Moving From a “Sick-Care” Model To A “Health Care” Model | Ep 74

Melissa Deally: 00:00:06

Imagine getting up every day full of energy is if you were in your 20s. Again, what would that be like? What would that be worth to you? What is your health worth to you? Think about it. Your health isn't everything. But without it, everything else is nothing. And yet too many of us are taking it for granted until something goes wrong. No one wakes up hoping to be diagnosed with a disease or chronic illness. And yet, we've never been taught how to be proactive in our health through our school system, or public health. As a registered health coach and integrative health practitioner, I believe it is time this information is made available to everyone. Combining new knowledge around your health and the ability to do my functional medicine lab tests in the comfort of your own home will allow you to optimize your health for today and all your tomorrow's don't wait for your wake up call.

Melissa Deally: 00:01:06

Welcome back to the don't wait for your wake up call podcast. I am Melissa dealey your host and today I have another wonderful guest with me Patrick Louie. Welcome, Patrick. Thanks, Melissa.

Patrick Louie: 00:01:18

Awesome to be on the show. I'm excited

Melissa Deally: 00:01:20

to have you here and the conversation that we are going to have today. But first, I just want to introduce you a little bit to the audience. As the founders of living well, solutions, Patrick and his wife Winnie have made it their mission to see an end to cancer, chronic illness, mental health impacts across Canada by introducing a holistic health care system to workplaces to achieve their vision. They are connecting wellness providers, workplaces and insurance benefits that provide funding for all types of holistic wellness modalities, whether they address body, mind or soul. Ultimately, their goal is to help families lead healthier and happier lives help workplaces realize the profitability of wellness and empower true health care over sick care for a better future of all. So you have to know after listening to my podcast that I am all about all of this as well. And so there is such perfect alignment, in my vision and then in what Patrick is doing, and he's kind of on the other side of it helping people have easier access to my work and the work of many other healers as well. So I absolutely love what you're doing, Patrick, it's so important. And thank you very, very much.

Patrick Louie: 00:02:33

Thank you. Yeah.

Melissa Deally: 00:02:35

So you didn't always do this, though. And I know you had your own health struggle that became, you know, kind of the impetus to take you down this path. So I would love for you just to do a little introduction of who you are and what you've come through to get to where you're at today.

Patrick Louie: 00:02:51

Yeah, definitely. So I don't remember the year exactly, but it was probably around 2014 or 2015. We have some, some severe forest fires here in BC. And that particularly It was so bad that actually drifted all the way from the interior of BC to the coasts where we're I'm here in Metro Vancouver. And I was out and about, I was trying to stay healthy. So I was doing jogging, I was doing dragon boat, I was doing canoeing. And I think I got a lot too much smoke exposure. And so I end up developing a cough, which turned into a chronic cough, Boston fat loss at almost two months. And it was about a month in and I just couldn't figure it out. So my wife suggested I go see the doctor. And so I went to a walk in clinic. And the doctor spent about five minutes with me asked me a few things, including if I ever had asthma. And when I replied No, he actually looked very puzzled. And so he who he tried out a few notes and then said, You know what I'm gonna have you try out this inhaler. It's for it's for asthma. I know you say you don't have it, but I want you to try to anyways. So I took it home and try it out for a couple of weeks. But my cough did not get any better. So I went back to the doctor again. And he says, I'm not sure what's going on. I don't know what's causing it. I don't know how to help you. Except maybe I'll give you a stronger dose give you a stronger inhaler. And that definitely I'm thinking, Well, you just told me you don't know what's wrong with me. You don't know how to help me. And I don't really know the long term effects of using this inhaler. Since I don't I don't have asthma. And so I refused the prescription. And I went home. And my wife actually started doing a Google search. Now I know Dr. Google is not the best way to approach health care, but it's all it's all we knew back then is sometimes

Melissa Deally: 00:04:55

that's what we feel like is our only option when we feel like our doctor hasn't been able to help us,

Patrick Louie: 00:05:01

right? Yeah. And so we started coming across things for, for chronic cough, and we had to look into essential oils. So we got ourselves a diffuser, got some eucalyptus, tea tree oil, and tried using that. And it helped a little bit, but not quite enough. And then we got, we started trying out this Chinese white flower oil, and put that in your inner diffuser. And to my amazement, after a couple of weeks, my cough cleared.

