Turnpaugh Talks

Welcome back to Turnpaugh Talks!  In this episode, Dr. Ross Marchegiani and Dr. Chris Turnpaugh give an overview of the condition of leaky gut and how it develops.  The Doctors start by describing the digestive tract, and different ways that this part of the body can become aggravated or cause problems. Dr. Ross and Dr. Turnpaugh also talk about various ways that leaky gut can affect your body, including hormonal imbalances and depression. The Doctors finally discuss some ways to help those with this condition, and encourage listeners to seek more information if they believe this condition applies to them.   At Turnpaugh Health and Wellness, we take a whole-body approach to your health and wellness care by incorporating physical medicine, nutrition, emotional health, and ongoing support. We use advanced diagnostic tools, a root cause medical approach, 25 years of clinical experience, a comprehensive care team and hour-long appointments because we believe that you deserve better health. We take a Care Team Approach to your health journey. Our team collaborates to provide excellent, cutting edge functional medicine individualized just for you. For more information on Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center, visit www.turnpaughhwc.com.

In this episode, Dr. Ross Marchegiani and Dr. Chris Turnpaugh sit down to discuss the increasingly prevalent topic of gluten sensitivity and Celiac disease. Dr. Marchegiani and Dr. Turnpaugh talk about how mutations of gluten over the past few centuries have contributed to different medical issues and bodily reactions, as well as the differences between gluten sensitivity and Celiac.  Dr. Marchegiani and Dr. Turnpaugh also discuss the importance of monitoring any gluten sensitivity symptoms, and what steps you should take moving forward if you are experiencing them.  At Turnpaugh Health and Wellness, we take a whole-body approach to your health and wellness care by incorporating physical medicine, nutrition, emotional health, and ongoing support. We use advanced diagnostic tools, a root cause medical approach, 25 years of clinical experience, a comprehensive care team and hour-long appointments because we believe that you deserve better health. We take a Care Team Approach to your health journey. Our team collaborates to provide excellent, cutting edge functional medicine individualized just for you.

In this episode of Turnpaugh Talks, Dr. Turnpaugh sits down with Dr. Regina Smith to discuss her passions that led her to Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center. Growing up, Dr. Regina always thought she wanted to be a veterinarian but, after working in a nursing home as a medical assistant, she realized she wanted to work with people instead. She read a book by Bernie Siegel about how much the brain and thoughts influence the body and healing. This turned her onto the idea of holistic medicine. She attended osteopathic school after undergrad because she liked the idea of the body healing itself. She worked at a couple of hospitals but eventually, she began to get frustrated because she felt that setting did not allow her to do everything she needed to do to help her patients. She attended a functional medicine lecture, met Dr. Turnpaugh through her sister in-law, and never looked back. Dr. Regina is always learning and bringing new findings to the office. She is constantly attending lectures, always up to date on the latest research, and enjoys both learning from and educating her coworkers at THWC. Dr. Regina specializes in treating chronic Lyme Disease. She has dedicated so much time to researching and attending conferences about Lyme for the sake of her patients. She is so passionate about helping her patients to the absolute best of her abilities. Many people who have chronic Lyme have been told in the past that there is no such thing and it is all in their heads. Dr. Regina provides compassionate care, understanding that if they aren’t feeling well there is something wrong and she will figure out what that is. Many times treating a person as if they have Lyme disease, even if they did not test positive, has helped them feel better. Just because it did not show up on a blood test does not mean it isn’t there. Dr. Regina is also board certified in internal medicine. She uses this in conjunction with her functional medicine training. If a patient needs a medication, she is not against it at all, but she will also work to try and get them to a point where they don’t need it, if possible. She will put a lot of her patients on anti-inflammatory diets. Something as simple as eating better shows great results in patients who couldn’t get relief for many years. This change in how they feel encourages them to exercise and move more, and in turn has a positive impact on their emotional wellbeing. Dr. Regina finds that after making dietary changes, her patients not only feel better physically but mentally as well. She can even help people get off of their mood supporting medications, such as anti-depressants. Dr. Regina sees some of the most complicated cases. She feels like she owes it to every patient to get to the bottom of their medical mysteries and help them get better. Most of her patients have already been down an allopathic route and found it did not