Intro:              00:00          Podcasting from the base of Lake Tahoe in the Eastern Sierras comes The Medicine Wheel. We are a group of progressive physicians seeking solutions and enlightenment while surfing the seas of big data and summiting mountains of research. In an effort to make the practice of medicine more personal and medical knowledge more accessible and empower you, the listener to be as healthy as possible. Now, The Medicine Wheel.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:34          Hello everyone, welcome to The Medicine Wheel. Again, we're proud to announce an interview with a phenomenal guest, a good friend of mine, a peer, a mentor, and somebody I've had a lot of fun with in the past. Dr. Henry Childers, he's joining us today from the great state of Delaware where he has a practice referred to as the Delaware Integrative Medicine Group. Dr. Childers, welcome. Thank you for coming on.

 

Dr. Childers:       00:56          Thank you for having me.

 

Dr. Devlin:         00:56          Great. I'd also like to welcome back my partner, Dr. Floyd, he's joining us here today as he has room in his schedule to do so. Thank you, Dr. Floyd.

 

Dr. Floyd:          01:06          My pleasure. It's great being here.

 

Dr. Devlin:         01:07          So one of the things that I find very curious about you, Dr. Childers, is your background. So, even though you're involved in doing a lot of integrative, more open minded medicine now, you've come a long way from your humble beginnings. And so I want to talk a little bit about your history and I like to talk about your pre-medicine history. Uniquely you shared with me early on that you were a sailor, you had a passion for the ocean and being on boats. Tell me about how you ended up involved in The America's Cup.

 

Dr. Childers:       01:44          I grew up in Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island and The America's cup for all of my life was in Newport, Rhode Island. So we grew up with it and it was always something that America had won, I think it was for 130 years or something. We had never lost it. It was the longest running, continuous, championship. And in 1983 maybe it was 1984, for the first time we lost it, and it was kind of devastating. So I grew up in Narragansett Bay racing sailboats and fishing and water skiing and just taking the boat all over the place. And being a kid and it was great. I loved racing and then I think when I got older I realized because you find out that sailing a boat is really applied physics. You don't realize it as a kid, but when you trim a sail, what you're doing is changing oil shape, that's why an airplane flies, and you're doing these things to make the boat go faster and the better you do it and obey all these principles, usually the better your boat goes. And if he knows some tactics, you know, it becomes a great sporting great hobby. One thing led to another, the world of sailing, like the world of medicine, it's really trying to small, when you come down to it, and people know each other and if you excel, you kind of graduate to the next level. Someone recognizes you and invite you up the chain. And one thing leads to another. When I got to the point where I guess in college and then immediately after college. I was doing research at the time, I was supposed to start medical school and I got an invitation to go out to Hawaii, which is not a bad place to train, to join stars and stripes in The America's Cup with Dennis Conner. And, you know, my dad who's a veterinarian, very common, and said, "Well, it's a great honor, but obviously you're going to go to medical school." Obviously, but my mother, much more practical, said, "Well, medical school will be there when you get back. Of course you're going to go take this opportunity that doesn't come along every day." So I did, and it was great. And I ended up staying out of medical school or deferring medical school for about eight years, racing sailboats around the world and doing various America's Cups and things like that. And then I finally transitioned back because they said, in other words, if you don't come, we're going to cut your spot. So I figured it was time to go. And it was at the right time because I tend to get bored with things, you know, after a while and I raced. It was great. You go around the world, that sounds glamorous, unless it's, you know, once you do it every day, it's just what you do, which I suddenly glamour in the Hollywood is more of what you do. And I just got to the point where I wanted more out of what I was doing and I figured, time to go to med school, do something different.

 

Dr. Devlin:         04:28          Wonderful.

 

Dr. Childers:       04:28          That's my story.

 

Dr. Devlin:         04:29          Well, tell me a little bit about some of the most exciting adventures you had while on the boat. You told me about one story, which I can remind you of, but I think you'll remember it. But it was a scary moment for a few of you on board.

 

Dr. Childers:       04:41          Was it on The America's Cup or on a different thing?

 

Dr. Devlin:         04:45          You might've been on a different trip, but it involved sea life.

 

Dr. Childers:       04:53          God, I hate to say that there was so many, but there were a lot, there was one, I remember there was a time before, we were in college, I think we were doing deliveries up from Fort Lauderdale up to Newport, Rhode Island. It was the beginning of the summer and we were right off of Cape Hatteras, like the Bermuda triangle, everyone hears about so you know, sea stories and everything, and all of a sudden it was a beautiful day and everyone's on deck and a squall hit us and we were on a 70 something foot boat and immediately the boat was just completely on its side. So much so that the boat- because of the wind squall just came out of nowhere, and the sails are being ripped off. And because the boat's on its' side, water stuffs coming in through the hatches and everything else. And we're struggling to get remaining sails down and just as soon as it hits people on the boat were, you know, praying to God and the whole thing, and then all of a sudden it went away. And the boat straight up, and I remember the sails were just dripping down like icicles because they were shredded. And I remember looking in the mirror and the tan I had, cause we were on the sun the whole time, was just like striped. I almost looked like a tiger, because it was like sand blasted off my face. And then there was no sign of any storm or anything was flat calm again. And you know, we're just like, "Wow," because the boat could have gone down at that point and who has time to get a life raft? And then it just went away. And it's, kind of shows you like the power of the ocean and the power of weather and you know what can actually happen. And so we took down the tattered sails, put up new sales and went on our way and just kind of had a story to tell for the rest of our life. I don't know if that's the one you were talking about but...

 

Dr. Devlin:         06:36          Well, I remember we talked about that one, but we also talked about one where you guys were within a few feet of a very large great white.

