Crossroads of Naturopathic Medicine and Fitness - Dr. ACE

The side of medicine that I get really excited about is more the uh the energy side. Kind of like uh, you know, the movie Elysium that I think had Matt Damon in it. He went he went to that planet and there were just those scanners. He just laid in the scanner and it just read your body's frequency and boom all the time. That's my vision of where medicine's going. Super individualized, but really it's it's the vibration, the frequency, the energetics of things.

What's up, fitness fans? Welcome back to the Future of Fitness podcast and interview series. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and this is episode number 44. I have the extreme pleasure of talking to Dr. Alexandra Carswell Engel, otherwise known as Dr. Ace. And her and her husband, David, own Regenerate Health in Santa Barbara, California. And they are at the forefront of the combination of medicine and fitness. And it's a fascinating world that we live in today. I can tell you that much. So take a listen to it because this is really valuable for one main reason. If you can find a partnership with somebody like Dr. Ace, or maybe Dr. Ace yourself, it's extremely lucrative and very valuable for a fitness professional to have this because there's some things that are out of our scope of practice that you need to refer out. And to have a network like this can really, really benefit you and your business. So before we get to that, I want you to take some action, please. If you are a fitness professional and you're listening to this, which most likely are, uh, please go to our closed Facebook group. It's called the Modern Fitness Pro. And you have to fill an application. If you are accepted, you will be part of a group that is 2,000 plus fitness professionals from all over the world. And our goal here is to keep you updated with everything in the fast-changing world of fitness. So technology, science, digital marketing, you name it. We'll be having mini courses in there, all for free, on digital marketing. We'll be having live QA with experts in the industry and overall just great conversations that you'll find extremely valuable. So go to it. It's the Modern Fitness Pro and it's on Facebook. So back to Dr. Ace. I, as you know, owned a gym in Santa Barbara for the better part of a decade. So I got to work with Dr. Ace and her husband David uh quite frequently. We had a nice referral network going on, and they did so many things. And from helping people solve gut issues uh at the root cause, regenerative therapies like PRP, stem cell, uh, all these technologies that are happening at just such a fast pace, it's incredible. And there's so much value to it. So all I want you to do is listen to it, listen to what she has to say, and then consider doing one of two things: either contacting her directly, because she does work with fitness professionals and patients online, or find somebody in your local market that you can team up with. Uh, it's something that is just a great combination, and I hope more people do it. So without further ado, that's enough of me talking. Let's get on to it. It's episode number 44. It's Dr. Ace, and off we go. Hey fitness fans, welcome back. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and today I get to talk to Dr. Ace, also well uh known as Alexander. Have you changed your last name?

No, it's still Carswell Engel, just as long, but there's no addition.

Okay. Yeah. Well, obviously, we know each other. We've known each other for uh a few years now. So I'll give people a little bit of background before I let you go off on what you do. Um when I uh own the facility in Santa Barbara that Danny Russell now owns, um, you guys uh moved up to Santa Barbara from the LA area and started your medical practice there, and you also coached the gym. Um and we had a great, absolutely outstanding working relationship with you guys. Um I think it's something that a lot of fitness professionals at a brick and mortar level should pursue. But uh that being said, that's uh that's our background. We've worked with each other quite a bit. Um you've helped me actually with some health issues as well, which I'm very thankful for. Um but give them the listeners now some insight, uh Doctor, about you know who you are, kind of what you do and and what you stand for within the industry.

Absolutely. Well, thanks for the opportunity, Eric. So uh Dr. Ace is my name. I'm at Regenerate Health Medical Center, and I am a naturopathic medical doctor. Um and you may or may not be familiar with that. Doesn't even really matter. The point is that how I treat is from figuring out what's going on, why it's happening, and what can we do to address it so that the body ultimately gets healthier and can perform better. So another thing that I really work a lot with is blending health and fitness. So you can also call that performance medicine. So there's a fine line between what is just fitness and what actually necessitates a greater level of health to be able to get to a higher level of fitness. So I like to be pretty data-driven in what we do, um, figuring out what's going on from an underlying health perspective, sort of under the hood, um, so that the body can then perform better. So there's a lot that that's involved with that, and I'm excited to talk about it with you.

So if you know our audience here is fitness professionals, specifically ones who um see the need for a digital presence. And so if you're talking to these people, uh kind of talk down to us a little bit, like give us some insight. Yeah. Like, what is it? What is a who are some of your typical patients? Um, how do you help them? What kind of diagnostics do you use? Yeah, give us give us some stuff that we can we can understand and digest.

