Why You're Still Sick: Thyroid, Inflammation and the Root Causes Most Doctors Miss With Dr. Kevin Smith

Still tired, inflamed, and not getting real answers? This episode might change how you think about your health.

In this episode of The True Form Podcast, I sit down with Dr Kevin Smith, a functional medicine practitioner with over 25 years of practice, to explore why so many people treat symptoms without ever asking what's actually driving them.

We go deep on thyroid health, chronic inflammation, blood sugar, supplements, wearable technology, GLP-1s, and the root-cause framework that changes how you think about your body.

If you've ever felt tired, foggy, inflamed, or as if something is off but can't pinpoint why, this conversation is worth your time.

In this episode:

• Why treating symptoms is not the same as solving the problem
• What's often missed when it comes to thyroid health and testing
• How chronic inflammation may be connected to more than you realise
• Why blood sugar regulation matters beyond diabetes
• How to think about supplements, wearables, and health tracking
• The fundamentals that still matter most: food, hydration, sleep, movement, and stress

Note: This conversation explores ideas and questions worth considering. Always work with a qualified health professional for personal medical decisions.

Connect with Dr Kevin Smith:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@KevinSmithdc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cccpa1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinsmithdc/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinsmithdc/
X: https://x.com/kevinsmithdc
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/ksmithdc/

Transcript

Dr. Kevin Smith 0:00

Not to confuse you, but if you have chronic inflammation, it's gonna throw off inflammatory cytokines, which are like little carrier proteins that block the thyroid pathway and stop thyroid hormone from binding onto your cells.

Jack Graham 0:13

Like you were just saying, it was gut it's governed by so many different things. So what would you say?

Dr. Kevin Smith 0:18

Well, I can I can comment on that. Yeah. Uh according to the medical literature, 17% of people that have thyroid replacement medication are going to be helped. That's one thing that's the difference between myself versus a typical like primary care doctor. I'm not anti-drug, I'm not anti-physician. I believe that there's a time and a place for all healing. I have a philosophy that whenever you have a prop, your spine or whatever, you always want to start off with the most non-invasive approach first. You you you answered that question right there. You can't improve upon anything that you're not measuring.

Jack Graham 0:54

What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the True Form Podcast. Before we dive into today's episode, I just want to thank the legends at Lumiflex for sponsoring today's episode. I'm actually blown away how this little red light therapy device is dramatically improving my health, recovery, vitality. Later on in the episode, I'll tell you how I've been using it and why you should think about getting one yourself. But first, we'll dive into today's conversation to help us, you and me, find our true form. Dr. Kevin Smith, thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Kevin Smith 1:29

It's a pleasure and an honor to be here today.

Jack Graham 1:32

I have so many questions and rabbit holes I want to go down with you. But first, I want to know after 25 years, what gets you excited? What gets you out of bed, and what gets you fired up to take on the day?

Dr. Kevin Smith 1:46

Well, I think that the the motivating factor for me is is I like to solve puzzles. I like to figure out what is behind the problem in front of me. Um that's one thing that's the difference between myself versus a typical like primary care doctor, a family doctor, or whatever. They're just interested in resolving symptoms. And they do that usually in the form of a chemical, like a drug. Whereas with functional medicine, this is a very personalized, patient-centric approach to health care. And so my goal is to figure out why. Why do you have these problems? Like, like, for example, if you have high blood pressure, why do you have it? Nobody has like low thyroid symptoms or digestive problems or brain problems just because there's always uh a hidden root cause of what's driving the problem. And my job is to figure out what that that hidden root cause is so we can offer you a permanent resolution to your problems.

Jack Graham 2:57

I love that. So talk to me about how you got to functional. Like where where did you start and where do you get how did you get to where you are now?

Dr. Kevin Smith 3:06

Okay. So um I've my base degree is I'm a doctor of chiropractic. And I graduated from chiropractic school in 2001. And um I immediately opened up a practice and word was good getting around, and my practice was growing, and people were coming to see me for things that you normally associate going to a chiropractor for, like back pain, neck pain, sports injuries, uh, automobile accident injuries, things like that, uh knee pain, things like that. And so, but every once in a while people would come in with some weird, mysterious problem that I could not figure out really what was going on. Uh people were coming to me with um, say, high blood pressure, for example. I didn't know really how to fix that using the tools that I was given in chiropractic school. And that led me to want to understand more about the problem. And for a lot of these people, they're not really totally happy with just taking pills. They want to figure out what's going on with their body and hopefully put an end to the problem. And so that led me to attend a bunch of seminars and read books and learn as much as I could about the nature of these things. And so I ended up becoming a clinical nutritionist, board-certified clinical nutritionist. And that led me to attend seminars about functional blood chemistry analysis and urinalysis and other types of lab testing. And that led me to the world of functional medicine, which, as I said before, is a very personalized, patient-centric approach to healthcare. And from there, just kept going down the rabbit hole and get learning and learning and learning. And the more I learned, the more I kind of discovered how little I knew. And uh so I've been right now, I spend about 50% of my time in the functional medicine realm and 50% of the time in the chiropractic circle. So I can reach into both worlds. So if the problem is more musculoskeletal, like neck pain, or if it's like a sports injury, I can help them with that. But if it's a metabolic thing, like low thyroid disease or autoimmunity or something that's bothering you on the insides, I can also reach into that and and offer a solution to that too. So it's a little bit of both worlds.

Jack Graham 5:48

So you said you're 50-50 in both worlds. Yes. Do you think they're disconnected, or would you say they are connected? You can't really have one without the other.

Dr. Kevin Smith 5:58

Sometimes they're connected and sometimes they're not. You know, I I often use the joke that patients reserve the right to have more than one problem. Yep.

