Introducing Plant Based Telehealth – Finally, you can now access the doctors that you want from anywhere in the world. These MD’s understand the connection between diet and disease, and can oversee your medical and lifestyle needs. Compassionate, affordable and accessible healthcare is now at your fingertips!

• Dr. Laurie Marbas’s discovery of the power of plant-based nutrition
• Setting up a telehealth service with plant-based doctors
• Reaching a great team of doctors remotely
• US laws about telemedicine
• Laurie’s journey with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis
• Plant-based diet and recovery times
• Choosing a doctor for first contact
• Practical guidelines for telemedicine
• How to book a telehealth appointment from anywhere on Earth

Clint – Welcome back to rheumatoidsolutions.com! We love solving problems that are associated with rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory arthritis conditions. Then, one thing that comes up all the time is my doctor doesn’t know the science connecting diet and my disease. With that, it’s hard to talk about nutrition with my doctor. To solve that today, we have invited to this episode, Dr. Laurie Marbas. She has set up www.plantbasedtelehealth.com, which is a service to enable people from all around the world to connect with plant-based doctors. Many of which who have personal experience and expertise in autoimmunity. This is a tremendous new opportunity for all of us in our community to be able to connect to doctors that actually get it. Dr. Marbas, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Marbas – Well, thank you for having me and the plant telehealth platform. With that, we’re thrilled to be here.

Clint – Can you tell me, how did this come about? Perhaps you might also share a little bit about what you were doing before this. It is because this isn’t the first project you’ve been involved with. Your bio is very long and you’ve done so many different things. It can be just bullet points and some of the things you were working on prior. Also, what led you to start this initiative?

Dr. Marbas – I’m a family physician by training, and I am board-certified in family medicine and lifestyle medicine. It means that I focus on helping people reverse or dramatically improve their health with nutrition. With that, it is one of the foundational points to always look at. Before this, I was doing just traditional family medicine in the United States and I was in the military. Then, I found the value of a plant-based diet through some patient interaction a decade ago and my life has changed. About 3 years ago, we launched Healthy Human Revolution and it’s my podcast. I’m sorry, I had the podcast before that and we changed the name to Healthy Human Revolution. Also, the podcast is going for five years. The www.healthyhumanrevolution.com has some free courses on how to save time in the kitchen, how to eat on a budget, how to get your kids to eat more vegetables, how to transition to a plant-based diet, and all that kind of stuff. Then, it turned into opportunities to how can we help people further. My business partner Anthony Masiello, lost 160 pounds on a plant-based diet back in 2005. I guess we’re closing on 16 or 17 years now that he’s kept that weight off and we’ve become friends. We launched healthyhumanrevolution.com together with another friend of ours, Jason Cohen, who also lost 120 pounds. These two remarkable individuals have shown the value of a plant-based diet with weight loss and other things. Anthony actually had psoriasis, and that went away with his diet as well. Together with Anthony, whenever we would go to conferences and different things. There is always an audience after a doctor would speak or some other speaker and they would raise their hands and go, where can I find a plant-based doctor? I had already been working on some other things, including telemedicine with a larger non-plant-based and non-lifestyle medicine company. It was more of an acute care type of calling and someone call in with a fever or a cough or upset stomach or bladder infection or something along those lines. When they would be speaking to me, I would always look at their past medical history. Then I would ask, I see that you have diabetes, and have you ever heard of plants? With that introduction, it allowed me to really see the power of lifestyle medicine being utilized in the venue of telemedicine. I was able to help people reverse their diabetes and improve their hypertension. I also helped psoriatic arthritis patients, rheumatoid arthritis, and all these incredible things were improving. It is just by the connection and helping patients understand the value of that education. I was telling Anthony these are remarkable results. Then Anthony was like, we should start our own telemedicine company. I was like, you’re crazy and there’s a lot involved or there are a lot of things that needed. Medicine, in general, is difficult enough but in the United States, we like to make things even more difficult and our system is really messed up. As a majority of people understand, we run a very good six system, we like to keep people sick, and we give them more medications. We’re not very good at taking a healthy person and keeping them healthy. Also, taking a sick person and making them healthy and not need medications. Over time, Anthony was very persistent about making our own company.

