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Introduction by Matt Feret [1:11]

Matt Feret:

Hello everyone. This is Matt Feret, author of Prepare for Medicare and Prepare for Social Security Insiders, guidebooks, and online course training series. Welcome to another episode of The Matt Feret Show, where I interview insiders and experts to help light a path to successful living in midlife retirement and beyond. James and Sylvia, welcome to the show.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Hi, Matt. Thanks for having us.

Matt Feret:

Tell everybody what you do, how long you've been doing it, and how you help people.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

All right. So I guess I'll start. My name's Sylvia and I am the co-owner of Health Made in America. My background is that I am a doctor of pharmacy. I spent my, it's been about six years now that I've been a pharmacist and I spent most of my career at retail pharmacy, so at Walgreens and Walmart as your local friendly pharmacist. And then I actually decided to go back to school and study Ayurveda, which for those that might not be familiar with it, a lot of people aren't at this point still. It's actually the sister science of yoga. So yoga goes back to ancient India, right before I came over to our country and sadly, Ayurveda was left behind. So yoga was always meant to be kind of the spiritual practice for a person, not as much the physical as it is used today. So it was meant for the spiritual. And then Ayurveda was actually the mental and the physical health for an individual and the practices and preventative care and kind of stuff that goes into health. So two, Ayurveda and yoga were supposed to make up health for the mind, body and soul. So I went back to school for Ayurveda. And so I'm an Ayurvedic wellness counselor and I do consultations and education with individuals on how to kind of change their diet and lifestyle to hopefully help avoid medications. And I met this lovely man actually at the pharmacy.

Matt Feret:

Wait a minute. James, you're up. We're not going to skip that topic. We're going to come right back to it.

Dr. James Boblak:

We did meet at the pharmacy. I was her manager. We got married a year ago and we just had a baby.

Matt Feret:

Congratulations!

Dr. James Boblak:

Thank you. Four weeks old tomorrow. And so I myself am also a pharmacist in retail, co-owner with her of Health Made in America and some of the things that we do. So we, going off of Ayurveda, one of the key principles is your gut health. So we did start with, besides her consultations that we do, we did design a probiotic as well. So we do have our own probiotic that we designed and we base ours off of our experience in the pharmacy as far as the ones that we saw and the strains that worked well. The key with ours was that we didn't like all the inactive ingredients that they put in a lot of these things on the shelf. So they put so many fillers and preservatives and we wanted a cleaner product. So we found a manufacturer that was able to make that for us, a cleaner product with basically no inactive ingredients besides cellulose capsule and powder to load the bacteria. So that's what we currently do. And then what we're working on is education. That was really our goal when we started a company is that we wanted education, health education because we see that there's so many people on prescriptions now at this point. And so we want to find a way to help people prevent them from basically being on prescription drugs.

There's just not enough information out there as far as keeping people off of medications. Most doctors are putting people on medications, but they're not giving them ways to prevent them from being on a blood pressure cholesterol medicine. So lifestyle changes, things like that. They're not really focused on that so much anymore. So that's where we want to get back to is help people stay off the medications.

Matt Feret:

Yes, thank you. So both of you, and by the way, I do want to know more about that whole workplace romance. Maybe we'll do that at the end of the show. How about that? Save that for the end of the show, but I'm going to get there. So let me just a point of clarification. Are you both now still currently retail pharmacists and this, have you guys both made the move or one of you to just doing this?

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Yeah, so I actually, I left retail pharmacy, hallelujah. And I am now 100% taking care of health made in America via the consultations and our probiotic and kind of working on our next thing. But my angel here is still in the pharmacy.

Drs. Sylvia and James Boblak on the Current State of American Pharmaceuticals [6:49]

Matt Feret:

Well, you've got a new marriage and a new baby. I mean, that's a big thing. I totally understand where you're coming from. So it was interesting what you said is you are both very recently or currently still in retail pharmacy. And you mentioned the phrase like over-prescribed, and what's your day-to-day or what was your day-to-day experience in retail pharmacy? Because I think many of us, and myself included, when we go to the pharmacist, we fill our prescriptions, it's harried, it's frenetic, it's crazy. Sometimes if you're pulling in the drive-through, you're talking into a bullhorn. So it sounds like, and it's very transactional. There's a hot minute where the pharmacist goes. Do you have any questions? No. And so the experience you've had in the retail pharmacy setting led you to say the phrase over-prescribed for a reason and you said Hallelujah out of retail pharmacy. What is it like right now? I mean obviously we're not bashing anybody or any profession, but from your perspective, what's that right now in terms of where the retail pharmacist and pharmacy fits into healthcare in America, and what do you see are needed changes, which is what led you to today?

