Solidarity HealthShare Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Oertle joins Bob Sansevere on The BS Show to discuss the importance of advocating for personalized medical care when so many medical professionals are pushing for a “one size fits all” approaching in diagnosing and treating illnesses.
Bob Sansevere (00:00):
We are joined by Dr. John Oertle, the co-founder and Chief Medical Officer for Solidarity HealthShare at solidarityhealthshare.org. Now, doctor, I want to ask you a question about something that one of your staff sent along to me and I’m surprised by what it said and I’ll explain why in a moment. But first here is what it said, ‘the beginning of it in the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, precision medicine also referred to as personalized medicine has emerged as a revolutionary approach that tailors medical treatment to individual patients.’ I would’ve thought that’s how it should have been done all along and would be done now, is it because we now have a genetic component that they couldn’t do that, they can bore down and get much closer to what your issues might be and what your maladies might be, but shouldn’t that have been done all along, that you don’t just apply a generic response to something?
Dr. John Oertle (OO:53):
Yeah, Bob, you would think that this is common sense, and I love talking about this topic because we have seen the increase in technology and healthcare advance so greatly, and yet what we’ve actually seen is that we haven’t had this kind of level of response or being access to this kind of testing and information. What’s gone on is that I like to refer to it as the medical insurance complex, and this is where when you have an insurance company and you have standard of care and standard billing codes and you have a big pharma that’s got a one size fits all approach to these treatments, oftentimes it’s the system that has created a difficulty for being able to again, be able to think outside the box or do things that are maybe outside of that structure that exists. And so unfortunately when you do this, you’ve got good meaning doctors that maybe they want to be able to do something but be able to go a little bit further.
(02:00):
But because the insurance company of the person that they’re seeing is not able to cover that or at least not cover it for first line or second line, they start to be able to say, well, let’s just prescribe a pill. Let’s see you shortly, let’s prescribe a pill and move on. And this is, again, it’s a square peg in a round hole and it works for some people and that’s great when it works for you. The problem becomes with when you become vulnerable to this and where precision shines is when you are falling outside of that standard of care and you’re looking for something deeper and about 20% I give the amount, 20% of people that standard of care or that system is not working for you. These are chronically ill people. This is terminally ill people that are looking for something better and looking for maybe why is the actual root causes, what’s going on with my, why is my body responding in this way?
(03:02):
Say for instance, molds, you have some genetic susceptibilities to mold toxins. Not everybody experiences mold toxicities that same way, but roughly around 15% of people when they’re exposed to molds really because they have the genetic makeup create for this perfect storm where it starts to be able to collect in the system, suppress immunity and now create a lot of chronic fatigue, brain fog, all of these things. But if you’re not doing the studies and testing, especially when things aren’t working, oftentimes because your insurance company isn’t going to be covering those things, many times patients are feeling that they don’t have options or they’re paying out of pocket for those services, going to see other doctors to be able to do this in more advanced testing. And this is where it really creates a problem. And you see amazing results when you’re able to actually understand the precision and the actual ability of looking at what is the genetics of the person, what are these factors at play and doing a deeper level analysis.
Bob Sansevere (04:03):
Well, and we mentioned it, the open that your chief medical officer and co-founder of Solidarity HealthShare at solidarityhealthshare.org, Solidarity does back people who get unlike traditional insurance companies, you do support this and you gave an example about the treatment of a 7-year-old stage four lung cancer patient who was referred to hospice by a premier cancer facility, but when advanced precision testing was done, they were able to basically the man went into remission within two months and is around two years later after being told you have to go to hospice, which essentially is where people go to live out their final days… now cancer, genetic testing with cancer, because every cancer could be different. They’re actually doing testing on the cells and I mean, there’s so much that could be done. I don’t understand why insurance companies are so far behind the curve. Is it the money or is it they just are stuck in the mud on these old thoughts that have been around for too long a period of time?
Dr. John Oertle (05:11):
I think it’s a system that’s unwilling and unrelenting to change. You start to be able to see this example. You’re absolutely right. Solidarity shares into these therapies. We shared the doctors looking deeper. Again, we actually have doctors who do this that if you are a part of our membership, the solidarity and sharing as a community into these treatments, we care navigate you as a part of our actual services to doctors to be able to help support you through this. But when it comes to even things like what you’re talking about as far as the stage four lung cancer patient, this is the power of being able to have personalized options. So yeah, that gentleman, he had gone to pristine cancer institutes across the country and they were practicing the standard of care what the insurance company is able to cover for that lung cancer case.
(06:05):
And when he was referred to hospice, because it wasn’t any standard of care, it wasn’t working anymore for him, and he actually received a personalized precision treatment with thousands of biomarkers, genetics and evaluation, and we were able to actually take him and look at a plan that actually was going to be consistent with actually treating his findings. And when we did this, we were actually, he came and was completely, this was a personal patient of mine actually at my center, but we were able to bring him into complete remission in two months and was able to actually have full complete remission. And he’s still alive today with complete remission. So this is the power of personalized medicine. It provides options to patients when you feel like no options are existing.