Dr. Marbas – In early 2019, we started really focusing and doing the hard work of how would we even start this? Also, how do we go start a national telemedicine company and internationally? We were working through a lot of hard work, perseverance, and a lot of nativities. It is because we being naive in the sense of not understanding the enormous thing that we were trying to accomplish. We would just hit one obstacle, overcome it, and hit the next one. We did talk to a lot of lawyers and we also spent a lot of money. Then, we launched in 2020 as COVID was really making its presence known in the United States. As horrible as COVID is, it was a silver lining for us in the sense that it really took down the perceived barriers of telemedicine. Patients were introduced to it and physicians were forced into it. It really made our work so much easier just to look in front of a patient and say, this is a very good way of treating your diabetes or helping to treat your hypertension. It was just a phenomenal moment when we were able to accelerate that growth. I think that would have taken a much longer time if we did not have a worldwide pandemic. With that, it’s how we got started, it’s been about 18 months and it’s been a phenomenal success. It was fun a experience as a doctor.

Clint – Wow. A strange blessing uniquely for your type of business, as you said. Who would have thought like in all historical time, there would have been no better time to start a telehealth business than during COVID?

Dr. Marbas – It focuses on people getting well, that’s even more phenomenal.

Clint – It’s divine intervention, great thinking, a good sort of manifestation, nice outcomes of meditation, and all of these together. It is some wonderful karma coming your way. How did you recruit doctors? I know that you’re well connected within the plant-based world and you know virtually everyone involved. How did you go about saying, Mr. Dr. X or Mrs. Dr. X, would you like to take part in this service? Then, what were the considerations they had to make to be involved?

Dr. Marbas – The only one that I did was with Dr. Chris Miller, who was our first doctor. She’s been one of my dearest friends for a decade. Also, we also had on your summit and other things. She has her own lupus recovery story, which is pretty phenomenal. She had a turn of events that allowed her to be available and we always wanted to work together. I just adore her and she’s super smart, as one of the smartest people I know. With that, it was an easy start and I wasn’t alone seeing patients. Then Dr. Klaper approached us and we brought out Dr. Klaper a few months later. I did actually ask Dr. Kim Scheuer and she also is someone I’ve known for some time. She just had shown an interest and I just put it in front of her. Then, everyone else actually reached out to us. It is because once they start seeing the potential of providing this type of service and practicing the type of medicine that they want to. With that, it’s a very strong attraction for physicians. The important thing that Anthony and I understand. we had to take very good care of our patients. They’re giving us our confidence when they come to see us just like any physician-patient relationship, but I really wanted to take excellent care of my physicians. If you don’t have physicians, you don’t have a practice Just like if you don’t have patients, you don’t have a practice. With that, we have to take very good care of these things. We take really good care of the doctors and they make a living doing just this. They’re going to take excellent care of my patients or our patients on plant-based telehealth, and that is panned out. I tend to be very picky who I allow to come and join us on the panel. It is because I really want to also build a network of plant-based physicians, who really understand that we have to work together. Also, they’re going to be maybe some really difficult patients, which we’ve already seen. We want to collaborate and we’re building a brain trust of some really remarkable physicians. In which, can reach out to each other and build this really amazing network of experiences, ideas, and education. Wherein, I feel is nowhere else in the world exist. Now we’re 18 months into it, we have thousands of patients, we have collected data, and it is quite remarkable. Also, who else has thousands of patients that are plant-based, which are cared by plant-based physicians who have lab data and medical records in all these conversations? I mean, it’s like been a really cool thing to be a part of. I feel like we’re at the tip of the spear on leading the world to be a healthier place.

