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Show Notes
Today, I talked with Dr. Christopher Duhon about his passion for working with people on their terrain, the foundation of their health. We had a fascinating discussion on the biofeedback signs our bodies give, why we need to listen to them, and how our habits affect the choices we make in regard to our health. We also delve into the world of telemedicine and hear from him, as a doctor who has worked firsthand with telemedicine, how it is making medical care more accessible to more people around the world.
In this episode you will hear:
- Healing the whole person.
- How Terrain Ten differs from current Western medicine and holistic medicine.
- The truth of polypharmacy.
- The social pressures and established habits of our lives.
- Listening to the biofeedback of your body.
- The precious nature of your health.
- Telemedicine versus in-person medicine.
Dr. Christopher Duhon grew up in a small town in southern Louisiana near Lafayette. As he matured and experienced life, particularly, medical school, what he discovered to be his passion all along is working with a person’s terrain, the foundation of their health, their “soil,” so to speak. Dr. Duhon’s gift of listening to his patient’s body has allowed him to honor their uniqueness and develop individualized personal care. He has been fortunate to be mentored by some brilliant Swiss medical doctors and local naturopaths who imparted their wisdom and experience to him. It has left him with a wide variety of tools to offer his patients (i.e., IV therapy, Hyperbaric Oxygen, O3 therapy, Swiss-German Biological Medicine, Terrain Ten work, and more). Dr. Duhon works out of his own office in Seattle, WA, both virtually and in person. He is comfortable with all cancer types and applies the Terrain Ten methodology to all cases in order to dismantle the process bit by bit. If you are interested in working with Dr. Duhon, please see the link to his website for more information.
Connect with Dr. Christopher Duhon:
Website: https://www.clearmindintegrativehealth.com/
Access Dr. Duhon’s Introduction to Terrain-Centered Living
Connect with R Blank and Stephanie Warner:
For more Healthier Tech Podcast episodes, and to download our Healthier Tech Quick Start Guide, visit https://www.healthiertech.co and follow https://instagram.com/healthiertech
Additional Links:
- Shield Your Body website: https://ShieldYourBody.com
- Shield Your Body Youtube Channel: https://youtube.com/shieldyourbody
- Host R Blank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rblank9/
- Shield Your Body on Instagram:https://instagram.com/shieldyourbody
Transcript
Dr. Christopher Duhon 0:00
People are getting those messages throughout life. It’s not just like when the diagnosis happens, it’s through life, they’re getting these messages that you need to change this or change this or do this. You know, we get signals all the time from our bodies internally that this is not good for us. Like, if we took the time to listen to the body and not blow through things, we could literally, you know, change the course of a lot of things that could happen later on.
Announcer 0:29
Welcome to the healthier tech podcast, the show about building a healthier relationship with modern technology. Now, here are your hosts R blank and Stephanie Warner.
R Blank 0:41
On today’s show, we’re welcoming Dr. Christopher Doohan to the healthier tech podcast. He is a doctor who specialises in terrain medicine, which I had never heard about before, but is really interesting conversation on that. And then towards the end, we get into a really nuanced discussion on on the value and trade offs of telemedicine quick note, I’ll be doing this episode solo today because of horrible weather impacting Stephanie’s ability to join us. So with that, let’s get into it. Today we have a very special guest joining us. Dr. Christopher Doohan grew up in a small town in southern Louisiana. And through his life experiences, particularly in medical school, he discovered his passion for working with a person’s to reign the foundation of their health. As a practitioner who values listening to his patients bodies, he is dedicated to honouring their uniqueness and providing individualised care. He has been fortunate to learn from some brilliant Swiss medical doctors and local naturopaths who have imparted their wisdom and experience to him, giving him wide variety of tools to offer his patients from IV therapy to hyperbaric oxygen and oh three therapy to Swiss German biological medicine and terrain 10 work, he has the knowledge and skills to help his patients achieve optimal health. He’s based in Seattle, Washington, working with clients both virtually and in person, and is comfortable working with all cancer types. He applies the terrain 10 methodology to all cases in order to dismantle the process bit by bit. Welcome, Dr. Doohan to the healthier tech podcast.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 2:23
Thanks for having me.
