Riordan Clinic [00:00:01]:
Hello and welcome to the Real Health Podcast. Today might sound a little bit different because I want to tell you about our Cancer Care Reimagined Speaker Series. When we began planning our 25th International Conference on Human Functioning, Dr. Ron Hunninghake sat down and created his dream team of speakers. We reached out to them and much to our delight, they all said yes. Now our speakers are leaders in integrative oncology, functional medicine, and research who are truly shaping the future of cancer care. Each week leading up to the conference, we will feature one of these extraordinary experts right here on the Real Health Podcast. They will be sharing insights, innovation, and inspiration to help you reimagine what's possible in cancer care. This series and the upcoming conference would not be possible without the generous support of our presenting sponsor, Empower Pharmacy. Empower Pharmacy is the most advanced compounding pharmacy in the nation, licensed to serve in all 50 states. They are deeply committed to improving access to high-quality, affordable, and personalized medications for the patients, providers and caregivers who rely on them. Their belief is simple but powerful. Behind every order is a person in need. And with that knowledge, they approach everything they do with compassion, innovation, and a drive for excellence. We are so grateful for their partnership and their support of this important conversation around reimagining cancer care. Tickets are on sale now for the conference at cancercarereimagined.org we hope you will join us in Wichita this November for this unforgettable event.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:01:26]:
Well, welcome everyone. It's another episode of the Real Health Podcast here at the Riordan Clinic. I'm Dr. Ron Hunninghake. I'm your host and it's really my great pleasure today to have Mr. Shaun Noorian, who is the CEO and founder of Empower Pharmacy. And the reason Shaun is on is because their goal is to become more integrated, more individualized in the care that that they can provide through practitioners to patients. And Shaun, this is going to be the gist of our conversation. Thank you so much for being on the program. And I'm really questioning how did you get into this? How did you kind of make this jump from just what our normal understanding of a pharmacist is into not only compounding pharmacy, but kind of integrative, functional pharmacy.

Shaun Noorian [00:02:29]:
Oh, well, thanks for the warm intro. Now, I got involved in this industry just by chance. I just happened to be a patient that was lucky enough to get introduced to compounding therapy by an amazing doctor that was so intelligent and wise that he knew that many of his patients, one would need to be on these medications for the rest of our lives. And so he would need a source, an affordable supply chain for his patients. And then second, he knew that his patients would most likely benefit from individualized treatment versus one size fits all treatment that the commercial market offers. And so he sent me to a compounding pharmacy and I got my prescription filled. And that prescription changed my life. I was born (unknown), and I didn't realize it until I was 25. And once I got tested and the proper medications dispensed to me, I realized how powerful these chemicals were. And I gained 15 pounds of muscle without even having to work out. My depression went away. I got my libido, strength, ambition, motivation, all the things that I was lacking my entire life. And so this medication changed my life, created a whole different human being out of me. And I became so interested in how the medications were made, because my background is engineering. And I wanted to then figure out, like, why are these drugs so expensive? Like, how does our pharmaceutical supply chain work? And so I studied pharmacy as much as I could, went to conferences, seminars, read as many articles and books on the subject, and then I decided to start my own pharmacy, Giving patients like myself what we would want from a pharmacy experience. It's pretty simple. What we want patients, we want good quality, we want good service, and want good cost. That's it. You can solve for those three problems. You've just reinvented the pharmaceutical supply chain in this country. So over time, I got to work as a pharmacist technician, working with our pharmacist and our providers, figuring out what they think is in the best interest of their patients and using them as our R and D function, to be able to create new formulations that are individualized for their patient populations. And over time, just grew and grew and grew until we became the largest compounding pharmacy in the world, serving several million patients and always asking ourselves, what can we do to innovate, to be able to create what is in the doctor and patient's best interests, not what's in a large pharmaceutical company or health system's best interests. And so by bringing the patient care and provider care back into the hands of patients and providers, we're able to work better and produce better outcomes than those patients would traditionally get from a more commercial supply chain.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:05:21]:
You're the kind of entrepreneur that this world needs because we have such a horrible growth in illness and the metabolic syndrome and then cancer. And so we are trying to figure out what can we do. And of course, the Riordan Clinic has been involved for 50 years now. Dr. Riordan was an early user of IV vitamin C. And we've had to use compounding pharmacies to help us get intravenous vitamin C to our patients. And so that's been a crucial part. And part of where I think you and I got connected was we are having a conference on cancer care, Cancer Care Reimagined. And so this involves what you do in your stores, how patients can get the nutrients, intravenous nutrients, intramuscular nutrients, whatever they need to help them overcome the deficiency states that they're in that are preventing their body from healing as well as it could. Because in cancer care, most of conventional attention goes to attacking the cancer cells itself. But what integrative oncology has discovered, and it's a huge area of need, is that the cancer patient. Why did they get cancer in the first place? They probably were deficient in things having the ability to discover what they're low in, and then you have to do something to replace that. Obviously, food is huge, but oftentimes what we found with our laboratory testing is that they've got deep deficiencies. And so pharmaceutical doses of B12, magnesium, vitamin C are needed in order to get that patient back on their feet to help them have a better outcome with their cancer care. So that's why we employ naturopathic oncologists who are. They've been trained, or naturopaths who have been trained to be integrated to the oncology process so that they can help the patients learn to compensate for these deep deficiencies that probably caused the illness in the first place. So how did you. Is this an area of interest for you as well, or. I know you're talking about anti aging, you're talking about metabolic health, weight loss, but now cancer care. That's really interesting. Yeah.