 

Dr. Childers:       06:43          Oh that was in Australia. That was when we were racing actually. And it was before the race and we could tell there was some weed on the heel or the rudder. You could see it pulling off. And we had a guy whose job it was, he was on the team and his job was to, he had tanks and he use to clean different things. But he would go down and get all that stuff off. And so the sail- we were on the back of the boat just kind of looking and it's right before it gets windy cause it always gets windy, about 11:30, 12 o'clock in Western Australia. And as we're down there and he's getting ready to go in, we just see this, I don't know, it was 10 feet below, 20 feet below, it's hard to tell when you look down in the water. This huge shark just come swimming by. And so we're looking down, we're thinking, you know, Dennis is a pretty competitive guy and I think he probably weigh, "Well Chris is a good guy, but we want to win the race." So he volunteered, "Chris go in." Despite the shark, and get the seaweed off. We all just watched to see what was going to happen. There's no way I was going in, but Chris did, he did his job, he stayed close to the boat so he was protected and scurried back up onto the tender. But, you know, kind of, again shows you what forces are out there and it's amazing, you know, you get out into nature, into the world as human beings, we really are pretty miniscule in the face of what could be out there. And uh... Yeah, there's big sea life out there, there's big waves, there's big winds, there's all kinds of things, It's called adventure.

 

Dr. Devlin:         08:11          Absolutely. It's humbling, some of these stories you share. Tell me, as we sort of segue into a little bit more about your professional career, tell me about the motivations about medical school and what your aspirations initially were in going into medicine.

 

Dr. Childers:       08:26          You know, originally I wanted to be a chef because I love cooking and I just- I thought about that. And also I wanted to be an artist and I'm very good at copying things and I realized I'm not that artistic. I can't make my own thing up, but I can copy it very well. I figured I'm not going to be an artist. I always like, I love cooking, but I wasn't going to be a chef and I always loved science. My dad was a veterinarian, so I grew up, he operates, friends would be falling, dropping, fainting, I'd be like, "Well this is cool." And so it was always kind of, you know, something I loved. Liked science, liked biology. So I always, kind of, knew I wanted to go into medicine and I always wanted to go into surgery because it was the most exciting part of medicine, you know? Interesting, In medical school, I'd like to say I got straight A's, I didn't, but I will say, I liked even psychiatry and hematology, oncology, and pathology, and pharmacology, as well as you know, anatomy and everything else. I loved all those courses. I had a ball, it was work, but I loved just learning all that stuff. The thing I liked the best was the cell biology and the biochemistry and that's where all my research was. But you know, everything I took was just new and it was learning and it was just so exciting. That's why I like medicine and that's why I like what we do now, because as much as we think we know, we probably know a percent or a fraction and we're revealing every day, and as soon as you start thinking you kind of got it figured out, hopefully we don't, and I know I never do, but I know when medicine, as soon as, we, as medical people stuff, thinking you have it figured out, it's when you're probably going to stop learning and treating well. Because we are on a very steep curve and that makes it interesting. I told you before, I get bored sometimes with things, as long as I'm not learning everything, then there's room to grow. You know, once you master it, and this is- So i went into cardiothoracic surgery and it was awesome. And the reason I went into surgery was because it was more interactive and I love surgery and it was fun. The reason I went into cardiothoracic surgery was because it was kind of like playing a Superbowl every time you operated. I mean the stakes were high, you know, you had to be very technically good and you had to be quick, and it was just, you know, you just get a good kind of stress. And after you do it for 10 years, it's kind of like more of the same. And you know, the excitement and the challenges when you are very young at, it is different than when you get further on in your career. And again, once I got to that point, and then you're up all night, you're on call every other night. The cons maybe started outweighing the pros and that's when I started getting into regenerative medicine. Besides having orthopedic issues from all the sports that we played I needed some kind of regenerative health. Then I started getting back into that aspect because I realized that was all the biochemistry and cell biology stuff that I loved, that was all off shoots of my research and I got to get back into that academic aspect of it. And, that's the stuff I always loved. So now, the academic hobby is what I practice and I love it because when I talk to people, or other practitioners, I mean it's easy, I could open up the biochemistry book or the cell biology book or the molecular biology book because we understand gene expression. And you never guarantee an outcome, but you can look at how cell biology works and talk to people and say, "This is why I think this is a viable thing to help your condition," whatever you're treating. And you know, one of the caveats when you get onto this is, you have a genetic predisposition, we're not going to change your DNA, but within the parameters of your DNA, which haven't changed, unless you have cancer or something, you have the same DNA, you should be able to express the same genes. As we get older we don't always do that, but there were ways to stimulate that gene expression, with older age. What you express when you are a neonate is different than what you express when you're 40, but you have the same DNA. And we are slowly learning to find ways to stimulate that expression, and if you can do that, you turn on the youthful gene or the repair mechanism that we typically don't do. That's how you're going to ensure health and get better results to people, hopefully without always having to rely on a pharmaceutical drug or an operation, there's a time or place for that stuff too.

 

Dr. Devlin:         12:53          Right. Dr. Childers, the one thing that you shared with me when we first got to know each other, was one of the impeti, impetus for you to transition from cardiothoracic surgery into this regenerative medicine field, you're in now, was a shoulder problem you were having that you finally got some relief from. Could you talk about that story a little bit?