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Well, I think I have so much to say about this. Well, I think frustrating would be a really good word to start off with. I think a lot of pharmacists would definitely agree with me on that. And that's because the role of a pharmacist is to be a medication safety individual. That's kind of our role to make sure that people get safe medications. They don't take medications for no reason, that there's always a reason on there, and they're using the best medication available for that individual. And that there's no interactions. It's safety at this point. It has become very transactional. And it's just not a setting where safety is any longer priority. And there's not really the time and the space to be able to have those conversations. And you have pharmacists being any questions almost hoping you don't have any questions. And it's like, that's sad. We laugh, but it's sad because that's what this profession has come to. And it shouldn't be that way because I think at the end of the day, we do need people checking in on whether medications are being taken safely.

Matt Feret:

What time of the day, when to take it, how to take it, what if you have something come in and talk? Yeah, I hear what you're saying.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

And patients get frustrated because they want to leave also, and maybe sometimes don't understand the importance of the conversations that need to be had about their medications and how sometimes the things that are happening with them aren't just like a random occurrence that they're happening because of something that they initiated not too long ago in their medication profile. And then, yeah, so it's kind of all around. There's a misunderstanding of what should be happening.

Dr. James Boblak:

Yeah, I would say the probably 99% of pharmacists would agree that it's a pretty stressful environment now compared to what it was like 10 years ago even. And that's because we really don't have that full amount of time to talk to the patients. It is kind of like assembly line where we got to really do this. I got two doctors on hold for me here. I got these two patients waiting for questions. I got this technician asking me a question about what was written on this prescription. Usually got five, six things going on at once. And it gets stressful where you don't really have that time to really spend time with that patient to go for.

Matt Feret:

It's stressful to watch when I walk up to the counter. I mean, you're looking at the techs running around, the pharmacist running around, I'm like, it's a stress factory. Seems like, anyway.

Drs. Sylvia and James Boblak on the Overuse of Medication [11:04]

Dr. James Boblak:

Yeah, it's pretty wild these days. And then going into that part about the over-prescribing is that, so that was one of the things that as we're going, we are seeing that more and more people are being put on a lot of different medications or people will be on 4 or 5, 6, 7. I mean, there's some people on 20 medications and it's not slowing down. It is definitely increasing. And most of them are very unaware of their medications, what they're even taking them for and ways that they could get off them. And that was our motivation behind starting Health Made America is that we need to get that education out there.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

And I think what you mentioned about getting off of your medications, I think that's a really important thing to mention because we all know, even back from when we were in school, we were learning about how we're here as pharmacists to understand the time and the place for these medications. But the goal of the doctor and the patient should always be to get off of the medication and to get out of the disease state that they're in by doing lifestyle changes and diet modifications. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line that kind of got lost and those conversations aren't being had anymore. And so it's just a bunch of just prescribing and then no conversations.

Dr. James Boblak:

If people are living a certain lifestyle that's been, let's say, increasing their blood pressure more and more and more, giving them that pill, it usually doesn't stop. They're like, oh, they took this pill and now their blood pressure is just going to be perfect from here on out. It's usually like it'll lower it and then for a small period of time it'll be fine and then it'll go back up because they haven't changed anything in their life for the reason that they got there in the first place and now they have to have a second blood pressure medications and now they're on two, and then later on they'll be on a third one and then they'll have complications from some of these meds and then all of a sudden they have to be on something for cholesterol or something else and they really just start piling on if there's not some sort of education about why they got there in the first place and trying to fix the underlying cause for how they got there.

Matt Feret:

So in your experience, well, I'll tell you what, I'll put something forth and you can slap it down or you can agree with it or somewhere in between. It's almost as if, and I had a conversation with another guest at one point. He says, I think he told, I'm going to not get the phrase, it's like when something's wrong, we in America tend to bring it the Howitzer and launch an artillery shell at it, and they usually, that's a prescription drug instead of taking incremental steps. And I put that re-quote in there to say that we all know, I mean we can't miss it, that eating healthy and exercising is going to address especially chronic conditions like high cholesterol and blood pressure. But we kind of have a get out of jail free card because we've got drugs that we can keep eating the way we're eating and artificially control our BP and our cholesterol, for example.

And I think it, it's even more recent than that. I mean, we're talking about the weight loss drugs now that everybody flooded the internet with not that long ago that you just pop a pill and you lose weight. What is it? Is that just news media making mountains out of molehills? Or are you guys seeing this the way I'm seeing it, which is like, yeah, I can go ahead with my lifestyle and just throw a pill at it and keep it under control and not have to make changes.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Yeah, that's absolutely there. And I mean you're currently in the pharmacy, so you can mention more about that. But I want to also say that with that mindset, mental health declines as well because you let yourself down as a person. There's something to having willpower and giving yourself goals of like, hey, if I want to lose weight, I'm going to change certain things in my life. You get satisfaction, you get a mental high from that, and that improves your mental health if you're going and turning to kind of the easy answer deep down inside in your soul, you cannot hide from yourself, your mind and your soul know that you're taking kind of the cheap way out and you end up feeling that kind of also, you don't ever end up matching mentally how you feel with the way that you now look, if you have lost weight from this and who knows how long that's even going to stay because it wasn't done through the real deal.

