DrKrupka

DrKrupka explains why functional medicine doctors won’t consume seed, oils, and why you shouldn’t either. Avoid seed oils to reduce your inflammation, and naturally control your autoimmune flareups like a functional medicine boss!

DrKrupka explains why functional medicine, doctors care about food reactions, as well as the best way to test for them so you know what to avoid. When you avoid reactive foods, you support your body’s natural ability to control your autoimmune flareups. Learn which foods you need to avoid, and control your autoimmune flareups, like a functional medicine boss!

DrKrupka learn what a functional medicine doctor knows about your detoxification pathways, and why they likely need some support. Learn how to best support your detoxification pathways so that you can decrease. Inflammation and support your bodies, natural ability to control your autoimmune flareups. Detox like a boss, to control your autoimmune flareups like a functional medicine boss.

Drkrupka explains, from a functional medicine, perspective, how to overcome challenges in, raising your vitamin D levels to the optimal level on your lab work. Learn how to increase your vitamin D levels, and calm your autoimmune flareups, like a functional medicine boss!

DrKrupka explains how a functional medicine doctor can test and use omega-3 fats to normalize your physiology and help your body naturally control your autoimmune flareups. Learn how to test your omega-3 and omega-six levels, and control your autoimmune flareups like a functional medicine boss.

Drkrupka explains the first of 5 tips to help autoimmune patients control flare ups from their autoimmune disease. This video explains how to test vitamin D levels and how to know from a functional medicine perspective when you need a vitamin D supplement. Functional medicine approaches to autoimmune issues

