Empower Your Clients to Rebel: Questioning Doctors, Rethinking Labs, and Taking Back Control

What’s Inside This Episode?

• How blind trust in the healthcare system can lead to missed diagnoses and worse

• Why “normal” lab ranges are anything but normal for vibrant health

• The early metabolic signs that signal disease before symptoms appear

• Dr. Ritamarie’s personal story and why she’s made it her mission to help others question everything

• The truth about firing doctors, advocating for better labs, and demanding answers

• The role of the practitioner as a health detective, not a protocol pusher

• Why personalized, root-cause healing requires rebellion

• How to teach clients to tune into their bodies and take ownership of their health journey

Resources and Links:

• Download our FREE Create Your Next-Level Practice.  
• Join the Next-Level Health Practitioner Facebook group here for free resources and community support
• Visit INEMethod.com for advanced health practitioner training and tools to elevate your clinical skills and grow your practice by getting life-changing results. 
• Check out other podcast episodes here

Transcript

Dr Ritamarie 

What if I told you that the secret to true health isn't about blindly following doctor's orders, but about questioning everything? In today's episode, we're diving into the rebellious act of questioning healthcare providers, demanding root cause solutions, and taking charge of your health through lifestyle choices. 

Far too often we're told that our symptoms are just part of getting older or that there's nothing we can do to change our health. But here's the truth. Just because something is common doesn't make it normal. It's time to challenge the narrative.

In this episode, I'm going to help you to help your clients become health rebels, questioning everything and demanding the tools that they need to take charge of their health. Are you ready? 

So let's talk about the rebellious spirit of questioning healthcare. We live in a world where we're taught to trust our doctors, and rightfully so, they're experts, right? But the truth is, many people accept things from doctors that aren't helpful. They're not empowering, and they're not even accurate. Too often we're told things like, it's just your age. It's all in your head. You need to take this medication for the rest of your life, or you're going to feel miserable. It's never going to get better.

So I have a very personal reason for encouraging you to question everything. My mother, who died when she was 56, had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, had gallbladder issues in her 30s, had multiple skin cancers removed. And yet despite all of these health challenges, it wasn't until it was too late that we discovered that her heart was at risk. For years, she ignored my advice to get to the root causes of her health issues.

She ignored my advice to change some diet and lifestyle habits. She was told that her ailments were just part of getting older and that they were normal. That the fatigue she experienced after lunch every day and needed to take a nap was normal for her age. And there was nothing she could do about it. But the truth is her body was crying out for help. They were whispering. Her body was whispering, and she didn't listen until it shouted. And by the time it shouted, it was too late.

Dr Ritamarie (03:39.841)

I believe that if she had questioned her healthcare providers, demanded root cause solutions, if she'd even known to do that, she might've had a different outcome. If she'd kind of taken my advice and taken that to the doctors and asked, things might've been different. Instead, she never got to live to the later years and the life she really deserved. And that's why I'm so passionate about empowering you and your clients to not wait until it's too late.

When we start to ask questions and demand answers, we empower ourselves to take control. When we empower our clients to ask questions and get answers, that means encouraging them to challenge their doctors and look for solutions that just aren't about masking their symptoms with the latest drug, but truly addressing the root causes.

I remember working with a client who'd been diagnosed with insulin resistance, and she was told to just lose weight and watch what she eats without any guidance at all. So after feeling frustrated and stuck, she joined my insulin resistance program and said, “I watched my mom and uncle suffer with complications of diabetes. I don't want to go there. I want to know what I can do to not go there, to reverse that, to help myself.”

She was such a compliant person, and she listened to everything we taught. And she was able to reverse her pre-diabetes, not just that, but also her autoimmune thyroiditis and lose weight, lose 110 pounds, just by being in the program and asking questions on the group calls. She was a rebel. She was a rebel, and she refused to take the conventional medical statements at face value. In fact, she was educating her doctors about the things she was doing to get the results. 

I am an advocate of firing your doctor if necessary. I know that sounds rebellious or harsh, but here's the thing. If the doctor continues to dismiss your concerns, disregards your intuition, or only offers symptom suppressions, I tell my clients to fire them. Yes, I said that, fire them. They deserve a healthcare provider who listens, who works with them to figure out what's actually going on in their bodies, and who gives them the tools to heal, not just a prescription. In fact, that's why I've built my practice based on root cause approaches. 