Dr. James Boblak:

And going back to the Howitzer example, because I do actually agree with that. You're just going at it with this incredible weapon, but those also have a lot of collateral damage, and that's what ends up happening as well is that you're fixing this one thing, but A, you're not fixing the underlying problem and every single one of them has potential side effects. I mean, I think even all these new weight loss things, I mean the list of side effects on them are very huge.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

They're real. And can we just take a second to say this? The side effects are listed because they are real. They're not just said for just giggles. People for some reason feel like they can just be said and then ignored, but we wouldn't say them if they weren't actual things to take seriously. I don't know why people still have a hard time understanding that when they say that there's a chance of death, there's a chance of death that's real.

Dr. James Boblak:

Yeah, I think they could be very severe, but I think where you're saying everybody's thinking that, oh, I don't need to change anything. I'm just going to take a bunch of pills, take a bunch of shots, this, that they're going to just do all these things so they don't need to change anything. But that's the whole thing. And I was talking to her earlier about the comparison to illicit drugs. Somebody that takes an illicit drug, they start off taking some, then they need more and more and more and more. It just keeps expanding and as it's just destroying their body, it is kind of like that where taking some medicines, they're not changing anything in their life, they're taking these and then they just slowly keep deteriorating. Now they're on two medicine now three, now four, now five, and just keeps going that direction. And it is a mindset I think that we want to change because their quality of life of these people is not good. And you could ask any of these people that are on a bunch of medications, they feel like crap all the time and maybe they have told themselves, yeah, I'm just naturally feeling like crap and tired all the time. And then maybe they've told themselves that, but their lifestyle on these medicines they're on are very much commonly do these things too. So I think you hit it on the head though, as far as that people are just thinking that way. But I think that's where we want some change.

Drs. Sylvia and James Boblak on Holistic Healthcare [19:00]

Matt Feret:

It's the easy button because eating well and avoiding things that hurt your body is hard to do, obviously pleasure, a lot of pleasure in food, a lot of pleasure in substances and a lot of pleasure in not stressing your body and working out. But to your point, there's a lot of pleasure in actually doing those things because it does improve your mental health. So if the pharmacists don't have time and the time they do have is, I mean, thank goodness focused on safety, I mean that's your base core kind of don't take this and that or you'll die. I mean, I'm glad to hear that safety is still there, but if it's frenetic and filling scripts and short interactions and the doctors that are prescribing these are maybe not doing what you're preaching, whose role is it to take control of that type of piece of one's health?

It sounds like it's my own that if a doctor isn't looking out for me and trying to figure out, alright, you're on blood pressure medication, 140/100, here's a pill. The extra, I think what you're saying is the extra piece is, and we're going to get you off of this and this is how we're going to do it together, or is that the pharmacist role or is that somebody completely different? Is that on me or do I need to find a functional or a nutritionist or somebody else? Where does this gap occurring if it's not occurring necessarily in someone's mentality?

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

I mean, so absolutely right. I think that it's not happening anywhere right now. There's no healthcare professionals that are really stepping up to do it in mainstream healthcare. I think in all of our curriculums and healthcare, they do specify that one of our roles is to talk to patients about the diet and lifestyle, but it's not really happening anywhere across the board. So it really does, a big thing does fall on the patient. You as the individual, you've got to be in charge of your own health because we do live in a time right now where there's a lot of pressure on healthcare workers from different directions, and it's not always at the best interest of the patient. And so if you really want to take good care of yourself, there are good doctors out there. I just want to be clear, they're out there.

So you have to be able to find one, and whether that's a functional doctor or a naturopathic doctor or just your average mainstream medical doctor, they're out there. You kind of have to do your due diligence in finding them. There's also a lot of other sources you can go to. I mean, I'm an Ayurvedic wellness counselor, so I sit down and I have very in-depth conversations about what kind of foods and what kind of lifestyles specifically benefit you as an individual, not like a generalized kind of thing that maybe a dietician would go over where it's like, here's the good foods, here are the bad foods. I go through what is good for you and only you based on your circumstances in life. So there's others like myself there, there's Ayurvedic counselors, there's Ayurvedic doctors you can seek out. There's a lot of promise in the eastern medical systems that are being brought over such as Ayurveda that are really helping people put a connection between their mind, body, and soul and enter a more holistic approach to healing and kind of finding themselves through that. Because eating healthy isn't easy always in this world, and living healthy isn't easy.