work for them or were told there was nothing wrong. Dr. Regina cares about her patients and shows them compassion. She meets her patients where they are and customizes her care to their needs. A patient’s decision does not dictate whether or not she will care for them. At the THWC Spring Summit, she will be talking about hormones and how to optimize them using a functional medicine approach. Bioidentical Hormone Replacement Therapy is an area in which Dr. Regina has done a lot of research and she loves to use it with her patients. She does very detailed and advanced hormone tests. These include blood tests, saliva tests, and urine tests. Many traditional doctors only use blood tests and are not capturing the full picture. It is important to make sure the hormones are going through the proper pathways for detoxification and to not only measure the level of hormones but how these hormones are broken down. Diet can play a role in how someone does breakdown certain hormones. Stress has an impact on hormone levels too. Sometimes, the solution is to fix the stress and not the hormone directly. Dr. Regina is certified to prescribe medical marijuana to patients. She has seen great benefits in a wide variety of patients. It may help patients lower their doses, or even get rid of, their other medications. Certain types of marijuana can even help kill cancer cells. CBD has a lot of the properties that a marijuana plant has without the THC, so she will use CBD for some of her patients as well. LDN is another approach Dr. Regina uses which helps her patients make more endorphins so they feel better and have less pain. The endorphins bind to immune cells and activate them in ways that help your body kill off pathogens and tumors, balance the immune system, reduce neural inflammation and more.

Ted Talk Referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ0q0JWRVn4 Thesis on Cerebrospinal Fluid Referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55QythvgRRk In this episode of Turnpaugh Talks, Dr. Turnpaugh sits down with Dr. Erin Gattuso to learn a little bit more about how she got to where she is today. Dr. Gattuso comes from a family with a lot of unusual health conditions. She remembers going from doctor to doctor as a kid and seeing conventional medicine consistently fail to meet her family’s unique needs. This opened her eyes to alternative medicine. She studied neuroscience in undergrad. During this time, she heard about naturopathic medicine and, although hesitant at first, realized that was exactly what she wanted to do. Dr. Gattuso learned the gold standard of treatment, knowing which medications to give in a conventional setting, but also learned which herbs and dietary changes a patient may benefit from. She received a bottle of herbs early in her naturopathic studies. After years of trying to find a medication for something, she was able to use these herbs to treat it. This began her love for botanical medicine (herbs and plants). She uses this modality with her patients frequently. A lot of pharmaceutical medications are derived from plants and herbs. There is such a variety of ways plants and herbs can be used, even the same plant can be used for many different things. She shadowed Dr. Turnpaugh 8 years ago and had crossed paths with him at conferences multiple times since then. When THWC opened in Manheim, right down the street from her previous office, she saw it as a sign that this is where she was meant to be. She worked in a pediatricians office before coming to THWC, where she specialized in Cranial Sacral Therapy (CST). Dr. Gattuso explained that the skull expands and contracts in response to cerebrospinal fluid (the fluid within the nervous system) and in order for the nervous system to be healthy, you need proper flow of this fluid. Sensitive hands can feel this expansion and contraction rhythm in the skull. This is essentially the basis for CST. It is toning the nervous system in a very gentle manner. Dr. Gattuso specializes in CST on infants who are having trouble breastfeeding and in treating children who are neuroatypical. She has discovered over the years that a baby having a latching problem and a child growing up to be neuroatypical often go hand-in-hand. This is because the feeding and latching reflex and primitive reflexes all have to be in place for the nervous system to mature in a functional way. The cranial bones are all connected. Dr. Gattuso can work on the back of the head or the temporals and notice a difference in latching, despite not working in or around the mouth. When she puts a hold on a part of the body, such as the temporals, it sends a message to the nervous system to bring attention to that area, allowing the nervous system to correct itself. Many people don’t believe in Cranial Sacral Therapy, but there is so much evidence to show that there are parts of the nervous system that only respond to these light touches. We often use light touches ourselves, for example, when we bang our elbow on something, we gently rub it to help with the pain. Cerebrospinal fluid has a crucial impact on so many parts of the body. If you lose even just a few drops of it, you will be in terrible pain for days. Dr. Gattuso interned at a water fasting facility called True North, the most researched and well known