She followed the rules, climbed the ladder, and earned the title and the paycheck then her body and her conscience started waving red flags.
I’m Sylvia Worsham, and I’m joined by Dr. Widian Jubair, an internist who immigrated from Iraq, rebuilt her medical career in the United States, and ultimately walked away from a lucrative role when she realized the system kept rewarding speed over healing.
We talk about what happens when a physician becomes a patient and feels dismissed, rushed, and scared. Dr. Jubair shares how those experiences changed her view of modern healthcare, especially for women’s health and hormones, where symptoms are often complex and easy to minimize in a 15-minute visit. We also dig into why “reactive medicine” can feel hollow: endless prior authorizations, coverage rules that override clinical judgment, and a structure that incentivizes quantity over quality.
Then we shift into what she built instead: Celestique MD, a concierge and holistic primary care practice grounded in long appointments, real listening, and root-cause planning. We get practical about lifestyle medicine and preventive healthcare, including the pillars that drive longevity and better metabolic health: nutrition, movement, sleep, stress, and connection. One patient story ties it together, showing how grief and loneliness can spike blood sugar and how slowing down can reverse the trend without simply stacking more meds.
If you’ve ever felt trapped between security and purpose, or you’ve wanted healthcare that feels like a partnership, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s fed up with rushed care, and leave a review to help more people find the show.
To follow Dr. Widian Jubair, do so on Instagram @celestique_md or visit her website at https://celestiquemd.org
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Released Out Revealed Purpose. And today’s Dr. Whittian Joubert. And she is someone that’s going to be talking to us about hormones and all things women related because she is an internist out of Colorado. But when she came here to the United States, she immigrated from Iraq and she did everything that immigrants do when they first arrive into this country. And that is to go up the step of that ladder. And all of us do it because my parents did it and my father did it when he came to this country. It was the idea of success, according to the Americans, which is to be successful, you need to prove your worth. And to do that, you gotta work hard and you gotta make money. And you gotta do all these other to achieve all these things. And then you’re gonna have this big old pot of gold called happiness. But that’s not what happens. And we all know this because some of us that went through that journey, I went through that journey, my father went through that journey, but we didn’t find that pot of gold. There was this emptiness, this void. And when you feel that void, that’s another pivot moment, and that’s where Dr. Joubert is gonna start her story of transformation. So without further ado, Dr. Joubert, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your amazing story of transformation.
Oh Sylvia, thank you so much for having me today. I’m so thrilled to be here and talk to your audience about everything women, hormones, purpose, and the transformation.
Yes. And I do know you emigrated here from Iraq, and so I I really want you to take us back to when you first arrived in that amazing story of transformation, just kind of guide us through how you landed in this space now that seems to be where your purpose is.
Absolutely. So yeah, I was born and raised in Iraq. Um pretty much my um teenager college years were in a war-torn zone. Um I grew up in a society where most women have assigned roles and there is this much they can do with their life. So um I challenged all the norms of the society, went to med school, finished um training, become a physician there, and um during that journey I volunteered to work for the World Health Organization to help area, underserved area and outreach communities who lives under poverty and lack of resources, and that work brought me the most joy I can think of. And um, but unfortunately, doing that work put me in a dangerous situation and um threatened the safety of me and my family, so we had to flee the country for that reason. And then I arrived to the United States as an immigrant in 2013. I carried carried that determination with me to find my purpose, to do good, um, to help people be healthy and help people who can access healthcare. So I had to do my training again and my schooling again, and um I was very excited um to achieve the American dream. So I did all the training, got the job, got the respect, got the salary, and something felt missing. And I remember questioning that. Um, like I feel like I’m doing my best every day for my patients, but I still hitting the wall of insurance doesn’t approve that, or this and that. So I wouldn’t say I found my purpose climbing the ladder, but I was kind of still there trying to figure out uh what I can do. And then just two years ago, I um faced two scary health diagnoses and had to sit on the other side of the desk and be a patient. Um I felt dismissed, rushed, frustrated, scared, felt like no one is hearing me, no one is trying to help me. Appointments were 15 minutes at the best. So surviving those health scares, I just sat on my desk again as a doctor, and I’m like, are we truly helping people staying healthy? Um, being um doing this reactive medicine type of thing where we are putting out fires and waiting for a cancer to take over before we step up and treat it. Like, is that truly what I’m trying to do? I felt like