www.DrKrupka.com many times patients ask their standard MD to run one of my functional lab panels. The answer is almost ALWAYS "no". Why is that? Patrick Krupka, DC, CFMP gives a behind-the-scenes look at why that is. Patrick Krupka, DC, CFMP: So a question I get regularly from patients is, can they get their family practice doctor, or gynecologist, or endocrinologist, whomever, to run our lab panels instead of us running them? Which I don't mind. I tell the patients regularly, I don't care who orders it. As long as it's got the components that I need, it'll work for us. So that comes up regularly. Well, there are several reasons why we've had very little success getting other doctors to run our lab panels. So I just want to run through this real quickly. It's, again, something I answer pretty regularly during an average week at the office. So number one, understand that I do functional medicine, and the lab panels that we've put together are specifically geared toward finding underlying mechanisms. Looking for problems before they are so far down the road that they're diagnosable. Looking for indications that there's dysfunction even if there's not disease at this point. That's, to a large degree, what functional medicine is known for. Is getting down to the root cause. Think of the gas gauge in your car. You don't wait till you run out of gas on the side of the road to go put gas in the car. Although it's undeniable at that point that there's a fuel problem. In functional medicine, you would read that you're at a quarter tank, realize what's about to happen and go fix the situation before it gets that bad. That's the difference. That's what our lab panels are made for. So understanding that, one of the first reasons that they won't do it is because insurance won't pay for many of those tests. Those tests are kind of considered screening tests. I'm looking at blood sugar, for example, four or five different ways in someone who's not necessarily been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance. So the insurance company would say, "Why don't you just do a fasting blood sugar and not all these other tests? They don't have a diagnosis that would support needing that kind of monitoring." Obviously my answer would be those tests will tell me if they're becoming a type 2 diabetic, and I'd like to fix it before they get there. Well, I'm sure the insurance company is fine with that. That's just not what they're for. That's not what they pay for. They pay to monitor and treat diseases that are already in existence, not future diseases. So they don't pay for those things. A full thyroid panel once a year on everybody. If they haven't been diagnosed with some sort of thyroid disease, the insurance company doesn't want to pay to run a full thyroid panel on them. Maybe they'll pay for a TSH, but not for the rest of it. So in a doctor's office, if they're going to run these tests, they've got to now justify to the insurance company why they want to be reimbursed for all this testing. And so if they don't feel comfortable making those arguments or asking for justification, then they'll just refuse to do it. So that's one of the big reasons is they have to deal with the insurance machine, and that machine doesn't like the way we test things. Number two is they don't always know how to interpret these tests. Many of these tests are tests that they don't regularly do, and I think to some degree, rightfully so, if they're not sure what that test means or why it's relevant, should they really be ordering that test? Because you could look back at it on paper later and someone could make the argument, "look, you ordered the test. Why didn't you do anything about it? When the results came back?" And the doctor could say, "look, I don't understand that test. The patient just asked me to order it because of this other guy, but it wasn't my deal." Well, still, you ordered the test on paper, it was delivered to your clinic, and then you didn't explain it to the patient or do anything. And so I think they get nervous about getting in that situation if there were tests on the list that they're not used to doing on a routine basis, that they're not used to reacting to. And that brings me to my third point is the reacting to it. So in a situation where that test could come back abnormal, and there's not a medication for that, there's not a fix. Like your cholesterol comes back high, they're going to want to prescribe a statin drug. But what if there's a test where it comes back out of range, and there's no drug for that? Well then, what are they going to do? Are they going to tell you, "Hey, you have a problem?" And then you say, "okay, what do we do?" "I don't know. We don't treat that." They don't want to get in that situation. So there are several reasons why those clinics won't order the labs that I want to see. I don't fault them, but I think patients sometimes feel like, "They're lab tests. Either of you could order them. Why can't I just get them from my other doctor?" Well, there are legitimate hurdles that would keep your regular doctor, your family doctor, from ordering those tests. It doesn't always mean that they wouldn't find the results interesting, or maybe they could even counsel you on the results, but if they can't justify it to the insurance industry, then they're going to be on the hook for the price if they do it. Especially if they're part of a group practice, that's absolutely going to be frowned upon. You're going outside the standard protocols for that group, and you're going to cost the group money and open them up to liability if you're doing tests that the group hasn't already said, "this is how we handle this. You get a patient with these issues, these are the labs you run." And then, all of a sudden, they've got a doctor doing all these extra labs that they're not used to seeing. That's going to make them very nervous. That doctor's going to get quite a bit of pushback for that. So I just wanted to let you guys know. Those are the main reasons why other clinics typically will not run labs that I want to see or run the lab panel that I ask for. I freely give out my lab panel with order codes and CPT codes, order codes for Labcorp and Quest. I give those out to patients when I'm recommending the lab if they want to try having their other doctor run. I can tell you in the 20 plus years I've been doing this, the only cases where I've seen other doctors run these panels in full is when that doctor is a family member of the patient. I mean, honestly, that's really the only time I've ever seen it. So those are the issues. If you have questions or comments, or if you've run into that, let me know. Let's have a chat about it. You guys have a good one.

Magnesium is the last of the Foundational 5 supplements that Dr. Krupka recommends to his Functional Medicine patients. Dr. Krupka also discusses various forms of Mg, and why it is such a common deficiency. He also explains functional nutrition testing for Mg using the RBC Mg test.

Patrick Krupka, DC, CFMP talks about why Vitamin D is included in the Functional Medicine Foundational 5 supplements, how to test your vitamin D levels, and how to dose your vitamin D supplements.

Functional Medicine practitioner, Dr. Patrick Krupka, explains the importance of probiotics as part of the Foundational 5 supplements and a functional nutrition approach to optimal health and wellness including supporting the microbiome.

More of my patients have had an elevated D-dimer test result. Why is this happening? Should you be tested? What do we do when someone has an abnormal result? Well I answer all of that and more in this short video. Ask your Functional Medicine doc for your test, or call our office. DrKrupka.com

Dr. Krupka discusses the benefits of Fish Oil omega 3 supplementation as part of his Foundational 5 supplements that are necessary for everyone. Dr. Krupka uses these supplements in his Functional Medicine, Functional nutrition practice for management of patients with inflammation or autoimmune issues. He also discusses using the Omegaquant test for omega 3 deficiency testing.

