From Healthcare Executive to Lifestyle Medicine Advocate: Drew Smithson's Journey

This paradox , as I view it , is the trust , interaction and communication gap that exists between exercise professionals and our medical community . This podcast is all about closing off that gap by disseminating the latest , most evidence-based and most engaging information in the health sciences , and to do that , in episode 119 , we're joined by Drew Smithson .

Drew's story is fascinating .

It starts with his journey as a health care executive , having many major roles in health care systems from an administrative perspective , and then pivoting , as he talks about during the COVID-19 pandemic , towards becoming more of a lifestyle medicine provider , working with exercise , nutrition , stress management and other lifestyle factors to improve individuals' health .

The reason why I think this conversation is so insightful is it's a look under the hood of health care from someone who lived in the business side of health care for more than two decades that decided to make a pivot to actually being a provider using lifestyle as medicine .

So many great tidbits of information , so many great gems that I think we all can pull out as we move forward on the journey to close off the Wellness Paradox . Any information we'd like to share with you from today's episode can be found on the show notes page , that's by going to wellnessparadoxpodcom . Forward slash episode 119 .

Please enjoy this conversation with Drew Smithson Today . We're delighted to be joined by Drew Smithson . Drew , thank you so much for joining us .

Just give us a little bit of an idea of your background to kind of tee up this discussion .

Actually , I started my career at Johns Hopkins about gosh 23 years ago now and I just fell in love with the administration side . But prior to that , axialism premed . I finished up premed . Also , my undergrad was in nutritional science , so that's where kind of I'm rooted into .

Really , if you want to call it , the wellness fitness aspect could actually just force nutrition as well as metabolism .

That was kind of my area of focus Back at a time where you probably remember this creatine was kind of a questionable nutrient supplement back in the day and I used to have a lot of discussion with my professors actually nutrition and actually biochemistry area about creatine and I was actually on it with the five gram a day .

You know it was even back then talking about five grams a day , etc . Etc . And that's really kind of where my love of fitness can .

So I should probably have you out there a little bit to start there and then kind of just led to where I was mean for some physicians back in around 2000 and talking about where my path is going to go , whether it was going to go to more .

Medical endocrinology is an area where obviously from the metabolism perspective it kind of fits and they said , geez , you know health insurance and you're going to laugh a little bit about this , because still the same issue today , even health insurance and the managed care industry is making it a little bit more difficult physicians to provide the care they want to do

. Yeah , and so as a 20 , 21 year old , I'm thinking myself what can I do to change that ? So healthcare administration I'm going to go in and help physicians and also try to see what I can do to facilitate them to do provide better care , and that's kind of how my career started off .

So over the last 20 years I basically moved up the ranks of more of the clinical operations side . So everything from a director of operations to associate vice president of operations at a large academic , then to vice president , coo at another large teaching campus and basically that's been my career and I was a CEO for a short time as well .

So I think that kind of gives you a good overview of my my 20 years in a nutshell . So I'm pretty well versed in all things , from acute care to amortuary care , which is more clinics , and then also post acute , which is long term acute care and things that sort of home care .

I used to do 5k all the time , run 18 , 19 minutes , go down around 10 to 12% body fat for good amount of my time . As soon as I got into grad school for health administration , you know , still going to the gym came out and then career started taking over . How's that ? Yeah , so , of course , about 15 years , my weight slowly started creeping up .

That seems to be the case with a lot of folks . Every year I was gaining about five pounds as I look back , and but before I knew it , in 2020 and now it's an interesting year for a lot of folks I was almost 260 pounds , right at six foot , and by that point I hadn't really taken good care of myself .

Best way to describe it is I ended up in the hospital for a little bit myself as soon as COVID took place and ended up in the clinics as well and found out that I basically had metabolic syndrome .

Well , I had all the factors metabolic syndrome , from everything from hypertension to , basically , type two diabetes , to GERD , which is not necessarily part of it , but still in that realm , sleep atnia was present for many years . Frankly , a lot of things that , frankly , the average person cats , yeah , and , unfortunately for me , I found out from my doctor .

