THE ACCRESCENT™ PODCAST EPISODE 238

Leigh Ann Lindsey (00:01.388)
Well, Dr. Hartman, welcome to the Crescent Podcast. I’m so excited to have you on.

Aaron Hartman MD (00:05.294)
Excited to be here and just have a great conversation and just share some amazing stuff with your audience.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (00:11.874)
I think there’s, were talking about this off air for a second. There’s so much crossover in your story with your daughter and the medical gas lighting, the blind spots that I think is just as applicable for a lot of my audience in the cancer world, the chronic illness world. But I do think a good place to start. And I know you’ve told this story so many times, so thank you for bearing with all of us. But what, what led you on this journey? Can you share a little bit about the story with your daughter and

and kind of how that led you to wanting to write this book on curable.

Aaron Hartman MD (00:45.742)
My journey started very typical, academic minded physician, got my board certification. I was actually in the military, so joined the military and served overseas and learning new skills and started learning dermatology and running the cardiopulmonary clinic at MacDill Air Force Base and just doing the stuff that you usually do as a doctor. And my daughter, Anna, started out as one of my wife’s patients. My wife is a pediatric occupational therapist and her patients were kids with special needs and she would have these

cases that like I’d never heard of before. There was like 50 of these in the country and she’s got one of these kids on her case load. so Anna’s birth mother did crystal meth throughout the entire pregnancy. And because of that, she had, she was born blind. She a stroke before she was born and the prognosis was really poor. She was never supposed to walk, or crawl. And as she was coming to end of her first year, her foster home was closing down and my wife said, hey, would you consider…

bringing this little girl into our home and fostering it, maybe consider adopting her. And so I was like, sure, we’ll do this. And because of our personal beliefs and faith, we’re like, you this is part of what we do. So we brought her into her home. And one of the first things with these kind of kids is failure to thrive, which this actually happens a lot in the cancer world where actually one of the most common cause of death in cancer patients is actually malnutrition. So in kids, you know, you fail to thrive. And…

She was less than the fifth percentile. doing the best we could, know, flying food in your mouth, spending an hour to feed her, you know, all that kind of fun stuff. And the GI follow up with the specialist, you know, the one person in Tampa Bay area that did all these, saw all these kids was that she’s still failing to thrive. So now the next thing for the standard of care is to cut a hole in her stomach, put a feeding tube in so you can pour formula in. And that’s just what you do to these kids. It’s just standard. They all get a tube at this point in time. And my wife and I discussed it.

You know, it’s at that point in time, she was still in the foster system. And it’s one of those things like our goal was for her walk, talk, crawl, for her to be, you know, her best version of her, whatever that meant. And if you, you’re chewing and swallowing is important for speech development, right? If you don’t chew and swallow, you actually, don’t get your tongue in the right place. It’s kind of hard to learn how to crawl with a plastic tube hanging out of your stomach. And so we said no, and it was just, you know, she’s doing fine. feed her, you know, whatnot.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (02:53.527)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (03:06.02)
And we got reported to Child Protective Services by the GI doctor for medical neglect because we refused to do what the doctor said. And so that was like, talk about two inflection points in my career. That was the first one where it was like slap in the face. This is what the system thinks when you say no to it. And I’m like, at that point in time, I was a major in the Air Force. I was a medical doctor. My wife actually had patients, shared patients with this doctor. So it’s kind of like,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (03:14.67)
you

Aaron Hartman MD (03:35.704)
My thing is always like, if you do this to us, what are you doing to like other people kind of thing? And yeah, and so you kind of navigated that. For me, the big, big inflection point was six months later when my wife found a growth chart with kids with cerebral palsy, which is Anna’s official diagnosis, and she was 50th percentile. And so that was like the scales fall off your eyes and you’re like, my gosh, the experts don’t know.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (03:40.92)
totally.

Aaron Hartman MD (04:05.708)
they were getting ready to commit her to a surgical procedure, which in the special needs world for kids leads to another, leads to another, leads to another. To put things in perspective, the time Anna’s 20 now, the typical kid with her diagnosis has had 13 surgical procedures by the time they get to be her age and she’s at zero. And so it was like this inflection point. What do we do? Do we do what they said? No. And then you realize, my gosh, they don’t know. we’ve had eye surgery recommended to her, heel surgery where they cut her heel cords.

hip surgery where they cut her heel stuff. One of the specialists at DuPont, which is the top place in the country for kids with cerebral palsy, I to put a back-of-the-limb pump in her for some of her spasticity issues. And literally every recommendation we’ve said no to hit that wall, found another way around it, and she’s thriving. She is doing amazing. She’s actually moving out of the house in two to three months. She’s my first kid to move out of the house, which is a little…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (04:36.483)
Mmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (04:55.181)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (05:01.592)
make me little anxious to be honest with you right now, Leanne. A little worried about it. A dad, my girl’s leaving and she, you gotta keep her safe, you know. So that’s what led down this pathway. And then I started doing things with patients that I learned with her and fast forward 20 years, it’s totally changed my practice of medicine.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (05:02.026)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (05:21.578)
Yeah, absolutely. There’s so many facets of this I want to get into. But tell me a little bit about at what point were you like, I need to write a book about this. And what was kind of the hope for the book of how that would be supportive?

Aaron Hartman MD (05:37.06)
Well, know, I wrote the whole adoption process, actually wrote when I was actually, you know, when I was in the military, I decided, because I had nothing better to do, I decided to get a seminary degree. So my thesis actually was on adoption. So I wrote that for my kids to have when they grow up to like, this is why we do what we do, and this is why we adopted you. And as she’s getting older, it was one of those things like her, like literally thousands of people’s lives have been impacted by her. It’s changed my practice of medicine, you know.

And all my patients know who she is because social media and all kinds of stuff. And it was like, she’s gone through a lot. She’s suffered a lot. She’s an incredible worker. She’s literally beaten every odd. And in my mind, it was kind of like, how can I make what she’s gone through worth it? And in kind of my economics, so to speak, the way it makes her suffering, because she’s been through a lot, it’s not been easy, make it worth it, is that it actually helps the maximum number of people. And so that was where the book kind of came in. Like, how can I tell her story?

about hope, like, it doesn’t matter. if you’ve been told you never see before, so has she. If you’ve been told you never walk, so has she. You’ve been told your kid’s gonna be a vegetable forever, so has she, you know. And so it’s one of the things in the sea now, like how she’s thrived. Like there’s always hope, no matter how bad off things are. And when someone, you encounter someone, they say, oh, I’m sorry, we can’t help you. I’m the specialist at Mayo Hopkins, Harvard, you know, whatever. It just means they can’t help you. It doesn’t mean there’s no help. And so…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (07:00.386)
I hate.

