Kevin Hoffarth, MD on COVID, CBD, the Impact of Emotion on Health, and More!

 

John Malanca 0:03
Welcome back, John Malanca, with United Patients Group Be Informed. Be Well.

today I have a special guest really cool. Cool, dude. I’m gonna say cool, dude. He’s a California guy now lives in Texas. Dr. Kevin Hoffarth

Unknown Speaker 0:17
How are you doing Kevin?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 0:19
Great. How are you? I like an intro. Wow, I’m the cool, dude. Here. Now. Well, here in Texas, you know? Yeah. You kind of got a hold back from being from California. Yes. Yeah. It’s kind of the represent California a little bit more positive.

John Malanca 0:36
We can be caught closet California now living in Texas, too.

Unknown Speaker 0:40
Yeah.

John Malanca 0:42
Moving to Austin. So let’s talk about, you know, we can talk we’ll talk about a bunch of things. I know you have a book, I want to help you with that. But let’s talk about what’s going on right now. stress, anxiety, the immune system. And I know, it’s tough. You know, I made a comment one time about how everyone’s stressed and one of one of our fathers wrote said, do not realize what’s going on the world. And I said, You know what, you’re right. I do know what’s going on, people are losing their jobs, people aren’t able to see their family, their kids or grandkids. Hugs. I mean, I just started hugging my mom, you know, and before just to be safe, I was fist bumping and elbow bumping and stuff like that. And so me get into the intro, I’ll share your bio here, you know, stress and anxiety, its effects, assaults, becoming a modern epidemic in society today. And so I don’t wanna say this is the new normal, but it’s, it’s amazing. You really didn’t I don’t know, you and I are the same age did we hear a lot about stress, anxiety, depression in those in our area, because I have friends that have kids in high school, and they’re talking about stress, anxiety, depression, you know, and it puts that the world puts a lot of pressure on what we’re doing here today. So and But anyway, let me talk about you, Kevin. Whoa, far, he’s the founder of bio fit medicine and his traditionally trained physician as well as a certified functional medicine physician who understands that isolating the body down to just systems like we see today in today’s traditional specialty care model is not treating the whole patient. Dr. Ho, farts background experience to training is only seen by handful of physicians worldwide. He takes the most current medically based science and therapies of today to an traditional and unprecedented level, Dr. are passionate lives where he teaches i think i love that he understands that there is no one size fits all, which I always say approach to any patient’s health, it is imperative to take this approach to achieve and maintain sustainable results. I love this shoe. Your goal is to give Hope, our hope our goal is for you to feel your optimum, reduce your medication reliance over time develop lifetime of good habits and lower disease burden in your future. So that’s it, I love it. And so, you know, you and I have spoken before. And I love your mindset. And I and that’s why I wanted to get to get you back on the show. And so what am I missing there? You know, we went over a lot of what you do. I know you were based California here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I mean, we were neighbors for a while. And then you upgraded your wife and your your daughter and moved to Texas.

Unknown Speaker 3:23
And how’s that going?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 3:25
Great. So we actually moved here eight years ago, okay, we were living in South Lake Tahoe actually dry spot, which is probably one of the most beautiful spots on the planet. Everybody says Why did you move and you know, one of the reasons was this, we had a child and we just wanted to not raise her in unnecessarily a mountain town so that just didn’t have as many opportunities that we thought so. So we ended up in Austin. So

John Malanca 3:58
so you know, booming city to

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 4:01
Oh, yeah, it’s it’s great. It’s It’s It’s basically I mean, if you haven’t been Austin A lot of people will describe Austin is is California in California in Texas. So it’s it was a pretty easy transition to be honest. It What do they say? I know they have a

John Malanca 4:17
what’s what’s the saying about Austin? That night? Austin should

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 4:21
keep Austin weird.

Unknown Speaker 4:22
Keep Austin weird. I knew

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 4:27
a lot of people like me from California. That’s no problem. So yeah.

John Malanca 4:32
So So how would your stress level?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 4:35
Well, you know, it’s funny because, um, you know, in the last six months as a provider, you know, I, I do, I do functional medicine, but you know, I do traditional medicine. It’s it’s kind of an integrated approach. And I always try to remind people that it’s not a different medicine. It’s it, we’re talking about the same disease. It just kind of depends on where we’re talking about in the disease spectrum. And most diseases are not way over here, they’re about the 95% third in the chronic stages that are slowly shifting towards a true disease state as we like to call it, and label it in traditional medicine. So, um, you know, functional medicine is, is just looking at the chat the earlier chapters in the book. And so, you know, one of the reasons I wrote my book, functional medicine, the new standard was just to help people realize that, you know, diseases is I like to describe as I put in my book, it’s like a waterfall. And when you’re at the waterfall edge, that the the current is very powerful, and it wants to pull you off that edge, onto what what I call disease. Now disease, it doesn’t really matter what you call, it could be heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, cancer, dementia, any of those. That’s not the important part that we tend to get a little bit stuck on. It’s it’s really the the river journey that got us to that waterfall, and why we got on the raft in the first place. And so I really like to kind of say, okay, traditional medicine, there are some tools there that can help push you back on that curve. But then we need to shift you away from the waterfalls pole, and get you backwards into that river, in the backwards journey in order to start shifting you back towards, you know, without disease.

John Malanca 6:40
Yeah. You know, you talk about the flow of what happened here to brought that brought you here. And, you know, you and I have talked about my wife, Karen, who passed away of pancreatic cancer A few years ago, and I spoke with that doctor after that, and she was a psychotherapist, actually. And it was we scheduled two appointments, I scheduled two appointments. And as soon as I get it was two weeks out prior and I should let me get to back to back and the very first one I had was the Monday after crin passed. And I was and she said, I heard what happened. Would you like to, you know, yeah, let me let me let me do and so he did a thing. And so she said, Can I ask you what happened to Chris 20 years ago. And so you talking about something, the flow of what took place over here to here. And you know, and I look back and what we’re going through in our stress, you know, stressors, the fight or flight that can help get things done, run quicker for bear, chasing your lion or tiger. But there’s also, you know, high stress with cortisol affects your sleep, like inflammation in the body and throws you off, which could lead to disease, heart failure, diabetes, and something as severe as is cancer as well. And so that’s a great analogy, how you’re talking about what’s what’s happening to be

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 8:04
curiosity, did you come up with something that you thought yeah,

Unknown Speaker 8:08
you know, and, uh, you know, it

John Malanca 8:14
all said, you know, probably, you know, crin went through an ugly divorce and she was really felt like it, you know, 20 something years ago, and she just felt Oh my god, how did that help? How am I doing this? You know, I come from two loving parents, two loving grandparents, great grandparents. And she says, And me, you know, and it’s, it’s, it’s in so she just took that extra stress. And, uh, you know, and being a mom with two kids, and, you know, and I think and she said, that was a really tough time for me that I just like, I failed. I said, Yeah. And she went through a lot. And I remember one point, she said, you know, that she thought she had Lyme disease. And she didn’t have line, but she was driver kids at school, and she would go home, start going home, and she’d have to pull over because she could, she was so tired as you just sit there and fall asleep in the car just for an hour, an hour, a half hour, 1015 minutes, whatever. Just but because she her energy level was gone. So she wouldn’t have you know, and I and it was just distressed, the stress distress. And so you know, and so when I hear that, I’ve shared that with other people that have called and said, let’s see if we can work on the stress here. You know, because it can affect us a lot. I know you’re about to say something. I spoke with a woman yesterday. She called it her, her dad’s 85. And he’s not eating he’s lost 50 pounds. And I said is it he has neuropathy? And I said does he have as he battling something cancer, diabetes, she has no. And that’s the thing. We don’t know what’s going on. But he’s so stressed out because we sold the family house, the COVID he’s not out being out with his friends. He’s not active and I’m just seeing that That stress and he’s always been that worrywart his whole life and I just said, you have, you know, if you’re able to let you know, see if you can either talk to a therapist go to get a massage, go to acupuncturist, you know, but he has to start eating to, you know, bring that in there. So, anyway, that’s what, you know, what was shared after crin pass? And I knew that I mean, you know, we shared everything each other. So, you know, it’s