Sure, absolutely. So I mean my patient base is pretty diverse, specifically amongst those from the athletic performance side. What I'm really doing is I'm deconstructing where are they at, both with their fitness and their health, and where do they want to be? Because not everybody, first and foremost, wants to get to the same place, and not everybody's willing to compromise the same things to get there. So, you know, on a concrete level, you have to look at sleep, nutrition, stress, hormones, digestion, emotions. I mean, all these things are a factor, and the more you want to get to that peak performance, the more you really have to dial everything in in order to get there. So a lot of the patients that I work with have hormonal issues. So within the hormone world, you know, stress hormone issues, whether it's the athlete that has, you know, been super high level, um, you know, perform pretty well, and then they kind of stop performing, but they keep pushing and they don't know what's going on, but they keep pushing, and it's not getting better and it's getting worse, and you're starting to see fatigue, maybe a little bit of muscle loss, PRs are starting to go down, they're getting irritated, you know, moody. So, sort of that sort of typical overtraining, we really look at that and we figure out what's going on from that hormonal perspective. Um, you know, are there blood sugar imbalance issues, digestive issues that are feeding into that, or is it just purely more training volume than their hormones can handle? So that's a really common scenario. And with that, when you know where the hormones are at, you can give people targeted prescriptions that you know more or less they're gonna respond well to. So there's huge crossover there between the medical side and the fitness side because as a fitness coach, you want to give your athletes the stimulus that is gonna be the best for where they want to get to, but you may not necessarily know from a hormone perspective if they're gonna be able to mount the appropriate, the normal response to that training. So again, knowing where the hormones are at helps with the health side and helps with the fitness side. Um, female specific, I deal with a lot of menstrual disorders. Now, you know, don't run away, guys. I know the fitness industry has a lot of gentlemen, but the reality is that the sex hormones for women are a huge factor of performance. So not only are, you know, we cycle every month, and depending on what day we're on, we're gonna get different results. You know, day 12 for a healthy menstruating female, day 12, 14, like that's when you want to peak her. That's when she's gonna get, you know, the PR. She's gonna like feel, wow, you know, I've been working so hard, and now this like this PR just happens. It just things feel easier. You get her day like 20, you know, 27, 28, and she's just like, I don't know why, but I I feel sluggish or you know, maybe just a little more irritable. Knowing what's going on with those cycles can help you program better. And then also within that, there's so much dysfunction when it relates to sex hormones for women. You know, PMS as just a society, we've kind of accepted that that's normal, you know, bitchy, bloating, whatever it is, but it's really not normal. It's signs that there are imbalances. Um, and so again, deconstructing what is that? Is that liver dysfunction? Is she not able to clear out her hormones? Is it a production issue? You know, estrogen is designed to have a specific ratio to progesterone when those are off, she's gonna be symptomatic, she's not gonna do that well. So hormones is a huge aspect. Um, and then I'd say, you know, digestion is really the next one. I mean, you know, any any fitness coach that that knows more than just training is gonna know that digestion is king because that's where we get all our nutrients. And in order to perform and be an athlete, you have to have good absorption. Of course, good quality, good timing, good, you know, food hygiene, that's essential too. But actually, what you're getting in to absorb it is key. And then the lack of bacterial overgrowth, yeast overgrowth to just be, you know, act as piranhas, essentially steal your energy. Um, we need to know that the gut is nice and healthy. Um, and really the sort of big third component that I work with is pain, you know, and pain again is gonna relate back to hormones as well as to the digestive function. But I treat a lot of people that have unresolved pain, you know, and they've seen the chiropractors, they've seen the orthopedis, maybe they've done some acupuncture, sort of all your typical pain things. But what's not being looked at is the systemic inflammation that's just keeping those sort of achy, stiff joints from actually healing.

Wow, you just blew my mind.

That was a lot.

Yeah, no, it's it's it's amazing. I guess you know, the first question I would have if I'm listening to this is how how many Dr. Aces are out there? You know, it was I just lucky personally to talk about somebody in Santa Barbara. Like if I'm a coach, owner, or a fitness professional, where can I find someone to partner with? Because this is amazing information. I mean, I never would have thought when training some of the female athletes I've trained that, you know, I gotta really I gotta ask them about the Metro Cycle.

I gotta work with Dr.

Ace, you know, I gotta figure these things out. When do I need them? Uh that just wouldn't come to mind. So right there is a nugget for people when they're listening. But yeah, how many Dr. Aces are out there? Is this a growing field right now?