Jack Graham 6:11

Um, so well, where I wanted to start with, what are people getting wrong with their body then? So obviously you've seen a lot of people, you've but you're a very curious person, which is amazing, and that's why you've ended up where you are. So what have you seen that people are getting wrong within their body? And I want to ask the same question for life in general as well. But let's focus on the body to start with.

Dr. Kevin Smith 6:35

Well, first of all, I believe that I'm I'm not anti-drug, I'm not anti-physician. I believe that there's a time and a place for all healing, there's a time and a place for medicines, there's a time and a place for surgery, there's a time and a place for chiropractic care, massage therapy, whatever, whatever's out there. I have a philosophy that whenever you have a problem, whether it's your house, your teeth, your lawn mo, your lawn, or your your spine or whatever, you always want to start off with the most non-invasive approach first and give that an honest try to see if that can resolve the problem. And if it if it does, then that's great. So if it doesn't, then you would move on to the next uh most invasive thing. And then the next most invasive thing, and then you climb your way up the ladder of invasiveness. In the United States, people are have that a little bit out of out of order. The first thing that they do, because we live in a drug culture in this country, and the first thing that people do is they'll they'll go to look at a over-the-counter medication and see if that can resolve their problem. And then if it doesn't, then they go to their primary care doctor, the family doctor, GP, whatever you want to call them, and look for something a little bit stronger. And maybe that resolves the problem. And so then the doctor would then re refer them to their buddy down the street that they happen to play golf with on Thursdays, and that guy works with another set of drugs. And so it just goes down the pathway. And then maybe they end up in a surgeon's office and physical therapy and such and so forth. And um I just think that if people really had this in the correct order, they would start off with things very, very easy like diet and exercise and massage therapy, chiropractic, um, something that doesn't involve introducing a toxic drug into the body or a risky invasive surgery. But we have this mindset in this country that if chiropractic is good, surgery must be better. So why not just go run to the surgeon and get something cut out of your body? I just think that that's that's the wrong order of doing things. You want to always start off with the most non-invasive approach first, no matter what the problem is.

Jack Graham 9:16

We'll get back to today's episode shortly. But first, are you somebody that works out regularly, sleeps the right amount, eats all the healthy food, but you still feel like you're not getting the results you deserve? It's not some crazy workout routine, fancy new supplement or restrictive diet that is missing in your life. The thing that is missing that'll help you find your true form and finally get those results that you deserve is me. Yes, me. I've been a personal trainer for about 15 years now, coming up on 300 podcast episodes where I've interviewed athletes, coaches, doctors, authors, high performers, and a bunch of other people, which means I know what we need to work on to find your true form and finally get those results you deserve. One of the biggest things I've realized over the last 15 years and 300 podcast episodes is that there's not one thing that is gonna help you get those results. Finding your true form is very individualized. And when we work together, we work on your mind, body, and your identity, which means you're gonna follow a workout program that I design around your goals, your abilities, and your lifestyle. We're gonna make sure that you're eating all the right foods and not the foods that you see on social media that you think you should be eating. We find out what works for you, and obviously you're gonna be following all those good sleeping habits, but we're also gonna work on your identity. And the identity is a big part that a lot of people are missing and is why they feel like they're not getting the results they deserve. So if you are somebody that wants to finally get those results you deserve and start living a life that is true to you, hit the link in the description. I would love to work with you and help you get there. Let's get back to the episode. Uh Australia is very similar. Everybody is just like, I'm sick, what drugs do I need? Or go see a doctor, what do I need? Give me the drugs, and that's that's pretty much the only questions they ask. And I'm all about asking better questions. So why do you think that is the case? That people just go straight for the drugs, and what questions can that person be asking themselves or the doctor to maybe not go down that invasive path?

Dr. Kevin Smith 11:18

Well, I can't comment on on what goes on in Australia or Europe, but in the United States, we have the drug ads on TV all the time. And the drug ads are they're they're spending an an enormous amount of money to pedal their wares so they can convince you to buy their drugs. They s the big pharma spends about $12 billion a month on TV ads to convince everybody to want to buy their drugs, buy their solutions. I can't compete with that. I don't have $12 billion a month. But what I can do is I can communicate with one person at a time and explain to them that maybe just a superficial glossover of the problem isn't always the right choice. Maybe you need to dig a little bit deeper and find out what you can do that's more natural, that doesn't involve drugs or surgery to resolve your problem.

Jack Graham 12:22

Yeah, I we don't have those ads on TV in Australia, thank thank God. But I have seen them before when I've been over that way, and yeah, it's mind-blowing. For somebody that's not never exposed to it, and then I see it, I'm like, wow, this is a lot. So yeah, it's hard to do that.

Dr. Kevin Smith 12:38

I think that that the two countries that this is allowed is New Zealand and the United States. And it just so happens that New Zealand and the United States has the highest per capita cost for healthcare than any other country in the world. Um they're they're they're gonna spend that money somewhere, and it's gonna be passed off onto the consumer. So um if you have something constantly in your face that's gonna be brainwashing you to buy a certain type of a product, uh it's gonna it's a very very effective campaign. And and in in the United States, that's why people naturally gravitate towards the medicine cabinet.

Jack Graham 13:24

Yeah, that's that's scary. That's very scary. Uh so again, say somebody's got a headache and they're like, this headache keeps happening. I don't want to start m taking medications. Like, what questions can they ask to start seeing like where where should they go? What should they do?