R Blank 2:25
Thank you so much. So I understand you began your career by becoming an ordained minister. And I don’t often we have doctors on and various healers, not many of them have this. So what was that experience? Like? And how did you get from that path? to becoming a doctor,
Dr. Christopher Duhon 2:47
doctor? Wow, that I think that’s what everybody wants? is how the two really kind of gel and how did I get from one to the other. And so I am a was, you know, an ordained Catholic priest. And while I think the easiest way for folks to understand is I’m a spiritual, I was trained classically in spiritual direction. And during my training, I went to Creighton University, in Omaha, Nebraska, and they have an excellent spirituality programme there. And while I was enrolled in that programme, I was exposed to other like spiritual directors, who used healing modalities, like healing touch, or massage therapy, or, you know, just different herbs, herbs, you know, herbal therapy, to kind of help their clients. And so what was so attractive to me was just the whole person was being treated, right, you know, not just like the emotional and spiritual dynamic, but also the physical was being brought into the thing. So that’s what really kind of started to Lord me into more of where I am today was that the other pieces that the programme that created was very introspective, meaning it caused you to really look deeply inside. And to kind of track the what I call the movements, you know, like, where is your move, you know, where’s your spirit going, your emotions, you know, what’s drawing you right now. And that is where I just found that, you know, what I felt was, what I really wanted to do is to help people in a more holistic fashion, with the body piece included, and I knew and what was becoming more and more apparent me, to me through this programme was that I would not be able to do that unless I actually stepped out of the priesthood and probably went back to school. And so that’s exactly what I did. I How old were you at that? I was mid 30s. You know, okay. well before now, and I was mid 30s. And and
R Blank 5:05
it’s just, uh, ya know, because I can totally see, you know, moving from one kind of healer to another kind of healer. But the thought of going back to med school, well,
Dr. Christopher Duhon 5:14
yeah, I think maybe, you know, and I’ve, I’ve had so much education up until that point, because I don’t think people realise, like what priesthood is, you know, there’s an undergrad, there’s a grad, and then there can be more, you know, more postgraduate work, and I was literally at that time I was in my second postgraduate work, you know, so, and then I entered medical school, which was more postgraduate work. So I feel like I have a wide, I have a wide, you know, bandwidth. In other words, I have you know, more that, you know, I have the sciences and I have the, the humanities broad spectrum. Exactly, exactly, yeah. So kinda, I, you know, I’m into philosophy I’d like, you know, I mean, I was, my undergraduate is has a minor in philosophy. So it’s, you know, we were trained in that. So, I do appreciate good philosophy. I like history. And I mean, I’ve done a lot of work. I mean, basically, History Throughout, is kind of, you know, before the modern era, pretty much history, everything’s kind of all rolled up into one with the church, you know, so at mediaeval time, antiquity, you know, everything that was being recorded were by scholars and people who were, you know, with the church or, you know, at a certain status in society. So,
R Blank 6:45
so going from the 20,000 foot intro, first question data, let’s say the 10 foot narrower? Sure. Second question. I understand your focus is on something that I’d never heard of, until I was introduced to you and your website, which is terrain medicine, or one of your focuses, as we’ve as we’ve already said, you have a but terrain. So when I was reading the description, it sounded to me like what when I was growing up was called holistic medicine. And I’m wondering if they are the same, or if there are overlaps, or if they’re just totally different kinds of approaches to medicine?
Dr. Christopher Duhon 7:25
No, I mean, you know, it’s, it’s kind of like, same picture different colour. Okay. Okay.
R Blank 7:34
I love metaphors.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 7:36
Say, Yeah, I’m full, I’m full of metaphors. I like that, too, as well. So it’s, you know, holistic medicine basically is just a word that we use to describe anything that’s out of the standard, what we see today in our country, which is your, you know, your traditional medical doctor, gone to the doctor, maybe getting a prescription, you know, holistic medicine is kind of what I’m a naturopath by, that’s the kind of doctor i am. So our therapeutic order does not start with drug therapy, our therapeutic order starts with lifestyle, diet shifts, changes, and it depends on the level of pathology in the person, you know, whether we can shift with just a simple diet change, or a lifestyle shift, or, you know, I mean, you want to have all the basic determinants that what we call the determinants of health and place, like good water, good air, clean air, you know, great food, clean food, you know, so we want all those in place, but then sometimes that will have a tendency just to take care of the pathology. So sometimes you need a little bit more, sometimes we do have to resort to drug therapy for a time. So while we’re working underneath to get everything balanced, and then we can kind of wean off the drugs. I mean, it’s, you know, drugs, and not always off the table for us, it just depends on where that person is, and the flexibility of their body. Right. So it’s the, their body’s ability to actually come back from the pathology, or how for I always tell my patients like, well, I have to see how much your body’s gonna give us. I don’t know how much damage they’ve inflicted on it, right? So I have to see how much we can get what we do and if we have to apply. So back to your question of holistic, you know, in terrain medicine, it’s really it’s, it’s sort of the same. Oh, no.