They said , drew , if you don't start changing your lifestyle and that's where lifestyle comes in you know , in the next five to 10 years , based off the calculators and just how you're , you know where your general health is right now you're probably going to have a mace or a major adverse cardiac event , like an MI or even a stroke , because my cholesterol ,

everything wasn't just not where it needed to be .

And so I made a difficult choice back in 2020 to take a pause in my career and really focus on my health because , frankly , with what was going on in the world , I didn't know if I was going to end up in the ICU myself , yeah , and so this kind of leads into the pivot , but , honestly , it's where my life changed .

I started doing exactly what I think you should do , which is I started walking every day and I started looking at my diet , if you want to call it that . Call it nutrition , because I really think diet is just an interesting word to use sometimes .

But I looked at my nutrition and I said , gosh , I got to get rid of a lot of the processed stuff that I was always eating . I was eating out four to five times a week Again , like a lot of normal folks highly ultra processed , very little whole food and so I just dug through my pantry . I pulled out my own nutrition books .

Quite honestly , I kept them from college actually . I started watching actually a lot of podcasts as well to kind of just catch up on some things and there's some really good ones out there , of course eating , the good wellness paradox , as well as an opportunity to look at things too .

And , frankly , as I started just kind of tearing through nutrition and exercise and I started building my exercise regimen as well over the course of a few months , because you can't just start off too fast , right , especially at the weight I was at and things of that sort . So , yeah , over the course of about six to nine months I dropped to about 185 pounds .

All of my comorbidities were gone . My A1C went from about seven down to 5.5 . Now today it runs around five , and one of the things I made promise myself because I'm very goal oriented and that's kind of how my career led to where it did is that I wanted to do a triathlon by 2021 , if it was available to do so because of the pandemic , and I did that .

So , in the spring of 2021 , I did my first triathlon barely got through it because of the swim , the very first phase , but I got through it because I never liked to quit on anything and , yeah , that really kind of changed everything for me from between 2020 and 2021 .

I think the other thing that I should bring up is I didn't just sit around the house either . I think it's important to say .

Another thing is volunteering is something that's important to a lot of folks and there's an opportunity that arise and I still am very thankful and grateful for this opportunity hospice care , which is a really I call it a sacred thing nowadays . So I really didn't have much experience , even as a hospital executive .

Right , and they needed volunteer because , frankly , a lot of the volunteers backed out because you had to go to assisted living , to homes , I mean just a lot of things , and it was a very difficult time .

Well , because of my background , I wasn't too concerned about it as long as I had the right precautions , and so I did that and I got to listen and talk to all different families .

And you want to talk about really learning about life and also just the value of life , and you know a lot of the things I got to hear , mike is I wish I would have taken care of my health better and I wish I would have done more things with my family and not just work .

And I think those kind of hit me pretty hard , especially with the health component , because most of them either had cancer diagnosis and you can't always stop that per se and also dementia , alzheimer's those are the two primary things I know that actually had hospice care , but just to hear what they had to say about life , that changed a lot .

So I think when you take the combination of just my own life events plus this experience quite honestly led to this idea of my wife was very supportive as well , which is always helpful .

I went back into healthcare administration , by the way , so in 21 , I ended up coming back to Nashville and helped open a long-term acute care facility here in Nashville with a large organization .

But after that , by the year , I just realized that my passion and that pivot you're talking about really took shape and I decided and I talked to the group and I said , hey , it's been a great ride , I got to open up something , do some really good things , but I really want to move in this other direction , which is prevention and wellness .

So it was a really good thank you , thank you and that was kind of where my pivot started and that's where Descending Upwards came up . Interestingly enough , the company so we'll touch on that really quick , if that's okay Okay , we're Descending Upwards came up . I had a really good friend , former colleague , who actually he also pivoted . We talked at one point .

He's a hospital leader as well who actually opened his own CrossFit gym basically now , and he's very I mean he's more passionate than I am , like I mean he's very gunk-hope , he's got his own gym , everything . And he talked to me one day about my journey . He was just so fascinated by it and he's like you know , drew , you descended so far .