Bob Sansevere (06:58):
Well, I’ll tell you what I mean, doctor, I’m fortunate in that yes, I have type two diabetes, which is under control and I had high blood pressure, but that’s very much under control. But if I ever have anything serious, I’m calling you because you know all of the- I mean, I’m on certain supplements because of you recommended them. So I put a lot of trust in you. I don’t think anyone has ever described you as a quack. You know your stuff.
Dr. John Oertle (07:28):
No, it’s all data-driven. It’s all data-driven and all this is the thing is that these therapies, it’s, it’s coming from the research and ensuring that it’s safe and effective, but it’s thinking about what is going on with the body and how can you support the body to be able to be well, and oftentimes it doesn’t just happen with just a one size fits all drug. (Absolutely.) But there’s other options that are working in synergy and with the body that are well data, there’s good data and research behind it.
Bob Sansevere (07:58):
Well, now you had a list of things that were sent that someone from your staff sent to me and mentions things that could help like MS. Lupus, Crohn’s disease, different neurological issues. Parkinson’s is another one where this type of precision or personalized medicine can be helpful. Let me ask this because my wife, I think her rheumatoid arthritis is from having Lyme disease or related to it, can something like rheumatoid arthritis benefit from this type of precision slash personalized medicine to maybe drill down more and put her on a better, she’s on medication for it, but a better medication and to help put that into remission if possible, or at least stem its development?
Dr. John Oertle (08:43):
Yeah, rheumatoid arthritis is just such a good example as you’re saying. Now, those other conditions, we see good successes because in a personalized precision testing and evaluation, but you’re absolutely right, Lyme disease is an infection actually that can go persistent, but it can be from Lyme, it can be from, and it’s usually a complex of situations that that could have triggered the autoimmune disease we call rheumatoid arthritis where the body starts attacking its own joints, but it also can stem from the GI tract and the probiotics or the microbiota of the GI tract that if you have a difficult GI tract and there’s dysbiosis or an unbalanced, again, infections in that actual GI, again, we’ve seen that cause a lot of these autoimmune conditions. Obviously that immune system, 80% of your immune system surrounds the GI tract. So you want to be able to start healing this up.
(09:37):
There’s various, what’s really interesting as well, there’s various infections that can persist in the dentition as well that actually have been correlated to rheumatoid arthritis. And then there’s also a genetic component to rheumatoid arthritis. It runs in families and there’s specific genes that can predispose you to when you have these root causes of what triggers things and then you actually have the genes, it creates that perfect storm. And so that’s a very important thing I’ve brought though in just even with rheumatoid arthritis, when you are able to understand what’s going on, Lyme is very persistent as well. Borrelia is a very persistent infection and it takes an expert to one, diagnose it because sometimes the testing models aren’t even as effective to be able to test Borrelia and it can go masquerading without detection in the body. So you want to go to an expert that knows how to detect Borrelia or Lyme disease, but then at the same time, you want to be able to actually go to experts that treat it because it is pretty difficult to be able to clear as well.
(10:42):
But that’s just a good example. And being able to look at these root causes and evaluating so you can develop a good game plan many times. One of the things that I always again advocate for too is that when it comes to some of these diseases, especially autoimmune conditions, people go on really expensive medications and they usually, again, are suppressing the immune system. So it creates this perfect storm that goes on too, where now you have an immune system suppressed. And then one of the side effects and some of the side effects to rheumatoid arthritis medications for immune suppressive medications is that it actually causes cancer in the future because it suppresses the immune system. So this is where we have gotten backwards in our system that we just the following that right next step, we want to think intelligently to be able to make sure that we’re able to really consider and practice medicine to a good level again, where the doctors and the patients are being respected in their relationship when we do this at Solidarity, to be able to go deeper and to be able to make sure these things are being evaluated.
(11:42):
The other really important thing that I will add here, pop, is that if you’re listening right now, come and look at us at Solidarity because of the fact that, again, many times, again, you can’t get onto Solidarity. And because we’re a healthcare sharing ministry, we don’t take preexisting conditions. So it’s really important as well to be able to catch ’em so that many times people don’t think about these conditions occurring to them, but they do. And you want to be able to have a healthcare system that’s able to help support you in when you actually do need the medical care and things are not working well. Once you get it, then Solidarity is there to be able to support you in those areas where when something does go wrong, now we have resources and support in the community to be able to actually share into those medical needs of the medical care that will get you the answers that you’re deserving.
Bob Sansevere (12:34):
And that’s critical because once you’re in Solidarity HealthShare, if the condition develops, you’re going to be covered by it. Doctor, as always, greatly appreciated. Solidarityhealthshare.org is the place to go. And Doctor, also want to just mention, when we started, I was reading from an article and that article appeared in a American Medical Association. Well, it was what, a year ago or so? It did What Doctors Wish Patients knew about Precision Medicine was the title of it. And you could find that in many other articles at on the AMA, ama.assn.org. If you want to check that out. Meantime, check this out. The BS Show will take a quick break and we will be right back.
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