Unknown Speaker 10:25
Yeah.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 10:26
And, you know, it’s so interesting. I love this is actually a perfect, you know, perfect kind of segue into stress. I mean, it’s, you know, all disease has to have like a starting point and for your your wife, crin. You know, maybe, um, and this is not this is the case, I think, for a lot of us is that stress can be one of the triggers. One thing I mentioned, in my book that I really tried to kind of emphasize, is that there are five what I call stamp, like stamp triggers. It’s all under stress. Yeah. toxins, toxins, allergens, microbes, bugs, like COVID. Okay, and poor diet. Now, the some of these are actually very visible, you can you could test for them, you know, you could test for you know, your, or you could see your foods and, you know, people are gaining weight. And we always kind of tend to focus on the kitchen and kitchens, extremely important. But let’s talk about stress, where it’s actually one of the two most powerful of the triggers stress and poor diet, the two bookends of that stamp and stress. Most of the time, you can’t visualize it. You can just see its impact. So like, for example, crin, you went through a divorce all the steps that she’s like, how did I get here? Now? I have two children. Gosh, I mean, this is her story is is unfortunately, very common. Yeah. Yeah. And, and she’s trying to raise these two children. Probably many, much of it was on her own. I don’t know the story. But, you know, there’s probably a lot of pressure there as a mother. And so that chronic, and, you know, putting this in from a physiologic standpoint, you know, we’re initially meant to have a cortisol response. Yeah, this is like, this is our adaptive response to a threat to our survival. This is normal, okay. But unfortunately, the divorce doesn’t go away. The kids are always there. Her the fact that maybe her economics situation was more challenging at that time, all these things are just triggered trigger trigger trigger of cortisol, cortisol, cortisol, cortisol. Now, cortisol is neither bad nor good. I like to remind people that anything that’s made in the body is not bad or good. It’s about a balance, unfortunately, if the trigger is constant, okay, and you’re having this release of cortisol, which is a hormone that literally just prepares the body for that stress response. So it prepares for the production of sugars, okay, through the liver, and it it changes the immune system changes. You know, our sense, sense and, you know, people talk about the fight or flight scenario, yeah, it gets our heart going, it gets our breathing going, as if we were running from a bear. But in today’s world, rarely Is there a visible bear, that bear is all the things that Kareem was going through. And you know, if everybody out there who is watching, you know, with all the, you know, mess of COVID and all the pandemic dominoes it’s caused. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s almost unfathomable to, to appreciate each person’s individual status, and how much it’s impacted their life. And so that there’s that cortisol Push, push, push, which really intriguing about that in with cortisol, for example. And it’s much more complicated, just that, but trying to keep it from in a binary kind of design here. yet. The body is very web, like, it’s a very complicated mesh of systems. But I like to remind people that that balance in our body also has built in fuse boxes, in a sense, okay, so if there’s too much cortisol over here, we have another system. A lot of people call it the parasympathetic system. And yes, that’s the major system that kind of tries to counter the sympathetic pathways, but going a little bit deeper than that. There’s the endocannabinoid system. And because we’re talking about CBD today, and how its effect on stress and immunity, and the you know, what I want to emphasize is that the endocannabinoid system is just a built in system that balances out that cortisol response. So when we have stress and it’s ongoing, it can become dysfunctional that fear and anxiety that was initially a good response now becomes a maladaptive response. This was what leads to people with PTSD, anxiety disorders, OCD, depression, all those diseases that you can’t visualize except the person feels it from with it. And in that from within is now the body’s trying to adapt it or equalize that, that balancing system through the inner cannabinoid system so that it can balance out that cortisol response, which is a very tricky system. Go ahead.

Unknown Speaker 15:52
It really is.

John Malanca 15:54
I think this brings a lot of stress to a lot of people nowadays, you know, everybody, every everybody like that, there is a I’m big into watching 60 minutes, it’s Sunday morning, with your ever watch. watch those both on Sunday. But anderson cooper did a segment on stress and cortisol and, and our phones, and they had him, you know, EKG up and they were doing something he had his phone to the side. And the producer was texting him not knowing, you know, she he didn’t know it was her doing it. But you saw his quarterly cortisol as hearing the phone buzz, and here’s the phone buzz. And, and Kurt and I were watching that, and she’s like, Oh, my God, this is what you go through. I said, Yeah, you know, I stopped. You know, first thing you get on Facebook in the morning, you just feel. So I don’t even do that anymore. because it affects it affects you. And I said, Oh my gosh, this is something that’s true. And so if anybody wants to look at it happened, maybe three years ago, four years ago, you can go look at another segment on 60 minutes, but it was actually a very well done segment.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 17:10
That goes into a really important story. It’s where we’re thoughts go energy flows. And you know, that energy or that thought of like, oh, gosh, I miss this interview. But Gosh, I got this, this, this person trying to get ahold of me, well, now your thoughts, you’re not really there, you’re not present that whole mindfulness concept, and then your energy starts to shift. And that energy shift is towards a stress response of cortisol. unknowingly, you’re trying to be focused and present here, and you’re over here. And you know, it’s interesting during this whole COVID thing. It’s there’s been a lot a fair amount of articles about kind of trying to get people to detach from, you know, social media, and be very mindful of their, especially their morning, initial steps, the average, like 85% of people, first thing they do within the first 15 minutes is get on their phone and read, you know, their emails or their or some news. And I was to blame, to be honest with you up until fairly recently, and I just said, You know what, I gotta stop doing it. This is not this is not useful on any level. Now, the first thing I do is get up, and I go meditate. So it’s like a lovely transition to go from a sleep state to another form asleep state. And just kind of worked my way into my day, and get my thoughts connected to my energy and so that they’re equal.

John Malanca 18:48
I was laughing earlier, because you’re talking about people. You know, like this in an interview. Also, in that same way with Anderson Cooper, he was talking to a document, doctors explained that thing, a lot of people will sit there and they’re automatically thinking about all the other things they need to do. And Andrew said, Oh, my gosh, he goes wall talking to you, I’m embarrassed. I’m thinking about my phone. That’s by my foot and how many emails and he said it on the camera. They said, You’re so right. So that’s great that you start your day at night, and I hope everybody could start the day off like that. Because state to calm state and make your way into the day.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 19:27
And honestly, john, it came out of two major walls I hit over the last six years, we’re about six months into the pandemic, and there’s been two times where I just felt where my life literally just says, You know, I just said to her, I have I got nothing left to give to anyone. No. Um, and I think I went through a kind of form of mild depression early on where I was just kind of, you know, detached from everybody’s detached and yeah, what normal is it? didn’t feel like I realized I liked lots of non essentials. Yeah, I, you know, just go into coffee shop or going to the movies, I just it was really it really started thinking about this is really silly stuff to be really, you know firstworldproblems kind of kind of issues. But it made me step back and say, Hey, where am I really anchoring? Where my thoughts really anchor Where is my happiness really anchored? And I realized that my anchoring is, you know, I wasn’t I was anchoring it too much to to Earth things. The non essentials, for example, yeah. And, and, and realize through friends and colleagues who are way better at the whole meditation thing than I am to make me realize, hey, look, we need to anchor ourselves outside of this world. And you start from within, and it starts with your thoughts. And those thoughts. If you’re positive, it’s going to generate a positive energy. And that’s it. It’s like gym work. I always say that meditations like gym work in the in the in the in the mind. And if you practice it every day, it’s gonna get stronger. Because there’s days where in the markets, yeah, there’s days in the mornings, where the whole time I’m, I’m thinking, like, I remember one time I was meditating, john. And I remember thinking I did 20 minutes, and the entire time, I think 18 of those 20 minutes, I was thinking about my basketball team that the night before and thinking of, if I was the coach, I would have run these plays. It was so ridiculous. And I look back and go, Well, that was useless. I mean, that was a useless meditation. We got to

John Malanca 21:45
you got two minutes out of it.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 21:47
But I but I realized that two minutes was valuable. Yeah. And it did pull me back and did anchor me for a little bit and it got my day going. And so it’s important not to judge, you know, your thoughts, but to try to sometimes step back, and, and look at it from a third party perspective, kind of laugh at yourself and say, all right, I gotta move forward. And that is a great way to shift that cortisol kind of constant bombardment onto the body and pull it back and allow the body to say, okay, we need to other systems to be working here. And if you don’t, okay, unlike, you know, in, look, we’re just we’re just speculating here with your with your wife. But you know, that chronic stress may have been a massive trigger, which it is for many people, and started her on that pathway along the river towards eventually that waterfall. It probably wasn’t the only thing. I always like to remind people, it’s probably not never just one thing. And that’s why there’s five stands. Okay. But if you know, we’re stress and poor diet, these are the two most powerful hormones cortisol and insulin. And if you don’t heal those two hormones, first and foremost, you really heal nothing. And the rest of it rest of is just to make a massive bandaid. Yeah.