Aaron Hartman MD (07:01.272)
I want people to hear that about a little girl who the system gave up on and then tell some other patient stories. Cause literally this is my practice now, you know, and we’ve got four practitioners or office and like literally we attract people from around the country. So this is kind of like our jam now. And so I want people to realize like, this is not a one-off. This is literally a way of doing medicine and life that’s accessible. And I ultimately her story, her life to have its maximum positive benefit. And the book seemed like

Leigh Ann Lindsey (07:22.2)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Hartman MD (07:28.856)
the way to kind of think about process and put together in a way that actually would do that.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (07:33.974)
Yeah. So tell me about some of the different, I mean, we’re going to leave something for the reader to go once they get the book, but tell me about some of the key components in the book and why you felt these were important components that were really, really important to include.

Aaron Hartman MD (07:47.396)
Okay, well one, I mean, I tell individual stories and I tell big, big picture. I’ll give you one story, one big picture thing. So one story was, know, with cerebral palsy or with any brain damage, there’s typically issues with tone where you get muscle contractions, muscle weakness, and that leads to a lot of surgeries and chronic pain, et cetera. And so one of the parts of her journey, they recommend doing some spinal cord surgery or hip surgery or.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (07:53.9)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (08:14.532)
in back up and pump and you’re looking at $400,000, a million dollars for these surgeries and complications and stuff. so one of my patients, well, we’re not, yeah, we’re not even going down the track. I’m sure with your population, people know about surgeries and trauma and medical trauma. so, so it was one of those things where like, so I was listening to one of my patients and one of my patients was talking about, you know, oh, there’s this device I’ve found for helping, you know,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:22.53)
not to speak of the trauma of all of those surgeries and.

Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (08:42.34)
blood flow in my legs. And at that point in time, I’d studied so many different things and I knew what I wanted for her tone. I wanted a type of neuromuscular stimulation device, but I just hadn’t found it when she was talking about this device. It was like, that is what I’ve been looking for. So I bought it. It was like 400 bucks online. And within three months, the tone in her legs had gone away enough that she was able to stand flat footed, legs straight. And for a kid with CP, that changes her posture, that changes your balance.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (08:48.526)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Hartman MD (09:10.244)
It makes your fall risk much less. That was a game changer for her. That was a $400 device that is FDA approved for like, know, know, cramping and swelling in your legs called revitiv. But for her, it literally changed her health trajectory. And so the point is like, there’s so many cool things out there like that, that people just don’t connect the dots. Like this is approved for that. But we do this all times with medications, know, repurposed drugs, know, metformin can treat diabetes and weight loss and

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:14.339)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (09:38.148)
Um, helping anti-aging and do all these, like we do this all the time in the medical world. Why can’t we do this as a practice? Right. So that’s like a one of many specific examples. And then as far as general concepts, you know, the biggest single intervention we did with her was just to give her real food. Like we started looking at food, like a drug and I did fancy testing and realizing she had neurological issues and fatty issues and started like making brain mayo mayonnaise made out of certain kinds of fats.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:45.166)
Hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (09:59.746)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (10:07.876)
to help heal her brain. We made granola with no grain. It was actually made out of a mixture of seeds to balance her trace minerals and fatty acids. Started using food like a drug and it’s, you know, she’s turning 20 now. She’s had antibiotics twice since we’ve gotten her. Once it was for a kidney infection. She had kidney stones when she was eight. Never had one since we actually made the kidney stones go away. And then got a tick bite, got some Lyme stuff and we took care of that. But.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (10:25.55)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (10:36.24)
How many kids with her condition only have antibiotics twice in their life? The answer is none. She said no cavities. For a kid exposed to crystal meth, no cavities. You don’t see these kind of outcomes, even in standard kids with healthy birth issues.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (10:41.312)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (10:52.974)
I mean, I was gonna say the standard adult has probably had antibiotics twice in the last year.

Aaron Hartman MD (10:57.432)
Yeah, antibiotics and cavities and literally she like, you know, was exposed to crystal meth for nine, actually seven months of her life because she was a preemie and like, and that’s possible for other people too. And then there’s lots of examples of the book in the book of all kinds of things that we talk about that just, if you want to, and maybe the concept that if you want to see like amazing outcomes, outcomes, other people don’t see, have to be willing to do things that other people aren’t willing to do. And that’s why I think where people are like, well, my doctor didn’t tell me that I’ve never heard that before. like,

Yeah, because you’re doing what everybody else, you find the crowd. If you want to have these amazing outcomes, you have to be willing to do things a little different.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (11:35.864)
I think that’s such a great segue into the medical blind spots. And I want to get into this a little bit more, because this is something, of course, with cancer all the time. I mean, I’m sure your patients are the same way. Like they are the best detectives. And there is, there’s a standard of care for just about everything, but especially with cancer, it’s, you know, the four main things. And these patients taking that responsibility and that initiative to go,

Is this really all there is or is there more out there and going into that? But can we talk about medical blind spots?

Aaron Hartman MD (12:11.172)
I mean, medical blind spots are basically things that our healthcare system thinks to be true that just aren’t, or things our system thinks are wrong that are actually the right way to do things. And so it’s like a horse. You can see right in front of you, know where you’re going, and you see nothing else, and that’s a medical blind spot. So what are examples of that? Well, I like to remind people it took us 50 years and 7,000 research articles.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (12:33.08)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Hartman MD (12:39.224)
before the surgeon general in United States said smoking causes cancer. And doctors in the 1960s, in the 50s were like, I smoke Lucky Strikes, I smoke Camels. In the 1970s, the AMA said, it’s controversial. It’s controversial, smoking is bad for you.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (12:54.892)
Right.

Aaron Hartman MD (12:55.78)
So even the top institutions in our country were kind of off, know, hand washing, know, ignosimilvice, and I think the 1830s lost his career, was jailed for insanity for describing these little creatures that might make people sick, you know, and come to find out 30 years old, 30 years later, germ theory, he literally lost his life over the infection he was trying to prevent. And people will be like, well, that’s, know, back then we’re so much smarter than that now. I’m like, okay, hormone replant.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (13:22.936)
said every generation ever.

Aaron Hartman MD (13:24.196)
Yeah, exactly. Well, you hormone replacement therapy, literally November of last year, we just took the black box warning off of hormone replacement therapy. Oh, by the way, for women going through menopause, perimenopause, and menopause, hormone replacement therapy can lower your risk for heart disease, I’m sorry, 50%, and lower your risk for dementia, 35%. That’s crazy, potentially between 140 and 160,000 women die prematurely because of lack of access to that.

Oh, that’s that’s just one example. OK, fat. We just brought fat back as of January this past year. Fat’s back. We flip the food and period upside down, right? It’s all of sudden now carbs used to be the big thing. Now that oops, so sorry. Now it’s a little small thing. And so we get it wrong. So many peanut allergies and kids 2015 study came out. Actually, if you don’t want to get your kids with peanut allergies, they need to get peanuts exposed earlier. I’m doing that actually lowers their chance of getting pet allergies like 86 percent.

We do this all the time. say this is the truth. This is dictum. This is the way we do it. And then 20 years later, we’re like, oops, and it happens all the time. And so those are basically a few examples of what medical blind spots are.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (14:36.782)
Yeah, it’s such an all or nothing binary way to look at things, which just doesn’t serve us to your point, even with like the peanut allergy. It’s, no, kids are having allergies to peanuts. Let’s just remove peanuts from the nutrition. And then to your point, peanut allergies actually skyrocketed after that. And, go ahead.