R Blank 9:35
And in your vocabulary, terrain comes from the landscape of the patient’s body. Right.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 9:43
Right. Exactly. So it is the landscape of their exactly like put it on like that metaphor. So it is. Yeah, so it’s like, you know, we’re looking at different eras and we’re looking at their metabolism, you know, looking at their immune system, we’re looking at You know, what is their toxic load? Like? What is their genetics, like, you know, what their hormones are doing, you know. So it’s, it’s a lot of their bodily systems kind of all rolled into one because you know, the thing about drug therapy or traditional therapy that you get, after a while, you will play a whack a mole game, right? And what happens is, you have this procedure, you know, to correct this, but then that unleashes, like two or three other, you know, issues later on, or if you take one pill for this, but then that one pill is going to create this side effect and this side effect and this side effect, and then you get to take pills for all those side effects. And after a while you what we call polypharmacy. And
R Blank 10:44
so is that really a word? I’d never heard that. It is a word.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 10:49
You know, it is a real thing. So polypharmacy, what that means is that, you know, you know, people that are on multiple medications, like, they’re on a stool softener, they’re on an IDS, medication, they’re on, you know, blood pressure medication, they’re on, you know, this medication, but this medication causes the blood pressure to raise. So then they put them on a blood pressure to kind of counter that. That’s polypharmacy. Yeah. And the truth of it is, is that, you know, a lot of people like, yeah, and the truth is that you don’t have to be like that, you really don’t, you know, there’s some just, but here’s the hard part is you have to be willing to change, you cannot live in the way that our country and our society, you know, drives us, right, because part of the people that I serve, you know, they’re oncology patients, right. So they come to me in different stages, right, either there with standard of care. And they want to do integrative treatments alongside so that it will diminish side effects. And so that, once they’re done, their terrain is enough, because, you know, Naisha, who I learned, who’s a good friend, and that’s kind of I, you know, I was on her, what I call her, you know, her heels for a long time, along with, like Dr. Paul Anderson, I worked for him in his clinic. And so I learned from them quite a bit. But one thing that nature always says, you know, you can’t heal from, you know, if you, if you’re trying to heal from the sick soil you got, you know, sick from it won’t work, you know, so you have to change the soil, in order to heal. So it’s like someone’s definition of insanity, you keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. But the truth is, you have to do something different. So when people come with the cancer diagnosis, it’s an opportunity in their lifetime to do something different,
R Blank 12:48
because they’re willing to take radical steps at that, right. Yeah,
Dr. Christopher Duhon 12:51
they’re not, then there’ll be swept away with the current of everything else, you know, and, and it is a game of live or die, because they’re in colleges is like, how much chemo Can I give you without, you know, killing you? Yeah, you know, killing the cancer, but then not killing you. And right now, you know, just standard of care, in oncology doesn’t have the best track record. You know, they don’t have really great long term survival, stats, you know, they everyone smile, you’ll get a star here and there, I don’t want to totally put it down. Because it’s never for me, it’s never off the table, right? Some people actually need that kind of therapy. And sometimes, depending on the cancer type, and what’s going on, we may have to start there. But we don’t have to finish there.
R Blank 13:34
Yeah. And because you mentioned, you know, social pressure is driving lifestyle choices. But it’s also it’s also habit at a certain point, right. So social pressures create a context for it, but decades of life. So over when you’re telling a patient that they really need to change their diet, change their exercise, change their cleaning products. They’re not You’re not only changing, you’re not only countering the waves of social forces, but also by that point, decades of right of established habit. And so I can understand why an oncology patient would be much more open to that than someone coming in off the street with just my leg is hurting too much. Yeah,
Dr. Christopher Duhon 14:16
you would be surprised. telling you you will beat you would be surprised that some of the patients that I get that there is no clue. I mean, I can write it in plain English, on the website, on the page on everything. And then when they get in the appointment, it’s just like, what you may have to do this. And I tell them this is this is not the easiest process. If you want the easier process and go through the chemo chemos it’s very passive. You just go for the treatments. They say I want you to come for one treatment every other week for six months, right or one treatment every three weeks for six months. That’s just a lot of chemo.
R Blank 14:54
It’s yeah, I mean, and everyone I know who’s gone through that reports. It is a form of torture. Right. But like you say it’s passive. So it’s a lot easier. And that’s easier than starting to eat more salad.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 15:09
Right, or changing, just changing, you know, changing, that’s the thing, you know, and that’s really the message a lot of times of the cancer is that, you know, we people are getting those messages throughout life, it’s not just like when the diagnosis happens, it’s through life, they’re getting these messages that you need to change this or change this or do this, you know, we get signals all the time from our bodies internally that this is not good for us. Like for instance, just eating a food and then you have a stomachache after you have a headache, after you have a runny nose, that’s your body’s way of telling you something you ate is not good. You know, it’s it’s it’s informed, you’re getting a direct bio feedback from the body. And we don’t, we’re trying not to listen to that we’re trying to blow through that, you know. And then people wonder like, Okay, well, with these autoimmune conditions, or they come up with these sicknesses like IBS, or leaky gut, or, you know, and then they like, Well, why did I get this? I’m like, look at your lifestyle.
