Functional Medicine: A Holistic Approach to Treating Chronic Disease with Dr. Debra Muth - Episode 136

Are you tired of being told your lab results are "normal" even though you still feel unwell? Have you or a loved one been dismissed by doctors while navigating chronic illness?

On this episode of the Caregiver Relief Podcast, Diane sits down with Dr. Debra Muth, a naturopathic doctor, women’s health nurse practitioner, and founder of Serenity Healthcare Center. Dr. Muth shares her incredible personal journey of overcoming multiple misdiagnoses—including MS and Fibromyalgia—to help over 5,000 patients reclaim their health.

This episode is a must-listen for caregivers and anyone looking to take charge of their health through a holistic lens. 🎧

🔍 What is Functional Medicine?

Unlike traditional medicine, which often focuses on treating symptoms with medication, functional medicine digs deeper. As Dr. Muth explains, it is an investigation into why the body is breaking down.

"We wanna know everything about what's been going on in your life... What's your stress level like? What's your sleep like? What's your hormones like? What's your gut function like?" — Dr. Debra Muth

By uncovering the root causes—such as toxins, infections, or hormonal imbalances—practitioners can fix the underlying issue rather than just masking it.

📉 The Myth of "Normal" Labs

One of the biggest frustrations for patients is being told they are fine because their blood work falls within a standard range. Dr. Muth highlights a critical distinction: Normal does not mean optimal.

• Thyroid Health: Standard ranges are often too wide to catch functional issues. Dr. Muth suggests that for thyroid health, you want to be on the lower end of the TSH range for optimal function.
• Vitamin D: While a "normal" range might be 30 to 100, you likely won't feel the same at 30 as you do at 100.

Functional medicine aims for an optimal range where 95% of people actually feel their best.

🧠 Regenerative Hope for Cognitive Decline

Dr. Muth and Diane discuss exciting frontiers in regenerative medicine, including the use of peptides, ozone therapy, and exosomes to repair damaged tissue.

Dr. Muth shares a fascinating case study of a patient with a genetic predisposition for Alzheimer’s. By using regenerative therapies to target brain health, they were able to reduce the patient's p-tau levels (a marker for Alzheimer's) by 20% in just three months.

🧡 Essential Tips for Caregivers

Caregivers often neglect their own health, with statistics showing that 63% may become seriously ill themselves. Dr. Muth offers practical, immediate strategies for caregivers to protect their well-being:

• Support Your Adrenals: Chronic stress depletes your adrenals. Simple additions like Vitamin C, water, and herbs like Ashwagandha can help calm the system.
• Take Micro-Breaks: You don't need an hour. Taking five one-minute breaks to step outside, get sunlight on your face, and breathe can rejuvenate the body.
• Detox Your Environment: Swap plastic water bottles for stainless steel or glass to avoid microplastics, and replace toxic cleaning chemicals with vinegar and baking soda.

📢 Ready to Reclaim Your Health?

If you are ready to look beyond the symptoms and understand the why behind your health struggles, this episode provides the roadmap you need. As Dr. Muth says, "Healing begins when someone finally listens."

Connect with Dr. Deb:

• 🌐 Website: www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com
• 🎙 Podcast: Let’s Talk Wellness Now – Available on all major platforms
• 📱 Instagram: @‌serenityhealthcarecenter
• 💬 Facebook Group: She Knows Community

If this episode speaks to you, please take a moment to like, share, or comment. Every click helps us reach more caregivers who need encouragement, resources, and hope.

Podcast Episode Transcript

Diane: Welcome to the Caregiver Relief Podcast, where we explore real world challenges and powerful solutions for family caregivers and those navigating complex health issues. Today I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Debra Muth, a naturopathic doctor, a woman's health nurse practitioner, board certified anti-aging specialist, Lyme literate practitioner, and founder of Serenity Healthcare Center.

Dr. Muth has helped over 5,000 patients worldwide reclaim their vitality through a unique blend of functional medicine, regenerative therapies, and integrative care. Her personal journey, including overcome a misdiagnosis of MS. Fuels, her passion for uncovering the real root causes of illness and empowering patients to take charge of their health.

We're gonna dive into the truth about normal labs, the latest and regenerative and longevity therapies, and why mindset is as important as medicine in your healing journey.