John Malanca 23:22
And then everything else will start to crumble and then the immune system and, you know, let’s talk about cannabis in the industry, but well into Canada into the endocannabinoid system is one of what 12 systems in our body, you know, we’ve reproductive and your immune system. And you want to add to that?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 23:42
Well, I mean, you know,

John Malanca 23:44
I mean, it goes, I mean,

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 23:46
I kind of look at the system from more of a standpoint of when you put in food in all the systems that it takes to get to get to the energy pathways that so so in the functional world, there, it’s broken down into seven pathways, where it’s the digestive system, and repair. And then so in when it gets into the GI tract. That’s the piece where there’s a communication pathway are Am I going to be allowed to come in or not? Okay, and then transporting it. And then, which is the vessels and the cholesterol and all that. And then there’s the mitochondrial pathways, the energy pathways, then there’s the detox pathways. And then finally, there’s the group where they kind of overlook the final pathway and say, Did everybody do a good job here, structurally? Did everything get taken care of? And so, yeah, I mean, there’s different ways to break into the body, and honestly, ultimately, doesn’t really matter as long as you’re appreciating that the starting point is the same regardless of what we’re talking about. This is where I think Traditional Medicine we have this tendency to get caught up on the details, not see the forest. And the forest is, hey, look, life is complicated. The body is complicated. And there are there’s initiating triggers, okay, that can activate this process and if not addressed appropriately, it just we’re just going to keep floating along that river until we reach the waterfall.

John Malanca 25:27
Yeah, and I think that’s what makes you a good doctor, you know, you take the mindset of all this and bring it together, because a lot of doctors, a lot of people actually, to the matter with a perfect you know, just look at things in the box. And I and I like your approach. I like the integrative approach to functional medicine approach with cannabis. And I always tell people, you know, cannabis is not the golden pill, the golden ticket, you know, the end on I never used the word cure, but it is beneficial. And it works. It’s

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 26:00
It’s a tool, it’s a tool.

John Malanca 26:02
Yeah. You know, in to have that tool as well as that weapon isn’t Arsenal, if you’re to do battle, whatever you’re going through, if it’s just sleep, if his anxiety, depression, but can you talk about the benefits of cannabis in the immune system and immune support?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 26:18
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think it’s important for the audience to kind of understand where I’m coming from, it’s, you know, just kind of give you a little background, I was that guy in high school, the guy that no drug, a person really liked to be around, because I would throw their drugs. So my buddies used drugs, they knew that don’t use drugs, Ron Kevin, I’m going to toss them, it messes you up. And so I was kind of like that goody goody two shoe guy. And I’ve evolved from that, I think I was really extreme on it, I was extremely, a little bit judgmental, frankly, because I saw its impact on certain people. And I was like, I don’t want to go there. So I became kind of extreme, when I was younger. Yeah, and then, you know, as a physician, you’re trained to all these drugs, like you suddenly become this, you know, at some of my, you know, patient friends will say, I’m like a drug pusher, you know, it’s like, and, and, and you kind of start to realize, shit kind of, I kind of had, you know, and, and then you don’t even realize you got there, you know, and then finally, then you start to realize, wait a minute, um, all these medications that I’m starting,

they have a very built in innate, you know, problem, if you keep adding more and more and more, and we’re not healing anything, I’m not against meds, in appropriate situations, they can be very helpful. But we get too often where we get cookbook, and we go, Okay, this has this will start this medication. And before you know it, that cookbook is, is now there’s a menu of medications that that person is on. And finally, I got to a point in my career was like, wait a minute, I need to start looking at these things as tools, and not as substitutions forever. And so, you know, it moved into, like, I worked hospice, that was one of my many hats that I worked in, as a physician. And, you know, you start to appreciate the pain and the suffering that people go through. And my understanding of marijuana, for example, really started to evolve and appreciate rather than looking at it from a social standpoint, or to kind of realize, hey, marijuana has a incredible potential to help pain and suffering, help with nausea with appetite. And so you start to kind of realize, wait a minute, and this is how I think medicine has been really good. For me, it’s like, it’s kind of starts to help you learn that life is very gray. There’s a lot of in betweens, and you have to be very flexible, you cannot get caught up on just this one way of targeted therapy and thinking. And so with marijuana, for example, you know, I was like, Okay, I’m alright, I can, I can wrap my head around that. And then I started to learn about it, because some of my friends were anesthesiologists and pain specialists. And they were, they were really all for it. And at first, again, I was a little bit I would say judgmental, um, I was kind of like, oh, they’re going down, like, you know, like every other California and going down this marijuana pathway in there talking as if it’s like the end though. But I started to appreciate that there’s the biochemistry and then within the plant itself, there’s, you know, 80 Plus, and they’re cannabinoids. Only one of them is the THC that causes the psycho activity and everybody loves that one. But you realize that the second one is CBD And CBD is involved in pain, and how our mind kind of views, stress or how it responds to it. And you start to realize it also helps with the immune system. And you’re like, whoa, wait a minute here. And there’s a built in system called endocannabinoids, just wait a minute, our body was made to accept these cannabinoids, whoa, and you start to realize that, hey, plants on this earth are connected to our systems. And you know, then you start to really start to say, Wow, we are really a connected organism. And if you look at it from that standpoint, then you start to say, okay, in these scenarios, these are excellent choices. It’s not for everybody, but it can be in the proper, proper, proper situation. So now it’s funny because I become this full swing doctor, where now it’s like I, you know, I have a lot of patients who are always drinking alcohol. And in my career, I, the first 10 years of my career, I basically feel like I ran an ICU full of alcoholics. And I was I was detoxing a lot of patients, and I saw the hammering effect of alcohol on the body. And now I’m kind of like, Hey, guys, um, rather than drinking alcohol, maybe you should smoke pot.

You know, choose, you know, the better of the two evils in a sense, I kind of joke around with them. And they look at me, and they’re like, oh, wow, you know, I never even thought about and I’m like, I’m not pushing, you know, to become a, you know, a pot smoker. But let’s make sure that we’re not allowing society dictate the things that we’re using. And look, everybody, a lot of people drink, or I should say, every, a lot of people drink to decrease to just reduce the stress by the end of the day. But they don’t realize that that’s a that’s a toxin. And that toxin, over the course of many years, is just another trigger that’s leading the pathway towards disease. And I say, Whoa, and then they’re blocking it for the stress. So now they have two triggers that they’re trying to waffle. And so then I say, Okay, wait a minute, let’s find another tool. In the toolbox that’s less, lets you know, it’s not a toxin, okay. And that’s where CBD comes in. CBD is not a toxin, I actually it works with our system that’s built in to help support the pathways. And then and then they can start to manage the stressors in their life a more easily and more effectively and appropriately in time where they can step back and look at themselves from a kind of a third party perspective.

John Malanca 32:48
Well, first, it doesn’t sound like you were taught this in medical school, which a lot of the dog learners who say, you know, I was blown away and the first time they had it, they went to a medical conferences, there’s some really good medical conferences in this industry. And they sit there with their mouths dropped. Like, why didn’t I learn this? You know, and they cannabis wasn’t a lifestyle. You talking about goody two shoes, as you were saying, you know, I call Korean Mary Poppins. She didn’t drink in the smoke, you know? And she’s like, honey, I said, I get a compliment, you know? Yeah. But she just thought, Come on, give me a break. We live in California, like you said, and everybody just wants to use it to get stone. And then we were thrown into this because of her father. And we have this success with her father, you know, with cannabis. And she’s just thought back. She’s like, maybe it is beneficial for the body. And so she started doing a lot. And she was she was great at researching her dad’s a Stanford grad, retired dentist. And so we started throwing, you know, scientific papers to him. And he asked one day, he said, Why isn’t so in suing the US government for murder? Like why he’s like, you know, actually getting ahead of myself. One, they have a, it’s under schedule one, no medical benefits. But they also have it as a patent with neuroprotectant as medical better CBD. And so, you know, if we didn’t live in a legal state, that would never have gone come out of our mouth. May we try cannabis when he was battling battling cancer. And, you know, it worked. It worked for him. And that’s what brought us on this journey of just seeing the benefits of this plant. You know, there’s so many different cannabinoids, you mentioned, I say there’s about 140 Some people say 8113 121 60 and more being introduced or discovered each and every day and they all play a role. You know, with the cancer patients that we work with, like my father in law, THC was needed. He used a four parts THC, one part CBD, so There’s studies that show TC has proven to kill cancer cells while CBD stopped to spread. Me personally, I don’t think he would be alive if he would have been on a straight CBD regiment. So I don’t want I know the media has confused a lot of I guess people and patients and consumers out there Oh, I have this helmet. Let me get as much CBD as possible. And so sometimes you do need to these other other cannabinoids in there and more being discovered each and every day. You being in Texas, are you kind of handcuffed when it comes to telling your patients because I was just I was talking to someone yesterday actually who’s also in Austin actually and I shared shared your information with them. And sure you’re going through a lot right now where there they do have CBD establishment CBD brick and mortar dispensaries. And is there a lot going through there in Austin right now where they’re trying to put a hold on that or block on that.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 35:54
Ah, so it’s interesting when I moved here eight years ago, California when I was practicing in California, California, that a couple years before that, about the two to three years, everywhere it was, you know, marijuana stores popping up everywhere?