Dr. Kevin Smith 13:44

It it it all depends on the individual. So there's no one size fits all what causes headaches. Some people may have headaches as a result of uh the bones in the neck area being misaligned, causing pressure on the nerves that go up into the head. It's called a cervicogenic headache. It's very, very common. At other times it could be related to your metabolism, it could be related to hormones, such as um a a childbearing your uh age woman that's going through her cycles, when your estrogen progesterone levels get out of out of out of sorts, that can often trigger a headache or a migraine. If it's due to um uh maybe maybe you're just you haven't had enough nourishment, or maybe you have a nutritional deficiency, then we gotta figure out what is what is the trigger, what is the root cause of the problem that keeps causing you to have headaches all the time. That's not normal to have headaches. It's not natural to have headaches, but a lot of people do, and there's a lot of different root causes.

Jack Graham 14:59

Can you talk about thyroids? It seems to be a bit of a buzzword at the moment for me. Thyroid? Yeah. Yeah. Thyroid dysfunction. It keeps popping up on my social media, in conversations in the gym, in health and fitness spaces. So, what is it about thyroids that we're we don't know, what we don't understand, and how should we think about it?

Dr. Kevin Smith 15:22

Okay, so let me explain for your for your listeners what the thyroid gland is and what thyroid hormone does for your body. The thyroid gland is a small butterfly-shaped endocrine gland that sits at the base of the neck in the front. And the job of the thyroid gland is to make thyroid hormone predominantly. It makes uh two different types of thyroid hormone called T3 and T4. T3 is named because it has three iodine molecules attached to it, and T4 is named because it has four iodine molecules attached to it. The majority of the of the hormone that comes out of the thyroid gland is T4. It's about 93%. T3 is a is this is the smaller fraction, about 7%, but that's the part that can activate and energize your cells. So your body needs to have an ample amount of T3 hormone to drive the process, drive all the all the processes. So every single cell in your body, you have about 70 trillion cells in your body. Every single one of them has a receptor site on the cell wall for thyroid hormone. And so what thyroid hormone does, what T3 does, is it acts like an accelerator pedal that drives a car. If you step on the gas, the car's gonna speed up. If you take your foot off the gas, the car's gonna slow down or it's gonna come to a stop, right? So it depends on what the cells are. So if it's the neurons in the brain, they need amount, they need a uh significant amount of thyroid hormone. If they don't get it, the the symptoms are gonna be brain fog or depression, anxiety, uh cognition issues, memory loss. Um you can walk into a room and then you can't remember why you walked in that room. So if it affects the the gut, then uh the some of the symptoms for that could be bowel transit time problems that result in constipation or diarrhea, or both, kind of ping-ponging back and forth. It could be uh leading to poor absorption of nutrients. It could be uh related to uh GERD or um uh diverticulitis or autoimmunity, something going on with the with the gut. So there's a lot of there's a lot of processes in the body that the that the thyroid gland governs based on on making enough thyroid hormone or distributing it throughout the body or converting it from uh T4 into T3 that takes place in the liver or in the gut. Or and the whole process starts in the brain. Now, one of the one of the problems is that the medical doctors don't do a sufficient amount of testing. When a medical doctor wants to look at your thyroid function, they'll they'll order a test called a TSH. When I order tests for thyroid function, I ordered 10 different tests. So it's a lot more involved as far as the testing is concerned. These are all blood tests. They're not very invasive, they're very simple, they're very cheap to do. But I ordered 10 different thyroid tests because I'm gonna look at the entire pathway and see where any kind of breakdowns could be occurring. Um, the other thing about the thyroid gland is that it's very rarely the thyroid gland that's the cause of the breakdown. It's usually some other type of a problem, some peripheral issue in the body, either because of anemia patterns, that's a problem transporting oxygen on the red blood cells, it's due to blood sugar problems, that's the number one stressor in the whole body. Uh stress hormones called cortisol. Uh, that's that's another problem that can affect your thyroid gland. Um there's sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. Remember, boys and girls make both, and they have to be in the right amount for the right gender and the right age. There's chronic inflammation, there's oxidative stress, there's GI problems, there's uh food allergies or food intolerances, there's chemical sensitivities, and there's unresolved virus problems like Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, uh, herpes, things like that. And all of that stuff, all of it, has the potential of throwing off the thyroid gland. Guess how much of that stuff that your medical doctor checks? None. Zero. So all that stuff is overlooked, and as a result of that, thyroid problems stay misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, and there's millions of people, tens of millions of people that have to suffer as a result of that.

Jack Graham 20:42

Yeah. So obviously, like you just said, thyroid is governed by a lot of different things to do with overall health and wellness. Correct. So if you suspect you are having some sort of thyroid issue and you go to your doctor and they only do that one blood test, or if that, what should you be asking to get done, or what should they be looking for?

Dr. Kevin Smith 21:04

Well, I would say that you're not going to get that to your satisfaction from going to the medical doctor, because the medical doctor is l mostly uh controlled by the insurance industry. And the insurance industry doesn't understand, doesn't appreciate this kind of stuff. I mean, I'm talking like well, this the test that I do, the medical doctors aren't gonna find out about that half that stuff for about 40 or 50 years from now. It's crazy. I don't want to wait. My patients don't want to wait. Uh so the the stuff that is very common to test for for thyroid by your PCP, that is technology that was created in the nineteen sixties. Now the names of the tests have changed and the names of the medications have changed over time, but really what's what they're doing for you has not changed at all. And it's it's antiquated. And uh like I said before, they're not doing a sufficient amount of testing to look at the whole entire picture. It's even scarier. I'm just full of good news today.

