Organic Acids Course Q&A

Good evening, good evening, afternoon everybody. I hope you're well. Let me just make sure that my sound is working. If someone could raise their hand, they can hear me properly. Is that good? Okay, great. Thanks, Gail. And, um, I was going to say, raise your hand if you can't hear me, but if you can't hear me, there's probably not really much of a point in you raising your hand. So, we got this is the most exciting thing I've done professionally, I think, ever. I hate to say that, but yeah, this is like the most exciting hour I've ever had professionally, ever.

Let me just tell you a little bit of background about why I'm so ridiculously happy right now. Um, it has nothing to do with all the cars that I own or anything else. This completely has to do with this class. So, I've been running organic acids tests for over 20 years, and the first 10 years of running them, I had no idea what they meant. I just knew it was a really important test. So, I would run it. And, um, about six years ago, I started running organic acids tests on every new patient, not just the really sick ones, but every new patient. And since then, my understanding and learning about this test as it applies in the real world has just skyrocketed exponentially. You know, I actually really understand it now.

And then, you know, about, I, I don't know, sometime last year, I met a teacher who's one of the leading experts in organic acids, and, and he and I meet once a week now for a couple of hours, and I'm being trained at at the highest level that I could imagine and and how to do this work. And so the level of excitement for me is is primarily because I really understand this now after decades of struggling with it, you know. And I understand how it's just the most powerful tool that we could possibly have. And for most of us in practice, it's just sort of sitting around, and we know it's important, but we're not exactly sure how to how to utilize it properly. And so if I can be a conduit to teach you all as much as humanly possible about the value of this test and how it relates to our patients and the world in general, then that just would just make me ridiculously happy. And we had a huge level of interest in in the course, which we, you know, I, I really didn't anticipate. So anyways, I'm super, super happy because it's the thing I'm the most interested in right now professionally, and it seems to be, you know, that's true for a lot of you as well.

So, um, we're going to do, I mean, I could talk for hours about this, as you probably could tell already, um, but I want to keep it real, you know, and we want to deal with the questions that have come in and questions that you guys may be asking now. So, we brought in Leslie, who many of you have probably already spoken with, who is in charge of all questions and all answers and stuff. And I thought that we'd have her field questions, and her, her also go through questions that have come up in the last week since we sent out the announcements about the course. So, we can make sure that you guys, um, get everything covered that you've been wondering about. And then if we have time towards the end, um, as you can imagine, I loaded a whole bunch of organic acids profiles in here. If we have time to go over some tests, um, I don't know if we will or not because we only have an hour for this, but if we do, I'd be happy to go over a bunch of labs because I got a bunch of them just sitting here, uh, for the end of the class if you want to stick around for that too. Okay.

And, um, let's see. Let's, Leslie, let's deal with the priority first, though. I would love if we could just, you know, get questions that have come in that, that, you know, either a lot of people are asking or that you see coming in right now. And, um, for those of you that don't know, Leslie Stewart is our, our tour guide for today, and is a wonderful person at The KES Institute that helps us with a lot of different things, including educating doctors and getting you guys signed up and oriented for classes and stuff. So, Leslie, can I turn it over to you for a moment?

Absolutely. Thanks, Dan. Excited to be here tonight on this exciting topic. And before I forget, I want to dive into some, some questions that were sent, as you mentioned, this week. Um, for sometimes, folks can't be live on the call, but I want to just put out there to the folks that are listening tonight that we are going to have just a special offer to those doctors that are really ready to enroll that we'll share with you at the end of the call. So, um, I just wanted to put that out there before I forgot. Okay.

Um, yeah, so let's dive in. Here's a great question from someone that sent this in this week. Uh, what types of patients and what conditions can we use this test with?

Okay, so this, this kind of goes back to my history too, which is that, and I think for most of us that have been around in functional medicine for a while, is that this test was always reserved, in my mind, for the really sick people that I couldn't figure out with my other basic testing that I did. And I kind of saved it for the super chronically ill, autoimmune, chronic fatigue, Lyme disease, mold patients, that kind of stuff. And then, um, you know, when, when I started to run it on every single patient, this whole other world opened up because I was just used to seeing organic acids in the chronically ill. Now I was seeing organic acids in children, and organic acids in older adults, and organic acids in professional athletes. I've done so many athletes, and there's different levels of understanding and interpretation for each one of those scenarios. You know, we can look at, when we get a chance to look at testing, just, just the amount of lean muscle mass that a person has can completely change many aspects of this test. So now I feel totally confident in using this test for patients with anxiety, depression, insomnia, sleep problems, patients with energy, mitochondrial issues, um, recovering from cancer, trying to prevent or reverse diabetes, trying to prevent or reverse cardiovascular disease, all the oxidative stress markers, mitochondrial markers. Super confident with this for anyone who just wants a basic nutritional screen, for people who have toxic liver related issues, people with all the different brain spectrum problems you could imagine that would relate to amino acids and inflammatory brain conditions because there's all these inflammatory brain markers.