I mean , if you think about what you went through to try to get yourself back , and that's a turbulent time that year basically for a lot of folks , and he took advantage of it versus kind of did not . He's like you descended , and that's where that word descended came from . And he's like you should really think about that if you're gonna open a business .

And I said geez . So I gave him credit and he was John . So John , I give a shout out to you , fantastic gentleman . And so Upwards came up from the other end because , frankly , when you think about life a lot of times you have to descend before you end up moving back upwards again , yeah , and so I thought that was very fitting .

So a lot of people I have now have clients with and we can talk about that a little bit in a few minutes they all descend .

I mean , if you talk to their story I'm sure you get to hear these things as well in your life is that they hit a point , whether it's actually it can be a lot of things family , but we're focused on more health , but it all feeds together .

Quite honestly , and the stories I get from my clients when I start working with them , and actually people outside , just executives too and others , they're all kind of going through a lot of these things . They descend , but they don't always kind of hit that point where they wanna , with a health perspective , go back again , because it's very tough .

I mean it requires a lot of discipline and the ironic thing about discipline is that to be a senior leader or a leader let's put it that way a manager picket , there's discipline involved to get to that point and I always find it ironic that we're so good about being disciplined about work life that we're not as disciplined about our own well-being , as it takes

care of our families and our overall well-being , and that's where I wanna change that dynamic and that's kind of where my company comes in . It's a model right now , because I know that's a question as well , I think , where I wanna do a proof of concept . So that's what I did for the last almost 18 months now .

I started with a pilot group actually consisting of physicians you might be interested about this because I actually had more physicians than nurses than I did anybody else and I actually had one physician out mind sharing this . He kind of joked , he's like you're basically my PCP .

Now he thanks me still to this day because I've changed as he quotes it his life by getting him back to where he needs to be , and we talk regularly and some of the things I learned actually from this work , mike , is that the challenge you run into a little bit and I'm very cautious and I'm also very sensitive to this is that I think doctors do the best

they can given the time they have with patients , and I'm very , very acutely aware of how that works in the budgetary world as well as the operation world . We could talk about that all day and I think that you hear that a lot about the burnout where it's just not enough time of patients and too much time .

I'll see what the billing aspect and the administrative component of it , and I think there's a reality to that and I think that's where my difference is that I give my clients every week I don't do it once every few months or what have you and it's not 10 minutes or 15 minutes and then a lot of paperwork or looking at a screen typing up your EMR .

What I try to do is we start off with labs but honestly I don't say I'm not a physician which I'm not , I'm not even an RD , even with my nutrition background , but I do have that basis in that .

And what we do is we go over a lot , just the basic metabolic components and I say , okay , let's look at certain things and parameters and say has your doctor looked at this ? If there isn't anything that's unusual . And because I work with primary clinical folks over the last year and love them , know me , and that's where I've gotten my name out .

Actually , to the clinical component Is that there's a lot of labs out there that we don't necessarily utilize because they're not part of the standard of care Today's world and that's changing , and I think sometimes you look at different countries as well .

So I look at Europe a lot quite honestly now , especially when it comes to cardiac and metabolic components from cholesterol panels . I'll call it lipid panels . So we use a lot of the basic lipid panels today , but more and more research is coming up that there's the advanced lipid panels , they call it , which goes into the lipid , the particles .

It goes into A and B , which is becoming a very hot topic more now , things like LP little a , which is a genetic condition that frankly , surprising enough , it impacts one in five adults , one in three African Americans . I think that's a component that really needs to be more looked at .

I will say personally , I have a personal relationship with LP little a because I found out that I have an elevated number which actually has contributed to my own heart , my my own cardiac challenges a little bit . But I think there's a lot of tests out there that are becoming more commonplace hopefully soon .