Aaron Hartman MD (14:50.434)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (14:57.188)
Yeah. Well, there’s an interesting book. I’m sorry, this actually might be more printed for your community. There’s a book called Emperor of All Maladies and it’s actually about cancer. And the first cancer cure, what did they do to, it was actually a Chinese researcher. You know what happened to the first, it was actually choreocarcinoma. The first cancer cured, you know what happened to the guy that cured it? Lost his career and left our country in disgrace. He actually used methotrexate and tracked the HCG.

and the choir carcinoma, is a uterine cancer, and kept on treating until the HCG went to zero. And people went bonkers and he literally got just, he left the country in disgrace. That was, that patient he did it with was the first cancer cure in our country. And what happened to the guy who did it? He lost everything. So like this happens all the time. And it’s just something people need to be aware of and they need to be able, they need to be aware of this so they can advocate for themselves.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (15:53.196)
Yeah, and the binary of, because we, in my world, we hear this all the time from doctors. Well, that hasn’t been, cancer patients coming and wanting to do HBOT or, well, I guess IV vitamin C’s now has been studied a little bit, but red light therapy, oxygen therapy, some of these, that hasn’t been studied for cancer. So no, it’s bad. And that’s kind of the automatic conclusion rather than.

Why can’t we have a little bit more nuance to this of, hey, I haven’t looked into the research of that. I don’t know that there’s research that exists for that in cancer. So it’s not something I can legally recommend within the boundaries. I have to work, but you know, if you want to look into that, great. But what I have a lot of patients who experience is the, they get demeaned, they get shamed. They have doctors who will refuse to work with them.

if they do anything outside of the conventional protocol.

Aaron Hartman MD (16:51.876)
Well, I would take this almost like a, I I 100 % hear what you’re saying, but, this might be, what I’m getting to say might be controversial to your audience. So let’s have a conversation about it. But is cancer genetic or is it a metabolic issue? And the current thinking is it’s genetic. Let’s find the gene, the BRCA gene, the HER2 new gene, whatever. But if you go back to 1920s, actually we have data that cancer actually is a metabolic disease that

Leigh Ann Lindsey (17:01.528)
Yeah, let’s do it.

Aaron Hartman MD (17:20.61)
What happens you get on toxin exposures, infections, heavy metals, whatever they call breakdown of the electron transport chain, which is how you buy makes energy. gets uncoupled. That causes genetic instability. And then you get these gene mutations. by the way, there’s 80 different types of breast cancer genetically, you know, so you have like these cancers and we found a few genes, but the reality is most of them are heterogeneous. They have multiple different genes because cancer actually is a metabolic disease, not a genetic disease per se.

And so all of a sudden the gene mutations are just a result of the metabolic rearrangement. so all of a sudden, do metabolic things work like, know, glioblastoma multiforme, ketogenic diets have great literature for glioblastomas combined with hyperbaric and it’s actually Thomas Seifried actually interviewed him on my podcast a while ago. He actually is one of the top researchers on this at Boston college. They have a patient 10 years out with

Leigh Ann Lindsey (17:54.947)
Exactly.

Aaron Hartman MD (18:17.572)
brain tumor, ugly or they should have been dead, you know, nine years ago, basically maintained on hyperbaric and ketogenic diet. There’s metabolic plausibility. There’s biologic plausibility. And evidence-based medicine is supposed to be three things, know, up to date research, which, you know, protocols come from physician expertise. So like I’ve been doing this for 25 years, seen over a hundred thousand patients and then patient preference. What does a patient want to do in current evidence-based medicine?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (18:21.795)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (18:47.876)
only keeps number one, throws number two, number three out. And that’s the reason why people are just not satisfied with the system because it’s ignoring the expertise of the practitioner and the preference of the patient. so, but on top of that, there’s so many cool things out there that work in other countries. in Europe, for example, in Switzerland, they use mistletoe therapy, pretty much in 80 % of cancers treatments to minimize the side effects from chemo and to actually help with the white blood cell count. Thymus and Alpha-1 peptide is used in Europe to actually help white counts.

and people on chemo suppressing the white counts. We talk about humor, there’s no evidence for that. I’m like, they’re literally using it as a drug in Europe. Like, I don’t understand the problem, but you have to realize again, the blinders, right?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (19:25.548)
great.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (19:30.006)
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because I, I almost wonder if the, the litigation system, the way it’s set up is I feel that doctors are now in a position of they’re not allowed to be wrong.

And I almost wonder if that takes away room to go to experiment a little bit and to play with things. Cause what I see so often happening for patients is when a patient comes to them with something and the doctor doesn’t know, they just say, no, that won’t work for this rather than I think a more honest answer, which is I wasn’t taught anything about oxygen therapy and glioblastoma, but

let’s both do some research on that and see what we can find. It’s kind of an instant like, no, that doesn’t work for that. That can’t be a plausible thing.

Aaron Hartman MD (20:19.459)
Yeah

Aaron Hartman MD (20:25.028)
Yeah, it’s hard because you know, I did my training started back in 1996 and I still remember vividly when I was in the ER during my training, being told that every patient is a potential lawsuit. And so the first concern is standard of care. If we all do, if we’re all making the same mistake, guess what? We don’t get sued. But if I make a mistake, I’m doing something different. That’s me have liability. And we now even more so now than back then, mean, we approach approach physicians approach patients as, oh my gosh, I might get sued.

which is reason why, you know, we do so many mammograms. It’s the reason why we do so many breast biopsies. You know, there’s about 10 % false positive incident mammograms during false positive. So women get like a lumped up, me a biopsy, whatever. And if you’re in like your fifties, the number of you treat is about 400. So if you do 4,000, sorry. So if you do 4,000 mammograms, right, you’ll save a life, but there’s 400 women that are getting stuff done to them that don’t need stuff done to them. And we accept that because of these legal liabilities.

When you see those numbers like that, most women are like, do mean? Like if one person, I have a friend who’s saved with breast, know, great, awesome, cool, means that 400 women were hurt. Whoa, like we say like that, all of a sudden it’s like, there’s gotta be a better way. And there is, there’s new technologies actually to actually do actually an ultrasound type CT that uses water around the breast that actually works really cool. But there’s like a handful of places in the country. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there are a places in the country do it.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (21:45.166)
The Qt imaging.

Aaron Hartman MD (21:50.724)
So there’s things out there, it’s just you have, if you wanna be doing the cool stuff, you have to be willing to do things that other people aren’t doing.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (21:57.144)
Yeah, and I guess for the patient’s perspective, because I see both sides of this too, where I will say that, you know, the medical, the conventional medical system rely is like a little too rigid on, if it hasn’t been studied for this, it can’t be used for this done period. There’s no further. And I also think on the other end of the spectrum, there are people experimenting with things and kind of giving functional medicine a bad rap because we’re just getting a little too willy nilly with it. But I think something we have to consider is

I think about this all the time, know, an, an MD went to, you know, let’s say they went to medical school 20 years ago. The reality is the textbook, the textbooks they were studying 20 years ago were probably from 10 plus years before that. And after they got their medical degree, like have they studied any research since then? So how up to date are they? That’s a really important question. And I know there’s continuing education that they’re kind of required to do, but I think a lot of people phone that in.