Melissa Deally: 00:05:33

That's awesome. And I've actually used diffusers and oils for the same reason. Because we too in Whistler have had the impact of smoke. And my daughter who does have asthma, not chronic or anything, but it'll kick in when she's sick. It was kicking in then as well. And rather than having to use the inhaler all the time, it was better to be using the the natural oils and the diffuser to help clear her pathways. Right. Yeah. So how powerful is that to figure out that the oils could actually resolve your, your cough issue?

Patrick Louie: 00:06:22

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, knowing that it's, it's natural, give me gave us, you know, more and more peace of mind. Because, you know, we've heard about the side effects of, of long term usage of prescription medication. So, you know, we didn't want to fall into that

Melissa Deally: 00:06:39

100%. And it also shows just that smoke inhalation, I mean, the forest fires, nobody wants them, they happen. But it's, again, it's another toxicity in our world. And especially when you can feel the particulate in your throat, which I know I can if I'm outside too much, the fires are really bad, right? And that's causing damage, and hence why you ended up with a cough. And I'm always talking about toxins in our world today and how it's impacting our health. And here's a classic example. But you're also able to do something about it and resolve it naturally.

Patrick Louie: 00:07:21

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it was. It was the irony, though. I was I was trying to stay healthy. I got really sick because of that.

Melissa Deally: 00:07:29

Exactly. So sometimes there are times when you know, when the our forest fires, smoke is so bad that we've it's actually healthier on those days to stay inside and shut our windows, unfortunately, and to what also I mean, your doctor was perplexed, and he didn't really know what to do. And he admitted that. But, you know, sometimes it's that I've seen it before as well. Well, that didn't if that prescription doesn't work, come back, and we'll give you a bit a higher dose. Right? And that isn't necessarily the answer either. Okay, maybe it helps sometimes, because the lesser dose wasn't enough. And then the higher dose helps people. But I also question if it didn't work at all in the first place, how does giving more of it? Right. And so that's something that I struggle with, because I do hear a lot of people tell me that that, you know, the first prescription I had didn't work, and then the doctor just wanted to give me more. And I know I've experienced that myself, too. So we all have to take responsibility for our own health. And we have a right to question things with our doctors, we have a right to get second opinions. And we also certainly shouldn't be putting all the onus on our deck on our doctor to fix us or right, it's not their responsibility to do that. Right. They're trying to help us. But I think many people have a belief that I get sick, I go to the doctor, they make us better. They're not making us better. That's not their responsibility. They're guiding us based on their knowledge. But if they don't have all the knowledge and let's face it, no one person can, then we also have to step into looking for second opinions or alternative options, etc. And take that responsibility ourselves. Because when we're part of the process, the body is much more likely to heal, because were invested in it and we believe we can heal.

Patrick Louie: 00:09:35

That's right. And in the end, if a recommendation that a doctor makes doesn't help you it's not the doctor who has to live with your disease or illness. It's it's you.

Melissa Deally: 00:09:45

Right? Absolutely. And so that's the other piece of it that I've been talking about. Just last month, I was talking about intuition show, right. And so it's listening to your own intuition listening to your body, which will To help you navigate this path and come to, you know, the right decision and the right next steps, right, because it's you living with it, it's you listening to your body, and your body is trying to ask you to do something differently.

Patrick Louie: 00:10:14

Yeah, I had heard that that long time ago, maybe hundreds of years ago, we had a better ability to listen to our bodies. But that was something that we, as society as people have lost over time.