Dr. James Boblak:

And I want to add, because I think everybody thinks it's just so hard, they don't want to change their life. They'd rather just take a pill or something. But in my own scenario, my blood pressure before I moved in with Sylvia, my blood pressure was always 140/90. I was always considered borderline high blood pressure, and after we went over what foods would be good for my specific body composition, so we just changed my diet. When I lived alone, I ate out a lot, like most guys who live alone I ate a lot of pizza.

Matt Feret:

Pizza. For those of you that have listened to different podcast, pizza is its own food group for me. I can do very well unless you put a strip of New York style pepperoni in front of me.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Well also, and there's a time and a place for that too. That's the thing. You don't have to say bye to things like this ever.

Dr. James Boblak:

That's exactly what I want to get at, I just changed basically not eating out all the time and changing over some of my foods to the foods that were good for me and just getting more organic food and basically getting rid of packaged foods. Nothing like overly processed. I would've a lot of chemicals in there anyways, I basically just changed to that. Didn't change anything else in my life as far as exercise or anything else like that. And that's all I changed and my blood pressure. Then after about a year, went down to 125/70. And so it was cool to see, it was like, okay, I didn't have to change anything else and it just went down. So I think it is easier than people think to just at least get themselves so they don't have to be on a bunch of medicines and not have that lower quality of life. I think it's simpler than most people think.

Matt Feret:

I want to ask another question, which might be a little, I don't know. I don't think controversial is the term. I'm going to go back to the actual practitioner side of it. Do you think some of this has to do with weight, not only what you're eating, the process piece, but the amount you're eating and then the weight that everybody's carrying around? There's been a very large loud movement in the last, what, 10 years. I mean, I hear it from my kids, “No fat shaming.” If I say, “Who was that guy?” And they're like, “Who?” And I go, “I don't know the fat guy in the corner.” They're like, “Oh, don't say fat.” I'm like, whoa. And that's been a thing for a while. I'm not trying to fat shame anybody, but is there a reticence now in the healthcare community, or at least in the pharmacist community to stay away from that type of thing? You don't have the interaction, but you don't get a chance to say things. But when you do get a chance, do you think there's some kind of reticence at all to even discuss it because it goes into this realm of everybody's beautiful and fat, don't fat shame. Is there some sort of weird societal thing going on here too? Or am I just old school and I'm out of it?

Dr. James Boblak:

Well, I think that if you're just talking to somebody specifically about health, that is a clear thing that should be addressed. I mean, your weight will reflect your health. So just if you're looking just at health for sure, that needs to be noticed and rectified. But I think as far as the rest of people saying that, yeah, big is beautiful and things like that, I mean to each their own. But I would say that I wouldn't tell people that that's going to be a healthier way to live and that they won't have a lower quality of life in the long run living that way.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Quite honestly, I think that we as healthcare professionals have a responsibility to tell that honest truth to people. Yeah, we're not trying to fat shame anybody, but you're right. People have become very sensitive about that these days and it's taken route in the wrong direction unfortunately. And it is affecting health.

Dr. James Boblak:

Yeah, and I mean I see thousands of people every week, and there's a clear correlation. Somebody that carries more weight does tend to be on more diabetic medications, cholesterol medications, blood pressure medications. I mean, there's a very clear correlation that mental health too, it does lead to more diseases.

Matt Feret:

Yeah, I'm trying to put myself in your shoes or healthcare practitioner's shoes with all this going around me going, okay, how do I talk about this sensitive subject, which 20 years ago wasn't sensitive.

Dr. James Boblak:

The people that we deal with at the pharmacy, none of them would feel shamed by us or feel that we are being rude. So I don't think people there ever feel that way. And maybe that's a lot of fluff that happens in some part of the world, but in general, the people that we deal with, they would never feel bad by us telling them that they may need to lose weight or anything like that. They understand that that has led to why they're in front of me at the pharmacy.

Matt Feret:

Got it. It's a doctor or pharmacist talking about medical pieces, not just me, like I said, referencing some fat guy in a corner and my kid's getting mad at me for saying so. Totally different.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Something magical happens when we have a white coat on where we can say certain things and they don't get taken out of context and they just get taken straight for what we're trying to say, and people are able to receive it.

Dr. James Boblak:

Yeah, it is true. We do get respect automatically with that white coat because a technician may say something and they may yell at the technician, then I'll walk over and they'll be super nice to me.

Matt Feret:

Well, I mean, you deserve it. I mean, you're both doctors of pharmacy, you spent thousands of dollars in years of your life studying this stuff. Yeah, you're the pros. That's why we're talking, right? That's why you're talking to patients,

Dr. James Boblak:

For sure.

Drs. Sylvia and James Boblak on Homeopathic Supplements [30:14]

Matt Feret:

All right. Can we go back into the pharmacological piece of where you guys see there's a gap? And I know you talked about obviously probiotics and gut health, but also the difference between natural vitamins and minerals versus not natural. Can you talk about that again from a pharmacology standpoint, what you see and what's optimal?