But beyond that, studies take so long to do. So if we are always going to wait for a study for everything, we’re always going to be like 20 years behind. That’s how I feel about it.

Aaron Hartman MD (23:05.7)
Well, I would probably, well, two things to that, and I’ll probably uplevel a little bit. The time from a bench research saying, first, ferretral can actually turn over cancer stem cells, to actually getting a drug, stage one studies, you’re looking at probably 20 years. And then from the stage one to the stage three, then four, you’re looking at probably another 10 to 20 years. So sometimes bench research to an actual therapy could be up to 40 or 50 years.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (23:12.534)
Okay, up level.

Aaron Hartman MD (23:35.076)
Like that’s a really, really long time. And so to your point, like more than, it’s more than 20 years. And so all of sudden, if you have something like, Hey, you might be dead in one to three years, right? you can’t, do you want to wait? No, I’m sorry. It’s not up to date, whatever. And then the second part I want to go back on is that the herd mentality, like physicians all the time do stuff off label, something like 60 % of all treatments and kid and pediatric kids are off label. You’ll use medications for off label things.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (23:35.211)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (23:41.666)
You

Aaron Hartman MD (24:04.548)
Has doxycycline been studied and shown? Does FDA approved trials show that you can treat Lyme disease with it? No, but it works and we do it. What’s the randomized trial? There’s not one. What’s the randomized trial? Wait a second, wait, clinical experience. Did I mention that about somewhere about, that’s interesting. But so the point is like if we do something as a herd that’s off label, it becomes accepted.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (24:14.318)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (24:18.882)
there’s 20 years of clinical experience seeing it work for patients.

Aaron Hartman MD (24:34.948)
Right. But if someone’s doing something that’s, that’s off label, that’s outside of that, that’s not accepted. And that’s what people need to see to see like it’s the hubris or their blind spot or the hypocrisy where I will do this off label because it’s accepted standard of care, but I won’t do low dose now. Trexone has some interesting stuff. It’s like a lot of the integrative cancer protocols. use it as an immune balancing tonic or long COVID or chronic fatigue. use it all the time. A hundred percent off label.

works great. been around for 30 years. And guess what? It’s really, really safe. And so it’s one of those things where there’s so many things we do off label, that people just need to kind of the doctors, providers, whatnot, need to acknowledge that most of what they do is actually off label. And really every patient is an off label experiment. Every person is unique, is their own end of one experiment. And once you start looking at every individual like that, that opens you up to a lot of cool things. Like if I treat every diabetic patient,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (25:25.079)
Yeah

Aaron Hartman MD (25:34.222)
the last tune of diabetic patients, the exact same. I’m missing a whole lot of things. And that’s where you get in the cancer world. We have protocols. You have a breast cancer, to negative ER, PR positive. This is your treatment. You know, it’s like, like what if I don’t want to do that? What if there’s this little nuance here? What if I’m diabetic? What if I already have peripheral neuropathy or diabetes? What’s the chemo going to do? You’re like, Nope. You know? And so all of a sudden it’s like, yeah, well, exactly. And that’s where, you know, you should at least be open to people, you know,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (25:58.734)
Doesn’t matter, this is the standard.

Aaron Hartman MD (26:04.196)
If you’re to do things to people that have really horrible side effects, you know, we should at least be open to allowing other things that are much safer. In my, one of my mantras, you know, first and foremost, do no harm. That’s the whole hypocrite oath. So when I do off label things or integrative things or things that are being done in Europe, it has to at least be as safe as standard of care. And the reality is, you know, one of the blind spots actually I talked about in the book that boggles my mind that still, you know, if you look at the literature medical error,

might be the third most common cause of death in our country. Medication side effects, misdiagnoses, hospital complications from hospitals. And so all of a sudden, me minimizing my risk to you could save your life. And that’s kind of the way I approach all these new things is like, is this at least as safe as what we’re doing? Typically the answer is yes. And a lot of therapies we do, they come with risks. And people just need to realize that some of the most up-to-date stuff is actually the most risky stuff as well.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (26:53.646)
Hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (27:04.311)
Totally. Well, there’s two sides of this because I do want to talk about scientific studies for a second with you, especially because I know you’re you’ve been involved in a lot of studies. So you have a different perspective on this or more of an insider’s perspective. But where I want to go first is I think it can be really overwhelming for patients. And I’ll talk about my cancer patients where on the one hand, they’re like what conventional medicine is offering me feels quite limited and is lacking nuance and bio individuality.

And so I want to go explore over here, but also where’s that limit of now I’m doing something potentially just as dangerous over here. And that’s a, I want to like, we have to honor that’s a hard thing to decide. Now with that said, I think there’s a fair number of things now in the integrative oncology world that are pretty widely accepted, pretty safe. IV vitamin C, mistletoe.

sauna, red light, hyperbaric oxygen, some of these different things. But there’s a lot of other things going on. Ivermectin, fenbendazole, all these different things. I guess it’s, you what would you say to the patient who’s like, okay, I do want to try other things. And also, where’s that line of now I’m getting into sketchy territory over here too?

Aaron Hartman MD (28:16.964)
That’s where I have this unique perspective because my first board certification is in family medicine. I worked in the hospital for 15 years seeing patients in ICU. So I’ve worked with super sick people, worked outpatient, worked in mission hospitals around the world. And so I’ve been familiar with all like a lot of these drugs and these medications and comfortable taking care of sick patients. The problem is a lot of people in this integrative space haven’t actually practiced medicine, like regular girl fashion, sick people, hospital medicine. And they’re jumping right to some of this stuff.

respect the issues with some medications. I had one of my patients who, I use Avromectin a lot for a lot of different things. It’s an amazing drug. It’s a great way to clear body lice. If you’re at a school in Guatemala and all the girls have head lice, just give them the Avromectin and knocks it out. It works great, pretty safe. And she decided she’s a breast cancer patient and she decided to start using Avromectin and went to Tractor Supply and got Avromectin and called me after she went to the ER with Afib.

induced by ivermectin toxicity. I’m like, my gosh, you work with me. You literally could have sent me a message to the portal and we could have like, and it’s like, so there are dangers with some of these things, but at the same time, you know, used appropriately, they’re safe. But, you know, to think, getting back to your question is that working with a doctor or provider who actually has like regular medicine experience, that’s actually practice regular medicine, who’s dealt with sick people and also does the integrative holistic.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (29:17.006)
Mmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (29:24.29)
Holy

Aaron Hartman MD (29:44.196)
integrative cancer stuff is really, really huge. It’s like the more and more I do this, the more and more I realize is people don’t have the clinical experience. have that, know, began working in the hospital for 15 years, seeing ICU patients and then being an outpatient at the same time. It gives you a really unique perspective on this stuff. And some people just think, oh, that’s, you know, that’s safe. It’s like, well, everything has a potential risk. And that’s where it’s realizing how these things work.

