that military operational environment, some of those threats to health and performance in the operational environment.
Jeff does a phenomenal job each time, really giving the ground truth and the lived experience of what it means to, um, you know, jump out of planes and have hard landings and, um, use explosive devices and have this blast overpressure exposure, toxin exposure, and some of the, um, military psychological, um, exposures and even, uh, childhood exposures over time.
But we did the co-lecture. Um, we’re doing a panel tomorrow, and we did a round table discussion facilitating that around, um, functional approach to high-performing athletes today. Yeah. That was, that was a really fun activity. Jeff, share a little bit about your journey to be speaking at medical conferences.
So how do you go from being a Green Beret to an educator, right? Well, the number one job being a Green Beret is teaching. Huh. And so all I did was when I found out my health was in struggle and not doing well, I just applied what I knew as a Green Beret to health and wellness, solving problems, and, uh, got a, you know, in touch with Mark Hyman at the Cleveland Clinic.
He became my provider. You know- We started a program looking at other people, and then it all grew from there. Yeah. That’s how I met Brian. So we- Yeah … we’ve been attached at the hip since. It’s been 10 years, uh, literally a full decade that we’ve been educating together. Um, once again, him painting the picture of the ground truth and lived experience and, um, us both speaking the same language about, okay, here’s how we got to these, um, these end states of physiology, you know, what root cause dysfunction looks like for the war fighter, and then pairing that with solutions and pairing that with care pathways.
So we’ve had that show on the road for a decade. What are the unique challenges to servicing that community with this care? So first off the bat is our community doesn’t self-identify. They don’t ask for help. They don’t show weakness. They’re not gonna complain about anything. So how do you cross that barrier?
And that comes through understanding and education, um, and how it’s delivered, too. That’s one of the most important things, is who’s delivering it, how it’s delivered, and putting it in their language and culture so they understand it. So taking PhD to put it into GED. Not making fun of the military, but you’ve gotta simplify things and, uh, we have– as humans, we overcomplicate things sometimes, but if you put it into a format that you can digest and understand, you don’t unlearn it, you don’t forget it.
And it’s something, once you learn how to implement it, you’ll do it for the rest of your life. How many times have you told your personal story in 10 years? Oh, qui- quite a bit. Quite a bit of podcasts and articles. But yeah, I mean, y- I’m not also the HairClub president, I’m also a client, right? Yeah. So I’ve I’ve lived it, and, uh, it, it’s one of those things, I’m not the only one living that experience.
I just learned how to tell that story and rewrite the narrative, not being a victim to it. It, you know, some of the worst things that ever happened in my life put me in the best places I needed to be. So being able to take that experience, turn it into something I’m passionate about, my new gift, my new purpose, to be able to share that with everybody and still contribute and help people out in the community that I came from.
From my vantage point, being able to watch people’s response to his briefing and him sharing his story is that they see themselves in everything he’s talking about, and they say, “Yep, that’s me. Been there, done that,” and this guy’s walked a mile in my shoes. Hearing it out of his mouth just validates, “Yep, okay.
Got it. So what do we do next?” And they come away from the briefing that we’ve done together, they come away from the briefing ready for action. Like, “Okay, what do I do about it? What’s next?” And that’s where it’s been a really nice synergy in having, um, relationships built to where we’ve got care pathways and access to resources and even training programs through the Walter Reed, uh, where, uh, practitioners can go learn functional medicine paid for by the military.
Wow. Um, we’ve got some action items that, um, all the people who are motivated after hearing him share his story, we’ve got, you know, things to point them to and, and places they can go for more. I know the last time we spoke, I think it was during the pandemic, PPE was hot, right? And you were talking about PPL, personalized protective lifestyle, personalized protective nutrition.
You’ve got it. Now I know that there’s this sort of, like, performance angle, right? Yeah. For people. I’m sure that over a decade is trying to, like, find out where the spots are to, to get some action, right? Yeah. We’ve really had the adoption of that terminology right there, um, to where in the military context, personal protective equipment, literally helmets, eye pro, ear pro, um, as important as that is personal protective nutrition and personal protective lifestyle.