fasting facility in America. She saw so many miracles in her time there, she watched people come off their medications, saw their mental clarity go through the roof, and saw their mood significantly improve. It really worked well for psychological conditions. One of the patients there was a medical doctor who had bone cancer, she knew in conventional therapy she would have at most 6 months to live. A year and a half after her diagnosis, it was her third stay at the clinic. Since she had started fasting, her bone cancer did not get any worse. Your body goes into a pure healing mode after a while of fasting. It searches for amino acids that are not essential to your body anymore and metabolizes them. This can include tumors or growths that your body cleans up. In a way, modern medicine is catching up with traditional medicine, medical doctors are trying fasting clinics and alternative approaches that our ancestors did thousands of years ago. At the THWC Spring Summit, Dr. Gattuso will be speaking on cell danger response. When cells are under too much stress, they go into a different state where they make enough energy to survive but not thrive. It is the root cause of many chronic conditions.

In this episode of Turnpaugh Talks, Dr. Turnpaugh sits down with Dr. West to discuss her background in allopathic medicine and how it led her to Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center. Dr. West went to medical school at Jefferson College in Philadelphia, PA, but did all of her training and started her career in Pittsburgh, PA. She is board certified in internal medicine, nephrology, and hypertension. She was a nephrologist for over 25 years, specializing in kidney disease, hypertension, and dialysis. One of the things that drew Dr. West to kidney disease is that in order to master it, she had to have a full understanding of internal medicine. She wanted her focus to require knowledge about other organ systems and how they impact the kidneys. Dr. West took a wholistic view right from the get-go. She wanted to be able to help her patients with any of their concerns, even if these concerns were not directly related to their kidneys or dialysis. The patients she saw were typically older and significantly ill. This left very little room for error in their medical care. Gradually over the decades, Dr. West started to realize that her patients were already taking a long list of medications and she had to add to it. She thought “how do they take all of these and how can they afford all of these?”. She knew that by the time they got to her they had been sick for a long time and there was not much she could do to make them better, but rather just delay the progression of their illness. Dr. West knew there had to be something that could help patients change this trajectory, she just didn’t know what that something was. She remembers one day, she was about to walk into an exam room and say the same thing that she had already said 8 times that day. She said the same things over and over again. She saw different faces with the same list of problems, over and over again. She decided there had to be a better way. Dr. West started doing experiments on her patients. Because many diabetics end up having kidney issues, she would look at their sugar levels and ask them “what are you eating? Did you go to a diabetes education class? What did they teach you in diabetes education class?”. She wanted to know where the system broke down in order to get them to the point where their symptoms could not be reversed. Most of her patients didn’t even know how to manage their diabetes. Even worse, she would see patients getting fed foods that promoted their disease or illness in the hospital. Patients thought that if they had this food in the hospital it must be okay to eat. Dr. West and her dietician at the time worked together to write an eating guide about how to eat out on dialysis called “Dialysis Dining On the Go”. There is a huge knowledge gap from doctors to patients in what patients need to do to manage their illnesses. In her quest to close this knowledge gap, Dr. West did some research and found lifestyle medicine. Lifestyle is the basis of 85% of chronic disease. Yet, most doctors don’t take the time to educate their patients on lifestyle. Lifestyle is perceived in mainstream medicine as the bottom rung of the ladder. Nobody needs to step on the bottom, we skip to the second. When Dr. West found the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, she was happy to be surrounded by people who recognized that lifestyle has to be the primary focus in order to decrease and reverse chronic disease. While researching lifestyle medicine, Dr. West noticed that functional medicine kept popping up. Eventually, she clicked on the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) site and thought “that makes a lot of sense”. She decided to go to a functional medicine conference which led her to become board qualified through the IFM. After this, she began to work at Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center. She uses her long history and knowledge of allopathic medicine with her functional medicine practice to support patients with all kinds of conditions and health concerns. Dr. West will prescribe medications as she sees necessary, but she uses lifestyle as the first step. At the THWC Spring Summit, Dr. West will be giving an overview on Gastrointestinal health. Many times, patients with GI health issues are told it doesn’t matter what they eat. This is simply not true. Many chronic diseases are caused by inflammation. Inflammation facilitates low body protein which drives the breakdown of your infrastructure. Certain foods, such as gluten, dairy, and high sugar foods, can drive inflammation. Even if a patient’s diet is not going to kill them, reducing inflammation can greatly increase their quality of life.