And there’s so many other things like you didn’t mention melatonin for metastatic breast cancer. You know, there’s great information that’s used in Europe, you know, um, and interesting factoid as well. You know, Dr. Paul Merrick wrote a great book on cancer care. I’m not sure if you know who, who he is, Paul Merrick. Um, yeah, he’s like his, um, he was on the head at the critical care, um, critical care, um, pulmonary critical care at EVMS. At one point in time, his group was the most published group, critical care group in the world. Like, so he’s like legit, legit. And he actually wrote a book called cancer care.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (30:25.774)
No.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (30:39.363)
Wow.

Aaron Hartman MD (30:42.66)
that goes through a lot of these, these alternative care. It looks at the evidence for them, right? And one of the things he talks about in that book is actually if you’re a female with breast cancer, and if you take high doses of vitamin D and get it over a hundred, that that lowers the risk for breast cancer recurrence and metastasis, similar to using a rheumatase inhibitor. All of a sudden it’s like vitamin D, mean, okay, well it’s high dose, let’s check your calcium, let’s check a PTH to make sure we don’t give you kidney stones. Got that checked, we can do that. I can do labs.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (30:48.578)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (31:04.418)
Wow.

Aaron Hartman MD (31:12.612)
It works as good or not better than a rheumatase inhibitor that’s going to put you in the menopause. That’s going to give you brain fog. That’s going to make you feel like crap. Should that be an offering? Should I mention that to my patients? Absolutely. Because it’s at least as safe as or not safer. And then throw some melatonin on top of that. The doses for that tend to be about 20 milligrams. They’re higher doses. But there’s so many cool things out there. And there all these textbooks written about this stuff.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (31:25.006)
Hmm.

Aaron Hartman MD (31:38.212)
So it’s not in, I love Dr. Merrick’s book for all the doubters out there. You might actually appreciate this. It has over 1500 references. I actually might have it laying around here somewhere actually. Cause I read it last year. So it’s probably hanging around here somewhere. But it’s literally like 50 some pages of just like literature references. So I’m like, when people say evidence-based, you know, integrative cancer care, I’m like,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (31:47.286)
Wow, my gosh. my gosh.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:01.973)
my God.

Aaron Hartman MD (32:07.244)
Is 1400 references good enough for you? You need some more. That might be it right there. But anyway, it’s Cancer Care by Paul Merrick. It’s like an amazing book. And one of the things I do now with AI, actually, I took it, it, and then kind of plugged it into an AI tool. And then you can actually just ask it questions. it’ll interact with it. It can literally help you navigate this on your own, which is really super cool.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:11.233)
Yeah, yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:30.592)
Yeah. You know what I feel like a really important distinguishing factor that I’m hearing here is these cancer patients are doing their research, which is amazing. And they’re then starting and doing a lot of these things of their own accord without bouncing it off of their quarterback team member. Right. And it’s, well, I read this book and this guy healed his cancer with juicing. So I’m just going to start juicing.

Aaron Hartman MD (32:49.081)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (32:56.278)
I read about ivermectin, so I’m just gonna start taking it without bouncing that off my quarterback.

Aaron Hartman MD (33:01.22)
And that’s the danger, I think, with all this information, because I’m working with some patients right now who are going through this and they’re like, I found this Facebook group, this person tried this and it worked great for them. And I’m like, yes, but they don’t have all your, like I spent four hours reviewing your chart. I saw you for two hours in the clinic, did over a thousand biomarkers on you. How about I individualize stuff for you and not just do all these one-offs. But unfortunately, like if you’re…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (33:25.429)
Yes.

Aaron Hartman MD (33:30.07)
out there and you don’t have someone to work with you, you’re kind of stuck in this like, me throw stuff and see what sticks on the wall, you know? And so that’s an unfortunate reality. And so I would just encourage people to find someone who, there are people out there, you know, that they can work with and at least find a provider who’s open to other things. There are people out there. It’s kind of hard to find in California. California is a rare state because most of the integrated providers that I, in my groups, I see are on the West coast, but the state also has some of highest.

limitations, like you can’t recommend people not to vaccines, for example, without potentially using your license. So California is a little schizophrenic and it’s like open and they’ll bring us to this, but then closedness to this is kind of weird.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (34:10.774)
Yeah. I mean, we definitely are a huge, like holistic hub. There’s so much available here, but to the point we made earlier, this isn’t, need to maintain nuance nuance. And I really think we need to support critical thinking. it’s not patients need to stop doing that research and stop looking into things, but it is, Hey, on this integrative side of things, we also need to be really discerning and go, I’m going to research this, but it is not discerning to just start taking and doing things willy nilly.

I need to have that integrative functional quarterback on the team who I can do a bunch of research, bring that to them and say, Hey, what do you think about ivermectin? What do you think about phenbendazole? What do you think about melatonin or whatever? Some of these different things. And they can go, yeah, that’s really great for this. But because we have this in your chart, no, actually that’s going to be really contraindicated for you. So that feels like an important piece of the puzzle. But to that end, tell me what you think about this.

Aaron Hartman MD (35:00.516)
100%. 100%, yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (35:07.008)
I think at the end of the day, people need to be allowed to make those decisions. People need to be allowed to do research. And if they want to try something that could be potentially harmful to them, I feel that they need to be allowed to make that decision. And when even coming back to you with your daughter, Anna, you know, it almost became this like medical dictatorship of no, no, no, this wasn’t an offering.

you must do this or we will report you to child services. And it’s kind of like, well, when did our personal health become a dictatorship? I know that’s kind of an aggressive analogy,

Aaron Hartman MD (35:40.612)
I I don’t want to get too crazy. mean, that’s kind of what happened in 2020, 21, 22. mean, we saw like the man behind the mirror, whatever man behind the curtain kind of sort of Wizard of Oz analogy. it’s, and my wife has been the special needs world since 2000, actually maybe since 1999. And it’s this thing called much house is by proxy. I know if you ever heard that term before, but it’s when like,

The kid comes in and they’re sick and the physicians are like, the parent, usually the mother, induced this on the kid. It’s a psychiatric issue with the mom, it’s her fault, basically. And they’ll take the kids away sometimes. This happens a lot in the special needs world, particularly with kids with rare illnesses. so it’s like, I remember this one case, this person who, the kid had a GI issue and the local doctor here in Richmond was like, I can’t deal with that, go up to Harvard. This is the person you wanna see, just go through the ER and they’ll take care of you.

They went up there and mom went up there, went there and the resident was like, I don’t know who this person is and your munchausen’s, she lost her kid for a month. And so, and so the thing is like this, this happens more than we like to, we like to admit. I think, you know, 2020 to 2023 ish, it kind of was out in the open. Like, look, you know, we don’t like it when you say no. But to your point, like ultimately at some point time, we have to have limitations on what people do. You can’t, you know,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (36:47.444)
my gosh.

