Ep 570: Labs, lifestyle & Lasting Health with Reed Davis

In this episode of the Health Fix Podcast, Dr. Jannine Krause chats with Reed Davis, a double board-certified holistic health practitioner and founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® (FDN). Reed shares his personal journey into holistic health, the origins of FDN, and why functional lab testing is a cornerstone for uncovering hidden health issues.

He explains his DRESS protocol—Diet, Rest, Exercise, Stress reduction, and Supplementation—as a comprehensive, client-centered framework for health optimization. Reed breaks down the concept of metabolic chaos, how it develops, and why conventional medicine often misses it.

The conversation dives into the critical role of behavioral changes, the supportive power of health coaches, and how AI in health can serve as a tool—without replacing the personalized connection between practitioner and client. Reed leaves listeners with actionable insights on continuity of care and the importance of taking charge of their own health journey.

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Resources & Links

• Learn more about Functional Diagnostic Nutrition®: www.functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com
• Follow Reed Davis on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.
• Explore the DRESS protocol and functional lab testing options.
• Free Webinar Access for listening to this podcast –  Step by Step System to Overcome Unwanted Health Issues which they can access at: http://www.fdntraining.com/healthfix

Our Partners

Podcast Transcript

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Reed Davis and FDN
02:58 Reed’s Journey into Health and Nutrition
05:58 The Birth of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition
08:50 Understanding Testing and Customization in Health
11:41 The Importance of Lifestyle in Healing
14:44 The Concept of Metabolic Chaos
17:51 Relief Care vs. Long-Term Healing
20:41 The Role of FDN Practitioners in Health Optimization
23:33 Case Studies and Real-Life Applications
26:32 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
30:47 Empowering Patients Through Self-Management
32:07 Teaching and Educating for Health
36:11 The Importance of Behavior in Health
38:45 Client Commitment and Expectations
42:36 Navigating Misinformation in Health
51:15 Transitioning to Cash-Based Practices
54:07 Resources for Health Practitioners

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Jannine Krause (00:01.08)
Reed Davis, welcome to the Health Fix Podcast.

Reed Davis (00:04.626)
Thank you, Janine, it’s my pleasure to be here.

Jannine Krause (00:07.65)
Well, I’ve been excited to chat with you because I see a lot of folks who have the FDN designation behind their names. I talk with a lot of them in different groups I’m in, masterminds, things of that nature. And I never knew who was behind all of FDN because I think for a lot of folks, we see, you know, the functional diagnostic nutrition, like label between behind people’s names. And we’re like, okay, they’ve got this certification. But I think a lot of people don’t realize there’s a guy.

behind this and there’s a team. And so I’d love for folks to really get to know you a little bit today and kind of understand your background and where functional diagnostic nutrition kind of was born from. So give us the scoop. How did you first start becoming interested in health? What was the first thing that set you thinking, this could be something I wanna dive into?

Reed Davis (01:04.209)
was in the 90s and I was saving the whole planet, air, birds, water, trees, bees. I was in environmental law and conservation. And I saw how bad things were for the flora and fauna of the planet. And I simply started to wonder about people like, well, what about us? And I was in my 40s already and I was healthy, but I didn’t want anything to sneak up on me.

Jannine Krause (01:31.534)
Hmm.

Reed Davis (01:33.102)
I saw enough dead birds and fish and then my employers at the time were making a lot of money doing that stuff and it seemed like that was their whole focus at some point where I thought they’d lost the mission. Because I really like the animals and the world, know, just really trying to do a good job on a mission. So anyway,

Then a friend of mine’s father, who I was very close to, dropped dead of a heart attack or something. And they kept saying, well, he was perfectly healthy. He was perfectly healthy. And it just didn’t seem like to me he could have been perfectly healthy. So all that was going on, environmental law, conservation, saving the planet, working for a big company. then at the same time, I was concerned about these things. And I was taking my son,

into a chiropractic wellness center. He was a high school athlete. And I started to just fall in love with that place. he got seven varsity letters in four different sports. He was a real, so I kept him, but I got a new career out of that, Janine, because I finally, after listening to the doctors in there talk about wellness and how the body works and the innate intelligence and things, I just said,

Jannine Krause (02:34.958)
Mmm.

Reed Davis (03:01.258)
I want to work for you guys. And I talked myself into a job. And within a short period of time, I was running that whole office. And I was also interviewing every person walking in the door.

And to make it short, I was just blown away by the number of people coming into that office for alternative care. was alternative versus their standard medicine. And this is 20, what 26 years ago. So, so it was really very distinct, alternative, standard. And I know there was some naturopathic and stuff going on at the time, but I didn’t know anything about it. I just knew these people were.

caught in a cycle of trial and error. were, they were trying anything desperate, searching for answers that they weren’t getting. And in a lot of cases, they’ve been told nothing’s wrong with you, but they knew something was, something’s wrong. And so.

Jannine Krause (04:01.358)
Mm-hmm.