But because of the more of the standard of care and just the way that we do checkbox I don't want to call it checkbox medicine , but we're kind of more regimented in a certain way that physicians are hesitant to sometimes order somebody's test , and so what we try to do is , sometimes I collaborate with the primary care and what we say is hey , have you thought

about doing this test in addition to this one , just to make sure ? Like , for example , glucose , a fast and glucose . Well , a lot of times you'll notice , and in research , your insulin levels are going to shoot up before your blood glucose goes up , and that's when the insulin resistance takes shape .

And a lot of times in a fasting , insulin is never checked generally , but fasting look like glucose is , or a one C sometimes , which gives you a little bit further out 90 days versus you know more immediate , which is great .

But again , if you can catch it early on and that's the whole point about prevention and wellness is trying to catch it before it gets to a certain point , and I think that's that's part of my .

My goal is to try to start bringing more awareness to that and when , using my leverage that I have I think that's to my background is that that's how I start to meet folks , is because I kind of enter through my own portal a little bit and , yeah , my pivot is kind of interesting a lot of folks , because here's this guy who was basically a healthcare

executive now has kind of , like you said , pivoted completely more clinical based , with a little bit of a business spin to it . So those are the kind of things I really focus on day to day right now .

As many of you know , the wellness paradox is all about closing off the trust , interaction and communication gap between fitness professionals and the medical community , and no organization does that better than the medical fitness association . They are the professional member association for the medical fitness industry .

This is the industry that integrates directly with healthcare in many facilities throughout the entire country . The MFA is your go-to source for all things medical fitness . They provide newsletters , webinars . They even have standards and guidelines for medical fitness facilities .

They do events around the entire country and , most importantly , they are one of the more engaging networks in the entire fitness industry . I personally have benefited from the network that I've developed through the medical fitness association and I highly recommend that all of you that are interested in solving the wellness paradox engage with the MFA .

To find out more about the medical fitness association , you can go to their website , medicalfitnessorg . That's medicalfitnessorg . Now back to today's episode . That's great . I love the arc of that entire story .

You know , from being in healthcare , understanding the inner workings of healthcare system to having your own personal health crisis to a certain degree and realizing that the path you were on isn't the path that was going to be sustainable for you to lead the life that you wanted to lead .

And now you know taking that pain and then transitioning into something that is now helping . You know other people address that very thing . I always found it to be very ironic that those of us that are caregivers often put our care very much on the back burner relative to the care that we provide other people .

You know your perspective as a healthcare executive is so unique simply because you understand you know the medical side of the system , but you also understand the business side of the system For our audience that is interested in . You know , integrating with healthcare as fitness and exercise professionals .

Where do you see the opportunities that lie for fitness and exercise professionals to integrate with healthcare ? And then we'll kind of follow on with how they can take advantage of those opportunities . But let's just start with the opportunities themselves .

Yeah , a good example is cancer care , even heart care , things of that sort where you have a dietitian , you have a nurse , you have a physician , you know , sometimes social work as well , things of that sort , and a lot of times , to your point , we don't necessarily have that fitness component right , we'll have a dietary but not the fitness , and they really do

hand in hand . I think they just start and kind of back up a little bit . How about this Healthcare ? How do we define healthcare today ? And I think a lot of people talk about being sick care , medicine right , versus well care . I think medicine has been set up in a certain way . Right now we're mentioning wellness .

One isn't funded quite yet and you can hear that from a lot of my colleagues . I mean , I won't , you know , I will share this much . I talk a lot , I'm out there a lot because I can talk to my colleagues and they say , yeah , it's a great thing , but you got to follow the money . And where is the money ? Today it's intervention .

It's still more cath lab , ep , you know , surgical intervention , stenting , that you know , etc . Etc . Micro valve things for cardiac and there's really a little amount of money spent right now less than 5% , quite honestly on the prevention side , and I think that's where there's that opportunity .

I think you're going to start , you're starting to see it quite honestly in this last few years .

You're starting to see more talk and then you have folks I don't want to say myself , but yeah , I've seen it more and more where you're starting to see there's some CEOs out there really literally committing to more of that lifestyle slash , prevention type model where there isn't the money necessarily there . Yet Some of the call .

