So, gastroenterology is essentially the treatment and wellness maintenance of the gastrointestinal tract
which by definition is from the mouth to the anus.
So, I deal with a variety of esophageal issues, stomach issues,
small intestine and colon issues
And a metaphor that I like to use is one in which I tell patients,
if you came to see me once a week, for an entire year and every time you came to see me,
I hit you in the leg with a hammer.
The first time I hit you, you would probably heal, and you'd come back the next time and chances
are we wouldn't really see too much in the way of any major effects from that.
If I hit you in the same spot the second week and thusly week three, week four, up to week 52...
At some point, you're likely going to lose
function on that leg, you're going to have chronic stiffness, chronic soreness, and a lot of inflammatory tissue.
Chronic disease is really a slow progressive loss of function.
Whatever system you're talking about, whatever organ you're talking about...
It's a loss of that organ and that system's ability to function optimally.
At least 75 percent of the complaints that I see on a daily basis are self-inflicted
through poor lifestyle choices.
Improper diet, lack of exercise, sedentarism...
Um, things that lead to chronic disease.
and I know the impact that it can have on a person's longevity,
on their morbidity and their mortality and also how it affects their families and their relationships.
[Greg] By my reckoning there are about 20,000 CrossFit physicians in the U.S.
We have, I believe the answer to what is killing about 70 percent of the population.
We've got it right here. You already know it. That's why I invited you here.
You already know we're gonna teach you, but I wanted you to see it firsthand, because I wanted you to know
firsthand, what it is that I think that your patient should be exposed to.
So that the burden of their disease
isn't a burden for which you don't have the tools or equipment to do anything about.
[Leah] 70 percent of deaths in our country are caused by chronic diseases.
80 percent of our healthcare costs in this country go to treating them and to treating them unsuccessfully.
Our goal by doing CrossFit is ultimately to achieve what? What do we want?
We want fitness and then over the length of our life we want?
[Audience] Health. [Leah] Health. Awesome.
[Chad] Yeah, so I got an invitation to the inaugural MDL1.
It was an L1 Seminar specifically for healthcare providers.
It was the best CrossFit experience, I've had since starting CrossFit.
To be able to come together with other healthcare professionals that were like-minded
and that understood the methodology and how
exceedingly important it is in helping to treat patients.
We're really stoked to have you guys here because you can help us relay this message,
and the message is simple,
"Eat meats and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar."
That is our prescription for wellness.
I've been to lots of CME's, Continuing Medical Education
in my field especially,
but it pales in comparison to how you feel when you— I left that seminar.
For the first time in my medical career, I felt like we didn't talk about symptom management,
we talked about cure.
And coach had said this too that,
you know, if you can get a patient off the couch and get them off the sugar, you've cured them.
It's done!
[Greg] I would hope that you would be able to with great pride and confidence refer patients to an affiliate.
Our estimation is we've got three times the number of affiliates that have carved 100 pounds off of a member,
then have sent someone to the Games.
So what's the real work in the box?
It's the good stuff. It's the good stuff.
We do a lot in medicine of just treating symptoms,
we don't actually fix the primary problem.
And I want to be able to fix the problem.
I'm moving towards, and I have been over the last several years of not just managing symptoms.
I want people to get better.
So my idea now of fixing something is not a prescription to treat a symptom.
My idea now fixing something is curing the root cause.
So we— you know, we currently live in a society where medical professionals
care less about the food that we eat and the people who provide our food care less about our health.
And, you know, I hear commonly from patients that they weren't given any advice.
Zero advice on what they should or shouldn't be eating and how the nutrition can affect their problem.
Then the flip side to that is we have
food manufacturers that are more
interested in their profits than they are the health of the people that they're supplying this food for.
And so it's a broken system. It's a broken system.
And it doesn't have to be that way. We don't have to get weaker, get slower.
We don't have to accept heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's
and think that it's— you know, it was fate.
We don't have to accept any of those things anymore.
I mean, we can make real change now and make a huge dent and preventing those things from occurring.