Reed Davis (04:07.46)
I realized the wheel, the hamster wheel they were on and going from one clinic to another and didn’t want to just be clinic number nine out of 14 that they had to try. And one thing I do a lot of is motorcycle riding, especially in the hills of Southern California. I just recently moved to Florida, but I was there for 40 years working in this clinic for 10. So I stayed at that clinic for 10 years and

interviewing people, finding out how many things they tried, six, eight, 10 different practitioners. And I just figured they were getting ripped off. I really never been to a doctor. I didn’t know what the system was like, but I found out working with them. And I just was out riding my bike one day and figured I’m gonna be the last person they need to see. Now you can laugh if you want to, it’s okay. Because I didn’t know anything except how badly I wanted to serve this

You know, I saw an opportunity as much as I wanted to help them. And so just thank God that I was able to run this alternative lab work. So the doctors there let me just do anything I wanted really. I was pretty creative and very hardworking and sincere. I really wanted to help. And so I got to run all these labs and I ran thousands of labs on thousands of people. I spent 10 years in that office doing just that.

face to face with Mrs. Smith or Mr. Jones or whoever’s walking in the door. If they would spend the money on the labs, I’d run the labs and interpret them relative to each individual person. See, the doctors there laughed at me and said, you know, ha ha, you can’t diagnose or treat anything because you’re not a doctor. Reed, you’re going to have to figure out what’s really wrong with these people and then teach them how to fix it.

Jannine Krause (06:05.848)
Mm-hmm.

Reed Davis (06:06.62)
Ten years later, I’ve made some observations. I had good coaching, but I made a lot of my own observations about who got better and who didn’t.

You know, I could say some things that to your audience probably sound very obvious, but the people working closest to the underlying causal factors were the ones that got well. Anybody who was just treating their symptoms, you know, the kind of diagnosis treatment model, we’re where they landed because that wasn’t working for them.

And so after 10 years, people just started telling me I should be teaching. And so in 2008, I started teaching the first FDN course ever. And that caught on. The people who took my first course ever wouldn’t go away. And so now we have this whole community in, you know, I think 50 countries, thousands of practitioners I’ve taught. And frankly, there’s…

there’s a portion of them are actually professionals actually doing the work. And that’s probably who you’ve had on your podcast as guests, because they’re real do-gooders. They’re they’re smart people. And they went through my program, which is very, very robust, very, tough stuff for most people.

Jannine Krause (07:30.094)
Yeah, you know, I’ve seen, you know, in different specialties, different, you know, whether it’s hormones, whether it’s looking at, you know, celiac, gut stuff, you know, you name it. Yeah, you definitely have folks who have a wide variety of specialties or there’s also generalists, much like myself when it comes to just helping with longevity and optimization. And that’s one of the things I wanted to definitely kind of talk about today because

You know, before we hit record, we kind of chatted about what I see and what people say. And one of the biggest kickbacks I get from a lot of folks is, you know, we’re going to optimize. So that means we’re going to run a whole bunch of labs that I don’t necessarily need, and I’m going to spend a whole bunch of money. And I’m like, no, no, no, that’s it. Let’s step back here. Because really what I’ve seen from your practitioners is that they’re honing in on looking at symptoms, what someone’s presenting with.

and then honing in on what can give us the most information that, you know, perhaps folks come in with basic labs from docs and the docs are like, yeah, you’re normal. If we’re lucky, we can see those basic labs and see where they’re not normal. In a lot of cases we can, but I think I would love to really kind of talk about your thought process when it comes to seeing these folks and being the last clinic that you want them to ever be at.

Reed Davis (08:57.384)
Great.

Jannine Krause (08:57.582)
how do we look at customization and optimization? How do we see that lens and take it versus the symptom-based and band-aid-based model? How do we bring it in? What did you see with all of your experience and seeing all those folks that you’re like, hmm, we do need some testing, we need advanced testing. I’ll ping you on all these other things next, but what got you thinking about the testing and looking deeper?

Reed Davis (09:25.244)
You know, have to go back to the beginning and the first test I ever ran was to check for food sensitivities because that was something that they’d never checked before. I had a lady come in the office and she was complaining of her, she was overweight, but it was because of medication that she’d been on for two years and it made her fat.

And she was feeling really down about that and telling me the story how she’d just been to her physician who put her on that medication and told her she was sick and tired of the weight. The weight was really getting her down, frustrating her because she was exercising and trying to eat right. And it didn’t matter on this medication for the hives. So medication for the hives. And he told her, she said,

lady, you can be fat or can have the hives take your pet. And I’m sorry for laughing, but I was trying to get a word in edgewise because I thought I could help her. Well, maybe I can help you. And she said to the doctor when he told her that, well, that’s very depressing. And he said, according to her, I can write you a prescription for antidepressants if you’d like.

Which just, you know, you know, you and your audience totally would get the, it’s not humor, but there’s something strange going on here. And when I finally asked her first name, why didn’t you ever try to find out why you get the hives?

Her head snapped around so hard, I thought, well, you’re not gonna need your chiropractic adjustment today. know, she, what are you talking about? So we ran some labs, found out she was very sensitive to some foods, like overly sensitive. And as soon as she stopped eating them, she didn’t get the hives anymore. Now we got lucky, that was lucky because…

Reed Davis (11:35.546)
I’ve had other people with the hives and it didn’t quite work out as well. So I discovered a lot by running these labs and learning that, you know, if you get it right, you can really help people who are very frustrated. And within a very short period of time, she was off her medication. I think it was only nine days. She called her doctor and says, I’m not taking this medication anymore. I found out why I get the hives. You know, what a concept, right? And within a short period of time after

Jannine Krause (11:55.532)
wow.