In this episode of Turnpaugh Talks, Dr. Turnpaugh sits down with one of the functional medicine doctors and chiropractors at Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center, Dr. John Brow. Dr. Brow was born and raised in New Jersey where he had his first experience with a chiropractor. His dad was hurt at the time and walked into a chiropractic office hunched over and in pain. About a half hour later, much to 10-year-old Dr. Brow’s surprise, he walked out standing up-right and pain free. The next time his dad went to the chiropractor, Dr. Brow went with him and sat in the room in an attempt to understand how this man made his dad feel so much better in just 30 minutes. From that point on, he knew he wanted to be a chiropractor. Dr. Brow never stops learning to help his patients. He did a rehabilitation program for about 3 years where he learned a lot about physical therapy and functional movement. He also went through a functional neurology program, which typically takes three years, in just about one year. He did a sub-specialty within this program for childhood developmental disorders. Dr. Brow learned how to support neuro-atypical children who didn’t necessarily fit into a box of ADD, ADHD, autism, etc. Dr. Brow is so great with children. No matter what their behavior is, they’re never too much trouble for him. He assures the parents that their child is not a problem and tells them they’re in this together now, he will be there to support them every step of the way. After completing this functional neurology program and passing an extremely difficult exam, Dr. Brow added the functional medicine piece to his training and became a specialist in clinical nutrition. Finally, he went on to get his Registered Nursing (RN) degree and is currently working towards becoming a nurse practitioner. He applies everything he has learned on a day to day basis at THWC. When Dr. Brow switched to this practice, he felt less confined to a the silos that his individual trainings put him in. He can have conversations with Dr. Turnpaugh and other providers to bounce ideas and thoughts off of each other. They work together to solve tough cases. Dr. Brow loves that every day is a challenge and a new experience. Dr. Brow sees patients of all ages, all backgrounds, and all health concerns. For example, he recently adjusted a baby, less than a year old, to help with her chronic ear infections and then saw her mom for her anxiety right afterwards. He did a full work-up and lab work on the mom. He changed her diet, added some supplementation, and sent her to see the functional therapist at THWC, Dr. Panattoni. Every patient has a different experience. Dr. Brow loves having the ability to utilize other services and practitioners at THWC. He frequently sends patients to get an IV, or try HBOT, or to see the functional therapist, the health coach, or the massage therapist. He wants his patients to take advantage of every opportunity they have to get better. Dr. Brow has played ice hockey since he was six years old. He has seen many concussions in his day. He treats them a little different than a modern medicine doctor typically would. He runs detailed tests on them, recommends the use of anti-inflammatory supplements, and sends them for at least 2-3 HBOT sessions. All of this is to decrease the inflammation in the brain, which is essentially what a concussion is. On top of this, Dr. Brow focuses a lot on eating an anti-inflammatory diet. Certain inflammatory foods, such as gluten and foods high in sugar, cause brain inflammation. This makes it so much easier for people who eat these foods to get a concussion. In addition to being an athlete, Dr. Brow is an incredible chef. He has no professional training but, despite incorporating dietary restrictions into his cooking, his food is delicious. He learned how to cook just by doing. He tests food on his family and if they don’t like it, he tweaks it a little. There are always alternative ingredients to make a meal fit your diet. Sharing recipes is such an important and wonderful piece that the community at THWC brings to the table. Dr. Brow has an interest in regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy for athletes. Athletes are injury prone, but if these injuries are treated effectively and immediately, they may not be an issue later in life. For example, if we can give someone stem cell therapy when they’re 20 maybe they won’t need a hip replacement, that they otherwise would have needed, when they’re 50. Dr. Brow really practices everything he preaches which keeps him fit and healthy and helps him age gracefully. Dr. Brow will never tell a patient to do something that he or his family has not done themselves.