Melissa Deally: 00:10:27

I agree 100%. And we've only lost it because we've got so busy. Right, right. And we don't slow down enough to listen to our bodies to tune in. So we all have intuition, right? It's just a matter of, are we listening to it? Are we using it? Are we slowing down enough? And yeah, that was my last month's theme for the month of June 2022. So if anybody's interested in diving into that, you can check out those previous podcasts. But for today, I would love for you to share some information, Patrick, because you just know all of this information inside out. It's your area of expertise. But I would love for you to share. What are the hidden costs of our free health care system here in Canada?

Patrick Louie: 00:11:20

Yeah, and I believe that this sort of perception or misconception of free health care, it's actually what's holding us back from true health care from true healing. Because we rely on the medical system so much. And so some of the things that have so so as I alluded to, in my story, the first part is that your doctor doesn't really spend any time with you, it might get 510, maybe 15 minutes. And as you've discussed before, in previous episodes, how much does your doctor really get to know you in that short amount of time, and really understand those those underlying conditions? And so sort of the first thing I would say is basically, you don't really get that sort of, sort of deeper understanding of your health background that's really needed for a proper diagnosis and proper treatment protocol. That will be the first thing. I totally agree. Yeah, that the second thing, I would say, is the wait time to see specialists. So I know so many people nowadays struggle with their mental health. And in terms of public supports available for that doctor might give you a referral to see a psychiatrist. But the average weight, at least it was a few few years ago, it was an average weight of over eight weeks to see a specialist. Right. And for a lot of people, their mental health can really deteriorate significantly in those eight weeks, it can be a long time.

Melissa Deally: 00:12:55

Yes. And feel like a really long time those eight weeks for those, right?

Patrick Louie: 00:13:00

I mean, every day can feel like a long time, there might be eight weeks.

Melissa Deally: 00:13:04

Exactly. And also, I just want to go back to your point about doctors only getting five or 10 or 15 minutes with you. That's not Doctor driven, though. That's system driven. Right. So the doctors are being told this is all you get with each individual. And it seems to me and you can correct me if I'm wrong. But it seems to me that that number of minutes that they get with a patient is being reduced over time.

Patrick Louie: 00:13:32

Yeah, I don't have the exact numbers on that. And it does vary per patient. But I do know, it's because doctors have the burden. And like you said, it's not it's not entirely their fault. It is having the burden of running their practice as a business. So they have everything else to do as a business owner on top of actually seeing patients and providing that advice. Right.

Melissa Deally: 00:13:59

And it just makes it very hard to do that in such a short amount of time when you don't have the full picture. Right. The other thing that is problematic that I know you have information about is patients paying out of pocket for medical payments in Canada. So even though we have free health care, it's free health care to a certain point.

Patrick Louie: 00:14:24

That's right. Yeah. So not many people actually know this, but under the Canada Health Act, and to a degree to the provincial programs, only prescription medications administered inside hospitals are actually guaranteed to be covered or, you know, free medications outside of a hospital may or may not come with a coarse grain and oftentimes they do. And what one of the one of the stories actually I hear a lot of stories about couples how husbands or wives facing cancer. And with with the recommended treatments for them, they're their customer medications are still costing them several $1,000 per month to receive those treatments. And with, with watchI, one story that I heard a number of years back, it was this married mother of two. And actually her story made onto the news, she had a massive GoFundMe campaign, because she had exhausted all her options here in Canada, nothing was working for her. So she was seeking an experimental treatment in the US. But this experimental treatment had a price tag of $250,000. So a significant amount of money for it for almost any family. Right. So she started solar finally started GoFundMe page. And I remember seeing the interview with her on TV. And I could, I could, I could feel I could hear the SIRT the fear, and panic and desperation in her voice as she was going through this interview. But unfortunately, the only raise half the amount, which is a significant amount here and $25,000, she raised, but it was It wasn't enough. Right treatment. So unfortunately, she didn't make it.

Melissa Deally: 00:16:25

And it's really sad when it comes down to, you know, costing that much money, which any family with, you know, young kids, they don't just have that readily available. And then, you know, you know, even through GoFundMe, what other options do you have to be raising the funds?

