The Evolution of Functional Medicine to Wellness Connection MD

Welcome to the Functional Medicine Podcast. This episode is actually a mini-cast" announcing our name change to "Wellness Connection MD,” which will start with our next episode.

Our podcast has always been dedicated to providing up-to-date, unbiased, evidence based, honest information on a wide variety of health-related subjects, from a functional, integrative and lifestyle medicine point of view.  On each podcast we have also attempted to offer practical, take- home solutions in order to help our listeners overcome health care challenges, and to promote optimization in mind, body, and spirit. 

Our goal  has always been to help as many people as possible, and in an attempt  to bring this valuable information to a wider audience we have decided to change the name of our podcast to "Wellness Connection MD."  It is our hope that  by making this name change we will be better able to connect with people who are interested in such information, but who not familiar with the term "functional medicine."

So, if you are a long-time listener, then we thank you, and we hope to see you on the other side. You can still find us on your usual podcast player, or just go to McMinnMD.com.   If you are new to us, and you join us on the Wellness Connection MD podcast, then we warmly welcome you.  We sincerely hope that we can help you in some way, and we look forward to serving you by continuing to provide these podcasts to you. 

Take care and be well.  

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Functional Medicine Podcast with Dr McMinn and Coach Lindsey. We're coming to you from McMinn Clinic in Birmingham, alabama, where Dr McMinn is an integrative in functional MD and Lindsey Matthews is a registered nurse and IIN certified health coach. In this podcast, we'll be discussing the latest information on a wide range of topics in the field of functional medicine, which looks for the root cause of disease, and integrative medicine, which incorporates both conventional and alternative therapies. Our overall goal is to help you be the best that you can be in mind, body and spirit. The following discussion is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease. Please do not apply any disinformation without approval from your personal doctor. And now on to the show with Dr McMinn and Coach Lindsey.

Speaker 3: 0:53

Hello and welcome to the Functional Medicine Podcast, an evidence-based podcast on integrative and functional medicine. I'm your host, dr Jim McMinn, and I'm here with my BFF and co-host, lindsey Matthews RN.

Speaker 2: 1:05

Thanks, Dr Mack. Good to be back with all you listeners. Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3: 1:11

And I'm actually going to call this a mini-cast today, since it's going to be a little bit shorter than our usual podcast, I come to think of it as really more of an announcement than it is a true podcast. For those of you who have been listening to us for quite a while, and as the main Functional Medicine Podcast implies, coach Lindsey and I are fully engaged in a functional and integrative approach to health and wellness. Our goal has always been to bring you up-to-date, evidence-based and unbiased information on a wide variety of health care related subjects, with practical take-home solutions from a functional and integrative perspective, in order to help you optimize your health in mind, body and spirit, and in so doing, we hope that we've helped and informed a few of you listeners along the way.

Speaker 2: 1:51

Now, for those of you who are new to the podcast, let me briefly clarify two key terms that we'll be referring to today. The term functional medicine means that we always look for or treat the root cause of the problem, and the term integrative medicine refers to what Dr Mack calls the expanded toolbox of therapies beyond drugs and surgeries, like nutrition, exercise, stress management, that good microbiome and gut health, sleep and exercise, as well as many other powerful modalities which, if used properly, can have amazing preventative and curative health effects and really impact your wellness. So by embracing these concepts, we've been able to help countless people who otherwise might have fallen through the cracks of modern medicine, and it really helps optimize those folks to their physical, mental and emotional health peaks.

Speaker 3: 2:49

However, since I retired last year from full-time clinical practice, I have had some time to sort of think about, reflect on the podcast. Coach Lindsay and I are so incredibly grateful for our listeners and for the growth that we have seen over the years with the functional medicine podcast. But it occurred to me that the vast majority of people out there looking for this very kind of information about health and wellness are not familiar with the term functional medicine and therefore they don't know the search word. And even if they do stumble across the term functional medicine, they probably really don't know what it is. So to some degree, for all these years we've been really just preaching to the choir to those folks who are already interested in functional medicine.

Speaker 2: 3:26

Now. We love the dedicated army of people out there who are already familiar and interested in functional medicine and we're happy to share with the choir, but we also want to introduce this powerful approach to medicine to a whole new group of folks who could potentially benefit from some of our discussions about these important health issues. So bottom line goal of this podcast is to help as many people as possible to be the best version of themselves physically, mentally and emotionally.

Speaker 3: 3:56

So, in order to be found by and to appeal to this wider audience who don't know the term functional medicine, we have decided, after much consideration, that we will change the name from the functional medicine podcast to something that better connects with a broader swath of listeners. Yes, as the New Year approaches, we will adopt a new name for our podcast, and our new podcast name will be Drumroll Please Goach, there you go. Wellness Connection MD. You know it's kind of interesting, coach. Years ago I had a podcast called Wellness Connection. I did it for quite a few years and then got out of the podcast business and, as I went back in, that name was no longer available. It's just the Wellness Connection, but we're going to just do a variation of that called Wellness Connection MD and, as the name applies, our goal is to connect with as many listeners as we can in order to introduce them to an evidence-based wellness model of functional, integrative and lifestyle medicine.

Speaker 2: 4:50

Don't worry, though, folks, even though we are changing our name, an integrative and functional approach is in our blood. It's not going anywhere. In fact, we will continue to enthusiastically promote functional medicine. We just hope, with this name change, we can bring new people into the wellness family who might benefit from a better understanding of functional, integrative and lifestyle-based medicine.

Speaker 3: 5:16

Well, lindsay, there's so many people who really want to do the right thing for their health, for instance, when it comes to diet and lifestyle, but they just don't know what the right thing is and, sadly, in many instances, neither do their providers. I can tell you for a fact that the vast majority of physicians get little to no training in things like nutrition and lifestyle medicine. So that's where the Wellness Connection MD comes in. We're here to shed evidence-based light on these important cornerstones of health and wellness.

Speaker 2: 5:41

When we look at the epidemic of chronic disease, from heart disease to things like metabolic disease and then the functional integrative model, it really provides a cost-effective and powerful approach which can greatly benefit countless people, both in terms of prevention and treatment, and this has enormous potential for individuals and for our society as a whole.

Speaker 3: 6:06

And with our aging population, a drug-centered approach is resulting in skyrocketing healthcare costs, while a wellness model would, for some patients, produce better results with improved quality of life and dramatically lower healthcare costs for society as a whole. So with Wellness Connection MD, we will do our part to respond. So we promote an evidence-based path to a more holistic approach to disease and wellness. And, due to this name change, this will be our last podcast by the name of Functional Medicine Podcast.

Speaker 2: 6:34

If you've been a listener and or a supporter of the Functional Medicine Podcast for a while, then we both want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts and please stick with us and check us out on the other side as the Wellness Connection MD podcast. We should have an episode out soon. You can find us by our new name on your favorite podcast player, or you can also find the podcast by going to our same old website, which is McMinnMDcom. On the homepage, just click on the button that states click here to listen to Wellness Connection MD. All the old podcasts and the new ones will be right there for your listening pleasure.

Speaker 3: 7:18

On our website you will also find a bio about Lindsay and also about me and some of our guests, just in case you want to learn more about us. We'll also have lots of other great information, links and resources there for you.

Speaker 2: 7:30

So that will about do it for this mini-cast, our last official episode of the Functional Medicine Podcast, marking the beginning of a new era, dr Mack.

Speaker 3: 7:40

That's right, and so we hope to see you soon on the Wellness Connection MD podcast and signing out for the last time on the Functional Medicine Podcast, this is Dr McMinn and this is Coach Lindsay. Take care and be well.