We sometimes call it value based care . I'm very careful when I call it that because it's more cost efficiency . If you want to call it that still , yeah , with a nice wording to it . Almost the value piece is kind of an interesting one .

I like to call it health based care almost , if we could , because the higher quality outcomes , the more you keep people from ending up in the hospital . That's where you should get paid for that and I think that's where this opportunity really in the next , I think , five years . This is where I keep thinking about the next five years right now .

I do believe in the next five years or so you're going to see more of this dynamic change because the world is getting more and more healthy . I mean , if you already look at the rates out there I keep looking at LL statistics .

I just always have I'm very data driven , being an operations guy , I'm always looking at data is that we're at about 43 to 45% OBC rate , because the last statistics really came out right before COVID and it's kind of delayed a little bit .

So because of COVID , everybody's talking about the explosion of obesity , more and what have you , and I don't disagree with it . I think it probably has increased . I don't think it's increased in the last few years and with that you still have again metabolic syndrome . I think the paper came out from TUS .

I put a little post out about a year and a half ago about whether 90 to 93% of all Americans are metabolically unhealthy right now quote , unquote . And that's a concern .

That's a concern for the US as a whole , at least talking about our country because frankly , productivity is what keeps the world going around and if we're very sick as a nation in the future and that's kind of the track we're still on . You know , how are we going to be as productive ?

Yes , I think there's great technology coming out with AI and all that and I think there's going to be a value to that . But you still need people , especially in healthcare , people with dry health care , not technology , and a lot of the generations still prefer to see a doctor or a person face to face , even if it's like this .

They don't want to just have a phone call or some generated something telling you what to do , at least not today . So I don't see that changing . And , frankly , going back to where fitness fits in , is that I just ? I think we're going to have to kind of keep pushing .

So I think you just had a conference with American College of Sports Medicine , I think it was . I saw , I noticed . I think we need to get more of these kind of folks together . We're just like the American College of you know , lifetime Medicine now , which is a little bit newer it's a little over 10 years , almost 15 years old , I think Great group .

It's growing pretty rapidly , quite honestly . Functional medicine is another area of you know , things of that holistic kind of medicine . I think those are kind of things I think we're going to see more and more transition to , especially from physicians . If you talk to them , they're enjoying this side because they feel great about what they're seeing take place .

And I think when you talk about burnout , I got touch on that , like I think it's important because there's more reports coming out , like even yesterday again , that's talking about burnout , and I've seen plenty of it , I think myself . I think I probably felt some of myself obviously back in 2020 . That's kind of what I think .

I was just kind of a little bit toasted myself Because I think I was scared of other people Myself , because we do give ourselves . I think you're right , we're all caregivers . That's what I used to say to all of my teams .

I don't care if you're administrative or direct care , we're all caregivers Because we try to take care of each other so we can take care of the community . That was always my slogan , basically , and we do put others before ourselves a lot , and that's great because we're a very high empathy kind of an area , have a way to manage that high empathy .

You take in , that stress and it's hard to get out . And I think this goes where the fitness comes in . I think fitness is a wonderful way of relieving that peace , so you can get on with your day and have a high energy and things of that sort .

Um , and I think that's where a nugget comes in too , mike , I think the more we can talk about the value of fitness right now , fitness doesn't necessarily can not , can really build . It's more private , based , like myself even right now . Well , um , but I think multi D is where this is going to start .

More , I can tell you that there are places looking more at longevity centers . You've probably heard that word a lot .

It's become a very , very popular word lately longevity or lifespan , I think it's the other word for it and then there's health span , which is , you know , there's longevity , living long time , and then there's actually the other part , which is quality of life , which I think it almost is probably as important , not more important , than length .

They don't want to be , you know , retiring and all of a sudden unable to do hardly anything you know , and be dependent on the health system versus enjoying your life . Hopefully , and , um , I think this is where fitness really has an opportunity , but I think right now I'm going to be blunt about it .