Patrick Louie: 00:16:43

Yeah. So I mean, as someone with an insurance background, there are insurance solutions available. And some people do raise enough money through GoFundMe. But at the same time, these treatments are not guaranteed to save your life. So you could have, you could have gone through all that, and still not have it work. So I mean, even though the having platforms like GoFundMe, and having insurance solutions are important, in my opinion, prevention is still better than an after the fact.

Melissa Deally: 00:17:17

Absolutely 100%. And also, to your point, when you're under that much stress of not knowing where you're getting the funds from in order to pay for your treatments, that stress is weakening your immune system through that entire time as well. Right and making the whole situation worse. So absolutely. Prevention is 1000 times better, right? It's really, to me, it's the only way Let's do everything we can to prevent because we're going to pay now, or we're going to pay later anyway. Right? Yeah. But why don't we pay now for preventative health care, that allows us to live fully and you know, with full energy and vitality and loving life, and getting the benefits of what we're paying for, versus paying later when we're paying for a treatment that, as you said, has no guarantee. Or we're even, you know, in our 70s 80s, and we're now paying for 10 years in a nursing home. In North America, that's the average amount of time people spend in a nursing home at the end of their life. But what quality of life is that? Instead of paying for that down the road? And also having family members struggling to figure out how they're going to pay for that? Pay Now, so that you're increasing your chances significantly? Of not ever needing?

Patrick Louie: 00:18:40

Yeah, yeah, because I mean, who wants to live the last 10 years of your life in a nursing home, instead of living at full of life, for vibrancy, you know, spending time with your, your loved ones, and instead of, you know, in, in a long term care facility,

Melissa Deally: 00:19:01

I agree 100% that's the path I choose to be on. And it's the path my grandmother got to live. And she's the one who I'm following, you know, she lives right to the very end by herself fully cognitively functioning, until she passed in her sleep

Patrick Louie: 00:19:15

at 101. Wow, amazing. Yeah,

Melissa Deally: 00:19:19

yeah. And so I've like, I want to be on that path. But I know that based on my childhood, and where I grew up, and the times that we live in now with more toxins, et cetera, et cetera, that I have to do more than she ever did in order to make sure I get on that. Right. So I would love you to also share, like some information around chronic illness and mental health challenges in terms of stats that I believe you have to share it with the audience.

Patrick Louie: 00:19:51

Yeah, and I shared us in my presentations and workshops, but some there's so many numbers but a few of the key why ones that I often share is the rates of chronic illness in Canada. So it's estimated that 44% of Canadian adults struggle with at least one chronic condition. And these are common ones like diabetes, asthma, heart disease, mental health issues, cancer, Alzheimer's. You name it that's on the list. And this is coming from the Public Health Agency of Canada. So these kinds of from the government itself that's compiled these stats. So

Melissa Deally: 00:20:32

that's 44%. Yeah. 44%. Right. So just under half. But if you go ahead,

Patrick Louie: 00:20:41

yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Melissa Deally: 00:20:43

I was gonna say, so basically, you can look around and at 44%. If you're in a group of, you know, three to four people, then somewhere between two and three people in that group are struggling. Yeah.

Patrick Louie: 00:21:00

Yeah. And they were and I mean, it's talking about about half the population. That's the number given by the Canadian Cancer Society, a number of years back, where they predicted that one in two Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. And all those one and two, one and four, will pass away from their disease. So they're saying one, eight of our population is predicted to die from cancer. Wow. And that's just staggering.