Clint – Absolutely. When I first went to your website and I saw that you had Dr. Klaper available on the website. I was like, this is sensational and this is amazing. It is because I want to go through some of your doctors, including yourself, some of the stories, and so forth. In which, you’ve got to share with us with inflammatory arthritis and the lineup is phenomenal. I mean, to speak to someone of that caliber would normally be a waiting list of 4 months in a clinical setting and it would be high fees. You might have to travel, you have to wear a mask, sit in a waiting room to go through, and eventually get a meeting. This way, you can contact the best of the best from your living room and be speaking to that person. In most instances, within a few days and Dr. Klapper might be a little longer. We’re not talking weeks, but we’re talking that week. This is amazing. Why don’t we or can we just go through with the doctors? Let’s start with Dr. Klaper and for those who aren’t aware. He’s one of the most award-receiving, most loved amongst patients and physicians that you’ll ever meet. Let’s just love on Dr. Klaper a little bit.

Dr. Marbas – What is not to love with Dr. Klaper? The first thing that I always hear when they are recollecting time with Dr. Klaper is how kind and smart he is. He has a really amazing ability to take the science and translate that to lay terms to understand. He has a very strong intuition of what’s wrong with the patient and will help them navigate that. But he also has a really strong desire to educate young physicians. He has a moving medicine forward initiative where he’s going to medical schools and he is explaining the value of lifestyle medicine. Wherein, it is really founded in plant-based nutrition. He’s been a doctor for almost as long as I’ve been living. I’m just going to put that out there and I have a daughter who’s a physician, so I ain’t no youngster. They’re the wealth of information and that one brain is pretty cool. Also, to have access to it on a daily basis I feel very humbled and honored to be a part of that. But he’s phenomenal and you can see him. If you’re international, you can see him. He’s also licensed in California, Florida, Hawaii, and New York. If you live in the United States, the way telemedicine works, you have to be in the state physically at the time of the appointment and you don’t have to live in that state. Let’s say you live on the border of New Jersey in New York, you could go over to New York and have your appointment with Dr. Klaper. It is just the way the laws work right now and it’s very burdensome. It’s very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to get these licenses. I could talk for hours just about the hassle of getting all 50 and D.C. myself. With Dr. Klaper, he’s in those four states. If you’re anywhere in that or international, you might live in the United States and just hop over to Canada at the borders. Then, you can see Dr. Klaper and it’s easier than traveling to another state. Yes, Dr. Klaper has been phenomenal and just a wealth of experience that you won’t find with another physician.

Clint – I echo all of that and I’ve been blessed to have done several events with him. He was in Australia one time and I put on my first rheumatoid arthritis event in Sydney. I timed it when he was going to be in Australia and invited him in advance. Then I said, would you like to speak at my event? He was so welcoming to the idea and that built a great friendship between us. He is a regular guest on our live support calls for our membership clients. in fact, there’s one tomorrow and he’s part of our summit, just like yourself and Dr. Miller. I cannot stress this enough if you’re uncertain listening to this or you are watching this and you’re thinking, should I get a second opinion? Also, if I’m worried about anything to do with digestion, pain, inflammation, joint problems, and autoimmunity. Please head over to www.plantbasedtelehealth.com and book yourself an appointment with Dr. Klaper. You will not regret it and it’s going to be possibly life-changing for you. Dr. Chris Miller, as I said, another guest at our upcoming summit. She has this wonderful compassion for patients. It is because she’s had her own journey with autoimmune problems, lupus and it’s quite confronting what she’s been. But the empathy that she’s attained and also the detail of how to overcome the most persistent problems. She’s been through it all, and she’s done it all. What a team member for you, right?