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Yeah, so it's interesting, right? Because herbs, for example, herbs and a lot of supplements, they work holistically on the body. A lot of the pharmacological agents, I would say most of them, they target specific like neurotransmitters or specific chemicals in your body or organs, and they are lab synthesized. They're not made from natural matter that your body can recognize and process. So not only are they not holistically targeting your whole body to rebalance it, they're targeting one specific area, but they are unnatural, and your body cannot process them, right? So that's the difference between pharmacological agents and then natural supplements and herbals. And we are really big on trying to promote more supplements and herbal use because we want your body to be able to process what you are putting into it. With the pharmacological agents, what happens is that you take a pill, it may does adjust, let's say your blood pressure for an example, it does adjust your blood pressure, but your body doesn't ever actually process that medication.

It literally cannot identify it, so it doesn't properly digest it and process it as it would an herbal. And so then what happens is that there gets basically a backup happens and there gets stagnant energy in your body because you're not processing these agents. They start wreaking havoc on your body as side effects, and they kind of throw other things off balance, and that's how you end up getting the side effects and having to take more medications and so on, so forth. So these pharmacological agents, they're not processed basically by your body the way that an herbal would be processed. Does that make sense?

Matt Feret:

It does. Do the herbal things work? I mean, I know a lot of people take them. It's a billion multi-billion-dollar industry. Take red yeast, something for your blood pressure. Is that the same thing as a group of chemists coming together and doing trials for years and years and years? There's one that's backed by science and trial in the drug industry, and it's approved and it's FDA, the whole thing.

Dr. James Boblak:

Well, first of all, I think a lot of the medications that are coming out are based off of what naturally growing things have done in the body, and they see how those work in the body and then they turn it into a pill. So they do try to go off of those things because something that's growing naturally on earth is part of nature and we're part of nature. Your body is much more likely to digest it and work holistically in your body, and so they're much safer, something synthetic. But what I did want to say is that that doesn't necessarily mean that every single herbal is going to necessarily work for you or for each individual. So some of them are going to be specific to the individual. And I wasn't as familiar with that aspect of it until Sylvia was teaching me some of these things with Ayurveda.

And because your body composition and things like that do matter on different foods and different herbals, that would be good for you and some of it would be bad for you. And I think Ashwagandha was one that I remember me and her talking about it would be good for some people and not good for others, and that's an herbal that would be on the shelf that you can buy. So it's not necessarily automatic that it will work for sure, but it is going to be safer than your basically average medication you're going to take from the pharmacy.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

And the studies have been done. I know you were saying that the studies were there, it's FDA approved, all that good stuff. The studies are there, but that doesn't mean that the side effects are not, it's almost like we know more about the side effects, so we say that it's okay. Do you know what I mean? We don't know as much about the side effects of the herbals. We know more about the verified side effects of the pharmaceutical agents and that they happen very often and they're pretty outrageous. But just because that's kind of disclosed, we're more comfortable taking the odds.

Matt Feret:

It kind of sounds like a birds and the bees talk I had with my son, I was like, well, yeah, condoms are 99% effective. That doesn't mean the 99th time you'll get pregnant. It could mean the first time.

Dr. James Boblak:

If an agent does target that one specific thing, then in a trial, of course it may show, oh yeah, it did lower this guy's blood pressure even though it may have, let's say it destroyed his kidney or something else. This trial shows this is very super effective. It lowered their blood pressure, but that doesn't mean it's going to still go up a little bit down the road or that it destroyed something else. But for that specific thing that they are doing a trial for, yes, that did lower it right there.

Matt Feret:

So two doctors of pharmacy both saying basically, well, don't let me put words in your mouth. When you have a condition and it's not maybe acute, right? Or maybe it's not very complex or genetic, or maybe it is when you have something like high blood pressure or high glucose and blood sugars or pre-diabetes or something like that, and a doctor prescribes you something, it sounds like you're both advocating an interim step there to say, well, don't not fill the script, but maybe look at some other alternatives before doing that around the diet and lifestyle choices. And on top of that, reach out to people or a professional or another doctor to see if there are interim steps before firing that Howitzer.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I would say always have the strength to have that conversation with your doctor, the doctor that's giving you the medication right off the bat, find the strength within you to have the conversation of, Hey, you know what? I don't want to start on this medication yet. Let's talk about different options that I can take or I can do prior to me filling this medication. I think that these conversations need to be put out there, and you come home so many times with different conversations that he had about people being really unsatisfied with the visits that they just had at their doctors, and they felt like they weren't being listened to, and they come in with a script and they don't even know what it's for. And you can tell that these people were just so scared to tell their doctor that they don't want to put this medication in their body, and I'm all about being able to choose what you do with your body, and even a doctor should not be able to tell you that. So these conversations need to start find the strength within you to say, Hey, let's find different solutions for me. I don't think I like this one. A good doctor will support you, and if he doesn't, well then you know that it's time to look for a different doctor.