Diane: Dr. Muth, thanks for being here today. You've had such an incredible journey in medicine. Can you share what first inspired you to shift from traditional to functional medicine?

Debra: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and share with your listeners. So I started out like everyone else and very traditional medicine. and when I was 28 years old, I started having some symptoms that didn't quite. Fit the picture. and I remember seeing my primary doctor and did all my research and I went in going, I'm coming out with one of two diagnoses.

It's either gonna be fibromyalgia or ms. I just know that's where I'm going. Fast forward, when I went to see the doctor that day, I'll never forget it. It was a hundred degree day. I had on a fleece jacket, a long sleeve shirt, and I was comfortable and. And the medical assistant took my temperature and he's I'll be right back.

He's something's wrong with this thermometer. And he came back four different times and I finally looked at him. I said, what's the temperature? He said, it's 95.4, but that can't possibly be right. And I looked at him and I said. Maybe what I'm wearing should give you an idea that it probably is Yes.

something's wrong. 'cause I'm comfortable here. Yeah. And the doctor never said anything. The medical assistant never said anything. I spent 10 minutes with the doctor, walked out with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, a prescription for narcotics, a prescription for antidepressants, and he told me to go home and get ready to be disabled in four years.

Oh. And I thought, you know what? I'm a rebel child. I'm not going to do this at 28 years old. I'm not gonna be disabled. I was just starting my career. I had just had my last child and I had my quote unquote wacky friends back then in the day that did this woowoo Herbal medicine type stuff. Yeah. And I called them up and I said, Hey, you guys know someone.

And luckily enough, they didn't mind me making fun of them back then. And they took me to an herbalist and took me to a nutritionist who was a nurse, holistic nurse. They taught me about herbs. They taught me about diet. They looked at me and they said, you have a thyroid issue. You don't have a fibromyalgia issue.

And we started changing my lifestyle and with three weeks, all of my symptoms were gone. I had none of them. At that moment, I started learning about alternative medicine. Went back to naturopathic school, became a naturopathic doctor. Fast forward to being 57. I started having some symptoms again, have a lot of degeneration in my neck. A couple of bad accidents. Saw my orthopedic doctor who looked at me and he said, Deb, you're a really bright lady. He's you know what's going on? And I'm like, oh yeah, my neck is killing me. It's terrible. He says, no, I think you have ms. And I went. What I said, here we go again. He's enlighten me.

Go for the brain, MRI. And we joked a little bit about wanting to figure out if I actually had a brain. And I'll do the brain MRI and he called me two days before Christmas and he said, Deb, I hate to tell you this, but you have ms. You have white matter brain disease. And I said, okay, but on that report it says it could be migraines, it could be Lyme, it could be toxins, or it could be ms.

He said, yeah, but yeah, but you don't have any of those other things, so it has to be ms. And I said, I've had Lyme twice. I have had heavy metals, I had mold toxicity. I get migraines. How can it not be possibly any of these other things? no. We caught this early. Go see the neurologist. Get started on some meds, you'll be fine.

So my rebel child came out again and I said, No. In my world, all of these things that we label people with are toxins and infection and other things until proven otherwise. And I chose a different approach. And two years later I saw the neurologist. It took me that long to get in to see a neurologist, and I had done all my alternative things and she looked at me and she said, this isn't typical in this.

She's I think you have post COVID peripheral neuropathy. Oh my lord. And I said, thank you for just an another label. Yeah. Yes, I had COVID, yes, all of these symptoms started after that. And yes, my spike protein level is high, but I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna do what I know to do. And it's not going to be taking the drugs that are imMuthnosuppressive, that are gonna kill my immune system and cause me to get cancer.

I'm gonna go back to what I know to do and get rid of the toxins and clean my body up. And that's what I've done for the last 27 years. And I love it every day. It's a new adventure for me and I absolutely love helping people. Figure out what's actually going on with them.

Diane: For those that are unfamiliar, what exactly is functional medicine and how does it differ from, traditional care?

Debra: That is a great question. Thank you. So functional medicine looks at the actual investigation of why the body's breaking down, not just a, this is your symptom, this is your medication. That's typically what we do in traditional medicine. You have high blood pressure. Let me give you a high blood pressure pill.