R Blank 16:13
Yeah. And like you saying, the warning sign I heard you talking with, I think it was JJ FL xanes and a different interview. Right. And you you one of the points that stuck out to me was how people tend to ignore early indicators. Right? Right. And so it’s not like the leader got just emerged out of nowhere. It’s like, the 10 things that happened before that you just weren’t paying attention to.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 16:37
Yeah, it did. Very true, you know, very, very, very true. You know, because if we, if we took the time to listen to the body, and not blow through things, we could literally, you know, change the course of a lot of things that could happen later on. Right. So that is, you know, that that is the piece that I like, you know, you have now is the time, don’t wait to get sick, you know, because there’s so much there’s, there’s because when people get sick, and there’s this, you know, they got the cancer diagnosis, there’s just so much baggage with each, like, you know, you get put into, you know, you get put into a category, you, you know, you have an autoimmune cancer, you have this, you have that, so, you in this category, right, and then some people tend to identify with that, and which is, that’s just the shortwave not to get out of it. Right, you have to kind of see yourself as more than that, than that diagnosis, or whatever is being you’re being labelled with because in all actuality, you know, you are and that’s where the whole mental emotional spiritual piece comes in for me, because it’s, we’re more than our bodies, you know, our body,
R Blank 17:51
you do you provide to your patients, do you? Do you provide them sort of? Do you actually provide them that sort of spiritual guidance as part of your practice? Or do you sort of more recommend that they pursue that kind of know, alongside with what your treatment regimen is?
Dr. Christopher Duhon 18:07
So it depends, you know, a lot of that happens naturally in, in the session, right? Or in the visit? And just to the answer to your question is not like I used to write, okay, you know, so like, people used to come to me specifically for spiritual direction. And that’s what we did. Now, they come to me because they have cancer, or they have some kind of ailment that they want correction with. And my whole point is, especially with recurring cancers, because if it’s a recurrence, then I’m like, alright, you know, we really need to cut to the chase, and really get into why do you think this happens again? You know, and that’s my question to them. Like, the first question I asked when they come and they’ve had the recurrence. And they’re like, you know, my question is, why do you think this happened? Why do you think this happens again, and this is where we really want to start working. Now. You know, we want to start kind of working in that mental emotional, because that is part of the terrain. It’s a lot of times it’s not the place we start. Um, you know, sometimes it really shouldn’t be, but it is the place that, you know, most people are not ready to go there. Because there’s so much. There’s a lot of stuff there.
R Blank 19:24
Yeah. And there’s, it’s also, I mean, I feel that there’s a real social stigma, right? There that not everyone in the population feels because obviously a bunch of people go to therapy, but a bunch of other people and just feel like no, I’m I am good. You know, I’m a person. I’m a functional human. That part of me doesn’t need that kind of work. And if I do, it’s a sign of weakness. Yeah.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 19:47
And that’s, and that’s the furthest thing from the truth. You know, because everybody has, you know, I was doing this session yesterday. One of the things I got introduced to with nations group She brought on these this group called humans are good. You know, and the whole humans are good thing is they do this. It’s a trigger, like you log these triggers in, and they basically take a trigger, and they do and emotional brain mapping. And that’s what they did to me yesterday, you know, I’ve been work trying to get they’ve been trying to schedule me for lessons before Christmas. And finally I’ve got, you know, I, we, we had the, the session yesterday at 7am here, so, and it was really good. And some of the things that came up, I was like, wow, I have not thought about that in so, you know, stuff that happened to me in high school that I was like, What the hell does that have to do with this, you know, but like, Don’t question just accept and embrace whatever is coming up. But then, you know, after the session, you know, you have these flashes of insight, like I was having flashes of insight all day yesterday, just like to see this web of connection on how the neurologically how all this was connected throughout my life, and, you know, just the underlying feeling and experience that was kind of being generated throughout my life, you know, just and that was just one thread. You know, they were just following one thread. I mean, just imagine people have multiple threads, and no one no one is immune from that, you know, you live in this world. You know, nobody’s, you know, everybody has something, you know, yeah, that they can work on, right,
R Blank 21:34
trying to remember the specific metaphor, since we both like metaphors so much. In college, I took a course on Buddhism with Robert Thurman. And he, the the metaphor that he had painted, it was an I’m gonna mess this up, I shouldn’t have even brought it up. But it’s basically like, if you own a car for 20 years, it’s, it’s gonna get dinged up, you’re gonna need to work on it. It’s like, the Marine does the same thing. Just going through life causes this kind of damage, and it’s important that we take the time to actually work on it.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 22:07
Yeah, that’s really good. And same thing in oncology, you know, people get our environment, the environment that we have today is very different from their environment. That was 50 years ago, or 100 years ago. You know, now in our environment, we have the presence of chemicals that our bodies don’t even know how to detox, you know, and they just keep putting them in. And if anybody wants a really funny, like, kinda description of it, they should go to John Oliver. And he does this whole, like 20 minute thing on called the Forever chemicals. And it’s, it’s, it’s meant to be funny, but it’s, it’s shocking and
R Blank 22:47
horrifying. Yeah, I was terrifying. I brought this up on a recent episode. Now I forget the number. But there was a recent study published that I’d read about. That was about the P. FOSS content of freshwater fish in North America. Right. And it was some just, it was like, it was like, a years worth No, it was multiple years worth of exposure by even one single fish,
Dr. Christopher Duhon 23:14
right? I mean, just you know, just to give you a little more statistics, right, so the average American will eat the size of a credit card in plastic every year. The average American
R Blank 23:27
satisfy the average American appetite for plastic.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 23:36
They eat a credit card a year, I’m like, Oh, my gosh, I don’t want to be one of those folks that eats a credit card a year. I do my best, you know?