John Malanca 36:13
Well, that’s not to say we were 2011 we when we went through my father nauseum ailment and watch the United patient group, and it wouldn’t have been in our mindset if we didn’t see

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 36:25
it. And you know, and you know, again, we have this tendency, we’re human beings, we tend to go extremes. And initially in this little town of, you know, 20,000 people, we suddenly have like three or four, see, you know, marijuana stores

Unknown Speaker 36:41
the country and,

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 36:42
and then you know, there’s, there’s doctors out there that all they started doing was just prescribing marijuana because they can make money off of it. And it really put a bad taste in my mouth to be honest. Because I just thought okay, this is this is the extremity of extremity of human behavior, you know, people trying to take advantage of it on some levels. And then you know, but then then you move to Texas and you see the exact opposite where absolutely not you can’t have any, you know, marijuana and you know, the CBD right now, it has to be medical grade, if there is point 01 percent, you could be closed down industry. Okay, so that’s where we’re at in Texas right now. Is there legislation going on? Of course, it’s it’s evolving, and there’s a lot of Californians moving here. So it’s gonna probably push faster. But, but the bottom line is, is kind of Rick recognizing how human nature is, you can see into in medicine is just as much it’s, it’s, the more you learn about the like, the, the cannabis plants, you know, you had mentioned, you know, you know, 140 and cannabinoids, I’m not aware of 140, I’ve always, I’m sure that there’s a lot Okay, um, and it’s, I kind of see it kind of related to a little bit like growth hormone. And let me explain to what I mean by that, you know, there was this growth hormone, you know, push for anti aging 15 years ago, and it’s, Oh, you got to go on growth hormone. And, you know, growth hormone, you know, has multiple, it literally works on over 300 pathways in the body. Okay. And yes, some of them are pretty cool. Your skin looks better, your muscles can build up a little bit more your fat loss. Oh, but oops, it also raises sugars too much. Oops, it also pushes other pathways too much if you’re constantly getting and it can shut down your normal production, blah, blah, blah. Okay. The point being, though is is that we realize that okay, yes, growth hormone has its place within it, though, is smaller segments. And within a hormone like growth hormone, they snip it down into peptides. And so now peptides is a very specific order, okay, so hey, you want great skin will snip it out, okay. And here is the peptide that focuses more on skin, rather than turning up 300 different pathways, okay. And, and we kind of go a shotgun approach, okay, we start to kind of narrow it down. This is where, you know, this is how we’ve, we’ve shifted in from that. That’s how we got into the pharmaceutical world. In medicines, how we started kind of good snipping it down and say, hey, what, what pathways can we work on? I bring this up because we got to be careful how we always look at everything, we have to say, Okay, look at our history, and how we kind of go Okay, it seems nice to break it down in peptide world. I love the peptides because they generate a support to the pathway. They don’t block a pathway. We’re not meant to constantly block a pathway. That’s not how our body’s designed. It’s supporting the pathway. Well, in the THC CBD world, you know, those are just two of the hundred and 40 endocannabinoids. And we’re just starting to learn. And fortunately, there are great minds out there really. And people like you who are saying, Look, guys, we need to look at this, we got to say, Hey, where’s the benefits? How did this? Was it the THC that really helped? You know my father in law? Yeah, it probably was, it probably helped dramatically with his nausea, and his his and his appetite that he was suffering from. But is it? Is it the whole picture? Probably not? Probably not. And, and so are what are the other endocannabinoids? And hopefully, you know, and you know, we’re constantly evolving. And if we’re open minded to it, and not get into that goody goody two shoe attitude that I used to have, and to say, hey, look, we need to see the big picture and see that, depending on where someone is on that river towards the waterfall, there’s very precise things that may be useful for each individual person, not for everybody. But for certain people at certain elements of their chapters of their book, where they’re at. Hey, it may be fantastic.

John Malanca 41:22
If you made a group but it was funny, I wrote up Mount Diablo and you’re from the Bay area here on my money. That was a 50 53rd birthday. I you know, right that quite a bit. But I on the way up and I did a video

Unknown Speaker 41:37
on a growth hormone You look like a good you know?

John Malanca 41:44
It’s funny you say that? Because when Chris and I are going through this her ailment. She said, you’re getting younger looking I so what do you she was your wrinkles have kind of disappeared. And I think you know, we took work off for four months. And it was just like, we just shut it down. We have great employees that just ran it for us. And I think I mean, I was I in high high stress. My our doctors were like, john, you are maxing your adrenals you know, be careful, you need to drink water, you need to, you know to eat. And when you’re in that you’re like, go go, go go go. I mean, I was up every two hours with her, you know, you know, and that was the thing that was really disappointing because being in this cannabis industry and doing as much as we had done for this industry and in this industry. She she would just say, and she was someone who never didn’t drink and smoke. And then she started doing a tincture because of you know hormones in the in the female body. And but while she was battling pancreatic, you know, she was taking the oils using a vaporizer. I mean, I was first she ever hailed anything. And if she just like, a, it’s not helping my pain. And she was just just so disappointed that everything that we’ve been reading and studying and learning and helping others that we had been working on, not everyone, but many wasn’t working with her. What she where she found pain relief was hot tub or bathtub. And I was up with her every two hours. Put in the bathtub, hang in there. And I would just sit there and hold her hand pray and talk. And, you know, it’d be two in the morning, three in the morning for the morning. And I just said she would apologize. Sometimes she Wait, I said, ever Paul do this for another 500 years, babe, you know, and so using an arsenal of whatever works, I think is important. You know, and like you said, Don’t just be Oh, I only want to try this and just be fixed on that. Sometimes that works for some people, sometimes it doesn’t. Back to my health and my thoughts on this. You know what I do I use a cannabis cream in my face. And I take care of it. And the older I get now at you know, I’m out every day but I I’m gonna start doing it. Yeah, my Thank you, you know, my, my therapy and for me, and everyone’s different is to get out and go for a run. And I have to do I don’t care if it’s rain, or sun or when but I get on my bike. And all right 30 plus miles a day that’s just regular run. And it just takes me away. I forget everything.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 44:32
You know, you brought up a couple really good points I don’t want to go please. I really what you got me thinking is you know taking good friends, you know situation. It’s really fascinating because she falls into a category that I think we as humans all fall into. It was like, Hey, I am not you know when I look at the five stamp triggers, okay stressors, toxins, allergens, microbes or diet. She was probably what I’m hearing issues with focused on probably two of them. Um, I’m not going to drink. I’m not going to smoke. So those are the toxins. And I got the impression she probably is a really good eater.