Reed Davis (12:05.47)
that Janine she said she was working out to a sweat and and taking hot showers which she hadn’t done in two years because even on the medication

She would get the hives sweating and taking hot showers. And she started losing weight. She was very, very happy. And of course, that’s very heartwarming to a practitioner. You feel like you’re a real genius, you know? But it makes you feel great. So I learned very early on, if you can get it right, that you can really help people by staying focused on underlying causal factors. And diet and foods is one of them.

Then it started running hormone testing, because most of the patients were women in that age group. And around that time, 2001, the NIH study, the Women’s Health Initiative, determined that they would end this eight-year study after only five years, because the medication, was like Premarin plus progestin, was making them worse. It was creating…

worse than if you just had your hot flashes and night sweats. know, like this was good for the bones, but for everything, caused heart conditions and all kinds of things. So the study came out and it was really dramatic. It was quite a turning point in the world of hormones. And that’s back when doctors didn’t know what to do. There was no alternative for them. Eventually the bioidenticals came out and people started understanding natural hormones better.

So I was there when a lot of these things were going on, running labs and labs and labs and labs. I ran way too many on some people. If they’d pay for a lab, I would run the lab. But I had to eventually, first of all, I made certain observations that a lot of that was not useful, waste of money. So I boiled it down to just a few simple tests. And I’m gonna answer your question about some of my

Reed Davis (14:14.578)
Graduates who are practitioners now, they focus in on certain areas, but that’s not how I teach them. I teach them a very broad way of looking at hormones, the immune system, digestion, detoxification, energy production, nervous system balance. So it’s really a broad, because that’s what I learned in the office. 10 years, you learn a few things. And I ran all the labs and I identified these patterns that are

there for most people, it’s never just one thing. There’s no one causal factor. Matter of fact, back then we all had the handle root cause, root cause. We look for the root cause. Well, sometimes there isn’t one. There’s never just one. And they’re having an effect on each other that aren’t even measurable. There’s just not enough labs.

Jannine Krause (14:59.843)
Right.

Reed Davis (15:12.602)
I recognize this pattern, hormone immune digestion, detoxification, energy production, nervous system was there for almost every person. That spells hidden by the way, H-I-D-D-E-N. So it’s cute too. And so that pattern, just run these. And then their chronic downward spiraling degenerative condition, you can see enough of the causal factors.

Jannine Krause (15:23.768)
Nice.

Reed Davis (15:39.462)
to have an effect and that effect is brought about, that’s the other half of what FDNs do.

So we can fix almost anything that’s chronic downward spiraling degenerative if there’s time, if there’s time for the body to heal. If it’s really contracted, that’s when doctors with their medicine are actually quite useful. know, the, the observations we make, HIDDE, and you need time to capitalize on those observations and you need the person to behave in such a way that they live themselves out of the problems that they’ve

actually lived themselves into, usually over a long period of time. And so that’s what I teach, H-I-D-D-E-N, and then all the epigenetic factors that will actually make changes and they can get well, stay well, use it for longevity and anti-aging and all this stuff. That’s how you live. It’s called D-R-E-S-S.

And that’s diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, supplementation. If you’ve had one of my graduates on, I know they talked about hidden stressors and the dress program. And then most of the practitioners, just for kind of, it’s kind of a marketing and what you love to do aspect, you niche. And usually they’re niching.

according to what their own personal problem was. And so people come to, I hope I’m answering this question correctly. So yeah, it’s a very wide spectrum. The approach is to look for as many healing opportunities as you can identify with multiple labs, not this many, but this many labs, identify enough causal factors to…

Reed Davis (17:37.412)
understand how to sort that person out.

We call it sorting out, I’m sure you heard this term from them, metabolic chaos. So we don’t have a medical diagnosis. It’s just there’s medical, there’s metabolic chaos. Here’s how you can sort it out. And then you can niche according to whatever your favorite group of people is. If it’s menopausal women or irritable bowel or gut or migraines or skin or whatever it is. Even children, there’s ADD, ADHD, I’ve had remarkable.

by cleaning up their problems. So the niching thing, the fact that they’re each kind of specialized doesn’t mean they run less labs all the time. They’ll still run our basic labs because they want to address each causal factors and see what shakes out. And it shakes out real well.

Jannine Krause (18:31.406)
You know, I’m glad you explained that for us because it’s good for folks to know like what someone with the FDN designation can do for them, what’s kind of the background, but also the component of when we’re working with someone, diagnosis isn’t necessary, that’s for insurance. And that’s something I like folks to really hear. It’s more like what’s out of balance? What do we need to help repair or optimize or get working better, whatever terms you wanna put there.

I, you know, with any condition, and I’d love to hear your opinion when folks do go into different niches and whatnot, we’re really looking at it as, yes, there’s this big overarching problem that someone’s coming in for, but like you had noticed, there’s the hidden factors that are all at the underlying stoop that’s brewing underneath this. Am I getting it right as to how you get to know?