You have migraines. Let me give you a pill for the migraines. Nobody digs in to try to figure out, why are you getting the migraines, why do you have the high blood pressure? And we're all taught in traditional medicine that no one's gonna change their lifestyle. So just give them a pill. In functional medicine, it's just the opposite.

We wanna know. Everything about what's been going on in your life, where have you worked, what have you been exposed to? What's your stress level like? What's your sleep like? What's your hormones like? What's your gut function like? We wanna uncover all of those things because within their lies, the answer is to why you're having the problems that you're having.

I always tell people, if you're depressed, it's not because you have a serotonin deficiency. it's not because you have a Prozac deficiency, it's because something else is going on that's not allowing your body to make enough serotonin or put enough serotonin in the brain to keep it there for a long enough period of time.

And once we uncover why that is, we can fix it.

Diane: Why do you think so many women are misdiagnosed, especially when it comes to chronic illness and hormonal issues?

Debra: I think a lot of it is how medicine is teaching doctors. We've, since the dawn of time, when women went through menopause in the 18 hundreds, they were hysterical.

My great-great-great grand Mother was. Put in a mental institution when she was going through her change of life because she quote unquote, became crazy. And if you've been through menopause, you understand what we mean when we say that. there's anxiety and there's sleep issues, and there's all kinds of things.

Our body's doing something that it's naturally supposed to do, but it's making us crazy at the same time. And I think we've always been dismissed that way. unfortunately we're still taught today that if somebody comes in and complains of three or more symptoms, it Must be depression. Yeah.

Women wait on average four to seven years longer to get diagnosed with an autoimmune condition than men do. We wait longer to get diagnosed with a heart attack. We wait longer in the ER to be given pain meds because we're all taught that women over exaggerate their symptoms. And if anyone's ever had a baby, I can tell you it's farther from the truth that we're over exaggerating anything because many women become very stoic when they're having a child or when they're in pain.

Absolutely. and it's a sad thing. And we're really here to teach the. The world that women shouldn't be treated that way. And we don't have to be treated that way. We are different. We are very different. when we look at studies up until, I believe it was 1997 or 1998, somewhere around there, women weren't even allowed to be in the studies for medical drugs.

We were excluded from the studies, which I understand if you're of childbearing years, we don't want drugs being tried on women when there's a possibility of them getting pregnant. But at the same token, there's a whole host of women that would not have gotten pregnant, that could have been in that group and could have been studied and were just looked at as smaller versions of men.

And that also couldn't be further from the truth. Our hormones, our biology, our genetics, all makes us very different.

Diane: You often say normal labs don't mean optimal health.

Debra: Can you

Diane: explain what you mean by that?

Debra: Yes. So when we set our normal ranges for laboratory findings, a good example of this is thyroid.

It's meant to pick up about 85 to 90% of the population. Now granted, this is only decided by a very small segment of the population that were thought to be normal in the first place, and most of them are not normal when we set that range. And so if we say an optimal range of thyroid is between. 0.4 and five and a half.

that's a pretty wide range. And then outside of five is considered abnormal. Doctors still have an option to say, I'm not gonna treat you until your level is at 10. that's just crazy for me. vitamin D is a really great, example of that too. It normal is 30 to a hundred. are you gonna feel the same at 30 as you're gonna be a hundred?

Probably not. So in functional medicine we've identified an optimal range where we want people to be, where we know that 95% of them feel the best that they can be at those ranges and for often. Times for people that's on the higher end of normal. Except for thyroid. Usually that's a little bit opposite of what makes sense to us.

We want you to be on the lower end of the TSH range for that. but that's where we're looking at optimal function. Where's the body optimally gonna fit in?

Diane: How do hormones influence not only aging, but also energy, mood, and overall vitality?

Debra: love this question. I could talk about hormones all day, so stop me if I go off on a tangent.

Absolutely. Love hormones. So for women and men, hormones are gonna fluctuate. Throughout our lifetime, right? Women more than men. We fluctuate moment to moment, day to day, where men stay Much more consistent until they reach about 50 and then they'll stop, start to drop off. Women will start to lose hormones about age 35, and the first hormone they're gonna lose is progesterone.

That's our very calming, very euphoric hormone. Makes us go, ah, whatever. I don't care. I can just roll with this. And I get into a deeper sleep and I feel amazing. And it's not until we're about 45 or 50 that we start losing estrogen and then we'll start having hot flashes and night sweats and irritability.