 

Dr. Childers:       13:14          Yeah, and that's what I was alluding to. So picture yourself on a 70 foot boat, in extremely rough, or at least, rough weather, 20 knot winds a moving platform, and boats we used to race in didn't have lifelines and you're to trying to pull up a hundred pound sail from a hatch because they have to change it, and you know, you're leaning on the platform that's moving and doing all of these things. It's really bad for you, as is football and lacrosse and all those other things we play, skiing. And so I've dislocated shoulders, knees and hips, not dislocated but have had injuries and all of these things. So you know, sports are good for everyone, should play, it's a great social thing, it makes you healthy, but when you get old and you pay some prices depending on what you're playing and how you got hurt. My shoulder was dislocated numerous times, and it got to the point, and I just worked through it, cause that's what you do with the pain, you just keep working through it, as a kid cause you stupid. Then you realize, there were better ways to go about it. Finally I got to the point where I had an MRI and all of my buddies who were orthopedic surgeons looked at it and said, number one, how could someone of your age get a shoulder looking like that? And number two, there's absolutely nothing we can offer you except a replacement, which I was not going to do, was a shoulder replacements, that's a really challenging operation and you can never undo it once you do it, and you can never do things that you were doing before. And I wasn't will, a knee is one thing, but a shoulder is kind of different, and I wasn't willing to do it. And I was looking for other alternatives and a good friend of mine who was at Sloan Kettering, with me, in New York hospital, way back, was doing some regenerative integrative things. And the first one was ozone, which, which you know well and you practice, Prolozone. It's a unstable oxidant species which stimulates mitochondrial function. And he talked me into flying down to Florida so we could stick a gas in my shoulder and I accepted the offer out of desperation, and cause I know him. And, all of a sudden I had pain relief, and I had steroids, I had all the other stuff. I wasn't going to take the pain medications and live on that. And so I started having function. I had more mobility range of motion and less pain. And so I'm like, there's something in this. And this is when I started with like, "What is this ozone thing doing?" And I looked at the biochemical pathways and realized this is a lot of what my research was about and all the biochemistry, all the biochemistry that we had studied, that we knew, the cell biology, their stimulating through oxidation, mitochondrial function, you're releasing growth factors, you're increasing ATP. All of this increases the antioxidant production. And basically every cellular parameter is increased. Okay, will that lead to healthy tissue change? Of course it will. Now I'm reading it, I'm like, "Oh yeah, that's why this stuff works." Because I wanted to know how it works. And so, you know, I started treating that way. This is how I got into it. So I started getting the equipment to treat myself. And then doctor friends of mine are like, "I got these patients and can you come to the office and treat them?" And then after a decade people started getting better. And so I got talked into like coming in a couple days a week and doing this to open an office a couple of days a week to developing a practice which has become extremely busy to developing that practice into other areas. Not only ozone applied to orthopedics, but in the treatment of Lyme disease and support for cancer patients and fibromyalgia and just a whole wellness for professional athletes who use this for wellness. But it also got into other areas, bioidentical hormone treatmentsusing PRP, as you know, as another regenerative option, using STEM cells as another regenerative option. Because again, what we're turning on is the normal biology to either repair and treat disease or maintain wellness. And it just intuitively and scientifically, academically, makes complete sense. And the best part is, even though we may not have these huge trials to prove it, because no one's done a trial yet, we see it happen. I mean it's unfolding. People are getting better. And how do we know that it works? Because you compare different imaging, a year apart, and you can see tissue developments. So there's no hiding behind the fact that this stuff actually works. And I find now, and I never thought it would be a viable way to really treat, but you know, the thing that impresses me most about what we do is when I say the more mature population, I mean the, you know, all of the 20 year olds are not as smart as you can ever get. And they're all into this new stuff. And the older people are, well, you know, all of the older population, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, these people don't want all those medications. I was always under the impression, if the doctor tells them to do whatever, they'll do it. They don't want it. They don't want to be part of that. They're much more enlightened than I ever guessed, more so than the younger people, you know, they don't want the pharmaceuticals, they don't want an operation. They educate themselves about, gene expression, and what else is out there, "what I can do", "how I can take care of myself". So I found that to be, you know, impressive. And all of a sudden I found a huge population who want to be treated in this way. Because they don't think it's necessary to walk out of every doctor's office with a new prescription. And all of a sudden there's your wellness base, and it's fun when people look at it like that. They're taking accountability.

 

Dr. Floyd:          19:06          I think that's great. I agree with you. And one of the things you touched on, which both Sean and I and all the other regenerative medicine docs out there the amazing ability of the human body to heal itself. And sometimes all we got to do is kind of give it a little nudge because our bodies are absolutely spectacular in how they can maintain homeostasis, they can repair and regenerate. And it sounds like you've got a really good handle on giving that nudge and I think more people need to hear about this and be enlightened to it. How did you go about enlightening more people? Was it just word of mouth through your business?

 