Reed Davis (19:27.58)
Yeah, that’s what I observed over a 10 year period running thousands of labs and thousands of people. Man, if you’re looking for that one root cause, guess what? There’s studies that say that root cause could have disappeared. You’ll never find it because it doesn’t exist anymore. But the downward spiral, metabolically, the things that changed are kind of burned in and the cause is gone. Whether it was…

some mental, stressors, some chemical stressors, some injury or assault or something like that. It’s sort of gone, but the downward spiral is still there. Like, you know, if you get really stressed out enough, you know that your catabolic, anabolic goes out of balance. You get catabolic. Well, then the body’s actually breaking down. Your sex hormones are the next thing to go because they’re in the steroidal family. Then after that is your immune system.

that starts to break down a little bit. But now you’ve got a dysbiosis, so the gut is now involved. And you can see how the dominoes fall when you run just a few labs, some saliva, urine, stools, little blood. And boy, you can discover an awful lot. That way you’re not practicing medicine, like…

pre-diagnosis, you the clinical diagnosis, then you run a lab to back it up. yeah, pat myself on the back, it’s your thyroid. You know, it’s never just your thyroid. You know, there’s nothing wrong with your thyroid. It’s actually responding appropriately to the type and amount of stress that you’re under. And so we have to look upstream pretty far sometimes.

Jannine Krause (21:01.688)
No.

Reed Davis (21:12.6)
and again come up with multiple healing opportunities and then apply the principles of healing, the principles of health building in our epigenetic program, the lifestyle medicine program.

Jannine Krause (21:28.296)
Let’s talk about that, you know, for a minute because I think a lot of folks, you know, it’s hard. We have the Western Medical, you know, conglomerate, let’s call it that, you know, and that’s, you know, magic pill, one thing, surgery, you know, we’ve got that type of thought process and then we have the whole type of process and one thing you mentioned earlier is about taking time, time to heal, time to get the body back in order and a lot of people are like,

I want it now, I want it yesterday. I want the quick fix. And what I’m hearing from you is how important it is to look at lifestyle, how important it is to look at these different things. And I would love to hear kind of your theory on lifestyle, know, because everyone’s hearing moderation, be strict, do this, do that. Give us a little bit of your principles you’re teaching for lifestyle for folks and how to optimize.

Reed Davis (22:26.376)
Sure, well thanks for the opportunity because this is where the rubber meets the road. For an FDN practitioner, the labs are important, but it’s being able to coordinate the labs with a unique individual. We call it clinical correlation. So the labs are explaining why they feel so lousy.

and you’ve identified the healing opportunities, here’s what needs improvement. And it could be the hormones, the immune system, digestion and detoxification. So there’s multiple areas and the body wants to heal. There’s an innate intelligence, it wants to get better. You wanna nurture that while you find the obstacles to healing and…

remove them the best you can, the body will heal. So we need time for that to occur. And it’s really important that you understand

Rather than treating a specific thing, you can have a better overall outcome by just treating everything non-specifically. So diet and rest and exercise and stress reduction and supplementation, those five things, have an effect on every cell, tissue, organ, system, the entire organism just gets better.

Again, you’re nurturing normal function, innate intelligence, while you’re identifying obstacles to healing. Hopefully they’re not too much in the mind and emotions of the person. You’re actually finding real obstacles, parasites, bacteria, funguses, viruses, food sensitivities, chemicals, and all these things, plus trauma, some known, some unknown. But for me, if I had one thing, it would be old injuries from…

Reed Davis (24:21.178)
having such a well-used body. You know, I’ve just done so much crazy stuff, high-risk type sports and things. So aches and pains have the same effect on the body as, let’s say, chemicals, you know, or emotions. Your body doesn’t care what kind of stress it is.

It’s going to react pretty much the same way the hormones, the immune system, digest and so on. So we know what the cascade looks like, but you can’t tell a person that really. You can’t say, just give us time. What’s all going to know? They want relief seats and there’s nothing wrong with relief care. So initially, I learned this the hard way, but you know, cause I ran some labs on this lady. She was having hot flashes and night sweats.

Jannine Krause (24:59.714)
Hmm?

Reed Davis (25:13.904)
I said, well, you know, we’re going to balance your hormones. We’re to have you, you know, eat better and get a good night’s sleep and exercise and reduce stress and take. So you want to relief now. So you play kind of the intelligent allopathy game.

and we call it intelligent allopathy. Relief care is okay. You can find natural alternatives to toxic medicine and things that give a person a little relief. So you can’t look at that as a totally bad thing. And we might add that that’s one of the problems with modern medicine is it’s so…

It’s so focused on the relief that you don’t really get better. It’s just get rid of the pain and now you’re fine. Well, no, you’re not. You haven’t stopped the downward spirals that are occurring. So like you mentioned, pills and surgery. If pills don’t work, don’t worry, we’ll just cut those parts out. I’m thinking of all the gallbladders we could have saved and other parts.

Jannine Krause (26:00.44)
Thank

Reed Davis (26:24.552)
much maybe even more important parts. So the idea of relief care is a touchy point for FDNs, because we believe in healing, taking the time, isn’t the innate. It takes lifestyle, it takes dedication sometimes, and some discipline even. Forming new habits, it takes a real purpose, whereas relief care is so easy.

So we call it intelligent relief care while you’re, and because you’ve done the lab work, you know, well, this will make you feel better now. You’ll get some relief. Your hot flashes will go away, your night sweats. But you know, you’ve got a lot of work to do here with the gut and all the other things going on. So, so my approach would be long-term, get well, stay well, anti-aging, longevity, and all that.