R Blank 23:42
No, I mean, I assume not only that this is different from 50 and 100 years ago, I assume that this is different from 10 years ago, right. And I assume that just because of my focus on on EMF through through a company shield your body, just seeing the exponential increase in EMF exposures just in the last 10 years. Right. I’m assuming the same thing is happening with all forms of tox. Right,
Dr. Christopher Duhon 24:08
right. Yeah. And you’re exactly right. You know, it’s like they introduce lots of things into our environment that we’re people aren’t aware of, because if people would be aware of there, I think there would be more, you know, a little bit more.
R Blank 24:25
Yeah, I’d like to think so too, but
Dr. Christopher Duhon 24:29
a little more cynical.
R Blank 24:33
Like I don’t know what I really want to pay a buck more to avoid cancer 20 years.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 24:38
I you know, that my thing is, it’s you know, health is precious. And yeah, you don’t really people don’t really realise until it’s until they listen. Exactly. And for me, it’s like I I’m very grateful for my health. I’m grateful for my mobility. I’m grateful for my, you know, my flexibility and my body’s ability to kind of manoeuvre in and out of it. environment, you know, and actually adapt to it. It’s when we start losing that, you know that that’s, that’s the ageing process, right. That’s kind of, that’s what happens as the body ages, but our bodies, you know, one of the things that I learned in, in literally in bioethics in seminary, that’s where I learned this, that our bodies are designed to go on. They’re not designed to break down and like what we see in society now. You know, when you look at the body, the way it’s constructed, though, it has been created, it is designed to live on and to move on. You know, it’s not designed to break down like, like, like I said, like what we see. So, you know, that’s kind of it, but when we choose to do certain things, you know, there are consequences to it. Right? You know, I mean, you know, we choose to eat foods with, you know, chemicals, we choose the 5g, we choose the now there’s a 10 G, I’m hearing on the radio, I was like hearing these things about 10 G, I was like, man, they just they putting out 10 G, what is this already? I was like, Lord,
R Blank 26:08
so So you’re in that last, back and forth. You talked about listening to your body and the things that you were hearing from your body? And I understand that as part of, of terrain medicine, right? A big part is listening to the patient’s body. So how, how, but as we also talked about, there’s a real lack of self awareness in a lot of people about what’s happening in people’s in their own bodies. Yes. So that’s all setting up the question, how do you listen to a patient’s body when they might not even be hearing it? Right? And then how it is what you hear factor into a treatment plan?