Dr. Panattoni grew up in California where she got her masters in psychology and worked in a mental health hospital with women and children who had been abused. Upon graduation, she settled in Pennsylvania and worked in a mental health hospital, in a medical hospital with the behavioral health center, and as an adjunct professor in the psychology department of a liberal arts college. She went on to get her Ph.D. During this time of education, she met Dr. Turnpaugh who taught her more about functional medicine and led her to Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center. Dr. Panattoni loves that functional medicine looks at a person’s bio-individuality, environmental factors, and lifestyle factors and that valuable time is spent with patients. Often, people overlook their social, emotional, and spiritual well-being and just focus on the physical aspects of their health. Because of how hard it is on patients to feel so terrible for so many years, there is often a mental health component to their condition as well. When we have problems with our minds, we often ignore it or are told we’re crazy. Dr. Turnpaugh, Dr. Panattoni and many other professionals believe that anyone can benefit from therapy. For these reasons, a visit with Dr. Panattoni is included in the new patient package at THWC. Initially, there was some push back from patients but, as Dr. Turnpaugh says, if you’re truly looking at a person’s whole body health, the mental component has to be a part of it. THWC combines the physiology with the psychology. When a patient comes in, Dr. Panattoni will talk to them about their exercise, sleep, diet, breath work, and meditation. She focuses on the limbic system- the part of the brain that helps us emotionally regulate ourselves and helps with memory and learning. The limbic system is the physical aspect of your body that isn’t functioning properly when you have a mental health condition, just as people with physical health conditions have a part of their body not functioning properly. Dr. Panattoni educates her patients. When they realize there is something in their physiology driving their condition, they have hope. Hope is a major piece. People have to feel like they have the ability to make the change. Breath work, meditation, and yoga are very important components Dr. Panattoni teaches. When patients don’t resonate with these techniques, she teaches them ways to implement movement into their lifestyles that are more suited to them. The underlying cause of an emotional condition can often be physiological. For example, a patient may come in with anxiety and depression to find out that these symptoms were driven by chronic Lyme Disease. For this reason, Dr. Panattoni has her patients get blood work done, speak with the health coach to talk about their diet, and meet with a nurse practitioner to incorporate physiological aspects into the patient’s care. Dr. Panattoni uses what is called a genogram to really understand the history of her patients’ conditions and which components of it are genetic and which are learned. Sometimes, something as simple as dietary changes can actually make people feel happier, less stressed, anxious, etc. Their diet can be what is actually driving their mental health issues. On the other hand, our social norms drive an emotional relationship with food. We develop feelings around food. People associate foods with comfort, joy, and love. Dr. Panattoni works to change these associations so when certain foods are removed from a patient’s diet, they recognize these foods are actually poison. Dr. Panattoni sees part of her job as making people feel safe talking about their feelings. These patients are often told their illness is all in their head, thereby instilling fear in them when it comes to talking about their health. She meets patients where they are and works in a way that is easiest for them to move forward. As a functional therapist, she explains that she is looking at their psychological, emotional, social, and occupational health. She is looking at everything externally that could be driving their conditions which led them to a functional medicine doctor in the first place. Her goal is to help patients find balance in their lives. Dr. Panattoni always says “you have to be the advocate in your own life”, if you don’t fight for yourself, change won’t happen”.