But if someone needs a quick fix, it’s not the worst thing in the world. So that’s where we might differ, because you find your adamant, no, your relief care is bad for you. No, it’s not. You better get those hot flashes to go away pretty quick. Again, I kind of learned that. But you know, and some of the rest of it, it just depends on the individual. Like that lady with the hot flashes. I mean, with the hives. That was almost like a miracle.

I had a lady who was doing very well coming in the office regularly and asked me if I worked with kids. And I love kids, I love working with kids. They respond so quickly to a point, to the point we’re making here.

She said, you work with kids. go, you know, I’ve coached football for 15 years, raised four kids. So yeah. And why? She goes, well, they want to send my son home from school if I don’t put them on drugs. This is 20 years ago and the drug of choice was Ritalin. She said that if I don’t put them on Ritalin, they’re going to kick him out of school.

Reed Davis (28:34.392)
And I said, well, is there a doctor at the school diagnosing this? No, it’s just a teacher and the principal conspired and told the mom. Again, this is over 20 years ago, but I wouldn’t doubt if it’s still happening.

And I said, well, do you think your son has a Ritalin deficiency? And she didn’t laugh. She didn’t think that was funny at all. a matter of fact, she goes, no, I’m serious. I don’t want to put my son on drugs. Turns out he was only nine, by the way. So here’s a teacher and a principal recommending a class two narcotic. That’s the same class as cocaine. Exact same designation to a nine year old.

Why? Because they wanted the behavior to change. And so I’m going to make this real short now. I said, I don’t know if I could help, but let’s run some tests and see. Within three weeks of getting the results, recommendations, by the way, I never met the young man, just had the mom, just worked through the mom. You know, here’s the test kits and the whole thing. Within three weeks.

The principal of the school tracked me down, Janine, and said, hey, this is the principal who got your name and number from the mom. I want to tell you this is a different kid. He’s not outbursting inappropriately. He’s not poking the other kids. He’s in his seat and his grades have gone way up.

And I was all feeling very proud and I still get kind of the, know how you get those shivers up your spine because you know you did good. Then he said, what’d put them on?

Reed Davis (30:24.582)
You know, and it just blew my bubble. just like, well, sir, you know, we put him on a better diet. We put him on a bedtime schedule. We put him on an exercise schedule that your school isn’t providing for him. Things like that. So he didn’t want to hear that. He just wanted to know what…

What do you got? So that was unfortunate, because I could see I was going to get every kid into school, you know, as a client, but it didn’t work out that way. But so one person at a time, we make these discoveries and we do good work and we get the emotional satisfaction and a sense of exhilaration, freedom. It’s very emancipating when you know how to do good work. But it took me 10 years to figure all that out.

Jannine Krause (30:44.461)
Woodrow.

Jannine Krause (31:11.982)
Yeah, yeah, and imagine it’s very freeing for patients too because now they’ve taken their own health back in their own hands versus, you know, relying on someone else to…

you know, give them a pill, give them, you know, something of that nature, where it’s like, okay, I know if my guts offer, if I’m getting hives, last time, it was these particular things that were bothering me and say, you know, they try, okay, if it works great, then if not, they’re coming back, they’re coming back to you to see, okay, what direction do I go now? And of course, where this is leading is how do you approach

Continuity of care with with your your folks that you’re training in terms of clients and when they come back and and kind of helping to explore You know one of the big things I’m always curious about is you know repeating are we repeating certain labs? Are we going towards back to the hidden are we going back over that are we going? You know lifestyle give us give us kind of a little bit of scoop there because sometimes things will come back and sometimes they’ll come back in different patterns and

I’m going after pattern kind of recognition. So I’m just kind of throwing it out there. What’s your thought process? And just so folks can kind of hear how you’re thinking, how FDNs might be thinking.

Reed Davis (32:25.064)
Yes.

Reed Davis (32:34.172)
I teach them to teach. so they’re using the lab work and getting the data and teaching that client what the data is really telling us about the body and how it’s functioning. We call them healing opportunities. So you can teach someone.

And then they can go and teach someone else. And that’s my philosophy of my mission for years and years and years and still is, I think 26, seven years now, teach people, educate people how to get well and stay well naturally so that they in turn can teach others. You got to add that little piece onto it. And so you’re

Jannine Krause (32:59.213)
Mm-hmm.

Reed Davis (33:25.308)
gonna have people with very protracted multiple causal factors that will take longer than others. But I don’t, and even back in the day, I don’t recall ever signing anyone up for more than a 90 day program. Because I can pretty much teach you everything I know in 90 days. And then now you know.

Jannine Krause (33:48.126)
Mm-hmm.

Reed Davis (33:50.616)
And if only time they would really, well, and they would make some progress. So we teach people how to live with and choose reasonable expectations.

So if someone says, weigh 300 pounds and in 90 days I want to be in a size one bathing suit, we would say, no, that’s not reasonable. So you decide what’s reasonable. If they have a problem like the migraines and the headache, some of this stuff just goes away so fast. But with the protracted problems, you’ve taught them enough that they’re going to know when to come back.

or maybe they’ll just continue. So 90 days, let’s do another 90 days. We’re on the right track. We know where it’s going. And I want to do another, to continue to get your coaching and your guidance and your things like that. Other people, depending on the results they’ve achieved in 90 days, will say, thank you. I’ve got it from here. And we’ll ask them for referrals.