So it became a mental checkbox, and the origin story around PPN, PPL, the concept was way bigger than the content. So now we talk about and literally communicate, “Hey, h- for this exposure, for this experience, the way it impacts your physiology, here’s PPN and PPL. So here’s the controllables. Here’s ways you can protect yourself against these exposures or accelerate the recovery from it after it’s happened.”
Um, yeah, that, that adoption’s been phenomenal, but the other beautiful thing about our flavor of functional medicine is that it is on the performance spectrum rather than just the healthcare spectrum. Yeah. So we can achieve human performance optimization, war fighter performance optimization, and at some times even war fighter performance enhancement for brief periods with the ability to think with this functional medicine lens and understand, you know, diet, lifestyle, uh, supplements, what can we do to augment capabilities, um, either, uh, from a root cause standpoint or for brief periods of time.
I mean, I hate to ask this question, but is there, i- is there any sort of silver lining to the fact that we might be at war or go to war for moving things along towards creating the he- you know, a- accelerating the, the health of the war fighter? So I just wanna take a minute to talk about the incredible mission partners that we have here at The Evolution of Medicine that have made this possible.
So first and foremost, I wanna thank- Fullscript and Fullscript Journey. So Fullscript’s been an amazing partner for 10 years. We only pick partners that can help us achieve our vision and help you achieve your practice vision. And Fullscript have been an incredible partner for a decade, but their new offering Journeys, this is why we called it The Evolution of Medicine Journeys, is allowing practitioners to combine the relationships that they have with the newest technology to sell direct-to-consumer lab testing, and use it as a funnel to bring into your practice, and it’s a game changer for the whole industry.
So go to goevomed.com/journeys, and you can get started on building the Journeys for your practice, an optimal way into your practice. We’re gonna have some conversations about it. This is a game changer. Next, Genova. Genova, um, have been fans of The Evolution of Medicine for a long time. We’re big fans of them, and they now have a lot more specialty testing.
They have a lot more tools, and it’s a key part of, uh, understanding the body ecologically. So go to goevomed.com/genova to find out more. Come on over here and I wanna show you about the other mission partners. You know, if you’ve been following us for a while, you know that these are organizations that we trust, that add a lot of value.
Freedom Practice Coaching. Um, I have been sup- supported by them since the beginning and, you know, so many of the issues that practitioners face in building a successful practice, scaling a successful practice, come down to having the right support with people who have been there and done that. Go to goevomed.com/fpc.
Um, BigBoost Marketing. Uh, Uli and his team are the best in the business when it comes to really understanding how to market your functional medicine practice. Go to goevomed.com/bigboost and see how they can help you. And then what you’re gonna be hearing a, a lot about is the formation of clinical networks.
And ultimately, TruNeura is our first effort at that, which is to build an integrated clinical network, combining independent practices from across the country into a network that can reverse cognitive decline. And if you go to goevomed.com/truneura, you can get a demo. You can see what it means to be part of an integrated clinical network.
That’s mentorship, that’s software, and that’s making it easier for you to get incredible outcomes in a disease state where there are no other options. So thanks to our mission partners. Let’s get back to the content
Lethality. Um, so you say accelerating the health, uh, from a military standpoint, and Jeff, you can speak to it more than I am, but lethality, durability, longevity. How can we make the war fighter more lethal, more effective, and do that job in that environment for longer, and then, um, keep that institutional wisdom around, um, because Jeff, if you wanna tell them about the, the intersection of those two graphs.
Yeah. A- as, as you get older, you got more wisdom, more knowledge, right? And as you get older, your body and your health decline. So trying to slow that curve down where we can keep people with the brain and the body going further and harder in that environment. And so right now, you know, with retention rates and able bodies to join the military, the recruiting pool is dwindling, so we need to keep who we have longer and keep them healthier.