Dr. Childers:       19:49          You know, starting out it was word of mouth. Again, I got talked into it, a good friend of mine, he hasn't medical building where I am. He asked me to come out and treat some of his patients and it was so successful that he was like, "why don't you...", He had space upstairs, "Why don't you come in a couple days a week and just try to do something, I'll send you some patients". And I was like, "Okay, fine." And then it, because we got busy, and I started with my wife, just she and I, we didn't know anything about starting a business. Nice thing about a surgeon is that you show up, everything's there, the paperwork's done, I don't care about insurance or anything, you just go in and do what you do. And now all of a sudden it's like, "Well, we have to be responsible for it." And one thing leads to another, we became full time. We had to open up another office because we didn't have room. We have a staff now, we've become somewhat sophisticated, I guess. We have billing and all that stuff. Don't take a lot, don't take insurance, really, take a little bit of insurance, but don't do a lot of insurance because they don't recognize in covering these things. So it started out by word of mouth and referral, and that's been, you know, we have a website, we do some advertising, I do a lot of seminars. But that's really how it goes. Now the other thing that's really important is continuing education. This is how I met Sean and everybody else. And to be honest with you, the continuing education, you know, you go to this meeting and you may get something out of it, depending on the meeting, you get a little something out of it, you get more out of some of them. But the real education is when you show up and you get together with the people you know. Sean and others, and we start going back and forth, and that's how I learned more things, I open my eyes to things, we share articles, we share research, we go to some of the same lectures. And I'm going to use Lyme disease as an example, we go to Lyme conferences, integrative Lyme, not antibiotics, we know they don't work. And then all of a sudden I'm looking at what David Minkoff is using and Sean Devlin is using and Frank Shallenberger, we're all kind of doing the same things to treat. It's a multimodal. And I tell my patients, like when we're going to treat Lyme or we're going to treat something else, we have a complex protocol, I embarrassingly tell them, I didn't come up with any of this. This is what I got from my colleagues. You know, a lot of it, I knew, I was going to use it anyway because it makes sense. But you know, I'm seeing what the other people are using and these protocols are kind of, not that they're universal, but this is what people use because this is what we see work. And in the case of Lyme, people talk about bee venom, and rife machines, and these frequencies, mushrooms, CBD. You know they all have a place because someone's on, and It works for them, and they may have a place. But if you're going to have a comprehensive protocol, you want to have office based things, because you can do that other stuff at home, you want to have the biggest bang for your buck that you're going to do in the office. And how do I know what they are? Because they've been shared with me from colleagues at meetings or at other venues. And so that's, this is how we get the information. That's how I disseminate it. And then it's through word of mouth and someone gets on my website, we do a Facebook thing, I have someone doing some marketing stuff, but I do seminars also. So you have to market it and people show up, and you know. But it's really that way. And if, you know, compared to if you're a general practitioner in an insurance based business, then you don't advertise because to be quite honest with you, you'd probably want less people showing. Right? Now you can only give him three minutes a piece because you have so many, because you're not even getting compensated, how are you even going to pay for your office staff? So it's a completely different model. And with what we do, we don't get the automatic patients because the insurance thing so sometimes we have to let people know what we're doing, but once they do, I think it's all word of mouth for the most part, and Sean, What do you find?

 

Dr. Devlin:         23:57          Yeah, 90% word of mouth and referrals from patients who had good experiences with what you did with them. Absolutely.

 

Dr. Childers:       24:02          Yeah, yeah.

 

Dr. Floyd:          24:02          And it's kind of like your saying, going to these meetings and networking and open sourcing. That's kind of why we're doing this podcast because we want to open source information to the masses out there so people can understand and see, "Hey, there's other modalities and treatments out there." Right? It's kind of the idea, Sean?

 

Dr. Devlin:         24:20          Yeah, I think the open source concept came to me years ago, and I think what's really sad is that there's a lot of companies out there who hoard data and keep it privatized for their own benefit for their, for their shareholders. But ultimately, if we're going to make big evolutionary steps in the field of medicine, we have to share more information and we have to work in an integrated fashion to bring all of us to the next level. You know, the next 25 to 50 years in medicine is going to make the landscape unrecognizable to us because of that behavior and that sharing. What are your thoughts there, Henry?

 

Dr. Childers:       24:53          Yeah, I think exactly the same. And it's unfortunate because, and you could look at STEM cells. You have some of the Diego careerer guys, and they're out there and they're doing the real research and they're academic guys and they're sharing it. This is what a lot of the institutes do. And then you have other companies which are on the stock exchange and they're publicly traded and they're private companies or they may not be, but they have like 10,000 different satellite things across the country, and that is a business. And I look at it differently than someone who is more medical because when you have them, the most important thing, in my mind, I probably shouldn't say this, but, I think the most important thing is the profit. How much do we get? How much are we taking out of them. And that just reminds me of the insurance companies, what they do. When you start having these huge national STEM cell companies, and now a lot of them being shut down because the way they're doing business. You know, that is a for-profit number one thing, a for-profit, there's no Altruism, It's about what I'm going to make for money. And I think when you have a lot of these other- everyone has to pay the bills and everyone's doing this in the world we live in, but I think a lot more of them are, the smaller ones, are more open. And that's how you spread the information, not only to the patients but to the other practitioners. And again, when I have questions about things I call Sean and other guys or email a text, "Hey, you know I got this, what do you think?" And we get information back. When I was doing open heart surgery, I'd go visit guys because I want to see how they're doing that valve repair or something and it's like... I'd always walk away with something. There's something they did that I'd always take away. I like what I do better or, in my hands, the way I think, I like certain things better, but I always come away with something, that's going to make me better and make you more successful. Meaning as an operator, therefore the patient does better. So this is why I collaborate with, you know all these guys because I'm going to walk away with something better. It's academia, it's medicine. That's how it's supposed to be. If science is supposed to be open source, as soon as you start making it more wallstreet, then you close the information down, for profit. And I just have a philosophical problem with that. Capitalism is fine. I have no problem with it. I think it's great, but when it interferes with what is supposed to be more of a pure academic relationship, science, medicine. Then you know, I'm just not the biggest fan of it. And I think that's kind of what you were saying.

 

Dr. Floyd:          27:29          Can I ask you, was it difficult to walk away from the successful cardiothoracic surgery business and engage in this?