We find all the stupid people in the world. Everybody here hates us and we. We're no longer gonna put up with the things that we've put up with our whole life. And that's why you see a lot of women start to change their life. We see a lot of divorces at that time. We see a lot of women starting to speak up and saying, I'm not gonna take this anymore.

And I think part of it is emotional as well. we look at our life and say, okay, I, maybe 25 good years left. I'm not gonna live it the same way that I lived the first 40 years of my life. And they start making those changes. And I do think hormones play a big part in that for sure. I don't feel that women should live as many years without hormones as they lived with hormones.

And that's where we're at these days. If we're about 45 or 50, when we're losing our hormones, and we're gonna live to be 85 or 90, we're gonna live just as many years without hormones as we live with hormones. I don't think that's the right thing for us to do. I think women should be vibrant and young and benefit from hormones throughout their whole life, and it helps with our cognitive function.

We do know that when we lose estrogen, we also lose the protective coating around the nerves in the brain called the myelin, which is why we see a lot more neurological diseases occur in women after menopause. So there are a lot of great benefits to using hormones. Indefinitely for as long as you wanna stay vibrant.

And, we can chat about that if that's what you wanna chat about a little bit too. Or we can move on to something else.

Diane: I'm, interested in, learning about the, some exciting regenerative and longevity, the therapies that you use in your clinic right now.

Debra: I love regenerative medicine.

I think it's amazing and we're on the cutting edge of so Much excitement these days, and it's using things like peptides and ozone therapy. And exosomes, these types of things that we can use to actually repair the damaged tissue in the body. And when we employ some of these things, we have some really great success.

And I'd love to share a story with you. I have a client that's been my client for well over 25 years. Very strong family history of Alzheimer's disease. She's always been worried that she would develop Alzheimer's disease. Unfortunately, she carries the genetic predisposition, the A POE four, and so we've worked with her very stringently to make sure this never happened to her.

And about a year and a half ago, she started noticing symptoms of Alzheimer's. And she's relatively young. She's in her late sixties, early seventies, so relatively young gal, and she's determined to not go down that path the way her mom did. And so she came to me and said, I wanna explore regenerative alternative therapies.

And we started looking at chemicals and metals and all kinds of things that we know shrink the brain. As well as just age, and she had been optimizing hormones this whole time and doing great things with her diet. And, we decided to do some ozone therapy, some peptide therapy, and bring in some exosomes that can cross the blood brain in barrier and regrow that part of the brain.

And within a three month period of time, we actually reduced her p al level by 20%. Wow. So for those of you who are. Familiar with what PTO is, it's a measurement of what we look at to see how bad Alzheimer's disease is. And, she's also working with another practitioner who's a BREIN doctor. and he had never seen that before.

I had never seen that before. And it really engaged me into this idea of regenerative medicine. And it's an exciting time to be part of it. And all of these things are done completely, in an observational study. They're not FDA approved. But we can use them here and it's amazing what we're seeing happen.

Diane: That's fascinating to me. modern medicine right now, I'm really, an advocate for functional medicine because it is truly our, the last frontier for holistic approach to our health. Yes, I am. I am. Our healthcare system is so broken right now that we have, nobody specializes in anything or they all specialize, but they don't look at the whole bo the picture.

Yes. The whole, the big picture. And it's very frustrating. And Medicare only reimburses for a 15 minute visit. Yes. And that means that the doctor has to, you have to be able to tell them symptoms. They need to assess you. They need to diagnose, treat, and document and all in 15 minutes. And it's unrealistic.

And what we're seeing, and I'm seeing this a lot, is. Things are going missed. They're undiagnosed. Yeah. or they're dismissed. There's a lot of doctors not having the time to properly assist, assess their patients. And the other avenue we have problem, we have, Dr. Deb is. We actually have the government involved in our healthcare so that the doctor and the patient no longer have a relationship.

It's the government policy makers. And, the patient. So I think that functional medicine is our last hope.

Debra: I agree. I really wish functional medicine would be the first line, but it's not. It's the last line, and I totally agree with you. the doctors, they mean they're trying to help, but they're caught within a system that doesn't work for the patient.