Melissa Deally: 00:21:32

It is staggering. It really is. And especially when again, if there's more focus on the preventative side, we could also have a whole lot of education around some of the known causes of cancer, right? You know, when I teach, I'm talking about sugar and our cancer cells having 15 times the sugar receptors. healthy cell, right. So when we're eating sugar, which is in everything, yeah, we're feeding our cancer cells. Yeah. Right. And I've had cancer myself, I've had melanoma, and it was nine years ago, unfortunately, it was all excised, etcetera, etcetera. And the oncologist told me, it was, you know, I'm cured. But I was like, how do you actually know that? I'm cured? Like it could have moved through my body? Right, yeah. So that was part of me also starting detoxing, and starting to increase what I was doing from a preventative point of view, in order to make sure that that cancer didn't come back again. Because there is so much that we can do in terms of our nutrition, or exercise or sleep, you know, our stress levels, etc, that when we change all those lifestyle factors, we can recover from chronic illness, we can also implement them before we ever have chronic illness so that we don't have to get the chronic illness is what you're all about, and why I'm here to teaching and have this podcast and do the work that I do. Because chronic illness does not have to be a life sentence. Yeah.

Patrick Louie: 00:23:09

And it doesn't have to be a given either. I know so many people say, Well, my parents or my grandparents had this cancer, or they had Alzheimer's. So, you know, I'm destined to get it to eventually. But you know, through through your work through your education that you've shared. I mean, we now know that that doesn't have to be true. There is a lot that we can control.

Melissa Deally: 00:23:33

Yes. And so just to reiterate that that's the power of epigenetics, right, which is a relatively new science in the last 10 years that shows that our health outcomes are not simply dictated by our genes, which we used to think they were. But we know that's not true anymore. It's a combination of our genes, and the environment that we create inside our body, which is created by our lifestyle factors that I was just talking about, right? And that's 95% of the equation. Or I should say 90 to 95%. And our genes are five to 10% of the equation. And what I love about that is it just gives us so much power in our own health journey. Yeah, that if, okay, our parents had Alzheimer's, rather than being resigned to it and doing nothing. You can go, I don't want to have Alzheimer's, I don't want to trigger those genes in that five to 10% of the equation. So I'm going to work over here in the 90 to 95% portion of the equation on my lifestyle factors to ensure those genes never get turned on. Yeah,

Patrick Louie: 00:24:45

yeah. And I absolutely love that you can really be empowered in your own health journey and self just just waiting for disease.

Melissa Deally: 00:24:55

Exactly. Exactly. Why wait for disease because by the time the body's diseased, it's that much harder to come back from. Yeah, we still can, with all of the right lifestyle interventions, et cetera, et cetera, we can still come back. But it's much harder. And it takes much longer to come back from, than if we just don't get there in the first place.

Patrick Louie: 00:25:16

Yeah, absolutely.

Melissa Deally: 00:25:20

If you're enjoying my content, and someone that wants to step into being proactive in your health and learning more, I would love to invite you to join my membership community, there's a link in the show notes for only 1999 a month, you get access to all of my content. And there's a lot as well as weekly calls that you can come and get your health questions answered.

Melissa Deally: 00:25:41

It's truly priceless. I'd love to see you join the community,

Melissa Deally: 00:25:44

check out the link in the show notes. So please share how you help people and your vision for transforming our society's approach to healthcare because this is the piece that I love, because it's so unique. And I'm so grateful that you are doing this and spreading this messaging and doing this work that people need.

Patrick Louie: 00:26:10

Yeah, thank you. So we work with two different groups, essentially. So one is workplaces. And the other one is the employees. So in terms of workplaces, we, we work with small to medium sized businesses, who I would consider more progressive, more socially conscious. So these companies are dedicated to resolving mental health issues, chronic illness, they're committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the environment and other social causes. So more on the more progressive side. And it might have a diverse and varied workforce with very diverse needs, and are wondering how to support all of that with a very limited budget. And that's where we come in with with our holistic health model. And on the flip side with the employees, so what we do is we introduce them to the holistic health care model. So bringing in amazing practitioners like yourself, to come in to do workshops, to educate, to show them that there are solutions and resources outside of the medical and even paramedical systems, and to be able to resolve virtually and any, any health concerns that that they might have, including, as you mentioned before, conditions that are that many medical professionals would consider incurable or lifelong, that, that there are solutions to that, that are available to them. And then the second part of that equation is recognizing that, well, a lot of these programs are not covered, and they're not free. So we provide the insurance model that will let someone choose their own health journey, whether it whether it dresses body, mind or spirit. So we we empower the employed individual to choose whatever path to health and wellness makes sense to them. And not dictated by by government programs or, or typical insurance programs.