 

Dr. Childers:       27:40          No. I mean, you know, my kids, when I did my kids were, this was several years ago and at the time, my kids now are 13 and 16 so that they were younger than that and being on call every other night doing... I had done it long enough and it was fine. It wasn't hard to walk away from- I am actually surprised how little I think about it. I thought, the thing I was going to, it's kind of like when I left sailing I thought I'd really miss it, and sometimes, you know, sometimes I miss it, I sail now, but it's all like, push a button and things come in, I don't have to do all that work. So it's completely different thing. But you know, you hear football players say, "God, I miss the guys that..." Yeah, you missed some of it, but I was surprised how much I didn't miss competitive yacht racing and I'm surprised how much I don't miss, you know, surgery. Time to go, a new thing. Like I said, I kind of get bored sometimes with stuff. So you move on and you do a new thing and you know what if you do it well and people come because of word of mouth and that's how we survive, it's word of mouth, people are satisfied, they come. All right. So you know, you can make a living. It's not like we've given it away or you know, or anything else. I mean you can still do well. You work hard, you get people well, but you know, you get compensated and it's okay.

 

Dr. Devlin:         29:01          Yeah.

 

Dr. Childers:       29:01          And I'd much rather do that, doing something I like than doing something that is just more, much more lucrative. I enjoyed it. And that's what... You know, you always hear about those guys doing bonds on the wall street, they hate it, but there selling bonds because, "I can't leave, I'm making too much money!" You know, then finally they quit and they go up to Vermont and they got a farm and they're milking goats. It's tough. Get out. It took them that long to do it. But yeah, at some point you got to say, "You know, I got to do what's good for me." And God bless them all. That's what you gotta do. Because at the end of the day, you know, I don't know how many years you got left, you gotta have- some of them gotta be enjoyable.

 

Dr. Devlin:         29:37          Absolutely. What you bring up is a really good point Henry. Is that quality of life for physicians is sacrificed for so many years in so many circumstances that it's really a shame. A lot of my colleagues who are in their sixties and seventies now, I mean, they share the wisdom of, you know, what if I had it all to do over again, I would have worked part time. I would have taken more vacations. I would have spent more time with my family. And I think that you kind of transitioned out of a very competitive and time consuming profession into doing what you're doing now. Talk a little bit about how that's impacted your personal life.

 

Dr. Childers:       30:15          Well, you know, I told you I was on call every other night and unfortunately when you do things like cardiothoracic surgery, you can be called in the middle of the night for things. And when you do, it's not just little things. It's like a dissecting an aortic or something like that. It's just gonna, you know, ruin the next couple of days because you never catch up on the sleep. The stress that goes along with that, you know, all of those things are there and it impacts your personal life when you are involved with a practice like that. Your time is really committed to the hospital meaning, you know, you can take vacations when you can, but I really didn't have, you know, I didn't really take vacations. And the nice thing about the transition is I'm able to always find time to work out. And that's really important. And before you can, I mean, if you're there at 5:30, 6:00 in the morning and you're not getting out until six in the evening and you've been operating, it's like, you know, going to the gym, it's like, you know, maybe I'm not going to do that today and today is every day. So you just never get back into it. I know that's not healthy. We all know that that's not healthy, but you can't, you just can't do that. And at what point you going to see your family and do everything else. And so being able to do that, being able to just having less stress because it really is a less stressful environment, but, you know, I see my kids, we can take vacation. I work for myself. The good and the bad for that is, something goes wrong, it's my fault. But I can make it the way I want and I can do it the way I want. Something goes well, it's my fault. So I don't mind being accountable for myself. When you are working for someone else, it's kind of, you know, you're working for someone else. So I've found it very liberating. I've found I can do those things that I want to do. And it's funny cause we were talking about how we go to these different conferences, and especially the last one that I saw a Sean at, I think it was in December, out in Las Vegas, it'll all stay there, no, nothing happened.

 

Dr. Devlin:         32:16          Stays in Vegas.

 

Dr. Childers:       32:19          But you know, the reason that we went to that one was because we wanted to go through, see the guys listen to the same talks that we heard the year before, but mostly go through the exhibit hall, which is massive because what are they doing that we're not doing? What's out there? What's the new thing we can add? Because the things that I do, which are very similar, what Sean and a lot of people do, but I don't do a lot of things. I don't do any of the things that I don't enjoy. So in a way I'm a very selfish doctor. I don't do runny noses, I don't- people want me for their main primary doctor, I'm not a primary care guy, sorry. And my patients, if they have something, I'll address anything, but I'm not going to be a primary care guy. I like doing some stuff. I don't like doing other things. The things I don't like doing, I don't do that at my practice. I love doing joints and orthopedics. I ultrasound and look at the joints, injecting. I do vein work. I love doing cell biology, so all of the major autohemotherapy and ultraviolet, blood irradiate, all of these things I like because I like the science behind it. That's what I do. So people are like, "Oh, you've got to get into this." I'm like, "Ah. Yeah. I don't think so. I just don't. Doesn't sound appealing to me." "It generates great revenue." "I don't care. It just doesn't sound appealing. I don't want to be that guy. You know? So you've got to go find someone else." That's what you can do when you work, when you work for yourself in something like this. So we treat tons of people, but I get to treat them. I get to treat the diseases I like in the ways I like to treat them. As long as they get better everyone's happy.

 

Dr. Floyd:          33:48          Excellent. I was just listening to a gentleman on JRE podcasts, Johann Hari and he was talking about, he's a very well published author, but talking about how having control of your life at work can either make or break you. And that's why so many people are so dissatisfied in life right now. Cause they go to work and the boss is barking at him saying, you got to jump through this hoop. You gotta jump through this hoop, you're, you're late, blah, blah blah. It sounds like you've found your niche and your calling and it sounds great. How would you recommend others can do the same?