Unknown Speaker 45:11
Kevin,

John Malanca 45:12
these are the things I have sat in on MD Anderson, Sloan Kettering, Johns Hopkins things on pancreatic cancer since she’s passed. And they say here are the reasons why you get pancreatic cancer. alcoholic, didn’t drink smoker didn’t smoke. obese. She was on top of her health. stress. With me, we had no stress. I mean, it was in love. And like, tell me something that makes sense. Because all those times she lived when I say Mary Poppins she was,

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 45:47
yeah, yeah, no, that’s why I was saying clean. You know, this, this, this goes into that paradigm that I always like to realize is that for credit for it, she was she was so good on the neurotoxins. And the poor diet. Probably the allergens, she sounds like she was a really good eater. And she totally, probably didn’t have any food sensitivities, microbes. If she lived a Mary Poppins life, maybe that wasn’t it. So four out of those five, you step back and go, Why Why did she get pancreatic cancer, but then when you go back into the story of her before john, okay, um, you know, that was a trigger, her world was upside down. Fortunately, john, you and her, you know that. It’s just listening, you talk to her about her even years after she’s passed, you can tell that you were just madly in love with her about it. You know, it’s awesome to see from what I’m seeing when I see your face up. But it’s but you know, that’s where the body is really complicated. And, yeah, you know, it can start so early in life, and be that trigger that kind of gets the ball rolling. Now, you know, for some of you kind of go will shoot, you know, that’s a, that’s so whatever happened in my youth, I’m screwed now. And, you know, but for her, she may have developed a very maladaptive approach, which she didn’t even realize she stress for so many years, and only until she met you, maybe that maladaptive state, maybe change, because she probably didn’t realize it could be that good for that for the until she met you. That’s not an unusual story that people will say,

John Malanca 47:34
I like it. It’s, it’s funny, because I look at that going, gosh, you know, we all have stress I have stressed today. I mean, we all have. So I’m not saying I live a stress free life, I try to control it differently. You know, I’ve had stress 1520 years ago, I you know, 30 years ago, I mean, I’ve had stress in my life. And, and I talk with people today and just say, you know, even couples, you know, they’ll say, you know, hearing your story you brought us together, even me and my wife, me and my husband closer together for that reason, because I say that, try not to sweat the small stuff work together your there’s a reason why you guys have come together as a husband, wife, as a partner. You know, you know, try to put that because Do we have too many other surroundings? You know, can I didn’t have children’s, you know, so we’d have to worry about, you know, homeschooling right now, picking you know, taking the kids to soccer to baseball, the tennis to dance to wherever, you know, your your daughter’s into, you know, and that that adds a lot of stress on families, and especially both parent parents work. Maybe right now, one pair is not working, because, you know, I’ve your friend, and you know, she got laid off and the husband’s working, but they’re everyone’s at home right now. So you need

Unknown Speaker 48:49
to find out.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 48:50
Yeah, and you know, the thing is, I think it’s really important to us is to stress about stress is, is that not all stress is bad. And, you know, again, nothing that’s made by the body is all bad or all good kind of like cortisone. Cortisol is a necessary hormone. But with too much, it can be a problem too little it’s also a problem.

John Malanca 49:12
You can you can do blood tests to see where you

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 49:15
are in. Absolutely. And I go through that. And actually one of my chapters have a specific biomarkers you can look at to kind of see what your chapter have on stress, that section that one trigger is looking like and how to kind of give yourself a kind of a quick assessment of where your physiology is. Yeah. Because we all know, okay, that if you want something done, you give it to a busy person. You don’t give it to someone who has no nothing on their plate because they’ll just, you know, take their time. And so it’s and we also all know where you know, a million things can be happening and that person is just cool and calm and they’re just like okay, You know, there, and then the other person is one or two things that have gone wrong and you know, their life is crushed. Okay? And so how we all, you know, respond to the triggers is also important. And it goes back to a really important principle that really started at the time when I first started medical school is at the time when I graduated in 2000. That was the year that the the human genome project completed. And that was the year that we thought, Oh my gosh, okay, we’re going to be able to transform, you know, disease is going to go away, okay, we’re just gonna manipulate little genes, and oh, my gosh, we’re gonna all be super human. And boy, were we wrong. Okay, we realized that, you know, about 10 years after the fact in entirely new world came out of it, we’re now they have PhD programs in it, of what’s going on above the genes, epigenetics, okay, what turns on that gene? and what doesn’t turn on the gene? And this is, this is where we were like, oh, okay, so you can have all these shitty genes, but be fine. Okay. And then you could have maybe a few, but you’re screwed if one of them gets turned on, okay. And it becomes this kind of this, this like, Okay, wow. Now, now, this is even much more complicated than we thought, and that the world of epigenetic started to come out. That’s where I was kind of trying to simplify with the five stamps, five stamps, you know, it really covers the major epigenetic triggers. But it’s even more complicated than that, where we really need to recognize that it’s kind of the timing. It’s kind of it’s, it has to do with, okay, what was the rest of the body state at the time when that stress came on? Maybe the body was great, you know, and so that epigenetic trigger, not a problem. But with crin at a time. Maybe she her world was a little upside down and just kind of Turkey and it’s unlocked the process. She probably markedly slowed down her process from her Mary Poppins way of living, you know, as you as you said, Yeah,

John Malanca 52:18
but it I’m a big fan of a blood test and you do that in your practice our doctors our natural past and I always say maybe maybe in your practice, but a lot of naturopath you’ll get you get a blood test a through double z and I and I always recommend this with our listeners. Go see where you are. Yeah, go see where you are in there. And here’s here’s a perfect example. I was, you know, our Doc, we did our blood test and I was borderline. My liver was maxed out like I was a drinker. Cholesterol was high, pre diabetic and my doctors like what are you doing? You guys are like my star patient, my star pupils here and I said, we’re nothing working out staying healthy. We’re doing everything and and i said i’m going to my acupuncture, she just said, Are you taking any Chinese herbs? And I said, Yeah, regularly. It’s just she she did a fingerprint test. She says come back. And next day, I was loaded with metals. And so for the next six weeks, once a week I did a Bose ozone ozone therapy. Oh yeah ozone, and clean my blood out and they did through the blue light took took the ozone took my blood out put ozone in the bud. And it went through to back into my arm back in the picc line but it went through almost like a blacklight to kill the bacteria that I read in my my blood test about six weeks later, and everything was back to normal. So this is why I share with with our listeners why it was so important. I could have lived my healthy healthy life thinking I’m just taking my tinctures, my my Chinese herbs. And there was metals that were in that and which brings me into the cannabis products. why it’s so important to if you’re going to ingest something, put it in your body, make sure it’s tested, you the consumer is not up to you to go make sure that thing is tested meaning get the test test results is from the product that you’re buying to have those test results done. Nowadays, they come with a QR code on the on the box. If you click on your their website, it’ll have a Contact Us page but it’ll have all the labs as well as the lot number that’s on the product. And if they do not have that go with another product and that’s across the board from THC to CBD to other the cannabinoids from, you know, the tinctures to smokeable, the vaporization products, the edibles, the capsules. And so that’s why it’s really important to see what’s in your body because you don’t really know what’s going on before it’s too late. And I would have kept on going on that route. Kevin, three years down the road. JOHN, you have kidney liver failure and I’m like, I don’t drink. You know, and so I think it’s really important to Get a blood test to see where you are. And to show record of the levels are and you know, you’re high in vitamin D, low vitamin D, I mean, and you could really see where you are, how we got into that was when krint hit 50 she always loves to beat she’d get in the car, and she would drive. And that was the time that she just listened to music. And, you know, her anxiety was coming on. And so she wouldn’t had a blood test and they saw it she was off and within, you know, they’re able to balance it right back out. And I said, well, test me I want to see where where I am. And so we’ve been doing that, I think for the past five, six years getting right, you know, twice a year getting blood tested to see where where we are for still, you know, it’s like, tuning your car. I mean, you’re not gonna drive your car attitude. Anyway, but we keep on talking about credit. Thank you. I love talking about creando.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 55:55
I it’s, it’s a great, it’s a great, you know, platform, though, because for you know, with, you know, toxins you bring up with cbds and making sure that the product is well. I mean, this goes with the whole toxin chapter. Okay, well, with CBD, you get this, you know, I go with Aspen greens, they have certification of their product. But, but you know, it goes with foods, it goes with, you know, the makeups you put on it goes with hair products that goes with anything you’re putting on your skin. You know, all these things are potential toxins. And unfortunately, we live in an extraordinarily toxic world. I don’t think people realize to the extent we literally in this country have over 88,000 chemicals that are FDA approved for everyday usage. I mean, that’s just mind boggling to me. And we don’t have a clue. Okay, how these, how when you mix them all together, okay, how what it’s going to do to the human body, it’s it’s kind of, it’s actually frightening. And yet, it really shows the power of our body’s detoxification capabilities. Because what’s so fascinating about the liver, for example, I always like remind people, you know, God, or whatever your belief is of, of who made us understood that we were going to really screw up this earth, because our liver has the capability of taking out chemicals that don’t even exist right now.