Melissa Deally: 00:28:13

Which all of that is amazing. I mean, you're just taking the extended benefits type program and making it much more personalized for individuals, right. So instead of just saying everybody gets vision, everybody gets Dental, everybody gets this. Now, as I understand it, the employees can kind of put together their own package based on what their own personal needs are.

Patrick Louie: 00:28:37

Is that right? Right. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, you might have employees who are kind of starting out in their career. And so they might be dealing with student debt, they might be buying their first home. On the other side of the spectrum, you might have someone who is closer to retirement, and maybe they're taking care of their parents, maybe they're our family caregiver. And they have to balance that along with their job. And maybe they're because of that the stressor that they're excited about their own chronic conditions. So those two ends of the spectrum, they have very diverse needs from each other. And so what our program does is let each person choose which path that he wants to take.

Melissa Deally: 00:29:18

I love it, and then also from the benefit of the employer, that initially employers might be thinking, well, that's gonna cost me way more money if these employees can do whatever they want in their own programs. But when we look at it not and maybe from a dollars and cents, you can even show that it costs less. But when we look at the bigger picture, in terms of we've got happier employees, we've got less turnover, we've got healthier employees, we've got employees with you know better brain function and more focus and therefore more productivity, etc. All of that impacts their bottom line.

Patrick Louie: 00:29:58

Yeah, so Got a couple of points there. So first of all, it actually doesn't have to be more expensive than their current program. Because of the way the flex model works, we can take an existing budget that they're already spending on. And because because you're giving employees a fixed budget, and they're actually choosing the spores that matter, most of them, so the employer is not paying for benefits that they're not using. So so there's there's, there's, it could be more cost in one end, but your savings on the other end, so it could come out in the wash. Right, actually. Right. Yeah. And to your point about the increased productivity and happiness. Yeah, there have been studies done showing the ROI of a happier, healthier, happier, more engaged employee. In fact, when when paper that I read, conducted a meta study of 56 papers, and they showed that the average ROI of a wellness program is $5.81. To every dollar invested in that program. Wow. So employers could, on average, generate five to six times the return on their investment. Right? Through a wellness program done, right.

Melissa Deally: 00:31:16

Yes, so through a true wellness program. Yeah, that's awesome. And I just love the idea that it's, you know, focused on all types of practitioners and all types of healing modalities in the sense that in Canada right now, even under extended benefits, you can't get supplements covered, you wouldn't get essential oils covered. Right. And yet, that's what you needed to heal. But you could have had that inhaler that was doing absolutely nothing for you covered, and nothing else, right. And so for some people, that means they can't afford to try other things they can, they're just pigeon holed into will the inhalers covered so it's free. So that's my only option.

Patrick Louie: 00:32:03

Yeah. And unfortunately, that's the reality for many people, today, living with chronic illness. And that's part of what we're trying to change here is to introduce a new way of approaching health care,

Melissa Deally: 00:32:16

which I love all of it, because I know that I saw some stats, and it was in regards to type two diabetes, which of course, is a chronic illness are labeled as a chronic illness. But it definitely doesn't have to be a lifestyle, a life sentence, you can absolutely reverse that type two diabetes when you start to change your lifestyle factors. And yet, people who have been diagnosed with type two diabetes can be on over 24 other prescription medications because of how it affects other things in their body. Yeah. None of which is actually resolving the type two diabetes, it's simply masking the symptoms of all of the other effects of it on the body.