Who else do know that we can help like this? So I’m big on asking for referrals and I teach my practitioners how to have a referral-based practice. You have to do good work. You have to actually get results. And that requires onboarding properly and lots of things, being careful who you take on as a client. But you’ve taught people enough that they know when to come back. And yeah, I’ve had repeat business.

get a lady all fixed up, calls me in a year, I’ve gone off the wagon. know, cause they stop exercising, they start eating crap again, they do the things. Well, that’s why health coaching has become such a great career, cause people want the ongoing support. So I’m not myself, not a health coach.

Reed Davis (35:47.688)
I used a more authoritarian style of implementation and working with people, really teaching them that they need to be in control, that they need to be aware, more self-aware, and do things because it’s the right thing to do. That’s pretty hard discipline, but I grew up with just that kind of parenting and Boy Scout and…

I pledge, I’m honored to, you know, all that stuff. And so it’s easier for some people than others. So if they need the ongoing support and help, that’s why health coaches are drawn to what we do, because they can do provide the emotional repeat habit-forming coaching. But the, so that’s part three, I guess.

Let me put it to you this way. Part one is run the labs, get to know your person. Part two is create a program that’s really gonna be effective. Part three is run the program. So that’s really the only place you run into any issues. One and two is easy. I figure out real quickly the healing opportunities that you get to work, here’s what you get to work on.

And here’s what it’s gonna mean if you work on it. And of course, you know what it’s gonna mean if you don’t work on it. And so that’s where the behavior becomes more of a challenge than figuring out what’s wrong with the person. And again, why health coaches are important. And a health coach that knows a thing or two could be a very useful person to have around.

Jannine Krause (37:35.778)
Yeah, behavior is, you know, a very big factor in anything, but especially when it comes to your health, because it’s one thing I’ll often tell folks, you know, we can do all the labs, we can figure out what we need to focus on. And I can give you a protocol, but we’ve got to have that behavioral shift. And this is where, you know, it’s one of those things where folks will be like, well, I don’t know if your program is going to work for me. Well, are you going to do the work is what I’ll often put back.

Reed Davis (38:05.768)
You have to and part of our, we just use the term onboarding. I don’t know how that sounds, but we ask people obviously, what’s your main complaint?

You know, if I had a magic wand, what’s one thing you’d like to change about the way you look or feel? And how often does that bother you? How long has that been going on? What have you tried so far that hasn’t worked entirely? What’s it gonna mean to you if you get rid of this? What’s it gonna be like if you don’t? But the next question, probably the key one, is there anything that would prevent you from completing a program?

Jannine Krause (38:46.125)
Mm-hmm.

Reed Davis (38:46.286)
if I decide to take you on as a client. So right there, you’re kind of flipping the script a little bit. They’re not interviewing you to see if they want to hire you. You’re interviewing them to see if you want them to. So we’re choosing clients that we think are going to be successful. So you flat out ask them. First one’s gotta be in your wheelhouse. You know, what’s wrong, how long’s it been going on?

Jannine Krause (39:10.338)
Mm-hmm.

Reed Davis (39:15.592)
But what would stop you from completing a program? And for all the practitioners out there, if you’re not asking this, before you even take them on, before you even agree, even if you know or you really think you can help them, you can’t if they have these certain things that are going to stop them from finishing your program. Not starting it, finishing it. For us, that’s only 90 days.

But still, and they might say, no, not really, I can’t think of anything. Well, how about money? This is an investment. How about support from a family member? Are you gonna have someone feeding you chips and beer the whole time you’re trying to behave yourself? And what about bad habits? Do you have any addictions?

that we’re gonna have to battle. I wanna know about them ahead of time. It’s only fair, but I’m gonna be your practitioner. You be honest with me. Tell me, are any of those things gonna stop us from completing the program because we probably shouldn’t even start it. Save your time and money.

And so, that’s really important. The other questions would be around reasonable expectations and commitment level. Like how committed are you to doing this? If they can’t get past those eight questions, I might just say I don’t think I’m the right practitioner for you. So you’re starting out with really good, not just good intentions, but again, these expectations that it’s a…

You know, really most of the, look, I can figure out, I can run the labs, I can figure out what to do, but I just can’t do it for you. And it’s, if you’re gonna live yourself out of what you lived yourself into, you’re doing the living. So you gotta ask those questions. And for anyone who’s not a practitioner listening, you gotta look at those things, like are you willing to invest?

Jannine Krause (41:14.062)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Reed Davis (41:26.856)
My wife and I spend a lot of money on our health. Why? Because we want to age gracefully and enjoy our lives and stay active and do cool things. So we’re willing to invest and we support each other. We’re always looking for support and not being around people who just want to drink and party all the time. You got to make some…

Jannine Krause (41:35.854)
Thank

Reed Davis (41:56.016)
choices in your life.

Jannine Krause (41:59.214)
I think that’s sage advice for anybody listening because I think a lot of us will think about going into programs and trying different things, whether it’s a fitness program, whether it’s going on a full FDN program. And yeah, we may have certain expectations depending on someone’s marketing, things of that nature. And having that clarification in there is huge because…

For many folks, think we still have that same, like I’m saying, know, those magic things, like this person’s gonna give me the magic thing that’s going to make all the difference. And if I only am in about 50%, it’s still gonna work. And I’ve learned, you know, that that is not the case.