Unknown Speaker 57:33
It is a powerful

John Malanca 57:37
way to get chemicals that don’t exist, I

Unknown Speaker 57:40
explained.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 57:41
Yeah, the metabolic pathways of how our system is designed through the cytochrome p 450. system, okay, as well as the second phase of detoxification, has a capability from science, looking at it, of Wow, it is chemicals that didn’t even exist five years ago, or 10 years ago, it’s metabolizing these things and getting rid of this. And these things didn’t even exist up until a few years ago. It’s just goes to show that our God, our Creator was like, they are going to mess this earth up. And if we if I don’t put in place some kind of filter to get rid of all this, they’re all going to be dead in a year, you know? And so it’s it’s really fascinating how, you know, despite all the bad we do to our body, by choice, are we all are still living it? Oh, that to me is one of the basis of my books is like, how are we all living? The way we treat it at times. And it really got to the concept of what is healthy, because a lot of people will say, Oh, I’m healthy. And in my book, I really break down with each of the stamp triggers what healthy looks like for each one. So for example, stress, there’s three things that have to align to determine if you’re healthy, into terms of stress. Okay, one is how do you feel? Okay, and only you can answer that. Yeah. So I always kind of go back to the, the concept in my, in my book, I kind of use the reference point of being a CEO of a company. If I have a company, and I say, you know, I got all these employees and I got all these division managers and I got all these things going on. And I’m like, looking at my books, and I’m like, wow, you know, it feels like I should be making more money. I feel like our company’s pretty darn good. And I go, alright, I must, I gotta, I gotta hire consultant to kind of look at this because I’m missing something here. So I bring in a consultant, aka me to look at you, okay? And you are your own company. So you are, you know, the body Incorporated. Okay, and I go And I look at three things for stress. For example, I first say I go to you, and I go to every single manager, and

Unknown Speaker 1:00:08
your little one wants to come in. That’s

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:00:10
Yes. Oh, she wants to get out.

John Malanca 1:00:13
Oh, get out. I gotta go to the bathroom dad.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:00:19
My buddy, I’m so sick of talking. Um, so, the, with when you’re looking at the three alignments, you, I would talk to you and I would talk to your division managers pretend I was at your company. And I would say, Okay, what, how are you feeling about what’s going on? You’re like, Well, you know, I got this thing’s going. And then and you’re like, kind of thing. Oh, my, my company is awesome. Then I go to all the division managers and they go, he’s a creep. He’s an asshole. You know, he doesn’t listen to us. And then I go to the, you know, the people who work under the managers, and they’re like, Oh, we have all these problems. They don’t listen to a damn thing that we say. Okay, so that’s part one. How do you how do you feel? Okay. And in the role of stress? Look, some people again, you know, they say, I’m not stressed. But when it really gets down to it, they’re like, yeah, I’m not I’m not sleeping, I’m not eating well, I’m not doing it. I’m drinking a lot. Because I’m, you know, I’m overwhelmed. So that’s part one. But how you feel doesn’t tell us the whole story. Because there’s lots of people out there who eat like crap, for example, and feel fine. Okay. So then you got to go into number two. And number two, is I would walk around your premise of your company. And I would say, Alright, does this look like a nice building? Is this a pleasant place to go as a customer? Do? I feel like they got their shit together? In a sense, okay. Is it clean? Is it well designed? Is it inviting, when I walk inside is it designed in an efficient way that the workers can do their job efficiently. So that’s part two. And that’s what’s called the body composition scans. This is why I do a dexa body composition scan on every single patient that comes to me, where it literally does a scan over their entire body takes like six minutes, and it breaks down their fat to muscle ratios, and every part of their body, okay to the gram. Now, what’s beautiful about this, is that a lot of people are what I call skinny fat. Okay. And this is very helpful in the stress pathway, for example, in clothes, they look, no anybody would look at and go, Oh, they’re skinny. But a lot of their fat is distributed in this Android distribution. Well, that’s an entirely different picture. You may be skinny, you may your weight may be within normal limits, okay. But majority of your fat distribution is telling us that your cortisol has been up for way too long, and shifting the energy and storing it within the liver pathways right here, right here. Exactly in that lovely little part. And and so that’s not healthy. So that’s part two. Okay. And then Part Three is, okay, let’s say I talked to all your people who work for you. And everybody’s like, john is the best CEO in the world. I love this place. I love working here, blah, blah, blah, building looks great. Everything looks great. And I come back to you. And I say, john, everything looks pretty darn good. And you’re like, well, gosh, why are we not making more money? And I say to you, well, there is one more thing, okay, I looked at your Yelp reviews, and your customers hate you. Okay, they’re talking crap about you, um, everybody likes to work for you, but you don’t listen to your customer, your customer is not getting what they need. Okay. And so that’s the third piece is what did the biomarkers say? This is what I call the Yelp reviews. Okay, what are they saying? That maybe telling an entirely different story from what your body looks like and or how you feel. And so for example, in stress, okay, it’d be your cortisol, but there’s also da ga s di hydro epi and restricted ion sulfate. This is kind of what I call the storing of energy within the adrenal system. If it’s really high, um, and depending on your age, it could be a sign that you’re, you’re in a good state, you have plenty of energy, or it could mean that you’re too revved up, okay. And then there’s what’s called reverse t three, which is in the thyroid, actually. Okay. And this is the interconnections of our body and reverse t three is the off button, I call it with metabolism. So if you have ongoing stress, your body has this way of going with them and we got to, we got to change metabolism, and it turns down the thyroid response and it raises what’s called this reverse t three. If that was it, that’s way up. Okay, um, what I talked about in my book, and it helps you realize, Wow, my body physiologically has been under a lot of stress. And I don’t even know it.

John Malanca 1:05:17
And so that was me. My credit level was high. I had a thyroid issue, and I was taking these, you know, and I was able to reverse it. And you can reverse this.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:05:27
Absolutely. And what’s interesting, though, john, is, is a high, maybe an early state of stress. Yeah, but a really low first thing in the morning, when your cortisol should be highest. If it’s too low, it means your stress has been going on for months or a year, because you have burned out your system. It’s no longer producing. So the highs and lows don’t, you got to always put it in in alignment with the actual story itself, too. So this is what makes it really intriguing is because I see some patients Oh, my cortisone low and I go, Oh, no, no, no, you’re burned out. You’re not responding appropriately. Okay. And so, so that’s, you know, everybody likes to call that adrenal fatigue, I just say it’s burnout, it’s stress, okay, I’m stressed in any form, it could be physical, like you were talking, when we’re talking before a camera work with pain, or it could be the emotional component. Or it could be someone who, gosh, I see this all the time, people who do CrossFit, and they, you know, they’re 60 years old, and they’re working out with 20 year olds, and they’re trying to keep up and they burn themselves out. And they hurt themselves. So it can come really in many, many forms. Lack of sleep is another form of inappropriate support for the stress pathways, for example, that’s another form of stress. I know that when all too well, 15 years to do a call, it’s extremely painful on the body.

John Malanca 1:06:58
So it’s so important, you know, when you have that one piece, it’s a domino effect with everything else, you know? Absolutely.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:07:04
And so it’s really asking those three questions for each area. And in the areas of stresses, you know, how do you feel? What’s the, what’s the dexa, or the body composition showing is, is fat going up and muscle going down? Probably stress could be a component, okay? And weight does not matter, okay? Because you could be gaining fat, but losing muscle and be the same weight, you know, and so that’s why I was trying to remind people, you’re no longer in the 20th century, we need to use 21st century technology. And this includes in the biomarkers, the typical traditional labs that I use as a, as a traditionally trained physician, I wasn’t trained to utilize a lot of these special biomarkers and think, you know, and using these stories on a deeper layer, and so yes, my my lab, my patients always tell me that they feel like, you know, vampires is hitting them each time. Because, you know, this is complicated story. And we need to make sure that we’re seeing the whole book, so that I can really give you as a consultant for your business, can I kind of tell you, Hey, this is really what’s going on john, and let’s not, let’s not reward those areas that they’re doing fine. Okay, you could give them a raise, but it ain’t gonna improve your business, you need to work over here, buddy. And, and this is the part that is your problem. And if you zero in on that, boom, your body is gonna, you know, turn around. And and that’s the exciting part of my job

John Malanca 1:08:42
is, it sounds like that. And so it’s fun when you see people come in, and they leave, you know, 10 feet tall or feeling like you know it, I have some confidence, I can bring this back, but certainly or the path of seeing your patients get healthier and healthier and healthier. say, God, Dr. Arthur, you know, this is what you did with me. What do you are you seeing in your practice right now, a lot of people coming in with immune systems and stress levels because of what’s going on? Or what do you seen your practice?