Um, you know, as a matter of fact, let me just, sorry, this is like evil, but I, this is, with not having, I'm in control of the webinar, even though Leslie's asking the questions, I'm going to just skip through the test and show you the different sections, and then you can see. So, um, the, the ways that you could apply it, right? Just real quick. Um, fatty acid metabolism, obviously, for people that can't burn body fat, people that need to lose weight, um, right off the bat. Carbohydrate metabolism for people that have unstable blood sugar. Energy production for people who are tired, any kind of mitochondrial problem. The B vitamin markers, neurological issues, brain related things. Checks for methylation, so anyone that has a methylation defect. Neurotransmitter markers, that covers everything to do with the brain I mentioned earlier. Oxidative stress, so now we're like staring at cancer, heart disease, diabetes, those kinds of problems. And then on the last section here, detox indicators, anyone that's struggling with toxin related conditions, which is pretty much everyone we work with. And then the bacterial markers and yeast markers for the gut. So, it really could vary from a gut patient to a person with a skin problem to chronically ill people. This works really, really well with children and teenagers in terms of being able to design effective protocols. Gotten great results with kids. Um, and, uh, it's, it's almost endless, I guess. Now that I'm testing everybody, it's, I feel like everyone needs the test. Um, and, you know, here's a really amazing thing is that you can interpret this test in really significantly different ways depending on if that person is a chronic fatigue case or if they're a college basketball player. You know, if you understand the background and history of the person, then there's a sort of richness that comes into this test in terms of the interpretation, um, which probably don't have time to get into tonight. But anyways, um, okay, sorry, Leslie, that was long-winded.

But that was, no, that was great. Okay, here's another question. How is your use of the test different from historical or standard use?

Yeah, so, you know, now it's become this one lab test now, and the results that come from it has probably come maybe 50 to 60% of the work in that I do in my practice. And so rather than being, I mean, it's basically my go-to analysis for all these different body systems and functions that I used to just kind of not really think about, to be honest. Like, I didn't used to analyze mitochondrial function on every patient. I just kind of let that go unless I had to deal with it. I didn't used to assess inflammatory brain markers in every patient. So, you know, in a sense, this has become, I would almost say the centerpiece of my entire practice now. I mean, I still do all the hormone analyses and all the stool testing, and, you know, we still do food allergies, and it's not like I'm ignoring everything else. But in a way, I see this as the, the UN, the test, it sort of unifies or integrates the overall programs that that I'm trying to design. Because it's, you know, the only thing is that if you, this is where it gets confusing, is that if you don't know a few simple tricks about how to analyze these labs, then it's really easy to run, you know, 10 or 20 of these, to see that the results don't match with that particular patient, and just throw your hands up and say, uh, this is interesting, but it's not really working, you know. And I've certainly been there. I was there for 10 years. I just persevered, even though most of the programs that I designed didn't work, until I, I finally started to figure this out. That's what I want to share with people, basically.

Awesome. Okay, someone's asking, how accurate is this?