So longevity and optimization. And there’s actually a unique difference between pro athlete, um, and athlete versus a military athlete and a war fighter, is that, um, the military athletes are typically, um, older, into their third, fourth, fifth decades. They still have the same performance requirements compared to other athlete individuals.
H- But there’s also, um, the performance of these activities, there’s no pause button. There’s no p- you know, timeout, and it’s typically done in a stress state with sleep-deprived, under load, and that’s not the same for, uh, sport. Um, so- Yeah … there is a lot that translates, um, from sport to military context, but there’s some unique differences.
Interesting. Yeah. Well, I know that you’ve been focused on the sort of war fighter community, but there’s been this sort of parallel thing happening in the VA, right, with the adoption of Whole Health. Um, how have those worlds intersected for you over the last 10 years, and is it helpful to have everyone kind of getting a piece of that?
Extremely. Yeah. I mean, it’s not a fight anymore to push this ball in the right direction. Yeah. Now it’s implementation. How do we do it at scale and repeatable with standard of care? Um, before we were fighting for over a decade to convince people we should be doing this. Now it’s like, “Hey, how do we do it?”
Yeah. And so that’s taken, you know, our roles of what we do in our programs to be able to expand them out to teach other people how to do it and how to implement it, so that’s something we’re working on with the Institute for Military Functional Medicine, to be able to go out to those programs, train and educate providers, and then so they can turn around and provide better services to our community.
More efficiency, more effective, so building capacity and capability at the same time. So what do you imagine that that organization will be able to do that can’t happen today? So they’re actually doing it. Um, in smaller locations, the VA Polytrauma TBI programs are doing a phenomenal job of looking at things under the functional medicine lens, looking comprehensively, looking holistically- Yeah
knowing that all these systems are connected. Yeah. You’re, you’re specifically asking about the Institute for Military- Yeah, the Institute … Functional Medicine, where we plan on having that go live in the next six to 12 months. Um, we’re super nascent, uh, early in its inception, but we’ve got the LLC stood up, and we’re made the decisions in what direction and who’s on the initial, like, founding team.
We’re co-founders, but we’ve got a core group of individuals that have been with us throughout the last 10 years of shaping the message, shaping the content, and it’ll be a hub for the educational mission And there’s the educational mission and the care delivery and the care solution mission. Um, so from the educational standpoint, we’re looking to set some standards and ensure some shared understanding around, hey, how does the military operational environment and the activities in those environment and the jobs and roles of these individuals, how does that translate to how people can break over time, and what that does from a root cause dysfunction issue?
Um, what’s the knowledge, skills, and abilities that practitioners need to have in order to take functional medicine base– uh, so functional education, their base of knowledge- Yeah … and then apply it to the war fighter? So it’s kind of like do this as the entry point. You know functional medicine, you wanna apply it to the war fighter, come see us.
We’re gonna teach you culture, context. Uh, we’ve got blocks of instruction of what works, lessons learned, best practices, templates, workflows, how to bill and navigate insurance. Um, so practitioners that are in the military system, that are in the VA system, that are in the civilian sector, they can all be more effective at handling and treating and, um, giving high-value care and a reproducible patient experience to the war fighter and the, the military family unit.
‘Cause the being able to understand the context and the exposures translates to the entire family unit, and being able to provide care for the entirely fam- the entire family unit depends on your shared understanding of what’s going on, how that impacts physiology, and how that impacts the war fighter and the family unit Do you have in- inside the, uh, the medical community, are there the same range of specialties and specialists, and have you found that there’s a, an appetite in that community?
‘Cause I know in, in the, in the, in the world, there’s been the least friction in normal people just being like, “I want this.” But there’s a little bit more friction in doctors realizing this is right, ’cause they’re going against their training, and then the institutions typically take the longest, right? So i- w- what about the sort of the, the, the military doctor?