Dr. Christopher Duhon 26:49
Okay, good question. So, you know, maybe one thing that I’ve, you know, so part of my training is also in, you know, East Asian medicine, like acupuncture, Chinese herbs, and they are they based their medical system is based on patterns, right. So like, the Chinese don’t have like, oh, it’s an infection, it’s a bacterial infection, or viral infection, or it’s this or that. They’re like, this is cold. This is Derrick, this is heat. And that’s the pattern they see in the body. And that’s the pattern they treat. And when they treating those patterns, the body experiences health, right? Because you’re, you’re dealing with a lot of times, you know, an infection will create heat in the body. So they’re using these herbs that actually counter that heat that cool that heat off. And the herbs are strong enough to where they just kills infection, right. So that’s kind of how we would explain it in Western medical practices. And terrain. Medicine is basically similar to that in the sense that we look at patterns. So when I am having patients, I’m looking at different patterns. And the way I look at patterns, there’s a couple different ways, but the main way is through lab tests, right? So the first thing that when a patient comes to me, there’s an extensive intake, right? So the intake itself, what I’m looking for is I’m looking for their story, right now, some people are really good at given me their story. And it’s known people, for lack of a better word started. The ninth grade, in other words, just not to be mean to these folks. But no, yeah. They’re just not good historians of their health, they’re not aware, right. So I’ll get literally I’ll get like two or three sentences, like, what were you before your cancer? I was fine. That was healthy. I was like, Well, then why you have cancer if you are healthy, right? So, you know, and then for the, you know, sometimes it’s like literally two or three sentences for you know, the diagnostic part, like when they got diagnosed, what happened, you know, so, so then I was like, Okay, well, I was, like, okay, how can I help these people more understand of what I want and what I need. So then I put like, guiding questions like, What was your health? Like, you know, when you were a young child, you know, what was your health like, in the teenage years? What was your health like, and some people do gravitate to them, they’re able to really give me a good story, and it shows me exposures. It shows me kind of, you know, the family, sometimes I’ll get family dynamics and that and, you know, so it starts to put together a picture for me, you know, so and I read every word of it, you know, when they send me that whether it’s short or long, I will read every single word of it. I do not skim read it, I did not speed read it, I read it. And I want to get to understand this person, right? And then you know, we’ll have the visit. And so if they do everything then the visit, the first visit is just like this conversation you and I having it’s a conversation about what’s going on in their body, and then you know, that way they can Get to know me a little bit better and how I work and ask any questions that they have. Because the first visit if they do all that is designed just to get all their questions answered, because my admin office manager, Sonya, who does a lot of the patient, new patient onboarding, she can’t answer those questions. You know, she’s not a medical practitioner I am. So a lot of the questions they have is medical. And so they have to wait till that appointment to get those questions answered. But she takes care of a lot of the other stuff. So once they do that, then we do what I call a battery of tests, right? We do what we call comprehensive labs, because part of what I base a lot of my dis clinical decisions aren’t is their land, and not just like, Oh, you have this Oh, you have, oh, you have breast cancer? Well, here’s the three chemos that we use for all breast cancers. That’s not the way this works. You know, for me, it’s like, oh, you have breast cancer. But I’m seeing this pattern. And this pattern, I’m seeing this inflammation pattern in you, that’s pretty strong. And I’m seeing Wow, there’s a big huge hormone imbalance pattern. So otter business first, is we correct these patterns, right. And as the body is presenting the patterns, so the way I listened to their bodies, actually, through the labs, and through their story, right, so, so the body, the labs give me real time feedback. And that’s why it’s important to base clinical decisions on that, and not just on, okay, this is what we do for this condition, right? This is the drug we give, or this is the supplement we give, or whatever it is that I’m seeing this grouping of stuff, I’m seeing this Oh, and we got some chronic, or we got chronic infections, right? I’m seeing this happen, especially in this admin, or this day and age of COVID, right and post COVID. You know, you just, I’m just seeing a lot of viral damage to people. And, and so so it’s, it’s to kind of address that. And to address it with whatever means we choose whether it might be an IV or hyperbaric, we might use those on or we might use this combination of supplements, or we might use like cold water therapy or whatever the therapy and then we measure, again, we do the therapies, and we measure again to see like, was my therapy effective? Did I do that? Did it do the work? Did it change that pattern? And if it did, then great, we can maintain and see what else what the pattern we’re being presented with? You know, the body has its own hierarchy of what it wants to work on. And it’ll tell you, it’ll tell you through those labs, it’ll tell you through its own feedback mechanisms, right. So that’s the importance of learning to kind of hone in to those signals. So that’s really how I do it, I do it to the labs. And my decisions for treatment are based on that. And sometimes yes, we have to it’s, it’s a lot of the treatment plans can be a lot. But they’re they’re unwinding, you know, and we have to kind of support like, I’ll have some people that will say, Oh, I’m so many supplements or, and I mean, when I say they say a lot of supplements, I mean, I’m keeping it like I would say 10. Okay, so 10, right, we got 10 things on their treatment plan, and they are whining, it’s a lot. But then I started to remove some of that in their body just goes right back to where it was before. And I just explained to them, I was like, your body is having trouble doing this on its own. So the idea of the supplement is a supplement acts as a support system, so that your body can actually do these functions. And you may have to be on these for six months, a year, two years, you know, maybe the rest of your life. So you got to understand what do you want? Do you want a dysfunctional system? Or do you want some health and eventually people’s bodies, if we have them on something they can eventually come off or be on maintenance to where literally just doing like, you know, like a B vitamin once or twice a week? That’s it, you know, so and getting everything from food, right? So we’re teaching them foundation up, like how do you get if people want to get it from food, I’m like, well, that’s great, but you may not be able to your body may be damaged to the point where it just can’t extract everything from the food and so we have to help it.