Shaun Noorian [00:07:56]:
We see the tens of thousands of prescribers that are utilizing our services. Many of them are involved in integrative health and functional medicine. And what these areas do, they look at the root cause of what's going on. Instead of just adding a synthetic drug that will create a side effect, that the patient then has to get another synthetic drug to manage that side effect. And then on and on it goes. You know, these providers are trying to figure out what's the root cause of that problem. And in many cases, the root cause of these problems are chemical imbalances. The human body is made up of thousands of chemicals, and thousands of these chemicals are what are known as biomarkers. And with all the additional testing that's coming out, we can now See exactly what biomarkers are causing a deficiency in that patient, and then individualizing that treatment to add the specific amount of that medication, that chemical to the patient in a certain dosage form and potentially combining multiple medications so it's more convenient and more compliant for a patient to be doing these therapies. And at the same time, you know, we're able to, we're also learning that the importance of metabolic function, muscle mass, decreasing fat, improving sleep. And there are medications that can help with all these areas. And at the end of the day, these areas are what support our immune function. So providers that are doing oncology treatment for patients are learning to add these additional therapies to improve the outcomes of their patients. Cause we see many patients going through chemo, you know, they start going through wasting syndrome, they lose their muscle mass, and that causes sarcopenia and a whole list of other disease states. And, you know, what if we could prevent that from happening? What if you could keep that patient healthy while they're on these therapies? And of course, at the same time, explore other types of therapies that could also help prevent the cancer from spreading. There's so many studies showing that high dose intravenous vitamin C is one of the, is extremely helpful for improving a patient's really supercharging a patient's immune function and being able to fight any potential disease that may be causing that, whether it's a virus, bacteria, fungi, or of course, in many cases, some cases, cancer. And of course, combining that with many others, throwing the kitchen sink, getting the patient on as many types of therapies while their body is fighting for its life to be able to support that battle. And we're seeing it across so many therapies that one have never been FDA approved. But the FDA has deemed safe for compounding pharmacies and outsourcing facilities to make and at the same time, being able to constantly see how that patient's responding and add more or subtract as the patient goes through that therapy.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:10:51]:
Yeah, I think this is all tied into what I'm feeling is the growth of integrative medicine. Integrative medicine. And the way I think of that is I grew up with my mom working in a pharmacy, and I would go into the pharmacy and look up at the shelves and shelves of medicines, and I thought, I'll never be able to learn that. Well, I learned that, but then I found out that there was another whole area that is not often taught in the medical schools, and that's all the nutrients and all the nutrient pathways and the CO factors and all of the things that the body needs, hormones to function normally. So the Riordan Clinic was originally called the center for the Improvement of human functioning. And Dr. Riordan's whole mission was to use the laboratory to scientifically determine what this individual, this unique individual, what were they lacking? In conventional medicine, you make a general diagnosis, and the individuation of that is really not there, other than making the specific diagnosis. But looking at the question of why did this individual get this diagnosis and what are they lacking that is sustaining the diagnosis, that's where Dr. Riordan really was a kind of a breakthrough figure, because this is what functional medicine is. But I think that the idea that we're now actually integrating in pharmacy along with that, because the drugstore idea is you write the prescription and you go in and get that. Now it's a much more complicated thing. So the pharmacies of the future will need to be able to individualize the treatments based upon the laboratory testing that's being done of that person's hormones, their nutrient levels. And very often when they're sick, they have deep nutrient levels that maybe taking a vitamin pill, a multivitamin, it's not going to do it. Or even taking an oral vitamin, they're not going to absorb it as well, because a lot of the chronic ill patients have gut dysfunction. So the idea of using intravenous or IM nutrients, that is definitely coming on strong now. And people are realizing that they need more than just the trip to the, to the health food store to figure it out. They need to take a very professional approach to it. So that's where I see you coming in and filling a major gap and also strengthening the ability of doctors to have better outcomes with their patients.