Jack Graham 22:17

I'm sure we'll find some uh good news to bring people back. So a lot again, with especially with thyroid, a lot of my experience, especially with clients, again, people talking to people in the health and fitness or just in the general public, it's like I have issues with my thyroid, I'm gonna go get this medication or I'm on this medication. Like like you're just saying, it was gut, it's governed by so many different things.

Dr. Kevin Smith 22:40

So what would you say Well, I can I can comment on that. Yeah. Uh about 17%, according to the medical literature, 17% of people that have thyroid replacement medications are going to be helped. They're gonna be they're gonna be correctly helped. That means that 83% of everybody that has this problem is never going to be corrected by taking things like synthroid or levathyroxin or cytamel or tyrosint or any of the other brand-name drugs that are out there. Just because of what we had talked about before, the problem could be as a result of some peripheral problem. Now, the number one cause of low thyroid disease in the United States is an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto's. And um that's just within the that's just within the United States. Outside of the United States, the number one cause of low thyroid disease is iodine deficiency. Americans don't have that problem. The reason is because we put salt on everything. I dye salt. Go figure. But the the number one cause is Hashimoto's. Now, Hashimoto's is not an endocrine problem. It's an immune system issue. So your immune system is out of whack, and as a result of that, the body's defense system called the immune system, which is your white blood cells, they travel around your circulation and they start attacking and destroying your thyroid gland. So the medical doctor's solution to that is to give you, start you off on like a small dose of synthroid, maybe 50 micrograms per day. And then after a couple years, that gets bumped up to 88 micrograms, and then that gets bumped up to 100 micrograms, and then 120, then 150, and you just keep climbing and climbing and climbing with no end in sight and no relief happening. And again, it's because the immune system is attacking and destroying the follicles of the thyroid gland, rendering it rendering it useless.

Jack Graham 25:08

So the for the 17% that it does the medication does work for, uh is it that just again masking the underlying issue that they had, and then they should still be fixing whatever outliers or outline was causing the thyroid issue?

Dr. Kevin Smith 25:25

So I want to I wanna I want to answer your question by using an analogy. If you're driving your car and the little light comes on that says you need you need gas for your car, you pull into a filling station and you start putting gas in your gas tank, and the gas comes starts to rise in the tank, and then it shuts off the little light, right? That's how it works. You want to think of it like this T4 is like the gas and the gas tank. Uh-huh. And T T uh TSH is like the light on your dashboard. So T4 and TSH have like an inverse relationship with each other. So as TSH goes up, T uh I'm sorry, as T4 goes up, TSH is going to come down. And like and the reverse will be true. When TSH T4 is too low, TSH will go high. So you want to think about it like this. When your gas in your gas tank gets too low, a little sensor in your gas tank sends a signal to your dashboard, alerting the driver that you're running out of gas and you need to fill your tank up. So what you fill up your tank with gas, when the gas level goes up, the T4 goes up, it shuts off the TS TSH thing. So when the doctors look at your TSH, what they're really looking at is the T4 TSH loop. And so they're just looking at that one little section of the whole entire pathway. That's not where, that's not the entire thyroid pathway. Uh you have to have a healthy liver to convert T4 into T3. You have to have a healthy gut to do the conversion. You have to have a healthy brain to make the process work in the first place. And you have to have healthy sex hormones that that drive the transportation of thyroid to different parts of your body. Not to confuse you, but if you have chronic inflammation, that's going to throw off inflammatory cytokines, which are like little carrier proteins that block the thyroid pathway and stop the thyroid hormone from binding onto your cells. So you can make plenty of thyroid hormone, you could transport it effectively from throughout the body, but if you're inflamed, it can't bind to your to your to your cells. So and as a result of that, you can have low thyroid disease and no amount of thyroid replacement hormone is going to fix that.

Jack Graham 28:08

Can you just I had that in my notes? Can you touch on inflammation within the body? What does that mean?

Dr. Kevin Smith 28:13

So there's two different types of inflammation. There's acute inflammation, and that's the good kind. And then there's chronic inflammation, and that's the bad kind. Acute inflammation is when you are riding your bike on the side uh and you uh on the road and you fall off your bike and you bump your knee. The inflammation is going to cause it to become red, it's going to cause it to be it to swell up a little bit, it's going to cause pain, and it's going to cause uh redness. That's the four signs of acute inflammation. And that is, believe it or not, it's actually necessary because it sets the stage for healing and repairing your body. But something occasionally can go in there and disengage the shutoff button, and it can no longer shut itself off, and then it becomes chronic. And that that wears out your cells. It's like putting a blowtorch on your cells. So chronic inflammation, excuse me, is largely mediated by your diet. It's created by consumption of sugar, seed oils, grains, dairy, other types of foods that you may have an allergy to, and that can cause chronic body-wide inflammation and screw up a lot of processes. By the way, most diseases that we know about today, like cancer, diabetes, um, COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, arthritis, they're all related to chronic inflammation. Every disease process is ultimately rooted in chronic inflammation. So you want to do what you can to minimize that as much as you possibly can, if for nothing else than the sake of your thyroid function.

Jack Graham 30:05

Is there any simple ways to detect if somebody's got inflammation that is causing them harm? Like obviously, you would have seen a lot of people come in to see you and s sort of start talking about their symptoms.