It works for the investors, it works for the people. That are on the insurance side that are trying to make money on that. That's who this system works for. But it doesn't work for anybody else that has to deal with the system, and that's why they have to step outside the system to truly get the care and the help that they need.

And unfortunately, oftentimes that's not covered by insurance because insurance isn't gonna cover it. And if you try to get it covered, especially with Medicare, you're gonna end up in an orange jumpsuit and orange doesn't really look good on me. So we don't do that. but it, and it's sad, it's unfair for the people who truly need it because this is the medicine that saves the amount of money.

you think of the amount of money that we spend on cancer treatment that we spend on Alzheimer's care and end of life care and the number of people that we have on disability right now that had, we used a little bit of that money on the front end. They would not be in this place right now.

They would be productive citizens, or they could be at home being taken care of with minimal care instead of such extensive care, and it's really sad.

Diane: Yeah. I want my listeners to understand that Medicare has moved to a cost sharing platform. and I took a, I recently took a, an insurance,ta course to, to sell insurance, not to sell, but to learn.

They literally say the high deductibles, high copays are to deter use of benefits. Yeah. So what the, what's in reality, what it is, what it happens is we are more. Financially responsible for the care that we receive. And if a doctor recommends something, for example, Medicare Advantage, right now you have a 200 to $500 a day copay to recover in rehab or skilled care.

That's astonishing to me. so we have a lot of issues that, are making us, we have to personally pay for what. If we want good results. That's why I think more people should look into functional medicine because you're gonna have to pay anyway. If you want care. That's exactly right.

That's the approach that I take. Now, you approach complex conditions like Lyme disease, mold toxicity, and chronic fatigue. Do you do that without solely relying on prescriptions and if so, how do you do that?

Debra: Yeah. we do an integrative approach. We don't solely do it without prescriptions. There are a lot of prescriptions that help us in this realm.

some that we can use on label, some that we use off-label. but we try to do a blend of prescriptions and herbal medicine or alternative vitamins, nutrients, amino acids, things like that. And that's our go-to for sure. Our go-to is always first, what can we get from nature? Second, what do we get from the pharmaceutical industry?

And if so, what's, why are we gonna do that? We always wanna look at that and say, are you gonna get the best benefit for doing that or not? if we can use, peptides, amino acids, things like that without using any traditional medicine, we most definitely will, but better to, in my opinion, it's better to combine the best of both worlds.

We do have some things that are good in the conventional world, so let's use them where we can.

Diane: I love that. and you know what, I've been saying this for decades. we have to have a meeting of the east meets West medicine. Yes. We really do. Because that's when you get, a good approach. And I think we on the western side have to wanna prescribe pills and not, and not look at the lifestyle or the The nutrition side of things. And we really are, Harming our, their patients more than we are helping them.

and my issue is a pill doesn't solve everything and nothing makes me crazier than when people say, I need to get, have a, what pill can you give me for this? It's oh.

Yes. Because it doesn't have to be. That doesn't have to be so E,

Debra: even on our world, patients will ask us for a protocol, and if they're not better in a week, they're calling and saying, we're not better.

Diane: Yeah.

Debra: people need to have a realistic approach. You didn't get sick overnight. You're not going to get better overnight, especially with some of these chronic illnesses that haven't been caught for six months or even sometimes as long as 10 or 15 years.

It is going to take time for the body to heal from that. The body's resilient. It can do amazing things, but it needs some support and it needs some time. For sure.

Diane: Now, what steps can patients take, to become their own best health advocates, especially in a system that definitely dismisses them?

Debra: Oh yeah, for sure.

I would say this a couple of things. First, when you're seeing a practitioner, remember that you're hiring them. They work for you. Don't forget that when you go in and you don't align with them, it's okay to fire that practitioner. And I think sometimes we forget, we're all been raised with a lot of respect for doctors and I respect them too.

But if I have a doctor sitting across from me who's dismissing me and telling me I'm crazy and this is all in my head and won't work with me, that's not the person I wanna work with. And I'll be nice about it, but I would dismiss them. so that's first and foremost. Secondly, if you're trying to navigate inside the traditional system, knowing that you only have 15 or 20 minutes, go in prepared.