It's just , it's a hurdle that's pretty high still , um , but I think there's a lot of physicians out there and I'm probably going to be one on that keeps tooting this component , where nutrition , fitness , sleep , stress and then obviously the emotional wellbeing component comes into all that , um , and I think it's like a trifecta to me , because I look at what I

do every day for myself and that's how I always try to look at it with my clients , um , I use a platform , quite honestly , a nap that actually helps them create their own models of fitness , but also track a lot of their other biometrics component and their food every day , so we can track a little bit of everything .

Um , and I can tell you that my recent , most recent , clients are nurse and , uh , she's so excited . Her triglyceride level and I'm not sharing this part of it because it's this is this piece of it but she went from over at around 150 , which is a high level down to 58 without any kind of it was basically fitness was a big component .

She had not done a lot of workout . She does 35 minutes a day now and she loves it . Her husband is now joined her as well . He's a physician and is the best thing .

I mean it was so much fun to see that basically to our guess , one of your factors of metabolic health and to see her drop almost from 150 to 58 , which is actually when you look at Mark Hyman and other physicians who have a pretty good name out there . You know the goal is under sixties and ideal state not under a hundred hundred .

Right now actually is the lab kind of metric of good , but really most people say , most physicians say between 60 and 70 is a really good level . She's at 58 now and now it's in eight months . Yeah , so , and it was just basically tweaking her diet , her nutrition model a little bit , um , and then exercise . That was really the two big components .

So you have to contribute between the two of them that that win um and her muscle mass and I think that's a really important part too has improved her tone . She loves it . Um , you know she just turned 60 . So I mean , from that perspective it's not as easy to do those kind of things , but yet she's rocking and it is the .

I have to tell you , being a provider , there's nothing better and I can see why physicians and nurses and truly direct care love what they do , because there's nothing , there's no better feeling to actually know you made an impact on some nice life .

And I think the fitness professionals , I think their component into this is key Because , again , the way I'm doing it right now is a decent model , but I think more robustly at a health system level there's so much more opportunity and that's where I'm going to commit a lot of my time , honestly , over this next chapter of my life , trying to get folks like

yourself . You're doing the same thing , trying to advocate I think that's a good word for it . Advocate , but also show that it works so that , when we can get it more mainstream , we're fitness experts can work side by side with nurses , with the dietitians , etc . They are a valued partner versus more of a .

I don't want to call it fringe , but I think it goes into a little bit of a talk of what do we think about fitness experts ? Because in health care , majority of health care professionals have bachelor degree , master degree , etc . I mean it's probably one of the most highly educated sectors in any industry . That's not always the case with the fitness side .

However , I'm also very sensitive because I've met wonderfully smart , intelligent fitness experts who may not have a degree but have those certifications from ACE or pick the national certification . Who does not do a wonderful job .

I think there's that barrier there sometimes too , where it just is sometimes and I've seen it where you have one that says , well , you're not this , so therefore you don't meet the standard . Despite that they do . I think there's some of that stigma . Maybe that's part of it and I don't like to say it .

It's not to be negative about it , it's just to say that there's this component where healthcare just hasn't recognized yet the value of you bring up this great group of folks who bring a lot of knowledge and they do change lives . I think that's where this chasm we call it sometimes , where it needs to be crossed .

I think , again , we're seeing this slowly change because of what this last few years has caused . I think it truly has been a pivotal moment in healthcare where you're now seeing just things have to change . Healthcare , as a lot of people say , is broken and it can't be sustained the way it's going .

I think fitness is going to be a big part of it , just as much as holistic care , if you want to , and that's part of it . I truly believe that , Mike .

Where's the best place to go to find out more information about you and all the great work you're doing ?

I really have some ideas about direct-to-employer type models of care . That's something we could always spend a lot of time . I mean , there's a lot of things we could talk about , probably have multiple episodes about things . There's a lot of things . I think that's a part where I talked to Chief Wellness Officer Mike .

I have a really close friend who actually is exercise . He's actually was . I won't give too much away yet , but he was a pretty big name actually with college football .