Dr. Krupka explains his list of 5 supplements everyone should be taking on the daily. This is video #1 in the Foundational 5 series and this video explains the foundational list as well as the 3 classes of multivitamins and which one is right for you. Functional Medicine funtime with Patrick Krupka, DC, CFMP.

Patrick Krupka, DC, CFMP discusses the similarities of most of the most popular low carb diets and why this same purpose keeps coming up again and again. Patrick Krupka, DC, CFMP: So you can't really go anywhere without hearing somebody talking about a low carbohydrate diet. There's whole 30, keto, low-carb paleo, diets that prioritize protein, fasting mimicking diets, fasting, intermittent fasting, keto, carnivore. We could go on all day with different diets that accentuate protein, or in the case of keto, protein and fat, at the expense of carbohydrate. I don't have a big issue with that. I think in many people, that's beneficial. But I want you to understand that whichever one of those you choose or whichever one of those is recommended to you or whatever, they all share a very common goal, a very similar goal. They go about it a little bit differently, but the goal is to expose you to a lot less insulin than you've been doing already. So I'm going to talk you through real briefly two or three different things to explain what insulin does and how it becomes a problem because we need it. Why would you want less of it? So we're going to talk about that and then an overview of how the system works and what the diets do. So think of going to a loud concert. At some point in your life you've been to a loud concert or a very noisy place. So when you leave that noisy place, you realize, "Oh my gosh, my mom was right. I'm going deaf. I can't hear very well." But if you spend some time in a quiet environment, your ears will kind of reset and you can hear normally again. Your ears decreased their sensitivity to sound as a protective mechanism because they were being bombarded with so much noise. So they kind of turned down their sensitivity. It protects them. When you get out of that environment, you're in a quiet environment, it allows that sensitivity to return to normal and you hear normally again. That's a very common mechanism in our physiology. We do it with excess hormones and all kinds of stuff. I'm not going to go through the list, but it works that way with insulin as well. So there are times where people will consume diets for a prolonged period of time that require large amounts of insulin. That's the loud concert. That insulin is constantly bombarding the cells. So let's say I was to drink a Coke or eat a Snickers or have a donut or something that provides a large load of sugar in a short period of time. My blood sugar is going to go up significantly. Now in response to that, my body says, "That's too high. Not supposed to be like that." So my pancreas makes insulin, throws it into the bloodstream. It takes a bunch of that excess blood sugar and shoves it into some cells as storage. We all know what the storage is. But it shoves it into the cells for storage, and that brings our blood sugar back down. That's the way it's supposed to work, except it's not supposed to spike that high. We're not supposed to have foods that do that to us. If you went back before we started processing our foods, you'd have honey, maple syrup, and maybe some of the fruits that were fairly sugary. Maybe some tubers, carrots and beets had some sugar in them, but there weren't things that delivered the load of sugar that we get now from processed sugars like high fructose corn syrup and soft drinks and things like that. Anyway, so that's the way the system's supposed to work. But if that happens all the time, now you're at the loud concert. You eat something, your blood sugar goes up, you make the insulin dump it into the system, and it tells the cells, "Hey, take this sugar. I'm clearing this out of the blood, and the cells say, "Man, I think I've had enough. I'm not listening today. I'm not going to take the blood sugar. Thanks, but no thanks." And so your body says, "Well, wait a minute. I don't have an option to leave it in the bloodstream. That's not acceptable. I'll just make twice as much insulin and force the cells to take it." Well, the cells get wise to that, and the next time this comes around, they pack extra cotton in their ears, and now you've got to make three times the normal amount of insulin. So they put on earmuffs on top of the cotton. Now you've got to make four times the normal amount of insulin. It's this battle between wanting to clear the sugar out of the blood, and the cells saying, "Look, I've had all I can take. Don't give me any more of that." "But it has to come out of the bloodstream." "But I can't take anymore." "But it has to come out of the bloodstream." And here's the argument going on. So the insulin level starts to go up to force the cells to take it while they're trying to protect themselves. That's insulin resistance. If that goes on long enough, you can't make enough or the cells can't take enough to control the blood sugar, and the blood sugar starts to go up. Now, your markers like hemoglobin A1C