Shaun Noorian [00:13:26]:
Absolutely. Giving patients an armament of different options to be able to fight this battle is integral for them having the best outcomes of survival going through these therapies. And as you mentioned, many of these medicines can't be absorbed orally or are not absorbed as well as if they were injected. Whatever is injected becomes 100% bioavailable. And for example, vitamin C, you can only take about 500 to 1,000 milligrams every several hours. If you take any more orally, then you will get explosive diarrhea. Your body can't absorb it. And so intravenously, though, we see some providers putting as much as 100 times as much, up to 100 grams of vitamin C intravenously. And when you bring ascorbic acid, serum levels that high, it has much more significant immune response than if that patient was only taking a very small amount orally. So for all the patients that are drinking orange juice and thinking that it's going to help them get over a cold, it's actually probably causing more damage because of all the inflammation caused by the sugar that that patient is ingesting. And so we see providers combining multiple vitamins, minerals, nutrients, amino acids into these IV bags and then infusing them directly into the patient and then seeing wonderful results. Especially that patient is deficient in many of these nutrients. So for example, we see a lot of providers that are doing immune support, putting high dose vitamin C, zinc, taurine, B complex, which is a mix of B1, B2, B5, B6, B3, along with magnesium, and then a push of high dose glutathione at the very end, typically between 600 and 1200 milligrams. And when we see we do that, we actually offer this to all of our staff. We actually give them free immune infusions every single month. If they want to. They just come, we have a nurse come over and they'll infuse them. And we've seen with our, our people, our own patient population within our company that they just keep coming back for more and more because once they realize how much healthier they feel and how much more energy they have and how much better they perform while on these medications, I mean, a patient typically doesn't go back to the traditional healthcare system of just finding a supplement on the shelf, guessing which one they should be taking, guessing which one they're really deficient in, and then trying to self treat, which typically doesn't work as well, is if it's done under the guidance of a licensed, experienced provider. So we're seeing providers learning how to do macronutrient testing and then figuring out exactly what's going on inside that patient's body and creating a customized protocol for that specific patient.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:16:25]:
Yeah, that was Dr. Riordan's battle cry. Measure, measure, measure. That's the whole essence of functional medicine. Because everyone's so unique in their individual situation, whatever disease they have, what kind of diet they've been eating, the amount of stress they're under, maybe they're not sleeping very well. They've got genetic factors, epigenetic factors, all of these things can alter what they really need. And so we really highlight that fact. I want to come back to the idea that high dose vitamin C can help cancer patients. I don't even know if our viewers, our normal viewers know this, but the University of Iowa has in the last two years done a major study where they, they did a double blind placebo controlled trial on stage IV pancreatic patients. Now, typically, stage IV pancreatic cancer patients don't have a long survival time. I mean, six months is actually considered pretty good. But what they did is they gave all of the participants in this study, they gave them all the conventional treatment for pancreatic cancer, but it was double blinded. But a number of them got high dose vitamin C in the. I think it was 75 grams. Of course, we at the Riordan Clinic, we do measurements to, we do a G6PT and various things to make sure people can tolerate the high doses. But 75 to 100 grams, those people lived three times longer than the people that did not get the vitamin C. So this is to me is a really, this is a testament to this idea of working together using complementary procedures that not only give better survival time, but better quality of life. And so this to me represents a kind of new age of pharmacology, a new age of medicine, a new age of oncology. But it also gives people, I think, better hope that because oftentimes just taking the medicines alone, medicines are great at blocking certain things, but nutrients actually enable improved functioning in the body. And really, when we're wanting to deal with things like metabolic syndrome and some of these chronic illnesses that are just afflicting so much of the planet right now, we've got to think about how nutrients play into this. And this integration of thought is so important because just standard medicine alone is not going to do it. Just nutritional medicine alone I don't think is going to do it. I think we need the professionalism of an integrative approach to get these better results faster and sustainable over time.

Shaun Noorian [00:19:17]:
Absolutely. And we see the providers that are most successful with their patients are the ones that are integrating multiple therapies. So everything from sexual health to mental health, hormone replacement, longevity medicine, IV nutrition, hormone replacement, they're combining them all together. And so you're really attacking the problem from multiple fronts and creating, giving that patient a level of health and performance that they would not get if they were only to get one type of medication or one type of magnesium. You really have to tackle it all if you want to result in the best outcome for that patient. We see providers helping providing NAD to their patients for mitochondrial support.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:20:04]:
Mitochondria. Yep.