He was an athlete trainer who now is pretty much a Chief Wellness Officer for a pretty major organization in the world actually , and he's doing some really fantastic things to improve health , and a lot of it has to do with wellness again to the point of what you bring up , the fitness component with nutrition , just living well .

So I'm seeing more of these kind of things where you're seeing direct models of care , and I think this is where fitness fits into it . I truly do . It's not just a physician-led or nurse-led , it can be , like again , an athlete trainer . This is a great example of that .

I can only tell you he's part of a major organization international-wise helping lead wellness for a multinational company and it's impressive to see what he's doing .

So , yeah , I think the journey is just really kind of the tip of the iceberg right now for a lot of folks , and the more I get to meet and just kind of get out there , the more excited I am about exactly what you're advocating for and what you're focused on . That wellness paradox . I like that title .

Honestly , I think it's kind of really catchy when I got to hear about it and I really agree with what you're trying to say is that it is frustrating a lot of times when I read your bio about why you did what you did .

It can be very frustrating , even as a health care executive when we think about , hey , we want a healthy community , but one of our biggest , you know , our goal is , frankly , to take care of from an acute perspective .

It's not necessarily from a non-acute , despite about 80 to 90% of all care really being outside the hospital walls , quote unquote a lot of our time is focused inside because that's where a lot of the resources are spent and I think that's part of the dynamic that needs to change .

You know and I was talking to a cardiologist and maybe I can bring this up really quick because I love talking to doctors about things you know , even if we did change the paradigm where we kind of got a lot of people to go more healthy living , more lifestyle focused , there's still going to be plenty of volume , quite honestly , at the end of the day , because

there's genetic deformity . I mean there's all kinds of things out there . That's just natural . I mean it's just life . You know genetics does play a part in our health .

However , as we know more now today , as research is coming out , that 70 to 80% of it really is epigenetics in our lifestyle that impacts our genes function , but there's always going to be plenty of volume and with our aging population anyway , the hospitals are not going to be not busy for a good while .

So I think there's that component to look at and say how can we manage ? You know , especially with our I think I'll use my healthcare put my healthcare executive hat on for a second , mike , is that we are seeing an aging group of physicians , an aging group of nurses . Okay , the average age of physicians , I think , is somewhere around 56 right now .

That's a little bit of a concern . A lot of them can actually opt out soon . Yeah , nurses are somewhere between when I was running my hospitals , anywhere between 50 and 55 . And there's only a few years ago and with the burnout quote unquote increasing still , you're seeing more and more of this .

So there's going to have to be an incentive soon , and AI is not going to be the solution anytime soon . I mean , we're talking a lot about doing more paperwork ministry , which is great . I think it'll help .

But if we're not going to have the people , especially in the acute side , we've got to do something to keep them healthy so they don't necessarily take up all the inpatient side , so we can get them into the ambulatory care and just keep them healthier .

And I think that's where , again , I think there's this beautiful moment I don't use that word beautiful , I guess I don't use it too often when I again I use five years kind of mentality that we're going to see some kind of a flip and I'm truly optimistic I use that word as well that there's something that's going to be a trigger that says we can't keep

going down the same route . And I just want to be part of that because I really do care , I love , I love health care . My mom's a nurse 40 plus years . So I grew up in a family of nurses and educators primarily . So it's always been my way to be a coach and mentor and really help communities out .

And if I have an impact on that for both a direct and I call it indirect administrative type way , then great . I feel great about my life and my career . Still , and it happened to be my own health event to your point early on .

That has kind of triggered this other side of me to say , hey , I think there's another way to still improve the health of our community and our society and it's not just through traditional health care . It truly is a different model of care where I think fitness more focused on the lifestyle component and it's more broad , as you know .

It's just key components of sleep to nutrition , to exercise , stress management , well-being as they call it . I think those things we kind of keep focusing on that more We'll have a healthier society of the whole , emotionally wise , emotional well-being as well as physical . And I want to say I remain optimistic .

I'm always call it and people call me , an optimistic realist because I think I am , I know , reality wise , it's not going to be quick , but I'm optimistic that we will continue to see positive change .