Reed Davis (42:41.18)
Yes. Yeah, you learned by experience. Kind of the hard way, I call it. You can learn from your own experience, you can learn from other people’s. That’s kind of the basis of my course that I teach. I can teach you in 10 months what it took me 10 years to figure out. And it’s a lot of learning, but hopefully you don’t have much to unlearn.

That’s the other thing we run into. People who know too much already.

Jannine Krause (43:14.158)
let’s talk about that for a second because I will see that we’re in the age of chat GPT where folks will have put their condition into chat GPT and bring it into you. I work between two states and one state on primary care provider and so I will get that more often than in my more functional medicine side of the practice. But yeah, folks will come in with that and say, this is what I did, I did all the research.

and I’ve been all the podcasts and I’m on all the different Facebook groups, when someone comes with that type of thing, what’s your statement in that department? How do you handle that?

Reed Davis (43:53.468)
Well, you know, the obvious question smells, spell, sounds kind of smart-alky, is how’s that working for you? So, so, you know, I said in the late nineties, I had a lot to learn when I changed jobs. I just changed jobs. I had a lot to learn, but I had nothing to unlearn.

Jannine Krause (44:03.426)
Yep. Yep.

Reed Davis (44:21.126)
I’d never really been to a doctor except for some sports injuries, couple motorcycle accidents and some dental work. That’s it. And then, so I hadn’t been indoctrinated or trained or it was all just kind of open book. And I had a strong desire to be the guy that really helped whoever it was sitting in front of me.

And so, and they were willing to spend the money to basically pay for my education. know, if they’d pay for the labs, I would do the work. And so I can teach you in 10 months what it took me 10 years to learn. And I think, I just want to say that that’s the angle.

getting the data that tells you what’s really going on and then using that to empower yourself or your patients. And you might want to rephrase that question just so I know you said.

Let’s talk about that. What was it?

Jannine Krause (45:34.222)
All good, all good. It’s it’s really just getting to getting to look at how how folks can can look at I don’t even know what I’m saying now either not now I’ve lost my I will edit this out. We’ll just edit it.

Reed Davis (45:50.34)
I’m good at that. I just miss the whole thing. So.

No, I think it’s good to be real and authentic. sometimes I do lose track because I’m a creative person and I’ll start thinking about things and hopefully it’s enlightening or rewarding to the audience in some way. know, your podcast, The Health Fix,

You’re interviewing, if you’re interviewing my graduates who are out there in the world practicing FDN, which is just a kind of a phrase that I made up when I had to teach my first course, and now I’m stuck with it. There was nothing called that back then. And I’d been observing for 10 years the evolution of alternative. And there was that and there was white coat, know, and there, well then complimentary.

became a phrase like, well, what is that? Well, it’s like a lot of white coat with a little bit of the other stuff mixed in. Well, then people got, because it actually helps and works. Well, then the next one was integrative, because now it’s by demand. The patients were not demanding something besides just drugs and surgery. Hey, what about all this other stuff, diet and rest and exercise and…

all the things. I think you mentioned chat GPT and how do we deal with those people who think they know something.

Reed Davis (47:36.456)
I saw alternative, complementary, integrative. Now it’s functional medicine, functional medicine, functional medicine. And you have people who are truly dedicated and understand a thing or two about underlying causes and looking upstream. Other people just use it as a handle. They go to a weekend seminar and get a certificate. You’re now trained in functional medicine and they’re still writing prescriptions for snotty noses, taking insurance back at the, you know, they’re not really

doing a good enough job. And even, I’ll call it real functional medicine, has not even finished evolving, has not finished evolving.

And I’ll bring it back to chat GPT in just a minute. So if functional medicine hasn’t finished evolving, where’s it going? You know, what’s it’s going to be this right here, FDN, no medical diagnosis, no treatment of specific things. It’s using the innate intelligence of the body and treating every cell, tissue, organ and system simultaneously. It’s called non-specific treatment. It just works better.

And that is with the caveat that if the downward spiral is really contracted, you need to go see a doctor. If you have Ebola virus, you’re not going to call your FDN practitioner or nutritionist or personal trainer or any of those people. If you’re a victim of a drive-by shooting, you got to stop the bleeding, right? Or fix the bone or whatever. So there’s always a use for good medicine.

But all the chronic degenerative downwards-browning things that we deal with that take time, you gotta be able to make observations that are useful, and we do, and then apply the general principles of health building, which we have.

Reed Davis (49:36.168)
and the person has to just perform. So if someone comes to us and chat GPT, which by the way, I like AI, until it takes over the world, then I’m gonna hate it. But, know.

And I hear all those theories and stuff. But no, chat, chat GPT, I use perplexity. If anyone wants perplexity.ai is really a good one. There’s a paid version, a pro version that I use. And if you go to any of those and you look up FDN and read Davis.

You’re gonna see good stuff. It’s gonna tell you how we work. They’re pretty honest. I don’t see a lot of censorship going on there. so if they’re into their chat GPT and they’re not well, I’ll say, look up what we do. You’re just looking up the wrong stuff. You’re not asking the right question. They’re called prompts. You’re not prompting in the right way.