Yeah, now, here, this is, let me answer that with the lab, because this is something that frustrated me for a really long time, and this is one of the first questions that most doctors ask, actually, which is a really good question. So, I'm just going to show you one little clinical pearl thing here. Oh, look, I, this, I didn't even plan this, but this is a great example. So, this is an organic acids profile, comprehensive version. We're looking down at the bottom of page three, in the left 10 margin, is tucked away this little marker here called creatinine, and it's expressed in milligrams per deciliter. You can see creatinine here. I mean, first of all, it's buried on the third page. You still have far to scroll to get to it. Second of all, it doesn't even really have a column or special thing, it's just, you know, an afterthought here. They're just letting you know how they standardized the test based on the creatinine level. However, if this number, creatinine in milligrams per deciliter, is below a 50, it completely changes the interpretation of the entire rest of the test. And if I scroll around enough, let me see if I can find another one of these creatinines here. I probably should have planned this a little better, but here's one at 70. Okay, that's above a 50, obviously, that's good. I'm just going to show a few of them. You can see what, how this number bounces around. And this is done from every urine sample for every urine test, right? There's another one that's at 70. This is how they standardize the sample so that they know that the testing is going to be accurate. But with organic acids, it makes a really big difference because this is the number that's going to be divided into by every one of these other markers. So, in other words, if your creatinine is a 32, like that first one that we saw, and let's say that the marker that they're analyzing with this mass spec machine is a 30 or something like that, just to keep the math easy, that's going to end up equaling one. But if that creatinine is a 320, and you're dividing into 320 with 30, you're going to get something more like 0.1. So, in other words, the creatinine being different could make the numbers that are being reported here vary by like as much as tenfold. And nobody ever tells you that, right? So, the most important number on here to look at is the creatinine. If the creatinine is really low, you can adjust all the markers here. If you've ever seen a test with all low markers or all high markers, if the creatinine is super high, you can also adjust the markers depending on what it's showing. So, you know, rather than just running this test like I did for so many years, seeing a gazillion high markers and then not understanding why that was happening, just a simple thing like knowing that the creatinine will move these numbers one way or the other completely changes your level of interpretation of the test. And so now you, you learn, you know, enough of these little tricks about the interpretation, you realize that what I used to think of as an inaccurate test, because it was frustrating because I designed a program that wouldn't work, was actually me just not knowing how to interpret the bloody thing. Because this isn't taught anywhere. When I, I was so angry when I first learned about creatinine. I was like, what are you, are you kidding me? Did no one ever tell me that? Why didn't I learn that on day one? It's the most important marker on the entire lab, and they've got it buried here at the bottom of page three. And most doctors don't know that that's a variable that influences every single marker on the test. So, it's stuff like that that you just have to know. And then once you understand that, then the test is incredibly accurate, um, and incredibly relevant for patients. You know, but without that kind of little, you know, specialized knowledge, it, it seems like it's wildly all over the place, which is not okay.

Great. Here's, um, here's a question. Let's see if you already addressed this, but it says, why is this test so important when it often seems to not help patients that much, or it gives too much or too little information?

Yeah, that's kind of what I just said, but let me, let me show you more, a more, uh, detailed example of that. Like, let me see here, if we can find, uh, yeah, this is a good example here. So, sometimes you'll get a lab back and you'll see that almost all the markers are really elevated. If the creatinine number is extremely low, that's going to falsely elevate the various markers on the test, right? Because the denominator, the bottom part of the fraction, is a big number, which leads you an overall big number. So, you can get false elevations on this test and have to adjust for that with a creatinine. And sometimes you see the opposite pattern as well. Well, you'll see a whole series of markers, like a whole page of markers, that are incredibly low. All those things mean different things are going on. Let's see if I can find a super low one here, just as an example. These are all highs for some reason. Uh, oh, well, I won't waste time on it. But sometimes you'll get a lab back, and typically it's this first page here, and you'll see that all, if or most of these markers are incredibly low. That actually means that, assuming the creatinine is in the right range, that actually means that the person has a hypometabolism, and that this whole mitochondrial system and fat burning and, you know, energy production is actually really shut down. And the lab report, this is one of my main frustrations, is that the lab report doesn't tell you any of this. The lab report just gives you this generic, computer-generated, total waste of time, and misleading bunch of statements about what supplements to give. They don't give you any kind of context. So, you could get some of your worst patients, and we see this every week in my training program, every week, we'll have a series of labs submitted, organic acids, that new doctors are running, and we'll see the entire first page in the lower quintiles. The computer doesn't think anything is wrong. It won't report that. And those are the people with the worst possible metabolism who are storing body fat like crazy and can't lose weight even if they're just eating lettuce and cucumbers all day long. And yet, the computer doesn't even think it's a problem because it's not spotting the pattern. So, I'm really trying to focus now on these details, these patterns, these things that are hidden in the test and that are not reported on the generalized lab report, which comes, which is again, in my opinion, you know, misleading at best, to just look at what the lab is spitting out as a result. Sorry, I'm a little passionate about this. Such a good test. Here's the thing: it's so frustrating because it's such a good and accurate test if you understand it. And I spent so many years not understanding it that I'm kind of maybe a little evangelical about this stuff. It's going to help everyone.