And to bring this to a close and this is a question I'm really excited to ask you because of where you spent your career in health care as an executive but I always end the podcast on the question of what I consider the wellness paradox is this trust , interaction and communication gap that exists between exercise professionals and the medical community .

If you could take your experience and everything that you've talked about today and sum it up and to once a synced piece of advice for the fitness professionals that are listening to close off that gap , what would it be ?

If you can do that and recognize where they're at and get to where they are , recognizing that they may not see what you're going through because you are trying to break through that barrier , if you want to call it that to some degree but recognize what everything you're hearing out there is real .

So for this , and they're getting fresher because of all the paperwork , whereas a lot of the exercise professionals don't necessarily have to go through all the insurance stuff and all the administrative push to say you need to see this many patients and all those kind of things .

There's a lot of pools and pushes and I think if they can understand that and if we can educate and I'm happy to do those kind of things as well to say , hey , here's what is going on in health care on this end right now , if we can meet in the middle and say , hey , here's the values proposition you bring and you're probably more part of the team because

you can't build , not today . However , you have a value add , just like an RD or a social worker . Rds can build some time for certain things like diabetes , education , etc . But social workers don't necessarily build , but they're a big component of the team when it comes to what's going on in our social network , with the family and what have you .

There's that same part of this . Fitness , okay , what are you doing every day ? It doesn't have to be weightlifting , it doesn't have to be necessarily going crazy on cardio . It could be just again , taking the holistic view and saying all right , are you tracking steps , for example ? That's an easy one to look at . I do that with all my clients .

They all wear wearables , basically , and I say , hey , let's focus on that , let's get you to a certain point . That's a pretty easy win and , as we know , walking is a fairly good , almost zone two level type exercise for a lot of people .

And I think if you can do that , mike , as fitness professionals for right now , I think you can cross that chasm , as we call it . It's just going to take some time .

I think you're going to have patience , but I think you have to have a recognition of where the challenges are right now on the traditional healthcare side as an exercise professional and say where can I add value ? It may be like I do where I collaborate with primary care doctor . Well , unless you get paid to do it .

It's just part of my thing I want to do to make it easier for the client , or , as they call , patient , for the physician . Well , you have clients too , fitness professionals . That's why we call them clients . Well , why can't you do the same thing ? Have you thought about that ? Have you thought about actually interacting with their primary care doctor ?

You know I'm not unique in that , I don't think . But I have no problem and maybe that is where another part comes in is is there fear in exercise professionals trying to reach out to physician , because they can be sometimes intimidating ? Yeah , I've worked with them for 20 years , so I'm very comfortable in that world . Not everybody is .

I think that's one of the things where you see that white coat , you know effect when you walk into a doctor's office like everybody seems to get it , where your blood pressure grows up and all those kind of things . You know . Maybe an exercise professional has that kind of a .

You know you have to think about those things and say , hey , I got to get out of my comfort zone . I think that's the other thing with exercise professionals is that they're very comfortable in their space , but when they also maybe try to enter into the healthcare models , that is today , it's a really different space .

It's not as flexible , it's much more regimented , very standard of care and it's kind of like you would do it when you're creating a workout model , for example , but it's more strict because , again , how you get paid is different than how you get paid as an exercise professional .

So , again , I think it's more of a recognition today and I think also the opportunities that do partnerships and say , hey , I have my client that I'm trying to work on . I understand they have these things going on . How can we work together ? And I'm happy to provide information , like I do . I'm happy to share stats .

You know , here's what's going on with their resting heart rate , here's what's going on with their nutrition . It's long to see that this is how we're trying to lose weight , etc . I think that's where your fitness professionals have that opportunity , just like I am doing . Is it to kind of be the one that reaches out ?

Any information we'd like to share with you from today's episode can be found on the show notes page , that's by going to wellnessparadoxpodcom forward slash episode 119 . Please be on the lookout for our next episode when it drops in two weeks , and don't forget to subscribe through your favorite podcast platform . Until we chat again next , please be well .