Go in with a list of questions. Absolutely. a timeline of what has happened to you, and make sure that you're using the best use of your time. I think that's really important. Secondarily, there are some things that you can do on your own. diet is, it's huge. And I know we always talk about this and people dismiss it.

You need nutrient dense foods. You need good hydration, you need sleep. We need to eliminate a lot of those fast foods. Food's in a box that's nothing but junk. Your body can't be fueled off of that. It's really important. Clean air, clean water. You wanna avoid chemicals. There's 85,000 chemicals in our environment these days.

If people cleaned up their chemical exposure, you'd be amazed at how Much better you feel. Get rid of all of those toxic cleaning solutions. Go to vinegar, water, baking soda, essential oil, some of the natural things. Those are gonna be Much better for you. Um.I love to look at balancing the nervous system, so breath work, prayer time in nature, those kinds of things.

There are some nice, really nice vagus nerve stimulators that you can use, you can buy online. They stimulate the vagus nerve to help quiet the body, quiet the nervous system. exercise really important. Sweating is so important. Many of us don't sweat anymore. These are just some little things that you could do on your own to start preparing your body for healing.

Diane: even carrying around a bottle of water all day. Yes. You see everybody with bottled water and now we're learning, there's microplastics in it, and we're actually drinking a credit card size full of plastics that's going into our body on a weekly basis. Yeah. Mean when you learn that, you just, oh, it's just frightening because that contributes to a lot of our health issues too, that we unknowingly.

are taking, in something that's supposed to be hydrating and good for us, right when it is, in fact probably causing us harm in the long run.

Debra: Absolutely use stainless instead of plastic. Stainless water containers like this are really great. One too. Yeah, don't warm in plastic.

Don't. My mom used to freeze in the old cool whip containers that she had leftover. Absolutely. And she'd freeze in there. And we'd warm in there and that was before we knew that was terrible for us. Do glass. I don't like microwaves anyway, but if you have to use a microwave, he didn't. Glass takes it.

Take it out of the container that you brought the food home with when you ate out. Those little things make a huge difference. Start learning about that.

Diane: Yes. for the caregivers, our caregivers out there often neglect their own health. 63% of them become seriously ill or die before the person they're caring for.

Yeah. And they neglect their health, are what are a few functional medicine strategies that they could start with today?

Debra: Yeah. first and foremost, I would say we have to get your adrenal function under good control. People who are caregivers are under a lot of stress, physical and or emotional stress combined.

Not to mention they have their own family stuff they're dealing with, but then they're caregiving for somebody who's not well, and that's a lot of stress. So that takes a toll on your adrenal glands. Your adrenal glands are two nickel size glands. They sit on top of your kidneys. They give you your fight or flight response, you need to keep those strong.

So doing things like vitamin C, water, avoiding caffeine, if you can, ashwagandha is a really great herb that people can use to help calm the system down, keep those adrenals functioning the way they're supposed to. I think that is gonna be one of your key points and making sure you take time for yourself.

take a step back, take five minutes for yourself, even if it's not five minutes all at once. If it's five one minute breaks that you walk out of a room that you're caregiving for somebody and just go out and take a deep breath, go out in nature, stand outside, get some sunlight on your face.

Those kinds of things are gonna rejuvenate your body so immensely. I work with a lot of patients that are caregivers and it is really a challenge, and you just gotta find those little bits where you can take them.

Diane: that's, those are good points. if you could leave our listeners with one message about reclaiming their health, what would it be today?

Debra: That's a great question. I would say, healing begins when someone finally listens, and that's, functional medicine is all about, it's being seen at last. For your caregiver patients, I would say there's hope and it starts with asking better questions.

Diane: I love that. How do people find you?

Debra: So you can find me at dr deb um.com, dr deb Muth.com.

You can also find me on Serenity Healthcare Center, all things social. I'm on Serenity Healthcare Center, and our clinic website is serenity healthcare center.com.

Diane: And to my listeners, all this will be in the show notes and we create a permanent page on the website of caregiver relief, and you will find all that information there as well.

Dr. Deb, thank you so Much for sharing so Much information. Uh, I'm a real good advocate and support of functional medicine because that's our last hope of, good medicine, a holistic approach, which we are sorely lacking. So I thank you for your time today.

Debra: Thank you so Much for being here. It's a pleasure.

Diane: Oh, it's been a pleasure too.