You know, it's it's I mean, it's it's kind of hard to quantify and define because there's what, again, my profession, the naturopathic medical profession, and that has a lot of um, you know, sub-specialties within it. From an athletic performance side, there's starting to be more awareness, like what you just said, that fitness is so much more than just what you put in at the gym just following a, you know, a training program. It needs to be individualized to what's going on with the person and also looking at their health. Um, but there really aren't a lot of people that blend the really deep understanding of functional naturopathic medicine with the athletic performance side. Um, so you know, I don't know of that many people that have sort of that blend, you know, and for me, this just I wasn't trained necessarily to think like this. It's just a blend of my athletic experience and what I love and where my journey with hormonal dysfunction, digestive dysfunction, and chronic pain led me. And it led me to a place where I was gonna figure it out because I just wasn't gonna accept the pain medication or the, oh, well, you shouldn't, you know, exercise, you know, all that crap that people are told, the limitations that are put on people, you can't heal, blah, blah, blah. I suffered a major car accident at the age of nine. And at the time I wasn't even sure if I was gonna walk again. Now I can squat. And for a while I was afraid I wasn't gonna be able to squat heavy. Now I'm able to squat heavy. So every every step of the journey I've been through, so it's really come out of my understanding, both as an athlete but now as a doctor, how to blend this to give people, you know, strength coaches, athletes, the information to empower them or their clients to get where they want to go. Um, so you know, I work with people locally in Santa Barbara, California, also a lot uh via telemedicine. Um, and I'd love to develop more of a network of practitioners that can really speak at this level. Um, but right now uh I don't I don't have a large list, unfortunately.

So I was gonna ask you that if if you do work with people all by we'll we'll get to we'll get to that at the end, how people get about that. But telemedicine.

Yeah.

That's something new.

I haven't Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's thank goodness, you know, we're we're able to do it. So essentially what it is, it's not necessarily all that dissimilar from what we're doing right now. It's basically communicating via you know, telephone or or via some sort of secure video portal, discussing your health, figuring out where you want to go, and then basically treating you that way. Now there are some limitations, which are I can't do any physical assessments, I can't do any physical exams in office. Um there's just essentially, you know, I have to know my limitations, and when I have to say, I need you to see someone locally for X, Y, Z. And of course, there's some consensus involved with that. But when we're dealing with, again, hormones, digestion, um, you know, sort of the functional level of things to get you more performance. I coordinate with labs that are, you know, domestic in the US that can ship internationally so that we can always get the testing. And then we just review it and we talk about health. I give you prescriptions and we we you know follow a plan. So it's not necessarily all that dissimilar from what you online coaches are doing with your athletes already. It just kind of upgrades that prescription to involve uh, you know, so some health components.

Wow, cool. So technology is a big part of what you do, right?

Yes, yeah. I mean, my practice is a hundred percent um in the cloud. You know, all of our electronic medical records are in the cloud. We do a lot of, again, telecommunications. You know, if somebody doesn't have an email and they want to be a part of my practice, that you gotta you gotta be in the the modern age. Um, and so yeah, for sure, technology allows us to do a lot of phenomenal things.

So, in regards to in context of of the health aspect of things and then the you know hormone testing, things like that, where do you personally see that technology going? And you know, especially tying into the fitness industry. I mean, I've I've had I'm a I'm a not so closet futurist anymore. I talk about this all the time. You know, I always think of like real-time biometrics, just something in your watch that says where your blood sugar is at, you know, what your HRV is, all these things. Where do where do you see it going? Because you're literally on the forefront, you're on the front line. Where do you see all this changing for the fitness industry? And what do fitness professionals need to be aware of uh within the health side?