Um, is there any new or organic? Is there anything new about organic acids testing?

Oh, yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, we got actually one thing that's actually super cool. I just started doing. Um, I can't show that lab because I didn't black out the names on it, but, uh, I can show you like an example here. Uh, let me see if I can find one. I can maybe try to describe this. These are all messed up in a certain way. Let me find a better one here. Here we go. Oh, look, I found one. Ha! Okay. So, now you see here's an example of what I was saying. All these markers are in the first or second quintile, and the computer is not flagging much except for isocitrate. This is your worst-case scenario with many patients. But the computer is not telling you that anything's wrong. So, this is what Dr. Lord calls a hypometabolism, right? Everything is completely shut down. This is the worst possible patient you could deal with, and yet the lab looks like it's okay unless you understand how to interpret it. So, one of the things that you can do, and I just started to do this in the last year in my own practice, to provoke reactions, because these are organic acids, right? We're measuring acids. And if the person doesn't have sufficient amino acids, especially specific amino acids, sometimes you can get negatives on this test or very low levels. That if you give a specific amino acid powder prior to doing the test, you can then provide a reaction with. And for those of you that do like chelation testing on heavy metals, it's the same basic concept. You can run a heavy metal test, but if you do a chelating agent, it provokes the dumping of the metal and you get a more accurate lab. So, you can give a specific amino acid formula the day before you do the test to provoke the organic acid reactions and get a more accurate test that way, which is really helpful sometimes. It's frustrating when you get these tests back and everything is low.

Okay, um, oh, you know what? I, I know you wanted to take a quick tour.

Oh, yeah. Doc, right, right before we go on to more questions. Yeah, let's do that.

Okay. And, uh, here, let me grab this and show everybody. So, this is a, you know, this, it's very hard for me to communicate this through email. So, I just want to show you guys what you actually get if you take the class. So, there's the obvious, which is the curriculum, and that's over here, and you can see this on the website under our courses section. And these are, you know, pre-recorded lectures that I've recorded on every aspect of the test. And we get into liver detoxification, big section on the brain, you know, all the different issues that we're talking about right now. Okay, that's pretty straightforward. But what's not that straightforward is complicated and hard to explain is the actual community. So, when you join the course, you also get access to what I'm showing you right now, which is the community. And the community has content going back, uh, many years, which is extremely extensive and pretty amazing. As an example, we have a case study library where we have, at this point, I think several thousand case studies. So, let's say you're really interested in organic acids profiles because you're taking the organic acids test, and you type in "organics," you'll see, at this point, I don't know how many. You'll see case studies. Here's case study number 1759. I think we're over 2,000 now. We have a couple thousand case studies in here that cover everything you could possibly imagine, from vegan diets to, um, discussing insurance and practices. Okay. There's a huge amount of information in here, and each one of these case studies has got a video that's associated with it. We can listen to or watch, and then it's also transcribed. So, the learning happens, in my mind, from cases. And I think of the lectures as, you know, your, it's like your textbook. You know, but the lab, if it was a chemistry class, you have lab and you have the lectures. You know, the lectures are great, and I'm really into it, and I put a lot of energy, a couple years of energy into creating these lectures. Okay. They're as good as I can make them. But the case study library in of itself is just incredible because you can watch and listen to case after case after case. You can see the labs, you can see what the patients and doctors are doing, and you get kind of like a reality check on that. And then, in addition, when you get access to the community, you get access to all of our content that's relevant. So, it's not just the organic acids testing, but it's all the case studies and all the, uh, information that we have on, I mean, there's other kinds of topics too, like you could put in like legal issues, right? And you can, watch this video. This is Michael Cohen. He's a really high-level attorney, worked at Harvard University for a long period of time, and he's devoted his career to helping natural health doctors. Okay. So, we've got a series of lectures that he gave to us. Again, it's all transcribed. You can watch the lecture. You want to learn about legal issues in your practice, in case you're concerned about that. So, it goes on and on. It's not just the clinical application stuff. There's, um, just so many contexts. And, uh, the content that we have is really rich. In fact, um, it's the class, but, you know, there's a whole lot more happening within the community that is pretty exciting. And there's, of course, other doctors in the community as well that you can interact with. And we have on the on the homepage of the community, you can see it's kind of like Facebook, you know, where doctors post their questions and they respond to one another. Um, here's Dr. Berggren. He's a naturopath up in Canada, really great doctor. He's a professor, actually, at the naturopathic college. Um, aspergillosis, you know, and Bree is answering. And, you know, Bree is an acupuncturist here in California. So, you know, people are going back and forth and really kind of getting into their cases. And it's not just about me talking about cases, you know, it's and interaction with all the other doctors in the community, many of whom are experts in various areas. We have some really good people in here. And it's a mix, medical doctors, chiropractors, acupuncturists, naturopaths, all mixed up together. I love it, you know. Matter of fact, we had, we had class last night. I almost started crying because there's this medical doctor on the call, and she had a patient who clearly had a structural problem, what we call a category two. And the chiropractors listening to this know what I mean. It's a, so category two, and I was like, Kelly, I think this is a category two. It's a practice problem. And, you know, she was so open to doing that and to referring her patient in for chiropractic care. And I just remember 20 years ago when there were so many barriers. But now we have a real community of practitioners with they kind of leave their degree at the door, and everyone is just in this to help their patients. And so we can have, you know, an oncologist talking with a chiropractor talking with a naturopath, all in one case. And, to me, that's really just a joy because I learn a lot. We all do. And we have these resources of, you know, colleagues, as well as the actual curriculum. There's one other thing I should probably show in the content because this is ridiculous, and there's a lot of it, which is under clinical topics. And we have, um, all these clinical topics here as well, from everything from clinical nutrition to patient communication, lab testing, all our guest speakers, right? There's, I think, at this point, there's more content in here than any human being could assume. And if you just learn how, learn how to use the search feature, you can kind of poke around. And, oh, here's the best talk I've ever heard on Hashimoto's. Isabella Wentz, who took this training program a long time ago, gave us an hour-long talk on hypothyroid. It was the most concise, well-described explanation of thyroid problems I'd ever heard. We've got all that in here as well. So, anyways, that's, that's the community. It's not just the class. You get, of course, the curriculum. You get access to the community and all the people. And, um, that is kind of what I feel is our sort of a heart and soul of the training program is is the other people that are involved in all this too.