Unknown Speaker 1:09:14
Or more or

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:09:15
less guessing? Yes. So, um, you know, I see, you know, I see what everybody else sees, yeah, every other day. I mean, you know, we’re, you know, I it’s, you know, stresses universal, lack of sleep is universal weight issues, weight issues is universal. substance abuse is universal. marriage problems, relationship. I mean, you know, and, and, you know, like we’re beings and that’s why I always like to remind people, it’s like, I’m not working with robots and working with human beings. And we always need to, you know, the body is an important place, but the mind and where thoughts go, is so important in how our emotional response I always tell people I got the easy job. Okay, I just have to work on the body where, you know, ministers and psychiatrists and all that they have to work on the emotional mind component. I do work on those a lot. A lot of my patients oftentimes say, Gosh, I didn’t realize I was going to have a therapy. Yeah, therapy session. But they start to realize, Oh, this is this is this is the piece to my pie. I came in for you know, fatigue, but it’s related to way over here. And I need to address this otherwise it’s that’s what’s leading to this pathway to work. Yeah. Exactly.

John Malanca 1:10:40
Just like just like your bio said, you know, you’re trying to develop a life a lifetime of good habits that will lead you know, my aunt, she turned my first job in high school was Baskin Robbins.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:53
Nice.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:55
Love, remember,

John Malanca 1:10:58
Shimon are chiropractors and they and they live down Laguna Beach and I wanted to be a chiropractor. So every summer I go down and spend the summer with them. I remember this one summer, I got off the plane. I was so happy and she goes, You look like shit. And I was like, I was a sophomore in high school. She Do you want to be a fat little pudgy kid? thrashy life? I said, No. Kevin, she put me on that. And I’m 53 years old, and I haven’t strayed. And because of that, I think my, my, my health to her. And so I developed because of her, I developed that lifetime of good habits. And so reading your bio at the beginning, I was like, I totally get that get his his mind his his approach to that?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:11:38
Yeah. No, it, I love it. I love that, to hear that an adult stepped in on a chat with a young person like me, I think we’re a lot a lot of us are afraid to say speak into people’s lives. But you never know, when that one little nugget that one little feed will can change the trajectory of that person.

John Malanca 1:11:58
You know, and I have shared sure even when I was in college, I waited tables, and I’m still friends, a lot of these guys, you know, 30 years later. And a couple of them have stayed that pad like, how can I What can I do? What can I do? And you know, they were you know, 1718 year old kids. And now their husbands, you know, their kids are graduate college. But they got on they stand this route. And they said, john, this is what you did for me. So what my my I say my wife, my aunt did for me, I was able to pass that baton to someone else. And I’m certain they did it with their kids. And they’re, you know, and it goes on. And so I just think that even with cannabis talks like this, and life in general, experiencing grieving, losing losing a spouse. It’s like a ripple effect with throwing the pebble in the pond. Yeah, and what you’ve experienced in life, what I’ve experienced life, you’ve been able to share it. And if you can reach one person, that’s a success. You know, if you can reach one person early,

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:12:59
in just that one little pebble member, it’s causing multiple waves. Yeah, yeah. And when you study, I’m a total geek in the world of quantum particle physics and studying that. And the whole idea of quarks and particle, you know, all those parts of smashers I love all that stuff because it really goes back to the realization of where we are how we’re built. And we are you know, literally actually fields of energy when it really gets down to the nitty nitty gritty of who we are, and, and how energy once it’s once it’s released, how it has that massive impact on everything around us. And you bring it up it’s you know that one little tidbit if you want to be a fat little pudgy you know person the rest of your life, that one little nugget change your trajectory and I guarantee you probably just by your life choices, you shifted some other people’s trajectory as well just by your example. Without even knowing it.

John Malanca 1:14:06
It should have tried trying all 31 flavors I had one you know, United spoke on another podcast one time we talked about before we keep talking about immune resistance, what is rachamim

Unknown Speaker 1:14:21
immune resilience?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:14:23
Yeah, I get you know, yeah, that’s a big question. Ah, so, you know, once again, going back to the stance, okay, this five step triggers Yeah, if you’re getting pounded okay. With any of these stressors, toxins, allergens, microbes or diet, your your immune system is is is is in place to protect against these, these triggers. Okay, in various ways. Our physical protection is our skin and our GI tract are the main ones. But also the lungs and the brain have barrier systems. And then on the flip side, if they cross those systems, those physical symptoms, IT systems, then there’s also the immune system. I mean, we’ve all been hearing with COVID 1000 times about T cells and, and it’s and vaccines and all that. Bottom line is it’s the immune that the body has an enormous capability of turning unleashing our military defense system. And this is when we get a fever and chills This is just sending out the first part of your military response. You know, those guys that go running out with facemask pain in there, they got their swords and everything, and they’re not really that good at anything, but they’re good at just killing and hitting things. That’s your innate immune response. It’s kind of just going, alright, let’s take out as many guys as possible at the initial first round, let’s shoot our arrows and kill as many people as possible and in a very nonspecific way, by raising the temperature of our body, okay, so that’s the innate immune response when that but that doesn’t kill everybody, as we know, okay? Otherwise, fevers would take, take away everything, okay? Now, the next specialized system has to kick up, these are the T cells, the B cells, and you know, we’ve been talking about and T cells help destroy viruses, for example. And, and B cells, you know, are the, I call them kind of the defect detectives of the system. So they learned over time, oh, these are the, these are the really bad guys, I have to unleash a little, little drone, and I gotta, I gotta shoot them down specifically with antibodies. Okay. So we have all these systems in play, and immune resilience really comes down to the entire system as a whole, how resilient are you against an attack? Now, one of the reasons we’re seeing people, you know, you know, this, what I think is fascinating about COVID. And where we’re at currently, is, you know, one of the reasons why there was such a fear going on speaking of fear in the science world, is we had no idea early on what this viruses game plan was, well, six months out, now we can kind of kind of settle back and say, Okay, we have a pretty good general idea who it’s hurting. It’s hurting the people with poor immune resilience. Who are those people? Well, 97% of the people who are dying are 45 and up, okay, most of those are 65. Okay, what’s the difference between that in the group who’s under 15? For example, the under 15 group, to be honest, I’m not afraid of them at all. Our numbers are less than 50 deaths over the course of over the entire United States. Now, some people will say, Oh, my gosh, well, 50 if it was one of your kids, I get that. That’s not what I mean, from a statistical standpoint. 50 Okay. Or I think it’s actually more like 30. Okay, is most of these kids that died were had poor immune resilience to begin with, they had underlying cancer, they had they had sickle cell disease, they had other underlying symptoms, so that when the virus attack them, they didn’t have the immune robust response that most kids do. And what’s the difference between a 15 year old and a 65 year old, the thymus gland, okay, and the thymus gland produces a peptide called thymosin Alpha one, which is a signal. I call it the bugle.

And it tells all the T cells to come in and go, Okay, guys, we need to ramp up massively and squash this virus. Well, young people have a really strong bugle, and their guys come running out, and they squash this virus through the T cells very rapidly. And that’s why a lot of kids are asymptomatic. And, you know, or for the most part are asymptomatic. They’re still carriers, okay, but their body is squashing it really rapidly. After 65 our thymus by that point after puberty actually, which is interesting, it starts to involute okay becomes less and less effective. By the time you hit 65 you have practically zero Imus an alpha one signal. So now your guys are like, Ah, I’m gonna put the snooze button on for a little bit. I’m gonna chill out and they kind of work their way up and it takes like seven to 10 days to build up a robust, robust T cell response. Well, here’s the problem. This is about immune resilience. They may at 65 also have other health issues that their immune system is distracted over here. And so they’re only going to be able to recruit so many, okay? And it’s not enough of a army to crush the enemy. And the enemy now has had many, many more days to build up to defeat you over a younger person where they squashed in just a few days, where instead, you know, we get we think we have COVID you get tested, you don’t get the results for three to four days. You’ve now just given that enemy, you know, a three to four day cushion, okay to build up and replicate at a massive size that now your armies like, ooh, you guys are you guys are a little bit bigger than that to begin with, and that’s the mean resilience. I hope that makes sense.

John Malanca 1:20:53
It does. I love all your I’m a visual guy and so I love your description from the bugle to the army to coming in there your river flow, you know, with the water

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:21:03
The Game of Thrones, I was like yeah, I love it.