Dr. Marbas – I’ve known Chris almost since the beginning of her lupus journey. When she went to a plant-based diet and she wasn’t like some of the other stories you’ll hear. For example, someone suddenly improving and they’re completely in remission in 3 months. Those are just wonderful stories you hear and we’re always thankful that to hear them. She was one of those that didn’t get better on a plant-based diet. Obviously, she stuck with it that the plant-based diet improved other components of her health. But she had a really aggressive case of lupus and had significant problems. She was always like, why can’t I be one of those people to help get better or be better soon? Then I was like, Chris, this is your journey and there’s a reason you’re on this journey. Your journey is going to end with you having the knowledge and the experience to help people, who are just like you. It is because there’s a lot of people just like you. Not everyone is going to get better overnight and that was really important for me to explain to her. She really took to that message and it’s still been an undulating path, but she’s persevered. She is like a pit bull when it comes to health, looking at the knowledge, and digging into the research. With that, she’s just super bright and intelligent. She did residency, internal medicine, emergency medicine, and she did an integrative medicine fellowship. I was like, you just can’t get smarter than Chris Miller and she’s just a delightful human. I don’t know how else to explain and you’ve met Chris. Then, you instantly fall in love with her and I just find her absolutely a delight to be with her at all times.

Clint – Yeah. She’s so passionate about science too. After I spoke with her, talked about the summit, and so on. We’ve just connected on WhatsApp and we are sharing scientific articles that are coming out passionately with each other. For example, check this out and we are totally nerding out on science about gut bacteria and stuff. It’s her mind and she’s totally into it. I think only into it at the level that you can be when your own health is at stake. When your own inflammation is kept at bay by what you’re understanding and the way that you practice your lifestyle. Also, I cannot recommend her enough and she’s a wonderful, humble, and knowledgeable person. With that done, let’s talk about you. You have had your own health challenge in the past as well. Hopefully, I haven’t thrown you under the bus by sharing a little bit about that. It helped everyone to connect with you on a personal level. Then, if you’ve got some stories also about folks that might have had good success with working with you as well with inflammatory arthritis.

Dr. Marbas – Yeah, absolutely! I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, 25 years ago after the birth of my second of three kids. It was a big surprise because I was 25 or so at that time. When you do that, nobody ever told me that this could be potentially improved with diet. No one told me the cause and it was just something that it was. There was no family history and I just continue to take the medications over the decades with escalating doses. About 10 years ago, when I went on the plant-based diet, my thyroid actually improved quite dramatically. With that, I had to drop my dosage, it’s a long story of how that was figured out and it was an interesting story. I really saw the evidence in my own body on how something that had been a chronic quote-unquote disease for years or an autoimmune disease, but the thyroid improve. When I stop igniting the problem with the foods that I was consuming. My body is like, finally, can I get better? Honestly this year, I actually had to decrease my dose again. I don’t know what that is and I don’t know if it’s just because I’m getting older. I’m like, we just have to keep moving in the right direction.