So if you're a provider, I encourage you to encourage your clients to do the same. They deserve better. Here's something else I want to touch on. Too many practitioners wait until their patients have full blown disease, before they start addressing the health issues, and people accept that.

We're so conditioned to think that we need a diagnosis, before we can do anything about it. And subtle imbalances that are often the precursor to full-blown disease are ignored. And if we wait until we see the actual symptoms, it could be too late, like it was for my mom. 

So let's jump into lab testing, because that's a big place where so many symptoms and so many signs are overlooked. How many times have your clients come to you with their lab results showing that they're cholesterol, they're blood sugar, they're hormones, they're out of whack. They may not be out of whack according to the doctor. They may be barely out of whack, but they may be out of the ideal range. The doctor just says, it's fine. It's just a little bit off. No need to worry. It's super frustrating, and I believe super dangerous. When we look at those values, we know that slight imbalances can indicate bigger issues down the road.

That's why when I work with my clients, we don't just look for diseases, we look at patterns, for signs that something's off. These early warning signs give us the opportunity to prevent the disease in the first place, not to treat it, because that's harder. 

The health world is changing, and it's time for our clients to demand that their health providers give them the real answers by understanding their lab results, asking for the tests that matter like hormone panels, advanced cardiovascular tests, gut microbiome testing, and even genetic testing. And working with practitioners like us who look deeper, your clients can start to make informed decisions and choose the lifestyle changes that will impact their health. I know, depending on what kind of practitioner you are, a lot of our people are working with other practitioners. They're working with specialists. They're working with prescribers. They're working with other people.

Dr Ritamarie (07:15)

And if we can help them to have the right relationship with those other prescribers, it makes all the difference in the world. We can't just settle for this is the way it is. 

Everybody has the right to question, to challenge, and to demand answers. And when you do that, and when you teach your clients to do that, you empower yourself and your clients to take back control of health, one lifestyle change at a time. 

And you know, as a practitioner, you may also be a client, a patient of a doctor. Right? You may have some conditions that you're working on. Question, question, question, and use your functional medicine practices to help yourself get better. 

I truly believe that had my mom questioned her healthcare providers, had she insisted that they check things out, like, why do I have gallbladder issues? Why did I get rheumatoid arthritis? Why do these skin cancers keep coming back? Why am I tired in the afternoon all the time? 

And instead of well, you had nine kids, that's why you're tired. You have all this other stuff going on. No, she was 56 when she died. So all those years and even decades before that, she was given these pat answers and not given solutions. Had she been given solutions, had they looked at her lifestyle, her diet, had they known the tests to do to look for subtle imbalances, she might be still with us today. And that gets me really angry. 

So here's the work we do as functional practitioners. It's so vital. We're not here just to manage symptoms. We're here to transform lives by identifying root causes of illness before they escalate into something more serious and maybe irreversible. It's more than taking a pill. Even if the pill is an herb or a supplement, it's not just about taking a pill to suppress the symptoms. It's truly about understanding the underlying root causes and correcting it, correcting the imbalances, understanding how the body works, empowering your clients and yourself with the knowledge and the understanding to get the care that you deserve. It's about knowing that you don't have to accept the status quo. Aging doesn't have to mean declining health. And disease doesn't have to be a one way street. 

The work of functional practitioners is giving people the tools to take charge of their health through lifestyle changes, education, and most importantly, personalized solutions. We work with our clients to uncover the subtle imbalances that often fly under the radar and balances that can change the trajectory of their lives. This is how we help people to prevent disease, improve the quality of life and live with the vitality they deserve. We help them to become rebels. Teach your patients and clients to become rebels, question the narrative that they've been told and take control of their healing process. As a practitioner, your job is not to just simply follow the path that's been set out by conventional healthcare, but to blaze a new trail, one that empowers your clients to do the same. So I encourage you to continue to be a rebel, both for yourself and for your clients.

Keep questioning, keep challenging, and above all, keep pushing for answers. Together, we can continue to challenge the face of healthcare, one client at a time, groups of clients at a time, helping them to step into their power and reclaim their health.

I invite you to join me on the path of reinventing healthcare. And until next time, shine on.