In this episode of Turnpaugh Talks, Dr. Turnpaugh sits down with Dr. Ross Marchegiani, one of the functional medicine doctors and chiropractors at THWC. Dr. Ross got his DC in 2018. During that time he knew about functional medicine and wanted to incorporate it into his training. He was also working towards his masters in nutrition all at the same time. He found THWC through researching the big names in functional medicine and finding that “Dr. Turnpaugh” kept popping up. He reached out, met up with Dr. Turnpaugh and has been with THWC ever since. Dr. Ross was always an athlete growing up, allowing him to understand the importance of exercise. He uses this to help his patients incorporate it into their lifestyles. As a teenager, Dr. Ross noticed that he had some OCD tendencies. To fix this, he immediately went to correcting his nutrition. He ate a low inflammatory diet and noticed that in a matter of about 6 months he wasn’t suffering from these OCD tendencies anymore. For this reason, he always starts with diet when addressing his patients’ health concerns. Dr. Ross talks about the importance of metabolic flexibility and how he uses intermittent fasting to keep metabolic flexibility strong for both himself and his patients. He spends a lot of time with them, discussing how and when they eat, no matter what their health background is. Dr. Ross sees hope and love as two of the biggest things he can offer to patients. Many of them have been turned away from other doctors and told there’s nothing that can be done for them. Dr. Ross always does everything he can to find underlying causes and dives so deep into their physiology until he finds these root causes. For example, chronic Lyme disease commonly leads to immune disregulation which may, in turn, lead to a variety of other conditions. If the patient doesn’t regulate their Lyme, their other conditions may never be taken care of either. This is why it is so important to find the real root cause of the problem. Not only does Dr. Ross practice and utilize functional medicine, but he also does chiropractic care in order to support the nervous system. Dr. Ross loves to introduce his patients to other services offered at THWC as well, such as IV Therapy and HBOT. By doing so, he ensures his patients are taking advantage of every opportunity they have to help them achieve their optimal health. It’s always multiple aspects that make up a healthy individual, each of which can be addressed in several ways. Dr. Ross is passionate about educating his patients and making sure they understand not only what changes they need to make to obtain health, but also why they are making these changes. He also educates the general public on YouTube, he truly just wants everyone to be able to get credible knowledge to make informed health decisions. He takes the time to do all of the research and recording himself because he loves to help people learn and find answers. Another topic Dr. Ross really loves discussing is adrenal down regulation. In standard medicine, adrenal fatigue is frequently not recognized. Adrenal fatigue can present itself through constantly having low energy, unproportionate weight gains, depression and anxiety, and brain fog. The adrenals can be tied into so many other body systems, they can affect the way we digest and our brain health. The adrenal glands are responsible for producing cortisol which has an effect on many other parts of the body. This is just another reason why Dr. Ross finds it so important to not specialize in only one specific area because health concerns in one area may be caused by another, such as the adrenals. He gives all of his patient’s completely individualized treatment understanding that no two people are exactly alike.