Aaron Hartman MD (37:07.524)
do crack. It’s illegal to do that. It’s illegal to do heroin and drive your car. There’s certain things we have to limit, but there are other things we allow people to do. What’s the limit for that? What’s the line for that? And we’re talking about someone’s health and they have a terminal illness or a chronic illness and the system’s telling them that there’s nothing wrong with them. They can’t be helped. It’s all in their head. This is the best we can do. Why is it such a crazy thing to ask for them to say, I would like to try these things they do in Germany and Switzerland, this thing they do here in Brazil.

Or how about this thing they do in India or China or Russia even? Why can’t we do that here? And the answer is, well, it’s not, you know, there’s no evidence behind it. like, well, there’s, you know, for my daughter, for example, actually, we went to go into Canada for this device called Ponds. It’s an oral stimulation device to help with their walking and help with their balance. And there’s Russian literature on it with kids with cerebral palsy helping with their motility stuff. Wasn’t available in United States. Went to China, it, got back here, had to do some finagling to get in the country.

You know, two years later, it came out and got FDA approved to treat bounce issues and multiple sclerosis. Then it just got approved about a year ago to treat traumatic brain injuries. So I was ahead of that curve by like five or six years, but it was like no deal to get that approved. And it was literally just a buzzy thing. Like electricity on your tongue. Like, why is this like such a illegal, you my gosh thing? It’s like, you know, cause it was low risk. And so that kind of stuff happens all the time.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (38:24.833)
Yeah.

battle.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (38:33.358)
Yeah. And I mean, to your point, especially with something like cancer, where a doctor saying you have a year to live, six months to live, two years to live. Who are we to say, Hey, if I’m giving you that, you know, you’re allowed to go. If I have six months to live, I’m okay with the potential risks of, you know, HBOT or the potential risks of this new treatment in Germany. that’s what’s going to allow me.

to have peace with this diagnosis is trying some of these different things. And it just seems like we should be allowed to pursue this.

Aaron Hartman MD (39:06.116)
Well, HH Potts, you mentioned that one a couple of times. I’m actually certified in hyperbaric medicine. was one of the many certifications I did to take care of my daughter. But it’s funny, hyperbaric medicine, the first chambers they built were actually in the 1600s. Yes, when I was doing my certification, they were very crude, very elementary. We didn’t really get really cool devices till they’re doing like the Brooklyn Bridge, right? The bends kind of thing. They go down 80 feet and dig in the footers and they have to pressurize them to go down 80, 90, 100 feet.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (39:20.16)
my gosh, no way.

Aaron Hartman MD (39:36.132)
But that was still late 1800s, you know? And so it’s been around for a really, really long time. It’s FDA approved for like 12 or 15 different educations. So all of a sudden, when you say, hey, I want to it for cancer, because cancer is a metabolic disease and they live in anoxic conditions and they only use glucose. And I want to use the hyperbaric to bypass all that stuff. People like, no, no, no, you can’t do that. It’s like, it’s really safe. It’s been around for a really long time. you know, it’s really…

Leigh Ann Lindsey (39:45.506)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (40:05.048)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (40:05.196)
It’s really weird what things people make a big, but what places sometimes professionals and experts will determine as a place they’ll, this is the hell I’m going to die on. It’s like, this is not your life. And you’re picking something to make a big deal about that actually has pretty low risk. And it has a potential huge benefit, particularly with people who’ve had a chemo with peripheral neuropathy or brain fog. It can be super helpful for some of them. Because chemo actually can cause like traumatic brain injury in people’s brains. It’s really interesting to see that on.

antibody testing. yeah, can use hyperbaric, can be with C and some IV, phosphatulocoline. It can be super amazing. It helped me a little bit of cerebral lysine, which is not available in the United States anymore because our government says no to that. But those can be really super helpful with these people with brain issues from their chemotherapy.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (40:34.402)
Yep, I’ve had a patient that happened to.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (40:52.288)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. one thing I wanted to ask about really quickly, and this is still kind of in the realm of medical blind spots. We’re spending a lot of time here, but it’s, where we’re going. So it’s wonderful. Can we talk about the, the, the lack of nuance in scientific studies and how in some ways scientific studies have to be set up to be so hyper acute to give us any kind of information, but what, what we then do with that acute information and how I think

That information gets extrapolated across everything becomes really dangerous. And I’ll give you an example I’ve made up in my head. So there’s all these studies, right? my God, this new study came out. Eggs did this. Eggs are now bad. Never eat eggs again. This, this other study, this one thing had this positive effect. This is now good. We should do this all the time. And it loses all nuance. And an example I sometimes use in my head is let’s think about exercise.

If they did in a really acute study on exercise, they would actually see that muscle tissue breaks down initially. So if they looked at it and they, there could be a study that went, well, we measured muscle tissue after exercise and it broke down. So exercise is bad. Stop doing it. And I think it’s an example that shows us sometimes how the information in too acute of a form loses its context and then leads us down paths that aren’t really.

taking in the full body.

Aaron Hartman MD (42:19.812)
Yeah. And your example is actually a true example. Every person who has a good workout for about an hour will develop low level of rhabdomyelosis and their CPK enzymes will go sky high. And I’ve had patients work out, come see me and it’s like, hi. And it’s like, okay, I just drank a lot of water and we’ll check it in three days. But if you did a study on that, you’d be like, oh my gosh, your exercise is causing you’re going to die from it. And so the thing about the clinical research, it’s meant to give you a data point. It’s meant to advance advances the not the

the body of knowledge in whatever field, you know, and you get this data point for one particular thing. And the idea is it’s meant to be, it’s like you’re going across this river, a body of water, and you got one stone to put your foot on. And so that research gives you one stone. And then you get another research study and it gives you another stone. You get another research and it gives you another stone. But the thing about it is that only leads you on one very specific path. Or if I’m gonna go that way, you can’t have to walk on water.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (43:13.784)
Yes.

Aaron Hartman MD (43:16.898)
And that’s what happens when you actually use that information and you look at biological plausibility. What’s basic bench science tell me? Well, it tells me that, you know, your brain’s mostly fat and that cholesterol actually makes your hormones. So it just makes sense that if your fat numbers are too low, you might get neuropathy and brain issues. That clinkly makes sense. Like just makes sense from a basic, you know,

Oh no, there’s no data on that. Well, now we know that if you your cholesterol too much, it actually can cause cognitive issues and there’s certain statins that can actually increase your risk for developing dementia, for example. Why did it take 30 years to figure that out when biological plausibility said it makes sense? And that’s what people need to realize to your point. It’s not nuanced. It’s a data point that gets me my foot here, my foot here, my foot here. But when I see people, I see masses in the water. Like I’m not seeing these data point things. When you do a clinical trial and you have thousand, two, three, four, 5,000 people in it,

It’s based on population of people. You restrict all the non-compliant people. You restrict all the unstable people. You basically, and you create this very controlled population that doesn’t exist in the real world. When I did clinical trials, one of the hard things about it was, is you might have a study and they gave you, they wanted you to do 40 patients. You have to screen three to 400 people just to find 40 people that might qualify for the study. So these studies are actually based on the minority of patients with the condition, not the majority. And so you get this small data point and then,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:33.527)
Mm-hmm.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (44:41.442)
great.