Sure. I mean, on the health side, I mean it's it's continually evolving for sure. I mean, and the the great thing is that there are advances being made in the testing world all the time. So, for example, in the hormone side of things, you know, five or so years ago, you wanted to do a complete hormone panel in urine. You had to collect 24 hours of urine in a big jug. Like it was it was a hefty deal. Nowadays, you can pee on four little strips and send that off to the lab within 24 hours, super easy, done. We get your sex hormones, your testosterone, your cortisol, all your metabolites, so much information. And it's really just because of advances in laboratory diagnostics. Um, you know, so that's that's continuing to evolve for sure. The side of medicine that I get really excited about is more the um the energy side, and not like your woo-woo reiki, not that I'm putting that down by any means, there's a time and a place for that, but really um frequence, I guess frequency medicine is more what I should should say, and that um is speaking to the fact that we are electromagnetic human beings, and the frequency that our different organs resonate at speaks to the level of health of those organs. So, for example, there's a treatment that I do in office, it's called pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, and what we're literally doing is we're inputting raw electromagnetic energy into the body in a local way to increase the function of the tissues in that area. Whether it's somebody that has, you know, a back issue, a knee sprain, a digestive issue, a headache, like it just gets the body functioning better. And so something that I always tell people about that I'm hoping this comes in, you know, well, 50 years, who knows? But kind of like uh, you know, the movie Elysium that I think had Matt Damon in it. He went to that planet and there were just those scanners. You just like a tanning bed, you just laid in the scanner and it just read your body's frequency and all the time. That is what I want. I'm telling you, Eric. Like that is that's my vision of where medicine's going. Super individualized, but really it's it's the vibration, the frequency, the energetics of things that as an industry, I mean, people are slowly starting to catch on. There's one guy, uh Dr. Jerry Tennant. Um, he wrote a book called Healing is Voltage. And that it's just it's it's very forward thinking, but I think that there's there are going to be developments in that area. You know, the conventional world of medicine, the the you know, take a pill for this, very conventional. They're they're not there yet by any means. And even the functional side of medicine, people aren't even necessarily really there yet, but that's what I'm excited about.

Yeah, God. I I think about that in a movie Elysium all the time because it's just especially now once you know, once we're starting to see a couple generations into genetic coding and what's happening about like these people that are superior beings living on this moon, and then all of a sudden you're screwed.

I know, right? Anyway. Well, I mean, that's another area of medicine that's that's evolving a lot is the study of genomics, you know, and how as a species, we have a lot of genetic variants, which are, you know, some of them cause it cause disease, but some of them just sort of change how your biochemistry functions. So the biggest one right now is the MTHFR gene, which essentially slows down your body's ability to activate some B vitamins, makes it a little bit more difficult for you to produce glutathione, which is a strong antioxidant, and so therefore difficult difficulty with detoxification. But even nowadays, you know, and particularly for athletics as well, looking at a full gene profile, which can be tested in saliva, I think it's you know, $169, 23 a knee.com. You don't even need to go through a provider to order that test, you can get some really good information genetically about what's going on. Now, of course, having that read by a provider looking at the clinical implications can give you more of a broad understanding of, okay, well, what does this mean for my genetic training potential? What does this mean for my nutrient status? What does this mean for how much stress I can handle, etc.? But that side's also really uh there's a lot of research going into that right now.

Besides the obvious of looking you up and working with you, as a fitness professional, how can they start taking advantage of all this information and data available through you know functional health? What else can they do? Is there, I mean, you mentioned um, you know, some some uh genetic testings and things like that. What would you do if you're a fitness?

I mean, I think at least me personally, the best way that I have learned over the years is by making myself a test subject, you know, seeing what happens to my body because I if it, you know, when I've experienced something and it's worked or it's not worked, like I will not forget that because it's it was my body. And if I when I get a test back that's data on myself, I you know deconstruct every little inch of that to really understand specifically what's going on. So I think really, you know, looking at your own health and working with somebody that can can really help you understand hormones, digestion, pain, neurotransmitters, like the functional side of things can be really helpful because then you learn through yourself. And not that everybody is having the same experiences that you do, but that's just a powerful way to get you focused on learning more. Um, I mean, uh, you know, one great place to start also is the uh Institute for Functional Medicine. Um, they're a great hub for learning. Now, I think in order to take their courses, you have to be some sort of a practitioner, but they have a lot of you know content online. Um, and on and again, getting back to technology, you know, so many people are using the internet, are using you know, podcasts, using Facebook Lives as ways to educate people. So finding people you know online that you want to follow and just learning from them. Mike Munzel, he's another really great one. Chris Cresser, um, you know, Bulletproof, Dave Asprey, just sort of these, you know, tend to be guys that are just all about you know educating people and you know, giving people the tools to understand more of what's going on with health.

What about your business? Where where do you see your business in in let's say like five years?