Where… Is the appetite there? Yeah, the buy-in and the demand signal. I’d say there’s both ground-level demand signal from literally special operations community that is aware that, hey, functional medicine, especially this per- this performance flavor of functional medicine, really has a different value proposition and a, and a high value, um, in what we do and what we’re trying to do for longer.
Yeah. Um, but then from a military medical institution, yes, there’s, uh, champions and hubs that have bought in and that are really leading the way. Specifically, there’s the National Capital Region Pain Initiative, um, based out of Walter Reed, where for the last eight years, we’ve been teaching military practitioners functional medicine, and they pa- they partnered with the Institute for Functional Medicine and brought in a small group of teaching cadre, myself, um, and there’s, uh, two other core teaching staff for the IFM, My-Linh Nguyen and Cara Parker.
Um, we’ve all been part of that teaching team, uh, for the last eight years. That’s so cool. Yeah. Um, how have you found the, you know, I know some of the ideas that we’ve spoken about, and Cara’s been a big champion of doing things in groups and connecting. Mm-hmm. I mean, that’s part of the culture there anyway.
Does that work? Yeah. Uh, is that, is that a, is that a delivery system? Well, it’s… Yeah, so we implemented it on the active duty side with shared medical appointments, running people through assessments together, and then educating them together about, you know, what we find in patterns of dysfunction we identify, and then being able to pool resources to those that need it the most upfront.
It became one of the most, you know, cost-effective, time-effective programs that was out there, and it was like, “Why weren’t we doing this a long time ago?” And, uh, yeah, I mean, that’s something we’ve been trying to push for over a decade, but was able to push it through on active duty while I was still in uniform, and watch the success of that program with a…
It’s called the Comprehensive Operator Readiness Assessment. I can imagine there’s a competitive element in your community that maybe doesn’t exist in the reversing chronic illness community, right? Just- How do you harness that? Well- Yeah, so I mean, when you do in a shared medical appointment, so imagine a bunch of alpha males in the room and- Yeah
who’s got the lowest testosterone level, right? Like, or, you know, who’s got, who’s got the highest HRV or, you know, it’s competitive in nature, but once you start educating people about this and they start talking to each other, they’re like, “Oh yeah, let’s see your WHOOP results. Let’s see your Oura ring.”
Yeah. And then, you know, everybody’s out there trying to increase those numbers to try to be better, but if you never show people where they start and where they go, there’s no feedback, then how do you action not having feedback? But when you can provide immediate feedback to things that are identified, our community corrects it immediately.
Yeah. And, and that’s the best part about working in that community is they’re goal-oriented, so you don’t have to convince them, you just show them. And that’s where we don’t even talk about labs, and we don’t use the, the term labs. We use performance biomarkers and biomarkers, um, ’cause this, this concept of being able to quantify systems biology in certain performance domains, now we’re talking about numbers associated to how am I performing?
Uh, how’s my systems biology looking? Red, yellow, green. If I’m yellow or red, like I need to fix that. Um, you’ve given me numbers on my gut health, I need to fix that. All right? Um, in terms of metabolic and hormone profile, if I can fix that, I’m gonna fix that. But giving them objective information, these performance biomarker panels, and being able to evaluate their health and systems biology and performance domains, that’s some language that’s really resonating with the end user, uh, who’s hypercompetitive and wants to objectively understand what it is that they can now fix.
We’re action-oriented. So if you give us a target, we’ll go to it, right? Yeah. And, and that’s how we deliver medicine in that same format, right? Find, fix, finish. So- I’m sure there are a lot of other people a- and other organizations that are sort of part of a functional medicine operating system, let’s say like wearables, who wanna get into the army.
Um, I, I could imagine that you might be a good clearing house for, um, helping them understand how could this thing that- Might have value by itself, but might be more valuable in the context of a comprehensive program. Um, are you, are you able to– do you, do you find yourself being referred to for those kind of things?