Aaron Hartman MD (44:43.246)
great, it’s meant to be a stepping stone, but what’s supposed to happen then is as you use this medication drug procedure, skilled clinicians with decades of experience go, I can use it for that now. there’s a better way to do it. and that happens all the time in the surgery world. That happens all the time in all these subspecialties. It’s just in the general medical world, for some reason, we allow in some specialties and not in others, if that makes sense. And it doesn’t make, it’s a logical fallacy to say it’s okay to do there, but not.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (45:08.003)
huh, yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (45:13.046)
here. And all the cutting edge surgeries, there was no randomized trial for that surgery. Some guy knew human anatomy and said, this is really hard. Let me figure something else out and figured something else out. And the really good clinicians and Dr. Merrick, I was mentioning him before, he actually cut his teeth in South Africa, which was a country with NALA resources. And so they had to figure out how to do things on cheap. And so he became an expert on repurposed medications and repurposed drugs was what his expertise was. And he actually the first studies

Leigh Ann Lindsey (45:14.733)
right.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (45:36.888)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Hartman MD (45:42.34)
that got published so when you could use IV ViM and C to treat sepsis in the ICU. Actually, 8 % response, people with ICU, like most of them die, if you give them IV ViM and C, you get 8 % survival. And he was the guy who published that in the American College of Chest Physicians. And so it’s like, did it ever pick up? No. Do people use it now? No. When COVID happened, we were using it my clinic. None of my patients passed away from COVID. And it’s a really crazy thing to think about. Like, why is that?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (45:58.243)
Yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:07.725)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (46:10.596)
I tend to think I was prepping them for that. And so that’s where you have to realize these studies are data points. A good con, good clinician will be guided by it, but it won’t be the only thing they use. And that’s where, and we’ve gotten to science heavy technology, heavy, it’s called vomit syndrome, victims of modern imaging techniques. And now we’re at the point where clinicians aren’t clinicians anymore. We’re, technicians where what’s the test, what’s the imaging test, anything outside of that I’d ignore and

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:22.176)
And, sorry, go ahead, yeah, yeah.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:36.279)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Hartman MD (46:39.724)
Humans are way more complex and complicated than them.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (46:43.95)
Completely. In one of the previous interviews you did, you talked about that ancient wisdom and I think you gave a great quote. I can’t remember who it was by, but if you talk to the patient long enough, the disease will reveal itself.

Aaron Hartman MD (46:54.34)
Yes, the patient will declare themselves. Now, they might declare like a day before they die, but if you just sit there and listen and just listen, okay, I’m not sure what’s going on, do a test, listen, eventually the patient will tell you what’s going on. We’re horrible at listening these days. We love doing tests, we love doing procedures. We don’t have time to listen. And the kind of medicine I practice is cognitive heavy. It’s lots of listening, lots of asking questions.

And then lots of therapeutic trials. do something, how do you respond? You’re great, let’s go down this pathway. Not so much my long COVID patients, which I’ve been treating long COVID since May of 2020, before it was even recognized. And because I was listening to patients, was seeing what was happening. You had COVID two months ago and you’re still sick. Like what’s going on? Is this a post-viral thing? Like people who go with EBV, like people who go with flu, like people have gotten with bird flu. Like these are things that have happened. Why can’t it happen with this?

Leigh Ann Lindsey (47:30.977)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (47:47.978)
and just start using those concepts. I was treating long COVID two years before it became a thing in the conventional world because I just used my clinical experience. Like every doctor is supposed to be doing that.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (48:01.784)
we have, we’ve really lost the, the insight that comes from the listening and really like, it’s still the doctor making a diagnosis based off of the client’s story and symptoms and history. And then maybe there’s a couple tests that confirm that, but it’s really the doctor making the diagnosis. It’s that’s really not the case anymore. It’s no, the doctor orders a test that might make a diagnosis, but there is so much lost in the process. So.

Okay, I think it would be fun. We have just a couple minutes left. I actually would really love to understand what it looks like if a patient were to come into your clinic first. How can they, how can they get in? Are you taking new patients? And if so, what is that? What does that integration process look like?

Aaron Hartman MD (48:50.788)
I mean, my clinic, have four practitioners in the clinic right now. I’m closed personally just to some of my personalized, like people that are looking for a similar experience in my daughter have, have a personalized medicine practice for that. Our general practice is still accepting patients and it’s, you know, we want to find the right people for the right fit. Like if you’re like not going to change your diet, you’re not going to, you know, exercise at all. You’re not going to take any supplements. You’re not going to do anything outside of the box.

it’s not gonna be a good use of your time and resources. And so we have like an application to make sure we’re finding people that are ready to like do this different kind of medicine. And once people are accepted, then there’s an application. It’s usually about 20 or 30 pages. mean, I’m sorry, the intake forms about 20 or 30 pages. It takes about four to five hours to fill out. And once people fill that out, maybe on the sketch.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (49:37.454)
I’m sorry, four to five hours. I love this. I mean, think about that. That’s unheard of, but how cool.

Aaron Hartman MD (49:43.171)
I mean.

Aaron Hartman MD (49:47.608)
I mean, like how else would you do it? mean, that’s, you you, you, part of it is actually you learning, like you remembering, yeah, like this all started after I moved into that house that was infested with the cockroaches and my dad sprayed it with the bug spray stuff. That’s when I started having my ADHD and my like people actually will learn, like, we’ll start realizing, start connecting their own dots when they fill out the paperwork, which I think is really super cool. And then.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (50:13.462)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (50:13.54)
We’ll review it before then you come in and then it’s a two hour intake where we review all this information with you. Did I get this right? Like all this started after your third pregnancy, after you had that traumatic birth. Okay, that’s cool. Check that. That’s a data point. Oh, when you had fillings put in and root canals, you still have the silver fillings in and your mercury level. Let’s check your mercury. Okay. We start connecting data points. That’s about two hour and then take, and then we order a bunch of labs. It’s usually about 30 to 60 vials of blood. So it’s a bit much.

But that gives us the little data points. We love doing lab tests. I don’t wanna be anti-technology. We typically do five to 800 biomarkers on a patient on their first visit. So it’s a lot of tests. And then as those come back over the next couple of weeks, we kind of take your chart, look at it again, and start filling in the holes. Or your cancer patient, your vitamin D level’s seven. It’s like, your B12 level’s low, your home assisting level’s high, your fatty acid level’s low, you have messed up.

fatty acids now, so it’s like all of a sudden there’s so many nutritional issue issues we got to deal with. You start connecting the dots and then the patient comes back about six weeks plus or minus later. And they sit down, then you review all the labs with them, review the chart one more time and then you put the plan together. So to get your plan, four hours paperwork, two hour intake, a couple hours reviewing labs, hour and 15 minute follow up and now here’s your plan. So there’s a lot of work that goes into that. And then you basically do therapeutic trials.