If you say, I’ve got fibromyalgia, what should I do? It’s going to say, go see a doctor. And they have medicine for that and all the standard things. So you have to ask really good questions if you’re using those things.

Jannine Krause (50:54.518)
degree. Yeah, the more targeted the more intelligent questions you can prompt it. Yeah, it’s impressive. It’s impressive. I’ve definitely used a lot of it for for business in particular. And yeah, taking over. I think what we do, it’s tough for an AI to do all of it. There’s some things, but I don’t think we can accurately, especially the lifestyle behavior.

Reed Davis (51:05.254)
Yeah.

Jannine Krause (51:20.502)
and some of that intricate work you do with someone when it comes to individualized care. just think that there’s, I don’t think we could chat GPT at all, I’m calling AI in general, not just chat GPT. Yeah.

Reed Davis (51:32.552)
Yeah, EI. I can’t even spell EI.

Hey, so, now are you still practicing, Janine? Are you mostly, you are? you, what’s mostly women with, the common everyday, type of stress related conditions, you know, type of thing. Are you seeing a lot of like long COVID or what’s?

Jannine Krause (51:58.126)
So.

Jannine Krause (52:03.808)
In Wisconsin, my practice is chronic degenerative conditions. And so we’re talking chronic Lyme, mold, you name it, yeah, COVID, you know, all those things. Whereas in my practice in Washington state, I am coming out of being a primary care provider that was in the insurance model, trying to figure out how to do natural medicine within that model and just wore myself completely out because I couldn’t do it. And so I’m coming off of that from there.

Reed Davis (52:13.254)
Yeah.

Reed Davis (52:31.432)
Yeah, oh good. So you had to go to cash practice, which is tough if you came out of the insurance model, because people are used to their insurance paying for everything. But it doesn’t. It’s good for catastrophic car accidents and what have you. If all of sudden…

Jannine Krause (52:43.662)
Yeah.

Reed Davis (52:52.474)
You come down with something, you can go, you you go get checked out. I go get checked out. I’m on Medicare. So it’s, it’s kind of hilarious going to a regular physician for your Medicare appointment. And the first thing they say is, can we see your Medicare card? And then they say, and what’s your, what’s your favorite pharmacy? Which pharmacy do you prefer? Cause the staff knows you’re coming out of there with two or three prescriptions, you know, and they want to ask me all the time.

Are you depressed? Is anyone beating you up or being mean to you? It’s just funny how their mindset goes. It’s not wellness. It is not wellness by any stretch of the imagination. Well, I’m glad to hear you’re doing that. You got out of the insurance algorithms because they’re not useful or helpful except for to the insurance company.

Jannine Krause (53:50.318)
Yeah, there’s no way to be able to help someone on a deeper level with, and I wasn’t doing 15 minutes, I was doing 30 minutes at the minimum. There’s no way to be able to do it at a 30 minute visit. I really need more time and that’s kind of where I’ve presented to my folks because my visits in Wisconsin are two hours most times to get through, at least to start.

Reed Davis (54:13.362)
Yeah.

Jannine Krause (54:16.206)
Follow-ups not so much but to start I need that much time to go back like you said through all of the different things that are going on

Reed Davis (54:24.872)
Absolutely. Well, good on you for that. keep up the great work with your Health Fix podcast. Matter of fact, we have something for your listeners if you want.

Jannine Krause (54:35.862)
Yeah, yeah, we get to talk about that there for listeners because I think, you know, I’ve got folks on both sides of the spectrum for folks that are in the health industry, but I also have a lot of folks that are just seeking health information. yeah, give us give us the scoop for folks who are looking for some training.

Reed Davis (54:57.16)
So now my staff member, told you before we started that high tech for me was pagers and fax machines. And so I have staff that does this. Matter of fact, speaking of AI, I asked for a report from a staff member last week and they gave me some AI generated piece of crap.

Jannine Krause (55:10.188)
Okay.

Jannine Krause (55:23.15)
you

Reed Davis (55:23.618)
and tell me, you’re cheating. We don’t do that around here. You gotta use your brain. Give me a narrative that actually means something. So if people wanna find out more, and we have like a free booklet on the Dress for Health Success program.

It’s at fdntraining.com slash health fix. H-E-L-T-H-F-I-X health fix. Fdntraining.com slash health fix. So yeah, if you want to put that in your show notes, anyone that wants can come and find out more. It’s just mostly putting you in the driver’s seat. Nothing bothered me more in the beginning.

Jannine Krause (55:51.854)
Got it.

Reed Davis (56:13.34)
than when someone had been to three, six, nine different practitioners or spent all this money and weren’t better yet, I would ask, why are you putting your health in someone else’s hands? It’s okay to get a practitioner, but you know, it’s not, you gotta take charge. So that’s what you and I are here to help people do.

Jannine Krause (56:40.632)
Absolutely, absolutely put health back in the hands of the folks. That’s what we do So read gosh great stuff today and good to meet the guy behind all of the FDN It’s fun

Reed Davis (56:50.999)
thank you. Yeah, I’m here to help anytime.

Jannine Krause (56:55.63)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and we will get all of the details for the freebie in the podcast notes at drjcrossnd.com. Thanks again. All right.