Matt Feret:

That power of that white coat again.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Yeah, exactly. It is, yeah,

Dr. Sylvia Boblak on Ayurvedic Practices [39:18]

Matt Feret:

You got to be involved in your healthcare. Can we pivot then to the Ayurvedic studies. You touched on it early on and you likened it to the other side of yoga, and I know my sister is a yoga instructor and I had no idea the number hundreds of hours of study and practice to go be a certified yoga instructor. It was insane. I mean, when I thought of it, I mean, I have my insurance license, I had to study for a couple of days and pass with a 70%. That is not what yoga was. And I have to assume, yeah, that is not what Ayurvedic studying is and being certified. So can you explain what that is, how long it took you to get it, and how prevalent or not prevalent that is?

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Actually. It's not prevalent whatsoever at this point. Still we're seeing it kind of slipping in more. I mean, you mentioned ashwagandha. Have you ever heard of ashwagandha, Matt?

Matt Feret:

I've heard the phrase.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

So it's an herb that a lot of people are taking for anxiety and uplifting their moods, and that's an Ayurvedic herb actually. So it's coming in through different, more popular herbals these days. And then, yeah, people I think are just reaching out to different realms and finding out about Ayurveda. But to be an Ayurvedic wellness counselor, it was a yearlong program for me. I went through Carala Ayurveda Academy, which is amazing. It's taught by, the main professor was a sixth generation Ayurvedic doctor from India. I talk about him regularly. He was the most amazing individual I've ever gotten the pleasure to learn from. We started each class with making sure we have a cup of tea, and nobody ever cared about me having tea in pharmacy school. They did not care. So it was a beautiful program.

I can tell you that we spent 20 hours alone just learning about the philosophy of Ayurveda, of this ancient wisdom that is more hours than the average medical doctor gets on diet, which is the building block of health. So we did that. And a big part of Ayurveda is preventative medicine. They have basically a section for everything, including pediatric surgery. I mean, it goes into a lot of different specialties that you can go into, and that of course takes more years of studies. But the main thing about Ayurveda is this whole idea of we can live a lifestyle that prevents problems that we don't have to get sick first and then figure out what to do. We can actually live a good way and prevent these issues through everything or just our daily lives because everything goes into our health. Literally the people that we talk to, the kind of music that we listen to, the time we go to bed, whether we feel safe in the community that we live in, every little thing, not just diet and exercise really affects our health.

So that's what was the main focus of that year long program was that learning how all the foods affect our bodies. Ayurveda has this really cool way of looking at food from the more physical realm. It's almost like a very quantum physics approach to what effect food has on you. Here in the US we talk about like, oh, you eat these vegetables, they have these vitamins or something else has this much protein, this much carbs. This is kind of your goal. It's very superficial, kind of just chemical, I guess, what's the word I'm looking for? Physical based. Whereas Ayurveda takes it to more the functional level of what happens to your food when you eat it and digest it, and you have to extract all that energy to then fuel all of your cells and all of your tissues and all of your organs. Are you actually getting all of those proteins and carbs from this beautiful organic meal you just ate wherever, or are you not doing that because your digestion is not in the right place to be digesting and translating all that into the energy that you need, if that makes sense.

Matt Feret:

Yeah, I've had Natasha TR on the show, and I think the mother of probiotics, it was a fascinating hour long discussion about it's not just the stuff you buy off the shelf. It has to be passed down. It has to be cultured, it has to be very, very specific, or it's mostly just waste if you're taking, and not to pick on a brand name, so I won't, but if you walk into a grocery store and pick up a probiotic yogurt, that's not what she was talking about at all. And so in terms of digestion, probiotics are a thing, but also can you talk more about what you've learned around the digestion and your digestive system and the ability to digest certain foods and your tolerances and like you said, the physical reaction I guess, to that rather than just the whole 33% fat, 33% carb, 33% protein.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

So in Ayurveda, what we say basically is that your digestive system is, it can be one of three things. It can either be, and this is kind of your predisposition throughout your life. You can either have a very slow functioning digestive system, which we call you have a low fire, low digestive fire, is what it's equated to. You could have a variable one where it just based on the day you have either a high or low one, or you could have a very high functioning digestive fire or a digestive system. And that can be equated to basically metabolism, how we talk about it in our society. And so for individuals that have a low functioning digestive system, that's where most of your metabolic diseases are going to be. So anything that's like people that are overweight, people that have diabetes, all the different metabolic conditions, they're going to fall into that category.