Here’s your buffet of all the ideas we got. We can’t do all these now, it’s impossible. Let’s do these top five things. You change your environment, change your diet, work on these lifestyle modification things, which are absolutely essential. Lifestyle is essential. And then we start going down these pathways. it’s always cool when you figure things out the first time around. it’s like, had this one kid who came to me from Boston Hospital, maps or mass general. And he had been diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease and.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (51:50.893)
Mm-hmm.

Aaron Hartman MD (52:06.372)
We did his intake, did a stool analysis and he had C. def and I was missed by two specialists. And so around a flagell made like 90 % of his symptoms go away. So sometimes you have those home runs on the first visit. Usually it’s the long game. Usually it’s the marathon, not the sprint. And so I tell people upfront, this is going to be probably a couple of year process, one to two to three years, depending on how sick you are. Obviously for a cancer patient, it’s going to be, you know, a lifelong process because you’re dealing with the milieu that sets up for that, the complications of.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (52:18.359)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (52:34.98)
medications, treatment, surgeries, whatever, and then secondary prevention down the road. So it’s a it’s a little more, it’s a bigger runway, so to speak. And you start working together and it’s really interesting. I tell people with my wife, for example, I’m not her doctor. She sees someone else in her practice, but I remember just talking with her. It took us 15 years to figure out, and this is the reason why she sees someone else, because I’m too close, but it took 15 years to figure out the law of her issue started.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (52:54.072)
You

Leigh Ann Lindsey (53:00.961)
Yeah.

Aaron Hartman MD (53:04.3)
in grad school after a massive formaldehyde exposure in anatomy lab for six months. That’s when her anxiety, a lot of her mood stuff, pain syndromes, hormone problems started after literally being in a formaldehyde anatomy lab for six months straight. And so it’s one of those things where like sometimes those data points don’t just pop up on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth visit. So that’s where part of our practice, it’s a relationship.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (53:10.016)
Wow.

Aaron Hartman MD (53:32.292)
The patient signs a contract. They’re becoming a member of our practice, but also binds us to the person because it’s going to be a journey. And sometimes these data points, figure them out in a couple of days, a couple of weeks. And sometimes it’s, you a year or two down. And I think, I think this will resonate with you. You know, we get a lot of patients a year or two years in three years and they’re doing great, but they’re stuck at 80%. Right. A lot, a lot of times that, that thing that lets your bike heal the rest of the way is trauma, whether it’s big T trauma, you know,

Leigh Ann Lindsey (53:53.953)
Yeah

Aaron Hartman MD (54:01.72)
or little T trauma or medical trauma, whatever you want to call it. Your nervous system doesn’t feel safe and you get stuck. And that’s sometimes as a journey for people to realize, you know what? I’ve done everything. Wash, repeat, done this multiple times. I’m stuck. Sometimes it’s a self-realization that part of what’s keeping me stuck is my, don’t feel safe in my body. My nervous system’s a wreck. And that’s when the really hard work starts to be honest with you is like getting your brain rewired, doing limbic retraining, neuro rewiring, know, whatever you want to call it.

That’s outline of what we do.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (54:31.874)
Yeah. Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, it’s so neat. There’s so much I could say about that, but I want to be respectful of your time. But yeah, it’s interesting because most of the patients who get referred to me, it’s a number of different things. But in terms of doctors, it’s a lot of patients who they’re like, we’ve done everything from a physiological perspective and it’s gotten us to a point, but now we’ve like stuck in plateaued. We need to go address emotional contributors.

And it’s such a, I tell clients like, this is a big sign. If you’re doing everything you can think of physically and you’re not moving forward or you you’re stuck at a certain point, that might be the sign that it’s time to turn over the stone of emotional contributors to illness and look at that. So perfect little segue there. Well, Dr. Hartman, thank you so much. That was absolutely fascinating. I can’t wait for the audience to get to hear that.

Just so that they can find you, I’d love for you to share before we hang up on where they can find you, what’s the best place they can find you. We’ll have it all linked in the show notes too, but just so they hear it.

Aaron Hartman MD (55:36.618)
We have created like a one stop shop reference, is Aaron Hartman, MD.com. That’s just my personal website. And you can get my practice from there, which is Richmond Functional Medicine. I’ll take you to my YouTube channel, take you to all the social media stuff and also the book, Uncurable from Hopeless Diagnosis to Define All Odds is my daughter’s story. You can follow it from there. But our practice is Richmond Functional Medicine. If someone wants to work with me personally, we do have a precision medicine practice as well. But that’s usually people reach out to us.

I love that to be honest with that stage is word of mouth just because I’ve been doing this for a while. but I would just say started Aaron Hartman MD. And then we have one of my beliefs is that 80 % of the stuff I do, people can do at home, you know, is your house moldy, you know, all this kind of stuff. And so we have a huge educational platform on our website. We’ve got over 400 blog posts are, a bunch of podcasts on made to health, which is our podcast. And the purpose is to educate people.

You know, think about my wife with her health journey. She was had horrible to building fatigue for five years. in hindsight, if like she could work with me, the me of today, not the meme back then that could have been six months, maybe a year of fatigue, but she missed five years of our kids lives. And for her, she still tries about it now when she thinks about it. And so if she, so if the thing is like, there’s people that are self starters who like know something’s out there, but want to, where do I start? I’m a triple board certified doctor.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (56:50.798)
you

Aaron Hartman MD (56:59.608)
You know, been a PI for 70 plus clinical trials, I published in Lancet. So I put together this really, hopefully a reputable resource for people. Even like if you want books to read, I’ve vetted over 500 books and there’s several cancer books on that site as well. Books I think are helpful. One of them I recommend all cancer patients to read is Radical Remission. Cause I think that helps frame people’s brains as far as like, you know, is getting healthy possible? You know, and the answer is yes. But,

So I have all these resources for people, no matter where you’re at in your journey, there’s something there for you. If you just want Instagram, we got that. If you want books, we got that. So if you want to see me, we got that too. So yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I have a lot of practitioners, actually nurse practitioners, PAs and other doctors who all need to go, Oh yeah, I’ve reading all your stuff for the last couple of years. I’m like, really cool.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (57:37.1)
Yeah, however deep you want to go with the content, we’ve got every version of it.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (57:51.406)
I know right when people in in your space are coming to you saying they’re reading you and following you it always makes you go. okay

Aaron Hartman MD (57:57.74)
It’s also funny because I do all this work and then you just forget about it and it’s just out there and then, and then people come to you like, it’s always nice to know what you do is helpful, I guess. And sometimes you just do things you’re like, is that helpful? Was that useful? Was that conversation that helped people? I don’t, cause I’m not, I’m not, I’m busy researching stuff and taking care of people. So I don’t always get the feedback that I’m doing is super helpful. So it’s always nice to have that feedback too. So.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (58:09.198)
Totally.

I know.

Leigh Ann Lindsey (58:22.222)
100 % exactly. Well, thank you again so, so much. This was fantastic.

Aaron Hartman MD (58:27.012)
Thanks a lot,