and fasting blood sugar are going to start to go up and everybody realizes you've got a problem. That's the mechanism. If you go for a period of time where you make almost no insulin, those cells have time to process the blood sugar they've taken, to deal with the storage issues, to start to normalize, and they haven't heard insulin for a while. Once you go for a couple of weeks like that, they start looking around like, "Hey, I was avoiding this stuff, but now I'm not seeing it at all. Maybe I'm missing something. I'm a little bit more capable of taking some blood sugar now. Maybe I should start listening." And they start taking the cotton out of the ears and taking the earmuffs off. So they're now monitoring the system to see if there's any insulin floating around. You're returning back to a more normal insulin sensitivity because you've avoided having insulin in the system for a while, or at least not at the amounts that had the loud concert effect. So as an overview, the reason the low-carb diets or keto or fasting or any of that really are beneficial for people is because you've spent some time with the pendulum over here with the high blood sugar, the high insulin. The cells can't handle it. Everybody's arguing with each other. Think of overusing a credit card. You're maxed out and you're still trying to charge on it. You need to spend some time on this side of the pendulum where there's no insulin being produced and there's no blood sugar issue to deal with, and the cells can start to process what they've had. They become receptive to insulin again. Your insulin levels drop. You can start pulling out of storage instead of just putting into storage, because that's the goal, to pull out of storage. So once the pendulum has been here long enough to pay off the balance on the credit card, then you can bring it back to the middle and live in moderation. It's not the goal to live there. The goal is to live in moderation, but you've spent so much time charging up the credit card, you've got to spend some time paying off the credit card before you can just have an empty credit card sitting in your pocket and use it once in a while and pay it off at the end of every month. If you just go from overcharging on it to paying what you're charging each month, you still have that big balance earning interest. You've got to spend some time over here first. Blood sugar and insulin resistance are not all that different. So what the low-carb diets get you, low sugar, low-carb fasting, whatever, it's a opportunity to spend some time dealing with all of that storage and all of the ramifications of that without adding to that. Without showing those cells any more insulin. Without forcing them to take any more sugar. They just get to quietly process what they've already got. And then, without that insulin level being so elevated... And I've done other videos on insulin and fat loss. Without that insulin being so elevated when you exercise, you actually have an opportunity to pull some calories out of storage and use that fuel during your exercise. If your insulin levels are high enough and everything is still going towards storage, you can't pull out of storage at the same time. It makes you very resistant to burning off body fat. So that part of it's a little bit of a different discussion, but the goal of the low carbohydrate diets, whichever one you choose, is to exist with very little insulin long and enough that the whole system resets itself just like your ears would reset themselves after the loud concert. So I hope the analogies didn't confuse you. I hope that made some sense, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit about all the different low-carb diets that are out there. And when you're choosing between them, it's probably more important to just pick one that fits your lifestyle that you feel like you can have some success with. The common goal of all of them is to be on this side of the pendulum for a period of time where you are not making much insulin. So I hope that made sense to you. If you have questions, let me know. If you hear this and think, "Oh my God, I didn't know that. Who does this?" Call the office or find a functional medicine doctor near you. It's a big part of what we do on a regular basis. All right, hope you have a great afternoon.

www.drkrupka.com Some Functional Medicine doctors are starting to suggest that you should have your labs done without fasting. This can yield some very interesting information, but there are a few important factors to consider before you try this. This is usually suggested for cholesterol or lipid testing and blood sugar testing.

www.DrKrupka.com Dr. Krupka explains why the current HbA1c standards for a type II diabetic are inadequate and encourage disease persistence. From a Functional Medicine perspective, using nutrition and lifestyle interventions, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetics should be able to meet a better standard.

I make my prediction for the introduction of lab grown meat in the United States market. You need to be aware of the steps in their plan to take away your ability to choose what you eat and serve your family! Watch now!