Dr. Kevin Smith 30:17

Was there any Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of really simple blood tests, like high sensitivity C reactive protein. That's an that's an inflammatory marker that only shows up if you are inflamed, and it could uh predictably lead to a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack or a stroke. Um, your fatty acid profile. Your essential fatty acids are like omega-3 and omega-6 free fatty acids, you have to have a balance. If you have 10 omega-6s, you should have 10 omega-3s. Omega-3 fatty acids come from the sea, omega-6 come from terrestrial food sources, such as grains, poultry, um vegetables, things like that. But if you eat oily fish, if you eat blue-green algae, if uh if your if your diet has a consistent amount of um fish uh fish products, you will get a lot of omega-3s in your diet. Now, a lot of people can't eat fish or they don't like fish. So the alternative is to take a fish oil substitute. And they're not all created equal. There's a big difference between the stuff that they sell at the discount store versus professional quality. There's all there's a lot of different types of inflammatory markers, like oxidized LDLs, lipoprotein associated, phospholipase A2, there's homocysteine, there's interleukin 6, triglyceride HDL ratios, fasting insulins. All those things are very important to measure, and they're very easily and very cheaply measured, but you have to request them.

Jack Graham 32:10

You touched on supplements there. I find that people are just the same with supplements than medication. It's like I am low in vitamin D, so I just go and get vitamin D supplements. But like you said, they're not all created equal. Most of them don't even do anything for your body. So, how should we be thinking about supplements?

Dr. Kevin Smith 32:29

There's four levels of supplements that are available to you as a consumer. Level one is what you get to find at a Walmart or the dollar store that they have in America, or one of those big box stores like Sam's Club or Costco. You know, there's a reason that you could buy a thousand fish rolls for eight dollars. Because it's it's rancid. It's been sitting on a pallet for 20 years. Don't don't waste your time with that stuff. I would just say that the most expensive supplements are the ones that don't work, and you just wasted your money. Level two uh are the kind of products that you could find at a pharmacy. In America, we have CVS, you have Walgreens, you have the local pharmacies at the gi at the uh local grocery stores. Um and those are better formulated than the the stuff at Walmart. It's um it's made with better raw materials, it's more absorbable, it does a better job. Then level three is what you get to find at a GNC or Vitamin World or stuff that you can find on an Amazon.com. For the most part, a lot of that stuff is better quality than you can find at the pharmacy. And uh it's more again, it's more absorbable, it's made with better raw materials, it does a better job. Yeah, you're gonna pay a couple of dollars extra, but yeah, it's not the time to save a buck or two. It's the time to invest smartly and wisely into your own body. And then level four, which is what I use, those are professional quality supplements. Those are the ones that are backed by uh research. They're independently tested by third-party companies, and uh they do the best job. They're about the price the same as GNC, but you get a whole lot more for for what you want. So I again there there's a time to save a dollar or two, uh, but I just don't think that your health is worth it. I think that you want to you want to uh invest on in the best that you can possibly get. It's kind of like a hamburger from McDonald's versus a filet mignon from a nice steakhouse. Technically they're both meat, but that's where the similarities end.

Jack Graham 35:03

Yeah, 100% agree. Um you just get what you pay for, unfortunately. Exactly.

Dr. Kevin Smith 35:09

You know, like like if you're gonna go and compromise and save a dollar or two on buying, I don't know, picnic supplies or whatever, you can, but it's it's not gonna kill you to buy the cheaper na the cheaper tablecloth cover. But um when it comes to things like fish oils or vitamins or magnesium or whatever, you always want to get the best that you can possibly get.

Jack Graham 35:35

And I would say that goes pretty much with anything to do with your body, really. Like foods.

Dr. Kevin Smith 35:39

Yeah, yeah. Whatever, cosmetics, foods, everything. You you you get what you pay for.

Jack Graham 35:45

Yeah. Uh even to seeing a doctor, obviously seeing a doctor that's going to cost a little bit more, but you're gonna get bet way better results.

Dr. Kevin Smith 35:52

Yeah, exactly.

Jack Graham 35:53

You did touch on the analogy of fuel, like fueling up your car. And if we talk about that with your body, what are people missing or what should people be thinking about when fueling your body, whether it's food, environment, and everything in between?

Dr. Kevin Smith 36:10

Well, that's that's that's that's a lot of stuff that uh we can unpack there because a lot of a lot of things that people eat are based on tradition or based on psychology. Um when a child is is young and they do very well in school, and the parent rewards them by giving them a cookie, they associate a good performance with food. And um that can transfer into adulthood, and then you start thinking, I did very well this month on my commissions, therefore I'm entitled to a steak dinner at a fancy restaurant. And uh I just I think that eating or food in general should be thought of as fuel for maximum performance, not as a convenient thing or not as a reward.

Jack Graham 37:08

It is crazy how these little red lights can have such a positive impact on your overall health and wellness. I'm actually disappointed in myself for taking so long to get into red light therapy, but there's just so many shitty products out there, and then they're super expensive. Like you're buying these expensive red lights, you put them on your skin, hopefully they're working, you don't know, and it's been crazy to feel the effects. I've been using the Lumiflex Body Pro for a few weeks now, and it is so amazing to actually feel the effects of the red light after a few days. I've been struggling with plant fasciitis for too long, eight months now, maybe. And I've was almost at the point where I was gonna go down PRP, cortisone just to get rid of the pain so I could do the exercises to fix it. Like when your ankle feels like it's gonna get whipped off by a blunt butter knife, you really don't want to do the exercises to fix the ankle, the plant fasciitis. And after three days, four rounds each day, on the fourth day, the pain was gone. It was crazy. So now I can actually do my exercises to fix a plant fasciitis pain-free. And I actually went for a run the other day, still pain-free, crazy. So I'm excited to have Lumiflex as a sponsor of the podcast. If you want to start improving your overall health and wellness with red light therapy, check Lumiflex out. You can hit the link in the description. Use True Form at the checkout to get 10% off. And I can't wait for you to start feeling the effects of these crazy little red lights as well. Yeah, but how do we change people's minds on that?