Okay. And that's something that I consistently hear too, on these, you know, just feedback from folks that have enrolled in your program that reach out to me and say how valuable having a tribe and community, uh, out there around them. That's what we're missing because a lot of us are stuck. Like I am, I'm in my own practice. I don't have any doctors around. My staff doesn't care about organic acid test results, you know, I mean, they, they, you know, they're nice people, but there's just not their passion. And so, yeah, having access to other people that are, you know, not just content experts in other areas, but people that are just interested in what we're interested in, it makes a really big difference. Okay.

Awesome. Are we, is that it for the tour right now?

Oh, yeah. Let me do one more. Questions.

Okay. Let me, a couple questions came in too. I think. See, Susan asked, um, go over some labs so you can see how that will help patients. And then Ruth asked, um, know about the connection with low stone. And then if someone else asked also, if the course will be offered in the future.

Yeah, if the timing doesn't work, we're going to be offering this on a regular basis, you guys. So, there's some special discounts that we're offering right now, kind of as an incentive to get people to sign up. But, um, this is, we're, I'm not going anywhere. You know, but let me just show one more time, maybe a sample test, you can see, because I, I kind of skimmed through that pretty darn fast. So, let me go through this a little more patiently. So, number one problem I see in my practice is people who can't lose weight, no matter what they do. Right off the bat, that's usually related to fatty acid metabolism or blood sugar related problems. Second big category here that they test is mitochondrial function. So, what did the mitochondria do? They generate ATP. That has to do with your brain, your heart, your liver function, you know, of course, how, how much energy you have, how much you can exercise. That's all determined by mitochondria. This is probably where I spend the most of my time with patients now that I didn't used to even understand how to analyze, is dealing with mitochondrial problems. And remember, like, this is a good example because these, this cluster of low markers, these first and second quintile markers on this particular lab, indicate that this person has a major mitochondrial problem that is, you know, just a deficiency of the mitochondria, not an excess of of of the markers. B vitamins again, neurological issues, could be anything from like, my hair doesn't look very good, to my arms and legs are numb, okay? Biotin, B6, these are critical. Methylation, again, you can't say enough about methylation, right? That has to do with your brain, with detox, all those different things. This is where I probably spend the second most amount of my time is with the neurotransmitter markers. These markers here tell you if the person's stressed and depleting their brain chemicals, like this patient has low dopamine based on the low homovanillate. These markers down here, kynurenate, quinolinate, picolinate, tell you if there's an inflammatory problem that's damaging the brain. So, in this case, this person is low in dopamine. They're going to respond really well to tyrosine, and probably feel better in a couple of weeks. You know, all that just looking at this test. Oxidative damage, so that's your inflamed patient, your patient who's trying to reverse their diabetes, patient who's worried about a second heart attack. This morning marker right here, 8-OHdG, in some ways, is probably the single most important marker on the whole test, right? Because you're, you're getting the antioxidant status of that patient. Just, what, what could be more important than knowing about oxidative stress? Um, and then this whole section on liver detoxification. So, you can really set up good liver detox programs. This person has low sulfate, so, you know, you need to work on phase two. The section here is about glutathione. These are about other markers like, uh, xylene, etc. And then there's a section on the GI, which is a bacterial and yeast origin, so GI symptoms as well. Now, I still do stool testing on everybody, but the GI section is helpful as, uh, confirmation and, you know, further examination of gut related stuff. Okay.