Patrick Louie: 00:33:02

Yeah, and then. And I think the reason why people are on so many medications is because of the side effects. And now you're taking drugs for the original drugs. Exactly. The emotional side effects

Melissa Deally: 00:33:15

exactly of the original drugs, exactly. Which, you know, is hugely problematic in and of itself, and especially for people who don't know that there is another way. Right. And that's the other piece that's so important here is the education of the fact that there is another way, yeah. And then they can get second opinions. And they can ask questions before just choosing to take the first drug, which triggers a symptom that they need another drug for, which triggers a symptom that they might need one or two more drugs for?

Patrick Louie: 00:33:49

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it starts people on a slippery slope, in my opinion.

Melissa Deally: 00:33:55

Absolutely. Like, I mean, we've probably all been in Costco where you see the lineups of people at the pharmacy and the bags that they're leaving with which have like, you know, I'm horrified if I see a bag of medications in it, but sometimes you can bursting at the seams with what looks like 20. And I'm like, Oh, my goodness. So it's crazy. I mean, I take a lot of supplements, because I know exactly what my body needs, what it's not getting because of our deficient soil systems, etc. But I know that there is food, right? That I'm not getting through my food because of deficient soil systems. So using the supplements to enhance that is helpful, but I consider that food and it's all natural versus chemical drugs that my body doesn't know how to deal with.

Patrick Louie: 00:34:40

Yeah, people don't don't consider food as your best medicine. Right.

Melissa Deally: 00:34:47

And it truly is. It truly is. And I believe it was Hippocrates who said that, what 2000 plus years ago that yeah, food food is the best medicine. Absolutely. You So, what does holistic health care and wellness mean to you?

Patrick Louie: 00:35:07

Yeah, so to me, it's really incorporating the whole of healthcare. So physical, mental, emotional, and for some people even spiritual. And so for me, it's, it's incorporating all of that and really understanding how different things affect other parts of the body. For example, as you talk about the importance of gut health and how that influences things like your immunity, or your mental health, and I don't think I think people I think the medical model has really segmented that has really put that into into different like specializations and silos and, and things like that. So they don't understand how, yeah, having a healthy gut impacts so many different things. And I actually I have to share the story of how last year when we had that heat dome, here in BC, I developed a blister or growth on under my arm. And so I had it checked out, virtually because they were doing virtual calls still. And the my end, the doctor who looked at it, after a few minutes said, Okay, it looks like an infection, you the antibiotics, then asked me about anything else I was doing? Because I've been working on my on my gut health, my digestive health for for a while now. And I knew that those antibiotics would have completely wrecked my digestive system. Right? And the work that you've been doing all the work that I've done. Yeah. So I didn't, I didn't want to do it. Right. So I just dismissed the prescription. And funny enough, I went back to an old friend, essential oils, yes, I applied some teacher oil topically to the blesser. And after a couple of weeks it it shrank, and now it's gone.

Melissa Deally: 00:37:09

Amazing. I love that. And that's not damaging your gut in any way. And that's something to that, I don't think people realize that. It's not just one, one whole course of an antibiotic that can wipe out our gut balance. But it's actually one dose can cause dysbiosis, or imbalance in our gut, right. And, you know, if we're If antibiotics were introduced as a life or death situation, so yes, they are needed if they are going to save your life. But over the last 50 years, we've certainly started prescribing them way more frequently. And that's causing all sorts of gut health issues, which is the majority of the people that I work with in terms of my clientele. But also what's happening is we're building immunity to it. Yeah. And not only are we building immunity to it through the antibiotics that we take, but we also have, if anybody's listen to any of my health hacks, I recently did one on the antibiotics being fed to animals, yeah, it to help them grow faster. So farmers can make more money and to keep them healthier in the insane conditions they're raised in. And then we're getting that through the meat that we're eating, or the antibiotics because you know, we're urinating out what we don't need, it's still getting into our water systems, et cetera. So our bodies are being bombarded with them. Unfortunately, even we're not taking a prescription dose of antibiotics. So adding in more just causes real problems and may not even work because we might have built immunity. And when I work with people on healing their gut, we change the natural products that we're using to wipe out any overgrowth of yeast or bacteria monthly, because again, they can build immunity to those natural, anti microbials, etc, that we use. Yeah. So it's a very complicated system that we have is Yeah, but I do love the connectivity between our gut and our brain between all of our organs between our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual bodies that we may not stop and think about either. But there's huge connection there. And to your point, our mainstream medical model tends to silo organs. You know, we look at this organ or that organ, and we're not looking at how one thing is impacting the other, which is so important. So, so important in our health today.