In this episode of Turnpaugh Talks, Dr. Turnpaugh sits down with one of the family nurse practitioners at THWC, Amy Montgomery. Amy grew up locally in Mechanicsburg on a horse farm. She always thought she would be a professional horseback rider throughout her childhood. Upon giving it a try, she realized that’s not what she wanted to do and decided to go back to school to obtain her BSN from West Chester. While there, she saw herself practicing medicine with an integrative approach, however, she couldn’t find anything like that in the Harrisburg area. She worked in a hospital setting upon graduation. After 14 years, she went back to school to be a family nurse practitioner where she graduated number one in her class. During that time, she also completed the modules at the Institute for Functional Medicine and found out about Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center. She shadowed at the practice and was sold. A lot of the patients Amy sees at THWC are very complex, but with her role as a PCP, she also sees patients who are healthy, just for a checkup. The tests she runs on patients at THWC are very in depth allowing her to really find the root cause of peoples’ health concerns and to catch anything that may later lead to health issues. The enables her to fix the problem before it even becomes one. As a primary care provider, it is important to know both which medications and which supplements a patient is taking to ensure everything interacts well. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for a patient to be afraid to tell their PCP about the supplements they are taking because their allopathic doctor may not believe in wholistic medicine. That is why the addition of family nurse practitioners, like Amy, has been so important to Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center. They are primary care physicians who fully understand both sides of the equation. Amy believes that often the ability to get off a medication depends on someone’s willingness to make lifestyle changes. She always tries the lifestyle approach first and then puts patients on medication if she feels they still need it. Amy makes recommendations but will ultimately let the patient decide what kind of healthcare they want. Typical first visits with Amy can be anywhere from ½ an hour to over an hour, depending on the complexity of the patient’s case. She loves that THWC has an intake form for all new patients to fill out with a full health history, from birth to the time of their appointment. This allows her to have an even fuller understanding of her patients’ overall health. Amy sends the message to her patients that she supports them no matter what, she wants them to share both physical and emotional components of their health with her. Amy sees a lot of patients for chronic Lyme Disease as well. Amy is passionate about learning more about Lyme, in order to give these patients the best possible care. She is also really interested in researching, talking about, and learning more about the gut. At the THWC spring summit April 25th-26th, Amy will be discussing the gut microbiota. The gut affects so much more than people think it does and is also is affected by so much more than people think, from the way you were born to where you live. Amy believes eating foods rich in probiotics is the best way to colonize your gut. She also encourages her patients to eat an anti-inflammatory diet such as the AIP diet. Because she is so passionate about helping her patients, she decided to go on this diet herself and practice what she preaches. She found that she was feeling so much better, eliminating shoulder pain that she has had for years and improving her mood, despite the fact that she didn’t even realize she wasn’t feeling her best in the first place. No matter what Amy’s goal is, she goes above and beyond to accomplish it.

In this episode of Turnpaugh Talks, Dr. Turnpaugh sits down with one of the family nurse practitioners at THWC, Cassandra Haddad. Cassandra has been in health care for almost 20 years now. When she began, in allopathic medicine, she watched patient after patient not get better and she thought “there has to be a better way”. About 6 years ago, one of her friends had her 4th child. This child had very severe gluten, soy, and dairy allergies. Her mom was told she would have to find another way of health care because this child could not receive any of the usual medical treatments. They began going down a more wholistic route. They started to tell Cassandra about it and she thought “this makes so much sense”. Cassandra also has two young children herself, 3 year old twins. Around the time they were born her husband started to not feel well. They blamed it on his age and exhaustion of having twins, but as it continued to happen they began to worry. Cassandra even thought that he had stomach cancer at one point. While searching for an answer, they found out he has celiac disease. After having eaten gluten for 40 years, Cassandra and her husband went gluten-free (the twins already were), but her husband still wasn’t feeling better. This solidified her decision to make the transition into functional medicine. When she first heard about THWC she didn’t even think it was possible that a practice like this existed, one that is truly patient-focused medicine, once she found it, she never looked back. She had Dr. Turnpaugh run blood work on her husband and he put him on a relatively simple gut-recovery