Dr. Kevin Smith 38:43

That is a million-dollar question right there. I mean, people come to me, they pay me pretty good money to solve a problem, but yet when I tell them that they're they're they can't eat certain foods anymore, they look at me like I've got three heads. Like, how dare you? This is how I grew up, and uh I want to eat uh I'm gonna eat pizza and burgers for the rest of my life, but it's maybe not in the best interest to do that.

Jack Graham 39:09

Yeah. In Australia, it's probably alcohol's probably the main the liquid diet. Yeah. Again, like you said, if you celebrate anything, alcohol's involved. If you have a good achievement, you celebrate with alcohol. If you gave it with friends, alcohol's there. So trying to get people to cut back on alcohol or cut it out. Again, they look at me like I've got three heads, and what do you mean? How do I do that?

Dr. Kevin Smith 39:33

So I'm a very boring person, so I don't I don't drink very much. I mean, I may have two drinks a year. Um, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs. Um I drink coffee, but it's black. It's not like you I go to Starbucks and make a tin roof Sunday with the toppings. Uh it's just black coffee. But um every cell in your body, it alcohol is toxic to your cells. And it's toxic to your liver, it is toxic to your brain. Um, but getting people to do that is that's a different story.

Jack Graham 40:13

Uh can we touch on nutrition? Like you said, like you just brought up a good point, and it just reminded me of a conversation I was having yesterday about somebody just trying to reduce calories. And I said, like, just watch what you drink, because most people are just drinking calories, like going to Starbucks or here in Melbourne at the moment, it's bubble teas. They got these little I don't even know, these little gem, like sugary gems in a tea. But because it has tea in the name, people think it's healthy, but it's a liquid candy bar. 800 calories for one drink is probably not not ideal. So can you just touch on nutrition for me? And just I guess your experience working with people and I guess the theory. What again?

Dr. Kevin Smith 40:55

So the first thing I want to say is that there's no one size fits all. There's no one diet that's perfect for everybody across the board. Some people are going to do very well on a Mediterranean diet, whereas another person may do very well on a carnivore diet or a ketogenic diet. When I'm trying to clean out somebody's system, the first thing that I'll do is I'll put them on an autoimmune paleo diet. So, really what the difference is between that and some of the other popular diets is adjusting your macros, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. So paleo would be like high high protein, moderate healthy fats, and low carb. Whereas a ketogenic diet would be high healthy fats, moderate protein, low low carb. The difference is that you you reverse the protein and the fat intake. A carnivore diet has almost all uh animal animal animal fats and proteins and zero carbs. So that takes a lot of adjusting to that. Some people that have diabetes or autoimmunity, they do extremely well on a carnivore diet or a ketogenic diet. But my experience has been that those diets are very difficult to sustain over a long period of time. So, I mean everybody needs to be tested to find out what they need, what's right for them, so and their particular needs and wants. So, for example, if somebody has an autoimmune disease and it's it's causing a lot of aggravation in their life, they want to do anything that they can to reduce the level of of um autoimmunity on their joints, on their thyroid gland, their their brain, their gut, and uh uh make little adjustments along the way. And then use supplements to do just that to supplement a healthy diet. Um, I don't think that anybody should be eating at McDonald's six days a week and then taking a multivitamin. It's kind of wasting their time.

Jack Graham 43:17

Yeah, you're not gonna be absorbing any nutrients in any way, shape, or form. And then they probably wonder why they feel like shit. Right, right, right.

Dr. Kevin Smith 43:27

So a lot of a lot of the stuff that we uh how we feel, our energy levels, how much pep that we have for work and for play, how much how uh uh our sleep, all these things can be boiled down to really basic essentials. You gotta be you gotta eat, you gotta you gotta fuel your body with the right types of of things, and everybody's a little bit different, so you always want to start off by testing to find out what you need. You always want to make sure that you're drinking plenty of water. We call it hydrating, and just making sure that you're getting at least 50% of your body weight and ounces of fluid. So I'll give you an example. Let's say that a man weighs 200 pounds. That guy is going to need 100 ounces of water every single day just for basic function. If you weighed 75, uh 150 pounds, then you need to drink uh 75 fluid ounces of water every day. Now I can't I I can't convert ounces to into milliliters, so I'll do that.

Jack Graham 44:45

I'll do that in the post and put it over the screen for everybody.

Dr. Kevin Smith 44:48

But if you drink coffee, if you drink tea, you're gonna need to drink that amount of money that amount of fluid in terms of water to rehydrate your body because they can act as a diuretic and they can they can cause you to become dehydrated. If you drink alcohol, you need to flush the alcohol with pure water all the time. Beyond diet and hydration, you have to you have to you have to sleep. You have to make get about uh six to eight to nine hours of restful, replenishing sleep every single night. And if you're not, there's something wrong, either because you have a lot of psychological stress or you have chemical stress or physical stress, something is is interfering with your ability to sleep. You have to you have to exercise, you have to challenge your body. Your body was made for moving all the time, and if you're not moving, you're gonna start to figuratively rust. And I believe that you should maybe pay attention to your frame, your joints, and your um posture that comes from chiropractic care. And um I I believe that most people should have the least amount of drugs, not the most amount. And what concerns me is that when people come to see me, I always check their drug list and always see what they're taking. The average person comes to see me with by taking seven drugs already. The most I've ever seen in my career. A guy walked in my office with his drug list, it was a page and a half single space typed. And he walked in like a zombie because of all the medicines that the doctors had given him for all these different conditions. And it kind of blew my mind. I felt really, really sad for the guy. And it's not on my license to tell somebody to stop taking the drugs. I believe that whoever puts you on the drug should be the doctor to take you off the drug. That's just common courtesy. But I I would just say, you know, the way to handle that is say, you know, doctor, I am working with a natural health care practitioner from Pittsburgh. I feel a hell of a lot better. I think that it's time that you and I had a conversation about decreasing my dosage of this drug or getting me completely off of it. What are your thoughts, sir? And if you approach them in a respectful tone of voice, kind of like what I just described, they're going to be all about getting you off that drug. Medical doctors shouldn't have a vested interest on keeping you on the maximum amount of drugs. They should have you on the minimum number of drugs.