Dr. Marbas – As far as patients with inflammatory arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis, I really feel these types of inflammatory conditions or autoimmune conditions respond well to a plant-based diet. Certainly, I’ve seen patients do very well and very quickly. But some require a little bit longer, as you would attest to. I think the earlier we can intervene in the diagnosis the better. It is because there just have been less damage to the joints. I had a really interesting case and it was my first RA patient. This must have been before 2015 or it must have been around 2013 or 2014. It was a woman who had kids and she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis for about a year. At that time, I still practice holistic medicine or whatever you want to call it. It is because I’m still an M.D. and I still am rooted in traditional sciences, but it is interesting how people are conveying. She came and we put her on a plant-based diet. She lost 40 pounds, all her joint pain went away, her rheumatoid factor declined. This was around the holidays and she went to her mother-in-law’s house. Then she goes, Dr. Marbas, they made this amazing brisket and I had to have just this little bite. Then she goes, it was literally 2 inches by 2 inches, and that’s all I had. Then, she did not do well, her hands were blown up and she had swelling for at least 48 hours. Also, she had some dissipating pain over the next week and she goes, I will never do that. But it just spoke volumes of how powerful this type of eating is and that we were meant to be eating this way. Our bodies are like, what are you doing? I’m going to give you this is an example of why did you do that to me and I was doing really well. But it was really telling and that really stuck in my mind as far as really thinking about RA, psoriatic arthritis, and other patients have done very well. I had a patient on that other platform that I will not mention. I only met him one time and he had called something pretty simple. I saw that he had psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. With that, I just really went into plants anti-inflammatory and gave him some resources of where to go. I would say it was about 8 or 9 months later. I got a Facebook message from this person, and he said, I had to let you know that I took your advice. He also said, I’ve lost like 60 pounds, my psoriatic arthritis is just completely reversed, and I can’t thank you enough. Those are just such incredible stories, which I’m sure you get all the time. It just fuels the fire to keep doing what we’re doing. Even when there are days like, I’m so tired. There are just many patients who need help, but this is some phenomenal stuff. Again, it’s for people like you that provide those resources and things that we’re doing. It allows patients to even understand that there is a possibility of healing.

Clint – As Dr. Klaper says, your joints are not looking at what you’re eating, right? You always can’t get away with those kinds of cheat. It’s crazy, isn’t it? The autoimmunity is like a smoldering fire where we haven’t got the flames there. We can get it to this point where it’s just this little smolder at this little level, but then eating something that’s oily or deep-fried. It is just by taking a whole bunch of dried leaves and throwing them onto there and there she goes. I’m now trying to picture myself as our audience listening to this. Now they are thinking, I’m not sure if I go to your website or do I pick Laurie or do I pick Chris or do I pick Dr. Klaper? How can people get an idea of what’s the best first doctor to contact?

Dr. Marbas – Absolutely. First of all, if you’re international, I would say you may want to pick Dr. Jeff Pierce or Dr. Kim Scheuer. If you speak Spanish, they are Spanish speaking, which is brilliant. Also, Dr. Elisabeth Fontaine speaks French. If you’re deaf, I don’t know who be listening here or someone’s signing to them, Dr. Kim Scheuer has a master’s in sign language. It is just phenomenal and they are really amazing people. Dr. Elisabeth Fontaine is also an ob-gyn, so she delivered babies. If you have female issues, menopausal concerns, and along those lines you can add into if you have other autoimmune issues, but those are kind of her specialties. She’s also a bike cyclist, she does long distances, and what an amazing athlete. Dr. Kim Scheuer is a family medicine and beyond her speaking abilities, she speaks multiple languages. What’s really cool about that is she also is a phenomenal athlete. She’s really good at doing a lot of different things and she can really hone in on what your issue. Also, she can help you understand the habits and build across those. She mentioned that she’s a plant-based athlete and she uses a plant-based diet to decrease inflammation in her patients (side effects included) Also, reversal of aches, pains, and chronic disease risk factors. While simultaneously improving function performance. She likes to get as many medications off the patient list as possible. With that, Dr. Kim’s story is an incredible person there.

Dr. Marbas – Then we have Dr. Collins Zhu, who is really cool because he went to culinary school. Now, he employs that with family practice and lifestyle medicine, which is really awesome. If you’re really struggling with food preparation and those types of things, that might be someone there. He is a double board-certified family and lifestyle medicine. He went to culinary school to understand how food either feeds our health or feeds our disease. He’s an osteopathic physician, and he has an intimate foundation, structure, form, and function. He can help along the path of lowering overall body inflammation and gain back more function in your Life. We have Dr. Niki Davis, who was a mechanical engineer and she worked on NASA on the Space Shuttle. She knows how to get people to outer space, but she chose to go back to medical school because it wasn’t enough. It is because she actually was plant-based and wanted to practice lifestyle medicine. She went back for 7 more years of training to become a lifestyle plant-based medicine physician. She’s passionate about helping the current disease and she is very intuitive. Also, she is very good at digging into the science.