plan. Now, her husband is feeling better than ever. In her experience in allopathic medicine, she was given about 15-20 minutes a patient. She felt like she was working for an insurance company and not for the patient. Now, in functional medicine, she is able to spend an hour with her patients. She loves having the time to sit down and truly understand the root cause of a person’s health concerns, however, if it is a follow-up or checkup that doesn’t require an hour she can easily get it done in 15 or 20 minutes as she did for so many years. Cassandra practices family medicine with a wholistic view, she combines allopathic medicine with functional medicine by prescribing a medication when need be but still focusing on the root cause of health concerns and trying to keep them on as few medications as possible. With her experience, she can see patients of all ages and all health concerns, whether it is a simple well visit, a chronic illness, or a mental health concern. Cassandra is also head of the IV department and is happy to be able to help her patients in this way as well. Cassandra’s patients always feel comfortable opening up to her about any health concerns they have, physical or mental. She wants them to feel fully comfortable telling her everything, she is accepting of all patients and cares as best as she can for them no matter what health decisions they choose to make. She loves seeing generations in the same family and building intimate relationships with them until she is like an extension of the family. Unfortunately, many medical practices will kick patients out who choose not to vaccinate or choose alternate vaccine schedules. Cassandra feels it is her job to provide great health care to absolutely everyone who needs it, regardless of the health decisions they have made. She is always striving to find a better way.  

Tara built her foundation as a floor nurse in a hospital. One day, she woke up with such terrible back pain she couldn’t even move. After a while, she got back surgery. Tara didn’t want to go back to hospital nursing but didn’t feel like she had a choice. She was a single mother of 4 children at the time and needed a way to provide for her family. When she was released to go back to work after surgery, she was hit by a car and had 8 broken bones. She saw this as a sign from the universe that she was not meant to go back to floor nursing. After a year of recovery, she went back to hospital nursing anyways because she needed to provide for her family. Tara was there for 3 months on a Med Surg floor until, one day, she got punched in the sternum and never came back. While searching for a new job, she found Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center (THWC), which she hadn’t even heard of prior to this job search. When she came to THWC and interviewed to be an IV nurse, she realized she actually went to high school with Heather Turnpaugh, COO of THWC. With this connection, and after meeting all the staff and learning about the services that are offered at this practice, she knew this was the place for her. She had actually never done an IV before coming to the practice, but she quickly figured it out. She fell in love with the way the staff cares so deeply for not only their patients but also for each other. Tara sees a lot of patients who have Lyme disease, cancer patients who want to support their immune system, and other patients who just want to achieve their optimal health and avoid the cold and flu. A lot of these people have been on quite a journey to get to Tara. They have struggled with getting stuck many times before they come to her, giving them anxiety when they see the needle. She will take any measures needed in order to make her patients feel as comfortable as possible, including bringing in other practitioners in the office to help relax the patient. Because Tara gets to be with these people for usually at least an hour at a time, she builds a strong relationship with her patients. She has a way of making everyone laugh and feel happy, even those who haven’t truly laughed in years. There is a sense of community in the IV room, everyone pulls each other up and encourages one another that they will get better. Some of the patients have been activists in their community for others dealing with the same condition as they are. The IV room is a place to go for a pick-me-up, there is always joy and laughter exuding from the room, and this is due to Tara spreading her compassionate, loving energy to everyone around her. Hope is always there, you just have to choose to see it, and when Tara’s around, everyone sees it. People come to Turnpaugh Health and Wellness Center to be heard. They receive continuous support and their practitioners won’t stop until they have figured out what the problem is. There have been many patients who were told there was nothing wrong with them and were labeled as a psych case. A lot of them actually turn out to have a chronic illness. Tara wanted to be able to help everyone in a wholistic way. Because of this, she is training in anthroposophy nursing, which is wholistic nursing. This involves looking at your spirit, mind, body, and soul and how they are integrating into this world and reacting to it. Anthroposophy uses a lot of alternative treatment methods. Tara is also going back to school to be a family nurse practitioner, she continues to learn and grow so she can provide her patients with the best health care possible.