Yeah, so WHOOP and Oura Ring help implement those on active duty. Uh, we test and evaluated them, and then I still work with WHOOP now, uh, in my program through Task Force Dagger. But our goal is to put a wearable on every single person going through our program and then put them in a pool where we’ll group them up in a cohort, and then they can all look at each other’s results and say, “Oh, yeah, who’s got the green recovery?”
Or, “Whose HRV is tanking? Why is that?” You know? But that’s shared medical appointments in group setting and sharing education information is, our program is based off that. The nice thing about the functional medicine lens on these wearables and biomarkers, um, related to, uh, you know, the data that they get is that you can help them understand why.
Like, why is it not what, what it should be? I’m putting in the work, I’m putting in the effort, but maybe there’s some, um, hidden stressors or some root cause dysfunction issues, gut function or sleep disorder issues to where, hey, this is holding me back. Like, I’m not getting the, the results from the input that I’m putting in.
Um, when there’s the mismatch, that’s where the magic happens. Uh, that’s where we see the wearable data playing into the important conversations where they start asking, “What’s wrong?” You know, “What’s, what’s different? Why am I not getting the outcomes that I’m, that I’m, you know, putting in the effort for?”
What are some patterns of, of dysfunction that you’ve seen that maybe are different from non-war fighters? Or are there things that you see commonly that come up like that, that with, with the reduced performance that they’re not aware of, but you could probably see from the moment you walk in? Yeah.
Started stained. Yeah. Uh- Sleep, start sleep. Yeah. So sleep issues, sleep performance issues, um, in terms of sleep apnea and poorly controlled or undiagnosed sleep apnea, that’s a big thing in our community, especially with- Sure … with traumatic brain injury exposure, uh, blast and concussive-related exposures.
Um, hormone d- dysfunction, uh, pituitary gland will literally function differently after a traumatic brain injury, both blast or concussive related. So, um, a lot of practitioners don’t even look, but you’re gonna be, you know– you’re gonna have brain fog, you’re gonna be depressed, um, and y- you’re gonna have slow re- performance, cognitive performance is gonna, um, suffer when hormones are out of range, when they’re, they’re suboptimal.
Um, balance, vision, hearing, some processing, sensory processing issues that we see. Um, and a lot of these, once again, are, are kind of related to some training-related exposures, so not even related to whether or not you deployed. Um, really interesting stuff there. There’s a big gut dysfunction issue that we’re seeing that is probably one of the biggest gaps from like a clinical ground level standpoint to where, um, these exposures will change how you’re able to, uh, digest foods and move intestinal contents, sets the conditions for SIBO and candida overgrowth issues.
And, um, practitioners on the ground that are seeing it are labeling it as irritable bowel syndrome and giving Ventyl. They’re labeling it as reflux and giving PPIs, but that’s just adding fuel to the fire. So really the understanding that we’re trying to propagate is that you can find clinical patterns that are consistent with SIBO.
You can find clinical patterns that are consistent with candida. You can test and confirm and quantify and then address with, you know, uh, nutritional strategies, supplemental strategies, and pharmaceutical interventions. You can do a better job with a simple understanding of how this works. Hmm. Would you say that there’s a pathway whereby which you have identified a common dysfunction that happens in training so much so that the training might actually change to avoid that dysfunction because what it’s causing is the down or is that not gonna happen?
We’ve already seen that play. Desired outcomes from stress inoculation that are necessary to work in certain environments. There are certain expectations that when certain types of people join our organization, they came from unique environments as a kid that preconditioned them to thrive in stress and chaos.
And after that programming of the nervous system, basically living off adrenaline and cortisol after so long that in the absence chaos, you need to find it or create it to feel normal because you’re operating a level up here all the time. So imagine like a pro athlete that played a football game 24-7 for 20 years.
Wow. Right? So you’re constantly having to perform and prove yourself on a daily basis in this community. And so you’re already setting high expectations, living up to them, and then you have to earn your seat at the table every single day. And you’re not doing it for trophies or bonuses. It’s your life depends on it.