Dr. Marbas – We have our newest doctor and she is Dr. Amy Zacharias, who is a family medicine doctor. She’s just started this week and she actually teaches lifestyle medicine to people. With that, there you go these are some amazing doctors. I’m just thrilled that we have all these incredible doctors available for anyone to see. But I just want someone to mention also Dr. Jeffrey Pierce. He does surgical OB as a family medicine physician. He actually did a lot of training and practice in rural Africa. Now you’re taking someone who has limited different tools, can take care of the illest and critical. They are the women who are giving birth in a very less optimal place. Many of them give a lot of their time to the underprivileged and I just can’t speak enough of just the integrity and the intelligence. I just have so much fun being with these guys, they’re just incredible, and I’m just so excited. I don’t think all of us have worked probably in places that were less than ideal with our coworkers. In my case, I haven’t had any problems. This has been so much fun to bring on and bring in more people. They are just like-minded from the very beginning, building this incredible opportunity, and platform to help so many people around the world.

Clint – It is really amazing, right? Them people are super excited and they now think, I’m going to go with that doctor. Then they might think, I’m already on a plant-based diet following what Clint says and I wonder what else I can get out of this. It is because one thing that comes to mind is you can run labs and you can do all sorts of other investigative approaches. Can you talk us through some of these directions that you can go with that cannot be done by just trying to work this out at home?

Dr. Marbas – Sure, absolutely. So if you’re in the United States, of course, we can order labs and look at those, but we can also look at your labs that you have done other places. For example, I have a patient that I’ve been seeing regularly in Mexico, and so his labs come to me in Spanish, but they’re close enough to English, and I have some Spanish background that I can interpret fairly well. But we’ve reversed his diabetes and he had some other issues as well. So those things can occur and you can we can make suggestions to international patients about speaking to your physician. Please have them do this or consider this medication or decreasing this or doing that. We can look in bring the scientific minds, medical minds to your current circumstances and look at the tests you’ve done or recommend tests be done, or we can order those ourselves. We can order medications and labs and all those things. The other thing is looking at certain food choices, if you’re struggling a little bit, maybe there are some other things that you’re dealing with in addition to your inflammatory arthritis or autoimmune condition, which often is the case. Such as, hypertension, diabetes, digestive issues, and the list goes on and on. Those are also things that we can address for you, so it’s not just necessarily the silo of autoimmune disease or inflammatory disease. Sometimes there’s going to be certain conditions that we have to be a little bit tricky with the diet, such as diabetes and type one diabetes, type one and a half. These are autoimmune diseases as well, and you have to think about them a little bit differently when you’re thinking about a plant-based diet. And we can talk to you about the tools that you can employ with those other chronic diseases. So with that, I think we’re just going to bring another mind, so the more minds you have on your problem, the better. Nobody knows everything, and if a doctor ever says that to one, and because they’re not going to be the humble spirit you need and to help you collaborate in your health. And so I just really feel like that is really important that you look at it as a collaboration and that again, the more minds you have on an issue, the better. Because people are going to become from it, from different angles, different experiences. They’re going to look at it with a different lens and really provide you insight that you may have never thought of. And so that’s the value of these incredible physicians.

Clint – Most definitely. And the huge one that you mentioned, of course, right at the top there is the medications, and this is an area where you can’t make these decisions on your own. You need the doctor, you need to make a call to you guys and say, Hey, my doctor wants me on these drugs, blah Blah blah blah blah. I’m taking This, that or the other. I’m not sure if this one’s doing anything. What are the side effects of this long term? And these conversations are really there’s only one place for those conversations and that’s with you guys or their existing doctor,and this is why a second opinion or shifting across to plant-based telehealth can be such a great move.