Um, all right, let's see. Other questions, Leslie? Should we go on?

And yeah, absolutely. There's more. Um, oh, someone asked, Dan, what's your connection with Dr. Lord these days?

Oh, yeah. So, you know, I thought I was getting kind of old. Like, this is how full of myself I can be, you know. I was like, I'm kind of old, I'm in my 50s. What am I going to learn now in functional medicine? Kind of been there, done that. And, uh, and I kind of, I got to that point after 20, 25 years. I kind of thought I knew something, you know. I did. I had a phase of that, and I got complacent. And then Dr. Lord came along. Dr. Richard Lord. He's, I don't have his book right here, do I? Oh, it's right over there. But anyways, he's the man that wrote the book, literally, right? Or, you know, Laboratory Interpretations in Functional and Integrative Medicine. And Dr. Lord has become my teacher now. And we spend a couple hours a week together. He quizzes me, he gives me assignments. He is training me at the deepest level on the GI Effects test, on the organic acids test. He's just, I've learned more in the last year of working with him, I probably did since I was in school. I mean, I really feel like I'm in a PhD program now. And, you know, to be able to ask him a question, and this is the man that invented this organic acids test, right? He's the one that actually developed everything about this test. He's seen every single one of these labs that's ever been run in the history of this particular lab company. And so his depth of knowledge makes me feel like I'm in my first year of treating patients again. And so it's a wonderful relationship. He's a very kind, he's one of the best teachers I've ever met. And he's really, in a sense, devoted himself to training me so I can train other people. So, we spend our Mondays together going over things. And then Tuesday and Wednesday, I explain everything that I learned to the people that are in the training. So, we're continually getting updates and all the latest research. And, um, my ability to interpret this lab in the last year has improved by so many levels of magnitude. And I didn't even know that many of these things were possible to do, to be honest. And so, I, I don't, I'm just in this privileged position now where I'm, I'm back as a student-teacher and and learning, um, about things that I, I, I really didn't even know were within our realm. And the depth of understanding. And I do understand one thing also about my position, which is that when, if you, some of you guys are at the 20-year mark, you do have, when you get to the 20-year mark and you get some basic experience, your appreciation of the information that we're learning is kind of at a different level. And so I don't think I could have absorbed this information 20 years ago, anyways. I don't think I was ready. But, um, I'm definitely ready for now. Right now. And I feel like, um, my career is kind of coming to some kind of peak right now with the training that I'm involved in. And I'm passing everything on every week to everybody in the classes because that's the intention that Dr. Lord has. He wants you all to get this information. He just doesn't have the time to talk to every individual. And so he's kind of filtering it through me right now. Um, and all of this is in the community, okay? It's not in the curriculum. I got to point this out, or people are going to get frustrated. So, I haven't had time to redo the curriculum yet, okay? It's going to take me a year or two. But everything that I'm learning from Dr. Lord is in the, um, weekly calls. All of which are in the database. Everything is recorded. It's all sitting right here for you guys. So, you get the latest stuff every week that you just have to search around. And if you have questions about that, I can, I can show you how to do that. Okay.

Oh, let me see. There's, uh, a couple other questions that I got on email too. Here. [Music] Um, let's see. Uh, the depth, Mandy asked about the depth, um, into the metabolism that underlies these organic acids markers.