So there’s consequences when you don’t perform. So it’s a lot different than being a pro athlete in the fact that if you don’t perform at a high level, someone cannot come home and it happens frequently. So there’s a high level of stress on you for a long period of time. And to your question about Are we seeing things enough or would these, um, dysfunctions, uh, related to the training environment lead to changes in the training?
Um, it can– What we’re seeing and the patterns of dysfunction related to training, uh, can change how things are done, but not necessarily whether or not they’re done. Um, you need to train in order to be ready, in order to deploy, in order to fight the wars and win. Yeah. Um, and an example that we’re seeing right now play out is blast overpressure exposure.
So heavy weapon systems and explosives that are used in training environments, um, they’re trying to find out what’s the safe limit, what’s the safe distance, you know, what are better ways of doing the same training, uh, to mitigate some of the downstream, uh, effects. But the value that we add to the conversation is, okay, PPN and PPL, how can we protect people to where they’re more resilient in those environments doing the job, and accelerated the recovery, um, on the back end after having had that, have, having had that exposure.
Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give you an example. Sure. Like munitions, right? Every time you shoot, a cloud of gas comes out the weapon system both ends with known human carcinogens. Until we invent a new bullet that can fire without those propellants and those primers- Yeah … we have to keep doing it, right? But what we can do is ventilate shoot houses, spread the ranges open, use a different type of ammunition for training only, whereas operationally we still have to use what we use.
For blast overpressure, they’ve developed new types of rocket systems or shoulder-fired anti-tank weapons that have less overpressure that pull the round away for you, then it ejects out further away from you, or using water impulse to deaden the blast overpressure wave. So there are changes that are being made, but at the end of the day, the military’s got a job to do, and they’re gonna do it, so.
What about a double dose of broccoli that night? Yeah. And broccoli sprouts for everyone up here, he’s saying that We always start with food first. And the simple thing of, like, having a meal before you go to the gun range changes whether or not you absorb heavy metals when you’re at the gun range. Right.
So little things like that, but that’s a frame shift. And, like, once you learn that, you don’t un- you can’t unlearn that. So that, those are the insights we’re trying to really arm people with is like- I can imagine there’s a performance angle in there too, keeping your hands still, being able to, like, maintain composure for the time to be accurate with your shot.
I’m sure there’s a way to, to pitch it as a, as a performance side. Yeah. Not only, but eat a meal, but eat this meal. Yeah. Eat this or take this supplement in particular. Yeah. I guess I’d love to just finish off by asking, you know, you, you obviously come to a conference like this, and you’re the only guys that are, like, doing this stuff, right?
There’s a few other people, and I know that you’ve met a lot of people here who you’ve had relationships along the way. What can the rest of functional medicine learn from what you guys are, are doing here, people who are just dealing with chronic illness in the community? What do you think that you’ve, uh, distilled through being in maybe a slightly different pressured environment that could be a lesson for the, the progress of functional medicine everywhere else?
Let’s say starting off, no one is immune to their environment And, uh, the way we were designed is very similar. Just because you’re in a different uniform or a different career doesn’t mean you’re gonna react differently to those things, right? We get a little more training in the military than a civilian, but all the principles apply.
Functional medicine is the why, not the what, and if you can focus on why you’re not feeling well and solve that problem, then guess what? You get resolution, so- Yeah … um, yeah. I’d say the problems we’re solving are not military s- uh, problems only. Um, literally trauma’s trauma, stress is stress, physiology responds to insults in very similar patterns.
But we’re, uh, we’re seeing the extremes of exposures, and we learn the most, the fastest from extremophiles, basically people that operate and thrive in these extreme environments and despite the chaos. So we’re learning lessons and seeing patterns of dysfunction and picking up best practices from dealing with the military population that will help everybody.
Um, there’s the opportunity to translate that immediately and directly to first responders, firefighters, law enforcement who work under the same stress conditions, work with the chronic sleep deprivation, have a lot of the same, you know, exposures. Um, but even the mom of four who’s trying to juggle a to-do list that she knows she’s only gonna get half those things done, maybe less.