John Malanca 1:21:08
What do you recommend to your, to your patients regarding like, supplements and nutrition and you know, eating right getting enough sleep water? Is there something that you can share with you know, any final words you want to share with with our listeners of what they can do? You know, if

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:21:26
Yeah, and this is part of it, cannabinoids are part of me. Yes, no, okay, I’ll put it into the yes or no category. Because part of you know, the whole body and I was trying to emphasize is, it’s really kind of depending on where you’re at, in the part of your story. But like, say COVID since we’re This is where our world is at right now. Um, you know, for my higher risk patients who have, you know, high fasting blood sugars, who have an immune system distractions that we call them, comorbidities, I call it inflammation, okay, the immune system has already been distracted over here, and they’re 45 and up, or maybe a combination, I actually am giving them five minutes and alpha one peptides, okay, to activate their own T cells. So to release the bugle when they get infected. So rather than waiting three, four days to get the results, if they let’s say are, you know, they have a loss of taste and smell, good chance. This is probably COVID Okay, um, and so I’m putting kind of things like that. Um, so that’s, you know, the extreme. That’s

John Malanca 1:22:34
where you repeat what you’re giving to them.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:22:38
I’m missing out the one it’s a peptide, your physician would have to order that for you out for

Unknown Speaker 1:22:43
injectable. It’s actually

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:22:45
an injectable. Yeah, yeah, it’s an injectable. Now, and this is before vaccines are, you know, you know, eventually we’ll have a vaccine, but we’re not in the place where a vaccine and I think we’re a ways away from a vaccine effective one. So, so we got to use the toolbox that we have. Number two is is zinc. We’ve known for years, zinc, and this was the whole hydroxy cork one story, okay. So, you know, hydroxy cork, which actually allows zinc to get into the cell, okay? Where when zinc gets into the endosome of the cell, it reduces the virus’s capability to replicate. So that’s the whole point of this zinc and hydroxychloroquine baloney, okay, I call it it’s, we’ve known this, we’ve known this about four years. Okay, so that’s, it’s just silly stuff. Vitamin D. Again, this makes me laugh, I always get a kick out of this. You know, in the traditional world, they’re like, Oh, hey, gosh, we’re noticing that people who’s low vitamin D, they’re getting more sick. Well, duh, it’s vitamin D is a hormone, okay. And we’ve known that it’s not just for bone. It’s for immune system resilience. Okay. And so having high vitamin D levels, 60 to 80 range is much more effective in a more robust immune response. Is it the only thing? Absolutely not, okay. I never, I never say that. You take this, it fixes this body’s just too complicated for that. If you’re stressed out of your frickin mind, and you can’t get your mind off things. Or if you can’t sleep, or if you’re having pain, CBD could be a great choice for you. Because it will change the dysregulation pathways by activating those endocannabinoids that are involved in reversing some of the damaging effects of that cortisol response. So again, another great additive, but you bring up a very important point. We got to remember we’re like plants, okay. And plants in order to like my wife always jokes that all her plans die, okay. It’s you know, to have a good plan. You have to know Just put water and you don’t want it in her proper cases, she probably overwater it. Yeah, you got to have enough sunlight, but not too much something that kills a lot of plants. The third is you got to have the right fertilizer for is maybe the pot that the plants in maybe it’s too tiny for it to really spread its wings? Do you need to take it out and give it some room? some breathing room? And then or you may or you maybe give her a cactus? Right, right about why have I actually have. And then and then the fifth is is love, you know, talking to it. A lot of botanists will say, you know, actually, I talked to my plants, okay. And, you know, we’re like that, where as a human being, we do better when we look at it from a plant perspective. We require sleep require access, if we require love and connection, connectivity, we require all these things. And you know, sometimes people go Oh, shit, that’s a lot to think about. And, and I agree, that’s why I say get back to the basics, okay, during the whole COVID thing. go inward, stop anchoring yourself to the things of this world that are causing you stress could be social media, it could be the news. It could be caffeine, caffeine, but certain friends that are constantly talking about COVID I have a few of them. And I’m like, I can’t talk to you right now.

John Malanca 1:26:28
I’m in politics. I mean, you can’t I don’t even Yeah,

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:26:32
absolutely. Okay. And so really kind of removing yourself from remember thought with thoughts go energy flows. And so starting there, okay, because, frankly, the thoughts that are coming in, is what’s leading to those five triggers. The stressors, the toxins, I’m going to drink my you’re going to drink a lot. allergens. I’m going to eat all this food that’s crappy for me, but it makes me feel good right now. microbes. And then poor diet, why not have that gallon of ice cream right now? I feel so much better temporarily. Exactly. Yeah. And, and so it leads to our triggers. And this is you know, where the big picture if we’re going to, you know, end it with the big picture is, you work on your thoughts as the starting point to all your triggers, you can simplify the hell out of it.

John Malanca 1:27:24
Good. Good. Vitamin D, I’m a big fan of vitamin D,

Unknown Speaker 1:27:29
both from

John Malanca 1:27:31
sublingual as well as going getting outside. When you What do you recommend to your patients run 5000 8000 I use a day or go outside or you say both?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:27:42
Both? Um, you know, I mean, to get an adequate amount of vitamin D for production, you have to be in the sun between 10 and two, with only underwear on her shorts after you

John Malanca 1:27:56
know it.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:27:57
And at least 20 minutes, well, how many people are doing that? Okay, so and then we tell everybody put on sunscreen. And so we have literally shifted our whole community to a vitamin D deficient state. So from a supplement standpoint, I do recommend a lot of people supplement. Generally speaking, I don’t like to give numbers out because it can vary from person to person. But, you know, two to 4000 is usually only enough to maintain levels. Okay. And so generally speaking, it requires more than that. Gotcha. So, yes, I do have a lot of people on 10,000 a day, but I’m not going to tell everyone go put on 10 people that could overdose them.

John Malanca 1:28:41
Yeah. Well, Kevin, always a pleasure. I thank you. So one, if you could share about your book, How can they find you? Your practice? I know you’re in Austin, Texas. Do you see patients via television nowadays from out of out of out of state?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:28:59
Oh, yeah, I got I got patients all over the world x. Okay, good. Bye. Yeah, no, my book is on Amazon. It’s nice because you can get it in Kindle form, or audio. A lot of people like audio now, I

John Malanca 1:29:15
was gonna ask you, because I’m always on the go from on my biker, I’ll listen to listen to

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:29:21
Yeah, I find it very useful for

John Malanca 1:29:23
stretch. You know, I do my own meditation, and I’d stretch every night. And I’ll just listen to books on tape or podcasts. And so I was gonna ask you, if you can, were you the

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:29:34
reading, by the way? Sorry, I don’t like when I did my own reading. I don’t like when authors don’t do their own reading. So I was asked if

John Malanca 1:29:41
you did your own voiceover. Great. And so

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:29:45
and you can also get in paperback. Cool.

John Malanca 1:29:47
So you people know what paperback is anymore. You know? So, your, your practice to name your practice in Austin.

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:29:56
So it’s firepit medicine in Austin, Texas. www bio fit medicine comm where you can check out my my links to my book, which is called functional medicine the new standard, but don’t let that title just help you know, don’t let it you know, for for those people who are interested, you know, it’s not a it’s not a medicine book. It’s it’s really about learning how to change your way of thinking about how you look at your body as a company.

John Malanca 1:30:29
Awesome. Um, you said your website you want to throw any any last words to our audience?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:30:36
Yeah, just really focus going inward. Yeah, your anchor yourself to your higher self, and you’ll be good. All the rest will come. And john, I can tell that you’re a guy who does that I just I tried to, you know, I admired that we all have restricted. There’s a lot of distractions in this world right now. And just remember, ask yourself is what I am listening to or engaging in? Is it? Is it giving any positive energy to me? Or is it removing it from it? And if it’s removing it from you, then you should remove it?

John Malanca 1:31:19
Life is short. And don’t settle that’s what I always say. If people don’t set you know, if they something’s bringing it down every day, you know, change it up. So well Kevin, Kevin Hogarth. great meeting you again. great having you. Great. And looks like you had a haircut. Just the last time I saw you. I haven’t. I’m COVID I’m COVID COVID haircuts my wife was doing for a while be like good, too. So anyway, thank you. I’m Dr. Kevin Hogarth find him in Austin, Texas. Do I throw a phone number out there and you prefer people to go into your website?

Dr. Kevin Hoffarth 1:31:55
I think that website is probably a good way to do it.

John Malanca 1:31:58
And we’ll get get the link out for your book on the site as well. And I thank you, to you Kevin, for joining us to your followers always following in in your support as well. This is John Malanca with United patients group, be informed and be well and we’ll see you soon. Bye bye. Thank you.