 

Dr. Childers:       34:28          Everyone's different in what they do, and my son in a way is so much like me, but in a major way he's the opposite because when I was young, probably I was very much the same. I would always do these outrageous things that I wanted to do. Not illegal necessarily though. Sometimes I would take these adventures, I would make things happen. I wanted to, you know, I wanted to, as a young kid, I want to ski in the Alps, I wanted to do either I want to do certain things. I wanted to do like a transatlantic crossing or something. And I was like, well, yeah, I mean you see that on TV and go, you can't do that because we live here and this is what we do here. It's like I wanted to do all of those things. So I found a way to make all that stuff happen because I just didn't want to sit around and say, "you know, wow, that looks cool, but my life will consist of something else." So I never let anything keep me back. And I think that's why I'v done the things that I've done. My son on the other hand, he is, he studies, he's going to go to school and he's going to be very on the straight and narrow. And that's great, because that's him. What worked for me doesn't work for him necessarily. So you've got to find out where you are. And then, you know, you've got to kind of just take that step. You know, what I always did is I always like, what's the downside? What's the worst that can happen? And then if it wasn't too bad, I take a step off the ledge and see this kind of, regardless of what happened. It's always a cool, even if it turned out badly, it's like an experience, more experiences you have... Hopefully their good ones. But I mean everything kind of builds on something. And you know, with business decisions and choices like going in this direction, I don't know if it's gonna work, let's see. You know, and I made a decision, and I did it, and then you see where you end up. And if that didn't work, what I did. Okay, I'll rebound and I'll go do something else. I have enough faith that I'll make something happen. And that's how I have to do it. Just cause I can't do it the other way. And a lot of people are just scared to get out of their job because it's security. And I don't blame that at all, because you know, and that's, don't get me wrong, I'm not cavalier about security. And when you're talking about, you know, I was doing cardiothoracic surgery and "how can you walk away". I spent, you know when I told you that I didn't take all those vacations and everything else, it took a lot of care in building security for myself and my family. Just so you know, cause I'm always thinking if the worst thing happens, are we going to be protected? So instead of buying all the race cars and taking all the vacations, I just built in a line of security that allowed me some freedom and some ability to sleep at night because we were okay. So, and once you have that, so no one wants to go off the edge, too greatly, once you have that, then you're okay. So a lot of people have a job and it's like, well, you know, I don't like my boss, I don't like this, but you know, I need the paycheck. What are you going to do? That's not the wrong decision because you can go and tell your boss your gunna go, and you've got to feel good for about six hours. You get home the next morning, it's gonna be, "Well, now what am I going to do?". So, what's the right decision? I don't know. And I've done that before.

 

Dr. Floyd:          37:44          It seems that some of the statistics out there that most Americans families can't afford a surprise $500 bill at this point. So there's a lot of insecurity financially, which is, it's tough.

 

Dr. Childers:       37:57          Yep. It is. That's a whole other topic. But there's also, you're looking at like the credit card debt and you know, in this country, you know, we have a problem with, I don't, you know, my mother probably all mothers growing up in the same era, they did quite well. They work very hard. But she was like, you know, if I can't afford it, I'm not putting on a credit card. If I can't afford it, I don't need it. And you know, they do quite well. They've been very successful. But they were from that depression era thing. "If I don't have the cash for it, then I don't need it." And you know what, for some reason that always stuck with me. And in this country we like to put things on the credit card and other things and that's why all of a sudden you're right, because the income thing is an issue. But a lot of people don't have an extra 500 bucks and that's a whole other political issue. Get out and vote.

 

Dr. Devlin:         38:51          Yeah. So, I'm going to reign you back in here. Dr Childers, I wanted to hear from you about a global perspective on healthcare. How do you think we're doing in healthcare generally speaking, when it comes to the care of patients here in the United States? What are we doing right? And maybe what are we doing wrong?

 

Dr. Childers:       39:13          I would say- well, you said global and now I'm thinking...

 

Dr. Devlin:         39:16          Well, globally speaking throughout the, the concept of primary care, specialty care, hospitalization, you know, things like that. I know we've got deficits in mental health and we've got issues with the VA, but maybe kind of from your experience.

 

Dr. Childers:       39:29          Well what I was going to say, on a global, being the whole world its so different that it's so hard to comment on. I'm glad you just reined it in. See how he has to rein me in? This country, and again, I'm no policy expert or anything else, but from what I see, we have several major issues and I never thought I would be someone who said, I think a single payer is the right thing to do and not that I do. And I'll tell you what bothers me. And everyone's living the same thing. My family's healthy. My premiums go up and up and up and my deductible is huge. Okay? Now this is for what reason? Because I know the head of the blue cross in Delaware, this guy's making $38 million a year. So honestly we're doing this to keep those kinds of payrolls going. If you had single payer, at least it may be inefficient because it's federal government, but at least you have a lot of Americans making money. No one's making 38 million bucks. So if I'm getting the same lack of coverage that I get from this company, why don't I just pay a whole bunch of Americans to get the same thing? The insurance companies make too much money and they dictate too much policy. The pharmaceuticals, obviously have too much influence. There's too much ignorance and unknown on the congressional side. They proved it when they did the whole Facebook and the social media hearings because they didn't even know what a click was or anything, right? They don't even know whats going on. The problem is, and we know that things like alternative medicine, that's all that funny stuff. You know, really what that is, that's evolution. This is what's been happening for millions of years. Plants and animals coexisting. We eat certain things because we need that to run our cell biology or we've evolved to utilize it because that is what was available and our genes, our genetic code, as complex as it is, utilizes our environment, the air, everything around us to grow, get better and evolve. You break a leg, what happens? We repair a broken leg. It's going to take 14 weeks. What gets turned on and how will you identify? Very complex system. So when you utilize all of these features from the herbals to the oxidative to everything to treat wellness or disease, we call that alternative? That's the basis of the problem right there. It's not alternative. It's basic biology. It's evolution. It's not alternative. Alternative is when you have a brand new chemical worth billions that you're going to stop throwing at everybody trying it out, see what the effects are. "Oh, The FDA said it's fine." That's encouraging. I trust it now because the FDA said it was fine. So that's, that's mainstay medicine. Okay. Pharmaceutical have been around for what, a hundred years, that's normal medicine and all of the other evolutionary things are alternative? There's the problem. It's a philosophical understanding of what makes people well...