People with slow digestive systems will also have a lot of constipation issues, and they're going to have a hard time basically converting all of their food into energy. So there's going to be a lot of leftover unconverted food in their stomachs and in their systems at the end of digestion. For people that have a very high functioning digestive system, they're going to basically have food that shoots through. So often those are the individuals that will have diarrhea right after they eat. And because everything's just kind of going through. And so kind of with the person that has the low functioning digestive system, food is still not getting cooked through because it's not low functioning, but it's so fast functioning that the food shoots through and doesn't get a chance to get absorbed and the nutrients are not taken in. So the whole idea is to get into a daily flow where you can have a balanced digestive system, a balanced metabolism or that fire, and there is so much that goes into it.

So in terms of food, eating very natural foods, you want to eat foods that your body can actually handle, aren't going to be overloading your system, and it's actually going to be able to digest. So you want to stick to natural foods, you want to do unprocessed foods, less packaged foods. So that's that with foods, you want to have a good circadian rhythm of going to sleep at a good time and waking up on time. People don't really think about how their digestive system is impacted by their sleep, but there's a huge correlation there. So you want to kind of even look at that. I feel like I've digressed.

Matt Feret:

No, you haven't. No, you haven't. No, it was the digestive and I was thinking the low was bad and the high was good, but you just said the high was bad. You're looking for some balance in the middle.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Thank you for getting back on track. You want to basically be in the middle. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm totally losing my track of mind right now. Pregnancy brain here.

Matt Feret:

Pregnancy brain and lack of sleep. Lack of sleep, I'm guessing or broken sleep. You said four weeks, right?

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Yeah.

Matt Feret:

That's all good. Well then why don't I just go back to something else. The Ayurvedic studies. So as a pharmacist, the pharmacist background, what did you find in your studies that kind of rounded out what you learned in formal education here in the states about pharmacology that you didn't know or weren't taught or went, you know what? There's the missing link.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Oh, man. Looking at the root cause of conditions. So I remember being in pharmacy school and each time that they would bring up a new medication, I remember being so confused. It was my first week of pharmacy school, and I just remember being like, wait, I don't understand how this solves the problem. Then this side effect came up and then we gave another medication, but when did we actually address the issues? I kept wanting to know, well, why does this person have this problem? We be addressing that, but that never was getting addressed in any of the classes. It was just kind of like when they have this problem, give them this to suppress it. And my Ayurvedic studies, it's all about getting to the root cause of the problem. And that's what we're both really big on. You don't want to just suppress the issue.

You want to get to the root cause. And so finally, I think it was my first time in healthcare being like, oh, okay, finally I can understand how to take an individual and I can talk to them and figure out what has caused them to have this elevated blood pressure or high cholesterol or high sugar levels, what in their life they've been doing over a period of time where we can kind of backtrack and be like, okay, I understand now. Here are the things that we can adjust and here's how we can actually be able to ultimately get you off of your medications. So that's kind of what it did for me. I finally saw like, okay, there's a way to really heal people. It's not just about slapping all these band aids on them with drugs.

Drs. Sylvia and James Boblak on the Future of Their Company, Health Made in America [51:05]

Matt Feret:

So you're both learned healthcare practitioners, both. I mean currently in market doing your thing, full-time jobs, and then you've got another health and wellness company health made in America, and obviously it's very clear that both of your passions are leading you to this whole like, okay, there has to be something in here where we can leverage what we know and leverage our experience not only historical, but actually current and make something and fill a gap. Talk to me about what your vision is for Health Made in America.

Dr. James Boblak:

Well, probably in the very most direct future, it's going to be education. And we do kind of want to start from the beginning of life, and by that we mean literally in the womb. So we kind of want to start with education, especially now that we just went through it through for pregnancy. We want to get information out to people. A lot of people are very unaware of maybe what medicines they can take or alternative things while they're pregnant and just the kind of diets and foods they should be having while they're pregnant. I think we want to start from that point and work our way to kids. I think that was our eventual goal, was to educate kids because we think that's the best place for them to start is early in their life.

Matt Feret:

And what about older adults and what if I already have, what if I've been on blood pressure medication for 10, 20 or 30 years? What if I think it's such a normal part of my life now? Is it ever too late to change, or is retirement and older adulthood a perfect place to set yourself up for the remaining years?

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Yeah, it's never, never too late to change. And it's interesting because actually in Ayurveda, you are not considered in your advanced stage of life yet until you're 72. And that's kind of like plus or minus a few years. So that's so different than how we look at life here in America. We think that when we're 40, life is ending. It's like, my back hurts up, but what do you expect? I'm 40. And it's like, wait, what? No, come on. So yeah, I really like that kind of approach of like, no, you're not old. You're just not, and it's never too late and you should always kind of live. You still have a thousand years to live, so it's never too late to get off those medications. Even if you've been on them for 20 years, they might be outdated for you. You might be able to get inspired and make a few tweaks and take that retirement time to really invest in yourself because it's not too late and get off that medication. Feel your personal best. There's a lot of people that I've spoken to that feel better at the age of 60 than they did when they were 30 or 20 even. So there's a lot of people like that.