Dr. Marbas – Yeah, I had a very recent example of that was a patient with Crohn’s disease recently diagnosed and the GI doctor said, Hey, I’m going to put you on prednisone this and didn’t sit down and explain what are the side effects, should I do this? This patient was highly concerned about that and reached out to us. And so we navigated that and talk through what are the side effects? What is the better treatment? Do you even need treatment at this time? When how does that relate to food and what should you be doing? And ultimately, there may be a decision you need medication for a period of time but are there better medications to choose from? And that’s the value of having someone who’s going to look at you in the hole and sit down and take the time with you, to educate you on those potential side effects and not just a rushed here’s your script go out my door and come back whenever, but literally sit down and say, Hey, my goal is for you to be well as possible with minimal amount of medications. And if that requires medications, it requires a bit, what are the best choices for you at this point in your life. Sit down and help the patient make the best decision for themselves at that point in time as a partner in their health, That’s the really cool thing about this group of physicians, they really value that partnership and they don’t speak to patients in that paternalistic way that we’re used to. When we were kids and young adults going to a doctor like, you’ll do this, do that, you know, here’s your script out the door. It’s just a very different world now, and medicine is way more enjoyable when you have buy-in from a patient and you work together.

Clint – Yes, absolutely. Insurance.

Dr. Marbas – So OK, in the United States, again, where we’ve had some difficulty with apparently allowing patients to have access to medical care, even if it’s most needed. What we have chosen to do is make this as affordable as possible. We run a really lean operation, I will tell you (inaudible) and I bootstrap this together ourselves with our own funds, and we are now at the period that we’re growing, that we are actually getting investors, which has been really humbling and honoring that people are willing to provide large sums of money to expand our operations, which is really cool. Speaking of that, though, in the United States to accept insurance is a very complicated and expensive ordeal, and neither one of us had the bandwidth at the point of inception to launch to do that, and we’re not quite there yet we’re working on bringing on more staff. That is our goal would be to cover, all Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, self-pay. Right now we’re on a cash basis and we’ve kept it that way and try it again, try to be as portable as possible to provide care for the patients and also pay a living good wage to a physician who would be attracted to this, they could walk away from a regular brick and mortar job. And with that in mind, we also provide what we call a super bill, It’s like a receipt, so to speak, of the actual appointment. And it’s what you would go when you go to your doctor regularly and they accept insurance, they’re sending a super bill to your insurance. But what we’ve done is we’ll provide the Super Bill for you and then you would submit it to your insurance. We’re having quite a few patients actually will get 50 percent in even upwards of one hundred percent reimbursement from their insurance company. And I have several patients, so like my visits with you are free. Let’s keep going. I’m like, All right, let’s do it. and so those are some really great stories when you hear them. But of course, not everyone will have that capability and we really are trying, and we’re looking at other ways like group visits and some other things, subscription models to make it even more affordable. But there’s a lot of things when you’re running a business like this and there’s lots of legal things, and I can’t even tell you the nightmare that it is to run a practice like this, but you want to stay in compliance and I get in trouble. But again, it’s but that’s where we’re at and we are hoping to have insurance. And probably it probably won’t be for a couple of years, but we’re really working hard for it, and we know that’s an important aspect that we’re going to have to eventually offer.

Clint – Speaking to this topic from a patient point of view, purely who has spent literally thousands upon thousands of dollars over the years in alternative therapies, medical bills, surgeries, all sorts. I’ve got an ozone machine, I bought an infrared sauna. I mean, we’re talking if you average it out over, per year, the cost of someone who is actively trying to be healthy if you have inflammatory arthritis is in the thousands per year. So to spend $150 to potentially save your joints and be able to have a better life it’s a no-brainer. For some of your doctors, if it’s twice that, If it’s gosh, if it’s three times that some people are still going to get extraordinary value. And so, the cost is not the issue here, I encourage everyone to take action now. If people want to learn more from yourself, from Dr. Chris Miller and Dr. Klepper, all three of you are on the Rheumatoid Solution Summit, which is coming out soon. Details to be shared shortly, it’s going to be a massively exciting world first. But for people who want to just dive in and do a telehealth appointment with you? Can you walk me through the exact steps involved next?