 

Dr. Floyd:          42:42          Amen.

 

Dr. Childers:       42:42          There's a time and a place, but you don't need a new prescription every time you leave the office. And to outlaw these other things, to not cover these other things. Do have the FDA get involved in places where they do not understand because they're pressured by lobbyist groups, who know, If you can't patent it, because it's natural, then there's no money. And so you have lobbyist groups getting involved on the other end of all these things. We're talking about because there's no money in it. So they won't be recognized by insurance companies and they won't become available for patients. What's right about that system? There's nothing right about that system. And you know, slowly a lot of the nutraceuticals are really starting to come in and we're understanding it more. So now the pharmaceuticals are trying to make their point where they should be the only ones making these because we can't trust... You gotta be kidding. I mean, just one quick example, you know, so I think it was... Average age 200 years ago was 35, I think that's fairly accurate. So we didn't evolve to be 50 and 60 70 technology has gotten us there as has agriculture and other things. You know, women go through menopause, they lose estrogen. Okay. And it does have effects in many different ways. How do we know? Because people say we need to replace it. Estrogen is a hormone. It's a specific molecule. If your estrogen is low, what you did give the woman? Well, the answer should be estrogen, okay? It's not approved. So what would you give them is a synthetic drug. Okay. Made from horse progestins that pharmaceuticals make and they tell you, we take this horse progestin from the urine and we chemically alter it. So we chemically alter it so we can patent it. Because once it's patented, then you own the rights and you can make money off it, this, and they come out and they tell you about the different cancers it causes stroke, death, weight gain. This is what we want to use instead of estrogen. Okay? Figure that one out. That's what's wrong with the system. Okay? Whether it's pharmaceuticals or it's Congress or it's insurance companies, there is no altruism behind them, okay? They're doing it for money. Everyone knows it. Everyone says it is, you know, that's what it is. And that's the problem with our healthcare. It's been said before, there is no money in the cure. If you cure people, there's no money. Keep them sick, you can cash in all day long. I hate to sound like a cynic and I don't believe in you know, space men and all that but, but this is, this is what it is, you know, and they tried to close down people who do what we do and that's, you know, Sean's a real doctor, ER, different things. I'm a real doctor. I know and it's funny cause a lot of my colleagues, you know they were like you do what? And it's like as soon as I open up the biochemistry book and say this, they're like "Oh, that's what it is. I thought it was alternative medicine." You know, you're so you didn't know when you had the opinion. Interesting. But that's what medicine is. They get an opinion without real knowledge, that's the problem.

 

Dr. Floyd:          46:24          You brought up a good point and Sean, you've told me a term that he's talking about keeping you alive long enough to drain your wallet. What was that term?

 

Dr. Devlin:         46:32          Well I mean we always determine it like sort of a wallet biopsy and then a full on exploratory surgery and removal of your financial wealth. The problem is is that we have a really upside down system in medicine and it is broken because you're talking about business drivers that have sort of co-opted, corrupted and altered the true meaning of medicine. And that is to basically provide care for somebody in need that is not only intimate but compassionate and has the ultimate goal being to the benefit of that recipient, that patient, when we put money ahead of that or we put other political motives ahead of that, we disrupt that intimate connection between doctor and patient or caregiver and patient. And that's the frustrating component that we see. And I think for Rob and I and my other colleagues, we are trying to promote a return that state, in other words, bring back that intimate relationship which we can have in private practice. A lot of times if you're working for a hospital, if you're working for a large medical group, that's taken away, because of the drivers you just mentioned, you know, there's formularies that we have to follow certain protocols we have to do tests. We can't order unless some other test is done or it's pre-approved by a third party who knows neither the clinician nor the patient, then that's the sad part of medicine today. So that's my 2 cents. Robert, do you have any other questions for Dr. Childers and we're getting late in the hour here?

 

Dr. Floyd:          48:06          No, I think it's been great. I would love to see you back on this show. There's lots and lots of conversations that we can have and this is very intriguing and especially coming from someone who left standard Western medicine with a thriving cardiothoracic practice and is doing what you're doing. I think that you hit it on the head too. What you're doing now is not alternative medicine. I think the big pharma style of medicine, that's alternative medicine. The question I was asking you Sean, I think you termed it the slow kill, you know, and Dr. Childers, you brought that up and say, you know, keep people alive long enough just to drain their wallets and But I would love to have you back. It's, this is really intriguing and exciting and entertaining to listen to you.

 

Dr. Childers:       48:53          It's gotta be entertaining.

 

Dr. Devlin:         48:53          So, Hey Henry, before we go, I know you have certain-

 

Dr. Childers:       49:01          Dr. Childers to you.

 

Dr. Devlin3:        49:01          Oh, shoot, Dr. Childers, sorry. Dr. Childers Listen, with great respect and humbly speaking, this is Sean. I wanted to know if you had any pearls that you could share with our listeners and viewers about what you do for your own health. I think a lot of us as clinicians, whether we like it or not, we have our own little regimens we follow, exercise routines, nutraceuticals, we take, meditation. We perform. Talk to us a little bit about what you do to stay healthy.