R Blank 34:11
So, the whole interview has and this has been really interesting and and entertaining for me. But it has been leading up to this next question. Because because of your particular focus, right, because I saw that you offer telemedicine, I don’t know when you started it, but obviously in the past few years, that’s very common. And but, and so I’ve wondered various versions of this question, but I’ve never had the opportunity to ask a healer who emphasises listening as much as you do and I use listening in the broad broad sense of the word. So what are the differences in session? In the care and outcomes that you’re noticing between telemedicine sessions, and in real life sessions are there, are you able to do the same job? Is it a different job? And it has pros and cons? Do you get where I’m trying to? Yeah.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 35:18
So you’re kind of there is, you know, here’s, here’s what I’ve noticed. So, I, when I, before COVID, my practice was in person. And I had a, I had a handful of people that I was seeing, like, I had some in Maryland, I had some here and there. And then, with the advent of COVID, everything started going to telematics right. And so for the from 2020, to literally just a little over a year ago, to about 2021. I was renting space at this Clint clinic called Ames Institute in Seattle. And I just rented their office just an office in their clinic for three days a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I would go in there and I would see patients and patients would be in there, you know, and Sundays that full and then they would have a few telemedicine extend to that those days. And then I would have in person visits, right. But then as the pandemic progressed, and we had 2020, then we had 2021. What I noticed in 2021, that I would literally see like one patient a week in person, and then everything was telemedicine. And so then they Eames wanted to increase my rent, I was like, oh, wait a second. Hold on. And I just kind of took a survey of like, Okay, how many people am I actually seeing in person? And is it worth the price of what you’re asking to written the space and it was not. And so what I ended up doing was I moved the practice to my home office. So Tuesday and Wednesday is strictly tellement days. And Thursday, I still keep open for those people that want to. And I love that I really do love that the thing about telemedicine allows me to do things like this, I can be in Florida and I could work and you know, or I can be taken care of my mom and I can in Louisiana and be working, you know, so it affords me a flexibility. Now the care, that’s the real heart of the question, I feel right, is the care the same? I don’t it’s i i don’t really have an opinion, per se like, is it better? Is it worse? Because I’ve had to kind of so here’s what I do for people to make it better. Right? Because there is something about when they come see you in person, there is that energetic dynamic, you still get that in telemedicine visit I can tell people like in through telehealth, but you do not look good. Like I have a patient right now that I’ve been working with this advocate, and it’s some patients need, they need help, right? So they’re in another state, they need help. And I find an advocate and I have the assign that advocate to them. And so they have it kind of helps him with what I call the grind of the process. Right? You know, so they are sending me patients of this pictures of this patient and I can tell from the picture from the telemedicine while this patient does not look good. There’s something wrong, something’s not right. And, you know, and I’ll tell them
R Blank 38:41
and you can hear a lot in the voice too.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 38:43
Yeah. So there, I can still pick up some diagnostic things, telemedicine, telemedicine. You know, the only thing is, I can’t confirm those without with a physical exam. That is the piece that’s been
R Blank 38:55
you could still order but I go to a lab and get
Dr. Christopher Duhon 39:00
oh yeah, tell them you know, if I’m like, You’re not looking good. I’m like, you know, I, I want you to go to you, you need to go to your primary care. Yeah, like if you go to this and do this, and that, you know, if it’s something acute then I’m always booting them back to their primary care or they’re in college. It’s because there’s something wrong. You know, like, why this is not what we should be seeing right now. So and the other thing that patients that come to me from other states have to realise that number one I’m licenced in Washington state only. So I have the privilege of practising my full scope of practice there. When it’s telemedicine another state I’ve my function falls to consultant
R Blank 39:42
how wait so how does that if the patient is in another state where you are and
Dr. Christopher Duhon 39:46
the patient is like so I’m, I’m located in Washington state, that’s where my licensure is. So when I see a patient from Texas or from Maryland or from Florida from, you know, Chicago or my lantana then I function solely as consultant, meaning I don’t, I can’t give you I can’t prescribe medications to you, you know, I can make supplement recommendations that I can make treatment recommendations. But, you know, yes, you, you know, you have to have people that that’s where we have to have a team, you know, that’s where they have to have a good primary care, they have to have a good oncologist and I usually assigned to some people, I’d say, we need an advocate, because just, you know that it helps the process go so much better, and then to help me listen to their body more. Usually, when they’re out of state, they’re getting labs through another provider. So then what I have is we have a spreadsheet, and that’s how I get them involved. That is like living, it’s like pulling teeth. Sometimes for some