Jack Graham 47:48

You touched there about testing. So I would like to know your thoughts on like testing, but also trackables, like wearables, technology, watches, rings, all that sort of stuff. I always say you can't really improve what you're not tracking. So where are your thoughts when it comes to wearables?

Dr. Kevin Smith 48:09

Well, I think that the you you you answered that question right there. You can't improve upon anything that you're not measuring. So if you can get like a Garmin or a smartwatch to track your pulse or your blood pressure or whatever you want to do and track that stuff, track your blood glucose through uh a glucometer. They have those those ones that stick on the back of your arms now, constant, constant glucose monitors, um, little portable EKGs that you can measure to see if you if your heartbeat is in the right realm. Um doing something as simple as measuring your weight with a scale to make sure you're on on the right track. They have these smart scales now that can measure your body composition, not just your weight. So, for example, if you lose five pounds uh uh over the course of a week, you think that's great, right? But what if you what if the scale says that you haven't budged at all, but in reality you lost five pounds of fat and you gained five pounds of muscle? That's something that can be easily measured by using a special type of scale, uh checking your what's called the body impedance analysis, and you can find out a little bit more about your body's composition.

Jack Graham 49:38

Yeah, I love that. That's a good point. I always said as well. Not all weight loss is good weight loss. If you're losing muscle mass, then yeah, it's not the best. Um and that brings me into like JLPL 1s and that sort of stuff. I have a few clients that use it, it's a good tool. What are your thoughts on it? And again, should it be relied on? Uh how to get people on and off it.

Dr. Kevin Smith 50:05

I a GLP1 uh for your for your listeners is a glucagon-like antagon, I'm sorry, glucagon-like agonist uh peptide. If the if the patient is a diabetic, then that's there's a lot of medical necessity for using that. However, I'm not a big fan of using medications for just general weight loss in the absence of having a metabolic disorder like diabetes. Um I would say the diabetes in my country is at an epidemic level. And um I tell people if you just want to find out how big of a deal that diabetes is, look at all the kidney dialysis centers that are popping up everywhere. It's enormous. Um diabetes can lead to heart attack, stroke, blindness, kidney failure, peripheral neuropathy, autonomic dysfunctions. Just um if if if it's a guy, just tell him that it's going to lead to ED and watch how fast he gets that chance, right? But um there's actually four types of diabetes out there. And I don't think that a lot of people know this. There's type 1. Type 1 diabetes is juvenile onset diabetes. It's an autoimmune condition. So in that case, the white blood cells are attacking and destroying the beta cells of the pancreas, and they can no longer produce their own insulin, and as a result, they have to be on insulin for the rest of their life. It has nothing to do with diet and exercise. Type 2 diabetes, which is the majority of the cases, is due to overconsumption of sugar, it's consumption of inflammatory things like seed oils, it's lack of exercise, and it starts with insulin resistance. It's probably 95% of all cases out there. There's another type that's been described in the literature as type 1.5. Type 1.5 is the same exact mechanism as type 1. However, the difference is it happens after puberty. It happens in adulthood. So what happens is that you develop a autoimmune disease that affects your ability to regulate your blood sugar, and but it happens as an adult. And then there's type 3 diabetes. That's something that a lot of people haven't heard of. Type 3 diabetes is mostly known by another name called Alzheimer's disease. So there's a there's a direct correlation between out-of-control blood sugar and early onset dementia and memory problems and cognition problems. And um there's it's just such a big deal in this country, but people are not making the connection.

Jack Graham 53:11

Can you, I guess, dive into that a little bit more? Like why is that type 3 diabetes? How is that even connected to uh Alzheimer's?

Dr. Kevin Smith 53:21

It's it's connected because of inflammation. Chronic inflammation affects the brain, and the brain literally gets on fire, and it starts you start to lose your memory, you start to lose your cognition. I don't really know all the biomechanical or biochemical pathways involved. I just know that there's a direct correlation between out of out-of-control blood sugar problems and early onset dementia. I mean, in the United States 1880 1860, 1870, around the time of the Civil War, Americans consumed about five pounds of sugar a year. Now they consume 150 pounds of sugar a year. So everything, everything that you eat has been uh supplemented with oils, sugars, or salt by the food industry to make things more palatable, to make things more tasty. So you wonder why uh people have such so many problems these days is mostly because of the food industry messing with stuff. Um in this country, corn is a subsidized crop. That means the federal government pays for a large part of it. That's why all these companies use high fructose corn syrup in their products, because it's cheaper to manufacture stuff using high fructose corn syrup than with sugar. The reason for that is has to do with economics and has nothing to do with what's in your best interest.

Jack Graham 55:01

Yeah, it's scary. And it's scary how addictive food is now. Uh and like you said, like combine that with marketing and all that sort of stuff, it's very hard to compete with.

Dr. Kevin Smith 55:13

So the portion sizes have also increased. When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, and we wanted to buy a Coke, the Cokes were sold in little eight-ounce green bottles. Nowadays you have these 64-ounce big gulps at your disposal at every convenience store out there. And it's like what you described, people in your country drinking those those sweet teas with all that sugar and all those problems associated with it. It's it's going on in my country too.