Dr. Marbas – Ok, so first thing is, you go to www.plantbasedtelehealth.com. There are a few things there you can do as you go to the main page. You’ll when you’re landing there, you’ll see where it says new patient registration and what this does you can fill that out, and basically, it’s going to ask your name, your email, the state, your phone number and date of birth, and that you agree to our terms of use and you click register. That sends us a notification to send you what we call a patient portal invitation. And this is our what we describe as a HIPA compliant, it’s a very safe place where you’re going to see your labs, you can communicate with your doctor, that’s where your appointments will originate. All of that occurs in this space called your patient portal. And with that, you can do it that way or if you can click on Find a Doctor, it’s at the top of the link you can click on there. You can click what state you’re in or if you’re international, and we also ask about Medicare because there’s again, we’re special rules with Medicare. And you could do that or if you’re not sure which doctor you want to click, just click on information, and the first choice is called Meet the Doctors, and all nine of us are listed there. If you want to learn more about them, you can scroll down or click on it or you want to schedule an appointment it will take you right to the schedule appointment and when you click on that button. Basically, if I wanted to see Dr. Klaper or whoever they will have, you know, do you want to do a 30 minute follow up or this is a new patient registration we offer half and 1-hour appointments. You click on whichever one you want and it shows which the next available slot. So like, If I click on Dr. Kalper, he literally has six appointments available next week. You can go see this amazing doctor Kalper literally next week. And that’s amazing, and that’s for an hour’s visit. You can do half-hour whatever you Like, and when you do that, it puts you into his schedule. You have that booked and then you’ll get an invitation also for the portal and you set that up as well. If there’s any problems, you can call 908-455-8080 or email us at info@pbtelehealth.com and we’re happy to answer those questions. Anthony’s always on the phone, he’s phenomenally is quite his own set of groupies that actually just call him to see you. I have patients who go, I’m just going to call Anthony (inaudible) really busy, He cares so much about patients and works so hard to make sure that we are providing the best care possible. You won’t meet another and speak about genuine human beings, Anthony is one of them. He’s literally, he and his family become part of our family, so we literally just their extended family. At this point, they’re just I can’t I can’t explain how the incredible humans I’ve met by being plant-based, including like yourself, just I wouldn’t change my life or anything. It’s been amazing.

Clint – And I’m really, really, really grateful for you sharing all this with us today. You know, anyone who’s been a follower of this podcast for a long time knows that I never have any sort of business or cooperation or any anything on anyone on this podcast who’s here to sort of act as a service or business or try to say, Hey, do this and in exchange for money. This is a completely extraordinary circumstance that we have here to be able to contact plant-based telehealth. And that’s why I want to push this as hard as people are welcome to receive it because this is an opportunity we’ve all been waiting for. How many, many months, years, or decades that we’ve had inflammatory arthritis. We’ve needed a doctor service that we can use from anywhere in the world at low cost to speak to people who are compassionate, empathetic and who have personal experiences themselves of plant-based eating, plant-based food preparation, plant-based lifestyle to be able to communicate with without that big doctor desk in front of us making us feel intimidated. You’ve brought this service to the world. Laurie, it’s just so amazing to see, and I really hope that everyone goes and just goes through an experience like this with you or one of your colleague doctors. So thank you so much.

Dr. Marbas – Well, thank you for such a wonderful paraphrasing of why we’re here, and we’re just so happy to be able to offer this service and we really want to make it big. So please share spread the word and you know, we’re happy to speak to anybody. If you have an opportunity for us to further share, we’ll be happy to do that. So thank you again for having us and we really are grateful for the opportunity to be in front of your audience. We know that that speaks volumes to us and we and we don’t take that lightly. So thank you.