Yeah, I mean, I try to do that as much as possible. If there's not enough of the science in the class, then you can just ask me and I can give you more information on it. So, like the way that I teach all these courses is in the language in which you can explain this work to a patient. Because I find that it's hard for doctors sometimes to take the complicated stuff and explain it. So, if I've done it, dumbed it down too much, Mandy, for someone like you, and you want the really heavy-duty biochemistry version of this, just let me know because I have all that information and I can give that to you as well. But it's not necessarily baked into the course.

Um, oh, and then Michael. Hey, Michael. I haven't talked to you in a while. Um, the details about the amino acid loading is complicated, okay? So, um, you can get the formula from Metabolic Maintenance. Michael, if you want to email me later, I can send you a link or describe how to get it. Um, but the interpretation of the challenge testing is really complicated. I'm still working out the details on that, just so you know.

Okay, let's see. Let me just make sure I got the comments. Um, yeah, let's see. This, this test is done by Genova Diagnostics. There's also a lab company called Great Plains that runs these, and a lot of the students in the class use Great Plains. Um, um, I prefer Genova. It's, you know, just sort of a personal preference thing. Um, I'd say maybe a quarter of the students use Great Plains, probably three quarters of us use Genova. Okay. That's all the ones I got on email. I don't know if you have any more on your end, Leslie.

Okay. Yeah, there's a couple. Um, some a practitioner is asking, I'm not sure how, what their experience level is. They, they want to know, what do I need as far as a prereq, or what, you know, how long of clinic, what depth of clinical experience? It's, I guess, what they're wondering too.

I was going to say, the less the better, but that's not very funny. Um, you know, um, it doesn't really matter if you, if you've, I mean, if you've never run these tests before, I actually think it's probably a little easier to just absorb all the information because I'm trying to explain it in a really simple way. Um, but certainly, we have people like, we just saw Jonathan, you know, who's a professor at a naturopathic college. The more advanced people like Jonathan, who are, you know, obviously he's a professor at at a naturopathic school, he's a much higher academic level than I'll ever be, you know, but people like that really like my classes because of the organization and the structure that I provide, and because it gives them a clinical model. So, there's kind of a variety of people that we get. Some people are are brand new, are still in school. And the average person that we work with has probably been in practice 10, 12 years, I'd say.

Okay. And just to add on to that, just to be clear, if this person's wondering, no one needs to have taken any of your other courses. So, we want to make sure that we communicate that.

Yeah, that is true. That is, this is the first time that we've done this. So, I've always kind of insisted that people march through this whole curriculum. And I decided to stop being such a control freak and just, hey, if you want to do organic acids, let's just do it. Just learn how to use this. When you sign up for the class, by the way, you get full access to everything. I've had doctors go through the whole curriculum in 30 days, you know, if you don't have children, basically, and you don't have a spouse, it takes a lot of time. You can get through the class material pretty quickly. Um, most doctors, you know, go at a pace where they're dealing with their practice, their family, and so they're, you know, they're not doing 20 hours a week. They're doing, you know, expecting like probably three to four, maybe five hours a week of time put into this. Probably the average doctor does around three or four, I think, hours a week. But we do give the whole thing right away for those people that are wanting to just chew through it, you know.

Yeah. Great. And then there's a couple questions I'll, I, it looks like we've covered them. You know, one person wanted to know, is there live teaching with Dr. Dan?

Obviously, yeah. Well, yeah. So, what we do is every week, just, you know, you get the curriculum, the lectures, you get the community access, and then you're stuck with me once a week. And we're going to go over every lab until we're done. And so doctors will submit cases from all kinds of different patients, and we'll analyze them together as a group and go through the paces of how to set up programs based on the labs. And I mean, that's really the best part of the class, I think, when we're all on the phone or a webinar together looking at the testing and brainstorming about designing protocols and how to approach it.

Great. And, um, I think you just covered this. How much, someone wanted to know, how much time per week do I need to plan for this?

Yeah, so I would say three hours, four hours, five hours. Or, you know, if you're ambitious and you don't have kids, I keep saying that because my son is about to graduate from high school after 18 years of having a child. I'm about to not have a child in a couple months. Let's see, what was I? I got lost there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, if you want to spend time in the community, communicating with other doctors, that's extra time. If you want to look at all the extra content and special classes that we have here, um, anything from case studies to clinical topics, you know, you could pretty much get lost in here as many hours a week as you feel like you want to, depending on how excited you are about learning all this stuff.