Jack Graham 55:48

Um yeah, it's a lot of issues we need to fight with these days to be a healthy human that lives a long time. But there's obviously ways we can do that. So would you just give me three, four, maybe five things that people should be looking at doing every single day just to live a long, healthy, happy life? Okay.

Dr. Kevin Smith 56:12

So the first thing I'm I believe that the first part of this is your nutrition. You got to make sure that you're eating a balanced balanced meals. Um I'm a I'm a big fan of intermittent fasting. I'm a big fan of making sure that your foods are of the highest quality possible. Uh you should never buy your food where you buy your gas at the local gas station. Um I tell people, if it's a plant, eat it. If it's made in a plant, don't eat it. And uh other other other little things like if it has more than five ingredients, don't buy it. If it has any ingredients that you can't pronounce, don't buy it. You don't need you need you don't need anything that's got uh 150 ingredients uh with um artificial sweeteners, artificial colors, artificial dyes. So your diet is the first and foremost part of your health. Make sure that you're drinking plenty of water, make sure you're getting plenty of restful, replenishing sleep, make sure you're exercising and challenging your body, make sure that you are um paying attention to your joints and your frame and your posture through chiropractic care. And I think if you just do if you just focus on the basics, you're gonna be getting a lot further ahead uh than you possibly thought of. I think that the a lot of that stuff is just overlooked by too many people. But I think that it's very important to do that, and I also think that uh it's important to not just wait until you're symptomatic to look at your health. It's it's really good a good thing to take measurements of the things that we talked about before, like those inflammatory markers. R it's not normally covered by insurance, it's not normally uh uh something that your medical doctor is gonna do. You have to ask for it. And if you do, they're gonna get they're gonna order them for you, or I will.

Jack Graham 58:28

Uh huh. Just can you touch on chiropractic care? Just for those that don't know. Like you said, make sure you're doing that. So what does that mean?

Dr. Kevin Smith 58:38

Chiropractic is the philosophy, art, and science of natural health care, and the purpose is to gently slip the bones back in place where they belong to take the pressure off the nerves. So the nervous system is called the master system of the body. It controls and regulates every single cell in your entire body through the autonomic nervous system, and the goal is to just take the pressure off of the nerves to make them work right. So, virtually all athletes, all professional athletes, all Olympic athletes, all college athletes, some high school, they all use chiropractors to bounce back after a game to keep themselves in top shape. It's it's recognized in my country by all 50 states, by the Department of Education, by all insurance companies, and so it's it's a it's it's a very, very popular and highly accepted form of natural health care. Um I believe, like I said before a while ago, I believe that there's a time and a place for all healing. So there's a time and a place for drugs, there's a time and a place for surgery, there's a time and a place for chiropractic, physical therapy, just all kinds of stuff. So just keep an open mind. I think that a mind is kind of like a parachute. Both work best when open.

Jack Graham 1:00:08

Uh huh. I'd just put one little point in there is just uh there's a lot of obviously insert personal trainers, chiropractic, physios that out there, and a lot of people will go to one chiro chiropractic practitioner and have a bad experience and say, Oh, that's not for me. I'd just say keep searching. Like it's it's for everybody. You've just got to find the right person, right doctor for you to help you.

Dr. Kevin Smith 1:00:35

I went to a I went to a dentist once and he hurt me. I still go back to dentist. Yeah. Right. So just because you had a bad experience or your sister's cousins, boyfriends, uncles, friend at the bar twice removed, heard that chiropractors kill everybody just by looking at them. Yeah, that doesn't necessarily mean that's the truth. Yeah.

Jack Graham 1:00:57

Uh so where can people find you, work with you, and connect with your content?

Dr. Kevin Smith 1:01:03

So the best way to do that is to visit me online by going to my website at metabolicsolutions.net. And if you go to metabolicsolutions.net, I actually have a free quiz, a free health quiz. It takes about two minutes. It's completely free, and you can find out where you sit on the grand scheme of things. So I would just say just go to metabolicsolutions.net, take that quiz, and uh let's let's find out where you're at. If you are having a problem and you want some help, you can reach out to me through the website, and uh uh we can set up a um a phone call or some other mechanism to find out a little bit more about what's bothering you and what we what my recommendations are for helping you. But the first place to start is just to go to metabolicsolutions.net, look around, read about what I do and what I'm all about, and then if you if you're having a problem, reach out to me.

Jack Graham 1:02:06

And take that quiz. Love that. Thank you. Yeah. Well, Kevin, thanks for your time. Thanks for your knowledge. And I got a lot out of this conversation. I appreciate all your knowledge and I said at the start, how you convey it. Very easy to understand, and I'm sure everybody's gonna learn something from this episode.

Dr. Kevin Smith 1:02:24

Well, Jack, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate that. And um, I hope that your listener has got a lot of value. What is up?

Jack Graham 1:02:32

Thanks for being here at the end of the episode. Obviously, you've enjoyed it and it's helped you find your true form. And I bet you know somebody that's gonna help find their true form as well. So I'd appreciate it if you could copy this show link, send it to one friend or family member and say, hey, have a listen to this. It's gonna help you find your true form. They'll probably have no idea what you're talking about, but it will help them. And I appreciate if you could do that. Uh, also, all podcast platforms these days have some sort of algorithm. So the more you interact with this episode, the better it's gonna perform and help reach more people and help them find their true form as well. So, five star review, positive comment, like, share, comment, however, you can interact with the episode. I'd appreciate that. And everybody listening that hasn't heard of the true form podcast is gonna appreciate it as well.