Sure. In five years, I mean, we're we're gonna continue to grow our local practice in Santa Barbara. Um, but I really see myself sort of moving in in sort of two directions. One is I really want to hyper focus on regenerative medicine, which is basically you know, taking injuries or arthritis, um, you know, whether it's tendinitis. Bone on bone, arthritis, ligament tear, whatever that is, and helping regenerate those tissues. Because we really have a unique way of working with that, because you have to get the body to a place where it can actually respond well to the therapy. So, you know, some of you coaches may have had clients that have had, you know, PRP done or prolotherapy or maybe even stem cell, and maybe they responded well, maybe they didn't. And it's not necessarily the fault of the substrate, the actual injectable. It's how was it done and what's going on with those people's bodies that's either allowing them to respond well and heal or not allowing them to respond. And that again goes back to the hormones, to gut function. So I really want to optimize people's bodies for regenerative medicine and then also for athletic performance, because those are sort of my two passions. Um, and then I really want to bring in other practitioners in my practice that can work with people from a more general health perspective. But yeah, those are the two areas that that I want to be dedicated to.

I just listened to, as the data is recording, it's it's the 24th of January, and uh I listened to a uh a John uh Joe Rogan podcast where he had Mel Gibson on and talked about the stem cell. Are you are you familiar with this? Yeah. I I'm wondering how long do you think until that type of therapy becomes mainstream and affordable to you know 20% of the population in the United States? When do you think that's gonna happen?

That's a good question. Because in that, there's also what do you mean by affordable? Because, you know, I mean, it's affordable to me is you know a few hundred dollars maybe, um, because let's face it, our middle class is shrinking. We got some issues in this country. Um, but you know, that level of affordable, I don't see that happening, you know, anytime soon just because of what's involved. I mean, just to you know, educate people on stem cells, right now, what we currently have available to us are really three ways of getting stem cells. One is through grafting from a patient's fat. So it's an in-office procedure. You basically graft the fat, concentrate down the stem cells, and then you can use those to inject it into an arthritic knee or a you know a shoulder that has a rotator cuff tear, whatever that be. Or you can do a bone marrow, which is a slightly higher level of um invasiveness. The third is from amniotic fluid. So that's what the most common is, but really the grafting from the patient is going to be the highest quality stem cells. Um, so those are the three. And with all three of those right now, there's a decent bit of work involved, um, and also liability. You know, I'd say from the liability side of things, that's where cost may come down over time, because as it's a more sort of accepted procedure, there starts to be more doctors doing it, sort of less um risk from a certain standpoint. So a lot of cost, what what you know non-practitioners don't actually think about um is the liability side of medicine. So the higher you know the risks, the more pricey it becomes, just because if something were to go wrong, you have to have the resources to deal with that.

Wow, cool. Well, I could I could literally pepper you with questions about these topics all day because it's so fascinating to me. And my hopes is that you know, by this interview and people listen to it, that they start putting this stuff on the radar. And you see that these are tools that are now available, and these tools are just gonna keep getting better and more numerous, and so many things, and it's just changing very quickly. So, Dr. Ace, where where do people find you? If people want to work with you, where do they go?

Awesome. Well, thanks, Eric. So my website is regeneratehealthmc.com. Um, info at regeneratehealthmc.com. Um, great ways. We're also on Instagram, um, on Facebook. Try to be pretty active there, um, talking a lot about you know my life, what I do in the gym, what I do for health, but also some good content to educate people. Um office phone number is 805-620-7122. So there's really a lot of different ways to reach out, just depends on sort of what medium you're most comfortable with. And either myself or my staff, depending on you know what the question is, um, are you know super happy to reach out. We do work with a lot of people, both you know, domestically in the US and then not as much yet, but growing internationally. Um, and really, you know, the the primary thing that I seek to do with that is to empower people through knowledge about their own health so that they can get to where they want to be with their health. Because I'm a really firm believer that you can feel the way you want to. You can have whatever body, whatever, you know, whatever you want from your health. You just have to know what you want, be crystal clear, and know what you're willing to achieve that, you know. So just for myself as an example, you know, I know that health is a is a priority for me. And so, you know, it changes a little bit my lifestyle choices, um, and that I don't make all my patients eat like me, sleep like me, work out like me, not at all. Like I want to know what you want, and we're gonna reverse engineer that. So um, yeah, just giving people the the knowledge to both get clarity on their priorities and then what action steps to take. That's what that's what I'm about.

Awesome. And it's a beautiful thing. I mean, I've I've been a patient and I partner with you, and uh I like both experiences. So thanks, Eric.

Dr.

Ace, thank you for coming on.

Absolutely, my pleasure. This is fun.

We'll put all those notes uh in the show, show notes so people can find you too.

So awesome. We'll look forward to it again soon. Thanks, Eric.

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