Okay. Great. And it looks like the last one here, um, is the organic acids test the only one covered in this course?

I think, yeah, yeah, it is. We just look at the lab, but the, I mean, all the different facets of it. So, to me, that means we're looking at brain function, uh, inflammatory brain problems, stress-related brain problems. We're looking at detoxification, we're looking at mitochondrial function. So, there's these huge topics, oxidative stress, but they are all, or methylation, they are all tied right back to the organic acids lab in some fashion or another. Um, but to me, like a brain program is pretty expansive. In other words, how can I say it? The, let me show you here, is that if the brain markers show up as the main problem, we don't, we don't just treat the marker, right? It's not just like, oh, this marker, like here, like this patient here, it's a perfect example. So, this, this homovanillate is low, so we know right away this is a dopamine case. But that doesn't mean we're just going to give some tyrosine and keep our fingers crossed. That means now we know, oh, okay, this is a primary brain problem. It's primarily about dopamine. What is everything that we know about dopamine? How it gets messed up, how we can fix it, how is that all going to work? So, what's the major reason why people have dopamine problems? Could be from stress, could be from neurotoxins. So, first thing you do when you look at the dopamine marker is you think, I wonder if there's neurotoxins present. And you look at the detox markers. You're like, oh, well, there is. Not only is there a detox problem, but it's a problem with sulfate, which is a primary, one of the primary nutrients that's involved in in dopamine production, right? So, if you don't have enough sulfate, you can't detox, you can't make dopamine. So, right away now we know this person's got major sulfation problems. We got to dump of not just a bunch of tyrosine, but probably a bunch of Muna. They're going to have to have B6. So, it's not just like this one marker means this one thing. It's more about how to integrate this into, you know, comprehensive protocols. Same thing with mitochondria. You know, if the mitochondria are crashed, we have to figure out why. So, it's not, uh, it's not something that's done in isolation, you know. The test, and that's what I was trying to say earlier, the test in some ways, to me, is like a, a way of integrating all these different things that we do in our practices.

Oh, and Mandy, who just, Mandy just, um, sent me a text message. Yes, this is, uh, recorded. Mandy, if you want to listen to this later, you're welcome to. Okay. I don't know if we have more on the chat. We have, this is that completes the questions I have.

Yeah, I think I'm done on my end too.

Okay. Well, I will share. This is a good time then before we, before we close up this webinar, that we, we want to reward and support the practitioners. If you're someone who knows that you're ready for this course and has been ready to enroll, uh, whoever signed the first 10 practitioners who enroll in this class after this webinar are going to have an opportunity to hop on the phone with Dr. Dan and discuss your functional medicine goals, your practice goals, any questions you have. So, that's a really exciting offer that we decided to make. That's on top of the special March discounts on the tuition that you've heard about. So, that's exciting. And if you're ready to enroll and save your seat in the class, Dr. Dan is ready to connect with you and support you.

Excellent. Oh, yeah. And we do have some special discounts we're offering for people right now. And I think Leslie, you can email them separately. We have a discount for existing students that have taken courses with me in the past, and then we have a special discount for people that are new that, um, we're going to get involved in the community. And I'll tell you guys, the, I mean, two or three patients into doing this, you'll have covered the entire course fee. I mean, if you tell, I was thinking about this earlier when I was walking around, three patients, maybe four people that you test, you'll have repaid yourself back for the cost of the class. I made this pretty affordable. I don't, I don't think I want price to be a huge barrier for people. Um, so we really want people to jump in. And let's see, um, let's, we have one more question that came in again about organic acids with Great Plains. It's fine to use Great Plains if you want. And then Skip asked about the follow-up. Usually, I do six-month follow-ups. That is typical because there's certain parameters that should change at the six-month mark. Certainly could do a different protocol than that. Um, some patients maybe stretch it out a little bit longer, but that's around the time when you, when you really start to see significant changes.

Okay. All right. Thank you, Leslie. I guess we're wrapped up with all the questions. This has been great.

Yeah, take care, everybody. You guys have more questions, you know, give us a call. We're here. And we really want to get an active and fun group of people signed up for this course. Okay. Take care, everyone. Have a good night.

Good night. Thanks, Leslie.