Um, even the individuals that are in controlled environments, other athletes, um, a big wave rider, a bull rider, um, you know, a race car driver, all of these individuals that experience, you know, stress, chronic stress, have these other factors at play. Oh, we’ve seen that before. Yeah. We know what to do here, and we’ve learned that because we’ve solved these problems first.
So cool. Well, final question. Tell us a little bit about Allo Performance and how you see that playing a role in the, the execution, ’cause you said it’s moving from, like, um, the, that everyone’s bought in now, so now it’s just like, okay, how do we deliver it? And like- Yeah … whether you’re taking a, a more active role in sol- in solving that.
Yeah. Finally, uh, the universe, uh, has led me to stand up my own practice. Um, but the practice that I’m starting is, um, concentrating talent. Uh, we’ve got some awesome team members, a physician’s assistant and a performance dietician that have all been operating in the special operation community and supporting them for, um…
I think combined, we’ve got over 30 years of experience doing what we do, supporting that community. Um, and w- we’re doing that as embodiment of the care solutions that we wanted to have earlier, that we wanted to do but couldn’t do in the constrained environment of the military. Um, and it’s what Jeff and I have been envisioning since we started working together 10 years ago, is like, okay, comprehensive operator assessment or comprehensive assessment, you know, full systems biology check, what does that look like?
We’re gonna do that well. And then also accelerated recovery programs. When you’re ill, injured, or you’ve had a s- recent surgery, how do we get you back to, you know, functioning well and restore integrity of tissue and function well? Um, and we’re gonna do that well. But we’re doing it virtually so that we can be a wraparound and accessible to people all over the US and maybe even internationally, ’cause once again, it’s not just a military problem and it’s not just a US military problem.
Um, and those lessons learned are gonna translate to addressing similar phenotypes and similar people, um, everywhere else. So that’s Allo Performance. But then the educational mission, uh, that we’ve envisioned and that is finally coming to fruition is that Institute for Military Functional Medicine. So by next year, next AIC, you’ll see us, we’ll probably be wearing some different shirts.
Uh, and we’ll be repping Institute for Military Functional Medicine. Well, that’s really exciting, and I look forward to that. I mean, it’s always a great journey to just see year by year. I mean, it’s 10 years, I think, since we first connected, and been seeing the, the journey that you’ve gone on. And congratulations for how it’s gone so far.
I know the first stage is, like convince everyone that we are right. Right? Then the next stage is actually implementing it at scale, and that’s got its own challenges, but it sounds like you’re on the way to, to executing that. So congratulations. I look forward to fast, you know, following the, uh, following the path.
Awesome. Thanks again for your time. Yeah, of course. Brian, Jeff, thank you so much. Uh, this has been The Evolution of Medicine podcast. We are live here from the Institute for Functional Medicine’s annual international conference. As you can see, some of the most interesting forward progress in the movement is happening in the niches, and this is where people come together to, to, uh, find out about this.
If you know people in the Army, armed forces, people who need to hear this podcast to learn about what’s happening, send this to them. This could change their life. I’d love for those guys to get in touch with people like Brian and Jeff so they can move, uh, the progress forward. Thanks so much for tuning in.
We’ll see you next time. So we are here asking practitioners about their practitioner journeys, and the reason why is because Journeys is a new product from Fullscript. Journeys allows you to set up your own lab offerings as the top of the funnel. Give the patients what they want. They wanna know about themselves, and it’s the easiest way to bring them into your practice.
We have all types of practices from across the country that are building their own unique lab panels for their own unique practices, selling them to their community, and acting as a great funnel into their practice. This is a massive innovation. I think this will accelerate the evolution of medicine.
You can go to goevomed.com/journeys to find out more. Set up your own journeys in half an hour, and transform the health of your community. Go get ’em. So that was the podcast. What an epic session. Thank you so much for tuning in to The Evolution of Medicine podcast. We will be back again next week, and thanks so much for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time
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