patients, they do not like that process. They don’t like the lab spreadsheet, but it’s showing them real time, like, what’s the change is going on in your body? You know, it’s getting them acquainted with their own bodies, you know, and that’s the whole teaching part. You know, it’s the lab teaching and me importing that, like, this is, you know, you filling this out, it’s a pain in the butt, but, you know, it’s going to eventually help you to see like, Are you staying on track? Are you getting off track? You know, and people know, like, Oh, tell me, Well, my lab, the labs look horrible. Something happened. I got off track. I was like, Okay, well, let’s talk about that. Where what do you think happened? You know, and we can and when we seen that, I’m like, Okay, what? Oh, it’s it’s not just like, I’m gonna guess and figures. Yeah. Doors with blindfolds are like, No, we need some you need to kind of be aware of what’s going on in your life. Because those things, those events have an impact. So So anyway, that’s that’s the point. I don’t know if that answered the question. Totally. Enough. No, no, that’s really how I that’s how I work. I’ve been doing television for two years now. So you know, I have patients literally all over the globe, not just in the US, but I have them, you know, I have some, I’ve had some in Australia, Taiwan, London, England, some in Europe, ya
R Blank 42:21
know, I have to think, you know, because I would consider myself to be more circumspect about technology than the average consumer. And I have to think that telemedicine is one of these almost unambiguously positive changes that have resulted from technology. And there might be some trade offs in terms of some aspects of in person experiences. But just the ease of Korea, the ease of the experience, the ease of looking at the ease of attending, encourages more medical care, and encourages you to be more open with your health care provider and to engage more and that just feels like a positive eight. I appreciate hearing your insight on that. Well, thanks. So Dr. Doohan, this has been a fascinating interview, where would you like our listeners to connect with you and learn more about your services?
Dr. Christopher Duhon 43:19
You know, one of the, I mean, the best place is my website. Right? And that’s really right now and not, you know, when I was kind of filling out all the work for the podcast, you know, kind of helping you to get to know me, you know, like social media handles, like, wow, I am so far back when that you know, is, you know, cuz I have Facebook that I never ever check. And I’m not a big social media guy. I’ll be honest with you. I’ve not and I think part of the direction that I’m in. Right now I’m in negotiations with a friend of mine. And one of the things that I found in just in the Telnet, when everything’s already going telemedicine is that we have I’m having trouble right now kind of helping people with going to a clinic to get a lot of things in one roof. Right? And in Seattle, sometimes, like if I want this, if I want that treatment in this treatment, like I have to almost send to two separate clinics, right? Like, okay, if you want hyperbaric things in here. If you IV therapy, we have to go here and see how it’s big, you know, it literally like some people where they are in relation to the city, it could take them 45 minutes just to get to one place and then another 45 to get to another. So it becomes more just impractical, you know? And so right now, I’m, we’re, it’s not that we’re not starting it, we are starting it, we’re just kind of starting to develop it from the bottom up. It’s going to be a clinic that’ll have a lot of this, you know, like it’ll have the IV therapy we’ll have the hyperbaric so have a lot of the technology And our treatments, you know, that are actually good for not only cancer, but anti ageing or, you know, just neuro degenerative or neurocognitive decline, you know, those types of conditions will be probably more what our focus is. But that’s, that’s kind of coming in the next year or so. But the best way to get me is through my website, clear mind integrative health.com If you want to if they want to become a patient, there’s a new patient submission. We just recently changed that over because we were using our Google email. And what Google was doing with Google was send it to just different we’ve been like, people like, oh, that dude is just he’s so busy. He doesn’t reply. I’m like, No, is because I didn’t Google has been screwing me over. Yeah, exactly. Google has kind of sifted, you know, sent your new patient into this other thing. God, they I had really good admins that would look, they just they just decided to one day look in these folders. And they were finding all these patients submissions from like six months. And I was like, Oh my gosh, so we had to go back and reach out to those patients and say, Hey, we’re so sorry. This is what was happening. Do you still want the visit? And a lot of them did? You know? Excellent. So
R Blank 46:17
clear mind integrative health.com. And we’ll have that link in the show notes. Right, and on our episode page on healthier tech.co, where we’ll also have the link to your website. We’re also going to be there’s a PDF gift for all the listeners about diet nutrition from Dr. Do on. So thank you again very much for your time today. This has been a great conversation.
Dr. Christopher Duhon 46:41
Sure. Well, thank you. Yeah.
Announcer 46:44
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the healthier tech podcast. Remember to check the show notes for all the links and resources mentioned in the show. Please like and subscribe to the healthier tech podcast on Apple, Spotify or your podcast platform of choice. Get your free quickstart guide to building a healthy relationship with technology and our latest information at healthier tech.co
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