 

Dr. Childers:       49:28          Okay, great question. And I have a real great philosophy, but I'll tell you and, and I'll admit to you, philosophies are grapes. We're all accountable for our own health and I wish I was as diligence in mine as I preach to others. And sometimes, and I don't care who you are, sometimes you just hit a rut and you know, it'll be a couple of weeks. And I feel like a lazy slob because I didn't do anything. And then I really get emotionally disturbed and I get out and do it again. So I'll tell you where I live, There's great outside along the ocean and everything else. And there's a 17 mile loop and in the summer I ride that on my mountain bike and I compete against myself. I mean, it's all for time. It's a workout and I ride it every single day. I mean, unless it's really weather, if wind is okay. But if It's really rough whether than I don't. I try to swim as much as I can. And it is an Olympic pool here. And this is one of the things that I couldn't swim before I had my shoulder worked off. So I try to swim a mile. But yeah, and I tried to do it after work, I've been very bad about that recently, but try to do that. Because of my shoulder- when I was a kid I used to love to do a hundred pushups and then lift and do all the different things, because of my shoulder, even though it's gotten so much better. I can't do pushup, I can't do bench press. And so I find other things that I can do, I still go to the gym and I try to do strength training because that's very important as well as all of the other things. Meditation, did I mention that I have two sore hips and the knee and you know, all this other stuff. Meditation always kind of hurt my knee, bending it and contorting myself. And it was probably as much of my, the way I am anatomically, I'm not like some little gymnast. And it just hurt, and after a while it's- as important as meditation is it was hard just to stay there meditating. And I'll tell you what I've been doing lately. There's something called urban float. It's like a big pod. It's Epsom salts. Very hypertonic salute. Like the dead sea, you float. I mean you are floating on top of this. The temperature is exactly body temperature. You get close. This is cocoon, it's sensory deprivation, there's meditative music and it's the best meditation I've ever gotten besides the therapeutics your getting, because you're floating in this Epsom salts, warm bath. So for all of the ailments, illnesses, detoxifying and everything else.

 

Dr. Childers:       51:59          So that's how I'm doing my meditation thing now. It's kind of a plug for the company, but I'm telling you, this is great. I tried to do yoga. Again. I don't, you know, I look at some of these people bending themselves. I'm like, I just do what I could do, but I know it's really good for me. And those are the things that I do. I know what you're not supposed to eat, I keep sometime. I drink water, I mean water, water, water coffee sometime. But basically I drink a lot of water and I try to do, you know, it's vegetable first we all know that I can't eat all the vegetables. So my supplement, you know, juice plus INTERMACS something, and this is an important caveat for everybody. Supplement implementation is important because what you buy in the supermarkets, are no longer the same quality or quantity of all the important things. You eat it because it tastes good, but you really eat it because you need all of those different vitamins and minerals and the the biome that's on it, that's why you're eating it because your body needs it. You don't get all that stuff anymore. So sometimes you have to supplement. If you do, a couple things, don't get it from Walmart because it's probably not the best quality. Well, they may have some good things. I'm not gonna name any particular company, but research what you get because if you're going to get something, make sure it's bioavailable. If you put it in your mouth, it needs to get into your system, not go back down the toilet. That's a big problem people make, people also end up buying a hundred different bottles. You're spending half your morning putting all these, you're gaining weight because of the gel caps that you're eating. Get something comprehensive because you can do that. I'm not talking about a Flintstone multivitamin. There are things you can get that are extremely comprehensive with all the vitamins, the minerals, the phytonutrients, the antioxidants, liquid form, take one shot a day. There were things out there from great companies. You're getting everything one shot a day. Okay? You're not wasting your time and buying it. And it's much less expensive than buying all that stuff. You need to supplement. But I find people getting all concerned about, I've got my Co Q 10 and my vitamin B 12 and you think you're all set. It's a symphony. There's a lot of instruments in there. You have to keep tuned up. It's not one thing or another. It's a whole lot of different things. So it's the nutrition, it's the exercise. Most important thing you can do is activity. Something, do something doesn't have to be- you don't have to do Pilates, walk, garden, hunt amd gather, you know, it doesn't matter. That's what I do. I don't, you know, I don't have to go to a gym, get a trainer necessarily. We can all do- use the house, use the yard and get to where we need to get.

 

Dr. Devlin:         54:35          Awesome.

 

Dr. Childers:       54:35          Ski! Skiing is good!

 

Dr. Devlin:         54:38          Snowboarding, snowboarding.

 

Dr. Childers:       54:45          Well... be careful about snowboarding.

 

Dr. Devlin:         54:45          I have a history. All right, Dr Childers. Listen, I want to say thank you again from both Rob and myself. And thank you from our audience that's been checking out the medicine wheel. I love to have you back as Rob mentioned, and we'll set that up probably for later in the spring, maybe after you and I connect in Colorado.

 

Dr. Childers:       55:02          Yeah, great.

 

Dr. Devlin:         55:02          And let's not forget about True North. We got to get on that.

 

Dr. Childers.:      55:09          True North, we'll be in the water at the end of March and we may try and get out to Steamboat for some spring skiing before then.

 

Dr. Devlin:         55:13          Okay, perfect.

 

Dr. Floyd:          55:17          Again, as well, thank you so much. This was great and that was fantastic. And for our listeners and viewers, please remember to go out and like us and rate us when these videos come out please.

 

Dr. Devlin:         55:32          Great. Thank you guys. All right, take care, Henry. We'll talk soon. All right.

 

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