Patrick Louie: 00:39:45

Yeah, and so so largely ignored. Exactly,

Melissa Deally: 00:39:49

exactly. And yet, again, in the work that I do with women in particular, I'm looking at the stress system I'm looking at, you know, being stuck in that state of chronic stress. and then how that is impacting our hormonal imbalances, how our toxic load is affected by hormonal imbalances, as well as we have these hormonal imbalances. And then because of the toxic load, we can't improve it because the liver can't detox the excess estrogen, et cetera. So there's so much interconnectivity. But when we look at all of that, we can get to the root cause. And we can use natural herbs, supplements oils, in order to help the body come back into balance, and then it will heal itself. Because I don't do any healing. I don't care. I don't diagnose, I don't heal. I don't that's not at all in my vocabulary. But I look for the imbalances. I look for the deficiencies, I look for the root cause, support the body and coming back into balance, and it will take over and do what it's supposed to do.

Patrick Louie: 00:40:55

Yeah, the body heals itself, if given the chance,

Melissa Deally: 00:40:58

exactly when we create that environment. So a question that I love to ask all of my guests is, what does don't wake wait for your wake up call mean to you?

Patrick Louie: 00:41:09

Yeah, so so to me, it means being proactive about your health, being your own best advocate for your for your own personal health, so that you don't end up one day in a doctor's office with that dreaded diagnosis of cancer, or some other unimaginable disease.

Melissa Deally: 00:41:28

I love it. Very simple and eloquent. And thank you so so much. And for people that might want to reach out to you either to learn more about what you offer to employees or bringing it to their own workplace. If they're like, hey, I want something like that. I want my employer to offer something like that. How do they reach out to you and connect with you so that we can get this into even more workplaces?

Patrick Louie: 00:41:52

Yeah, so so people, I'm happy to have people email me at Patrick lui at living more solutions.ca or visit our website, triple W Living solutions.ca. And what we can do is we can set up a free workshop, actually, for workplaces where myself and a another holistic health expert can come in and just kind of share solutions for a common struggle that that employees might might be dealing with.

Melissa Deally: 00:42:25

I love that. That's awesome. So I highly encourage people who are listening to this to check that out. Because you might think that you have no impact yourself. But you just never know until you ask the question and see if your employer is open to a presentation to just learn about it. Because they don't even know that it's available, I bet. But you do now because you've listened to this podcast. And so now it's about sharing it with others and having those conversations. So thank you so so much, Patrick, for all that you do. I absolutely love it. And it's a huge mission. But you haven't shied away from it, you step into it, full force. And it's so important, and it will impact so many lives over time. So thank you for all that you do. And what's just one last message that you would like to leave the audience in to motivate them to start their or jump into their health journey today.

Patrick Louie: 00:43:24

Yeah, I mean, so for one, I mean, continue listening to Melissa's amazing podcast here. But also like, like myself, become your own best health advocate. You know, like, keep an open mind, stay curious. Keep learning and decide for yourself. You know, you know, I don't want anyone, I don't wanna influence anyone. But I want you to decide for yourself how you want to live your life and whether, you know, whether it's a medical model, whether it's the holistic model, or whether it's a combination of both, you know that you get to decide how you want to live your life.

Melissa Deally: 00:44:03

I love that. Well, thank you so much for being here today. Patrick, thank you to the audience for listening. I hope you've found this to be really informative. It's unlike any other show that I've done because you know, this is something that's relatively new and you probably don't know about. So I hope it's been really helpful to you to learn about what Patrick's doing and livingwell solutions. So thanks for joining us and see