Shaun Noorian [00:20:06]:
And then we also see providers adding anabolic therapies so they can improve that patient's muscle mass while they're going through these therapies and not just while they're doing the therapy, but for the rest of that patient's life as well as our hormones continue to decline and get out of balance with each other as we age. The human organism was not meant to survive more than 35 years. And if you look at our 100,000 year history, only in the past 2,000 years has that life expectancy increased. And so what are we to do with our patients past the age of 35? Let them succumb to age. Let's put their bodies in a state where their biomarkers were when they were before they were 35, and keep them there as long as possible. And as long as that patient responds well to the medication and there are no downstream biomarkers getting out of whack, then the patient, this is where we see our providers headed. It's a lifelong support before, during and after a comorbidity may present itself. And if we're finding, if you provide these medications to a patient before they get sick, many, many of them, because they're preventative in nature, they prevent the patient from developing a disease state in the first place. So, yes, medicine has changed rapidly in the past 100 years and even more so in the past 15 years as we're seeing more and more providers become educated because of people like yourself and the conferences, word and clinic going out and spreading this word amongst other providers so they can learn and then apply these learnings to their patient populations.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:21:41]:
Yeah, I couldn't. I mean, I'm almost excited because when I first started at the Riordan Clinic 35 years ago, we felt like we were lone voices in the desert crying out and not everyone was hearing the message. But people like yourself, you have become tremendous exponents or people who are really pointing out how powerful this message is. And I want to personally thank you for your organization's support of the upcoming conference that the Riordan Clinic is putting on. I don't know if people know, but this is the 50th year of the Riordan Clinic. So we've been at this for a long time trying to help this, help this airplane get off the ground. And I think it's now really getting up in the air thanks to innovators like yourself who are showing us how to integrate in with all the services that we traditionally think of when it comes to appropriate medical care. So empower pharmacy. You're doing exactly what your name says. You're helping people get empowered to take better care of themselves, to find out how they can replenish deficiencies rapidly so they can get back into their lives again without having to suffer any longer. This conference that we're having will feature 11 speakers, four international speakers, and seven of the top integrative cancer specialists here in the United States. And we've done podcasts with each of them. I'm glad that we were able to get you in on this podcast as well, Shawn, because I think in many ways, because of your support that enabled us to say, well, let's. Let's really get the message out here and do a really good job to help people understand that this represents a revolution in health care. So thank you very much for all your support.

Shaun Noorian [00:23:35]:
Oh, no, it's our pleasure. And I'm kind of hesitant to take the title of innovator. It's really you that are the innovators. Our providers are the ones that are working with us to be able to create these innovative therapies. And so thank you. And all the work that Riordan's doing and has done to help spread the message and educate others on the possibilities out there. And, you know, a pharmacy should be a partner to a provider, not just a place that dispenses medication and, you know, and doesn't give any feedback or work with. And that's really what we're trying to do, is reimagining the pharmaceutical supply chain to be able to support the real innovators that go out there and are on the ground helping patients every single day. So thank you for what you do. Appreciate it.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:24:17]:
Well, our good friend Vern Harnish, as he said, anything that's going to do well, it's got to work as a team. So I feel like what you've done is opened up and become more inclusive in what you can do to help with this growth of integrative medicine, your ability to reimagine a new type of pharmaceutical entity where people actually are empowered and grow stronger and healthier as they use your services. So, once again, thanks. And I hope we can talk again in the future because there's a number of really neat ideas. I've got one special idea about metabolic. The metabolic syndrome. That's going to be the next area because now we have over 45% of Americans with the metabolic syndrome, and it's a very difficult illness, and it actually increases the risk for cancer. So if we can get to some of these preliminary situations that people are struggling with, we can help them prevent the cancer. So that's preventative pharmacology. That's something that people have probably never thought about, but preventative pharmacology may be in the offing here. If we can pull this off, the.

Shaun Noorian [00:25:33]:
Best disease state is one that doesn't exist. Yes, let's make sure that we continue to work together to be able to create these revolutionary therapies that patients badly need in this country. And we're looking for solutions that best serve them that we can afford for the rest of our lives. So we're glad to do whatever we can to support providers like yourself from providing these medications.

Ron Hunninghake, MD [00:25:54]:
Thank you, Shaun. Thank you for your leadership and for your foresight. And you're willing to think outside the box and be big and help people get well. Thanks so much.

Riordan Clinic [00:26:04]:
Thank you for listening to the Real Health Podcast. This episode was brought to you by Empower Pharmacy, the most advanced compounding pharmacy and 503B outsourcing facility in the nation. Licensed in all 50 states, Empower is committed to improving access to safe, affordable, and personalized medications for patients, providers, and caregivers. Learn more empowerpharmacy.com if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. You can also find all of the episode and show notes over realhealthpodcast.org also be sure to visit riordanclinic.org where you will find hundreds of videos and articles to help you create your own version of Real Health.