Dr. James Boblak:

And we deal with patients all the time that are mostly probably 40 or older anyways at the pharmacies, and we've helped plenty of people get off medication. So definitely it is doable. Anybody can do it. You just got to find out maybe where it kind of started and why it's happening, or maybe just a couple little tweaks in your life and you could get off of these things. Some people are at a point where they could get off of them, but I feel like they're afraid to get off of things because they don't want to tell their doctor that they're going to get off of it. But it's very doable for people to get off, especially these lifestyle, especially, I'm not talking about the acute stuff, these chronic diseases that happen to a lot of people, especially the common ones, cholesterol and blood pressure, things like that. Those are ones people could make changes and get off of.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Also, if anybody that's listening does have that already in mind, they have questions about their medications and they've been curious about, do I really need these? What can I maybe be doing else to help me avoid these medications? And they don't necessarily feel comfortable talking to their current pharmacist or their doctor. I do want to invite them to come talk to us on our website, health Made in america.com. We do have a little tab on there that's Consult the pharmacist, and that's me. I'm that pharmacist. So I always say, please, this is free questions. It's as if we're in the pharmacy together, and I'm so happy to always give my best advice and see where we can take things from there.

Matt Feret:

Thanks. And what else can I do on your website? I know, do you have one-on-one Consulting? Do you have group classes? What do you have?

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Well, first of all, when you go on there, you can take a look at our probiotic. We obviously have a huge passion towards digestion. We feel it's the place to start for your health. So that's where you can purchase our probiotic. Take a look at that there. We do have the ability to sign up for consultations on there. I believe there, you can either fill out a form on there or you can email me or call me and we can set that up. I do in-person consultations and virtual ones as well. So there's that. And then we are currently working on classes and courses that we're going to be offering on different levels. So that's kind of something that's coming up and to look forward to.

Conclusion and Closing Stories by Matt Feret and Drs. Sylvia and James Boblak [57:00]

Matt Feret:

Nice. Well, I promised I'd get to it, so I'm going to ask it. You guys met at work, huh?

Dr. James Boblak:

She transferred into my store, and it was actually funny because technically because I was the manager, I couldn't be dating her. So we had to have this awkward conversation where we met up with the district manager, and it's funny, he saw us walking up and he said he had just a totally different thought about what we were going to say, about how we hated the other pharmacists working with us or something. And I just was like, oh, we were pursuing a relationship because we didn't want to get any trouble with corporate. They just transferred her out to another store.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

It was a really bittersweet thing because I loved him, but at the same time, he was the best manager ever. And I knew that I would have it so much harder at every other store, so it was kind of like, what do I do?

Matt Feret:

You followed your HR guidebooks very well. I'm very impressed.

I don't think many people would've done that. And I'll say as well, I met my wife at work too, so it happens.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

That's the place, right?

Matt Feret:

Well, I mean similar interests. You spend time together and nature happens.

Dr. James Boblak:

Absolutely.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Yeah. You got to let nature take its course.

Matt Feret:

That's right. That's awesome. Well, you guys were by the book. It sounds like it. That was great. I wasn't, but we weren't each other's managers. We were just coworkers. Be very clear about that.

Dr. Sylvia Boblak:

Okay. That's a little less scandalous. Okay.

Matt Feret:

Yeah, it wasn't, there was no potential for scandal. Awesome. Well, look, this has been a great conversation. Tell me a question I didn't ask you that I should have about this kind of combination of topics or something that I missed that I didn't pick up on that I should have explored more.

Dr. James Boblak:

You know what, just reiterating maybe the fact that to make sure everybody is empowered to confront their doctor or ask their doctor questions because I see a crazy amount of stuff every day of doctors just going off literally guidelines and nothing else. And it is leading to them writing prescriptions wrong and doing a lot of wild stuff. And it seems like that's a trending in that direction that people are no longer treating that patient them. They're literally seeing them for shorter periods of time, taking blood work, writing a bunch of things for them. But what I've seen is them going off weights and just going off guidelines, just looking at the guidelines, punching in a calculator and their dose is going super crazy out of control like that. That wouldn't be good for people. So people need to pay attention to what they're taking and not be afraid of their doctors and to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask questions. And pharmacists, you see how crazy they are all the time. You know what you ultimately are in charge of making sure that you're taking the right thing too. Don't just rely on everybody else around you to take care of it.

Matt Feret:

Awesome. James. Sylvia, thanks so much for being on the show.

Dr. James Boblak:

Thank you very much for having us. Thank you. It was so much fun.

Matt Feret:

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