the victory of the modern medicine and Western medicine was hollow and something is missing. Um, but the turning point happened last winter. I started a job with a new uh clinic and I was assigned an office in a cube where there is no window, no sunlight. Um, it felt more like a bunker than where you hide from rather than a workplace you are supposed to engage in. And um I dealt with um seasonal affective disorder all my life. I worked hard every winter when the days get shorter and the weight of darkness weigh in, and related to the darkness of the night sky. I know all the symptoms, I know how to handle it, but last winter I just could not. And um, talking to my therapist, we talked about the window, and he’s like, You’re a doctor, you know, sitting in a dark room 10 hours a day is not how you are supposed to heal yourself. So I saw a simple solution. There is a vacant office down the hall, and I um with conscious optimism, I put a request in and asked to move to that office, and I explained that this is a critical in managing my seasonal depression. And to my surprise, I didn’t get the simple yes I was hoping for. Um I faced just uh bureaucratic firework. And um have you been in a situation where you feel like all you needed is outside your grasp and you know the answer, but is no one is helping you getting there. So the message was clear. My vulnerability wasn’t a bridge to understanding, it was a packet of paperwork that get filed and forgotten. And that vacant office that I walked by every morning remained a symbol of a system that doesn’t extend empathy to their own worker. So as my focus afraid and um my frustration increased, I gave myself permission to surrender and to um stand up for my mental and physical health. And that’s what I did. I just resigned from my lucrative six-figures job and decided to start my own business. Um, what that experience did to me, to my surprise, it helped me find my mission to challenge the indifference in our system and found a place where healthcare is not a luxury and every person is heard and cared for and seen, um, where it is a partnership model rather than a proactive health model rather than a reactive, and where the um slow the healthcare is purposefully slow to allow meaningful healing, and um where everyone gets the respect and the autonomy they deserve. And that’s how I ended up founding my practice, Solistique MD.
Wow, what a story! Seriously, like I just sat there, I got chills. And no, they’re not multiplying, so that’s not like the song. Well, as I was hearing you, and this is a vision that God is giving me. The movie Patch Adams kind of came into full view, the Robin Williams film, based on a true story, by the way, of doctors, the way he wanted to treat patients, which was like a partnership. It’s not doctor, patient, and all disrespecting, you know, it was a very meaningful collaboration between patient and physician and and different modalities to get to the root cause of why they are ailing and not just stuff them with medications or you know, the typical protocol that the doctors will do because that’s their training. That’s how they’re trained here in the States, unfortunately. Now, in other countries, they’re trained very differently. Like I know in Mexico they’re trained clinically, and they’re much better clinicians than they are like books and academics, you know. Not that they’re not good at academics, I’m just saying they put them in clinic in the first year of medical school versus third year here in the States. And so two years of being in clinic is gonna teach you a lot about the and patients and root causes, and you just have way more exposure to it. I know my father not only had that background because he came from Monterrey, Mexico, but he also went to Vietnam as a surgeon. So that experience of like he would tell us, he’s like, all these shows that depict war, they’re so unrealistic. That that’s not war at all. He said, He goes, I had two minutes tops to open up a central line in dirt floors. It wasn’t even clear, yeah, you know, and he goes, How fast I got, I mean, he was fast in surgery. I once had the privilege of shadowing my father when I worked for Pfizer. Because back in those years I sold Viagra and my father was a urologist, and I had to say Viagra to my own dad. I know that was just I never had the sex talk with the man, and then I had to do all that all over. It was so bizarre. But Pfizer thought, well, if you can get over talking to your father about penises and erections, then you can get over it with everybody else. So I’m like, great, that’s wonderful. So I do know what I loved about your story is how you reach that purpose. It sounds like it wasn’t linear at all, it was a series of choices along the way. And that pivotal moment for you came when you realized there’s a system here that is not working. Tell us more about that turning point. Like tell us how you designed your practice to where the system is no longer the system and you’ve created something totally new and innovative.
Absolutely. Yeah, you I like your point about the purpose because we often grow up thinking of purpose as this big grand thing, like I’m gonna stop the war, or I’m gonna cure cancer, or I’m gonna feed every hungry kid in the world. Truly the real purpose is uh small actions and um activities that is joyful and intentional that we fill our everyday with. And I think that took me 10 years of doing medicine twice and traveling across the globe to find it. Because to me, when I achieved being an attending in the United States and I have a good reputation, my patients love me, I felt like, oh, that should be the purpose. But then sitting at the end of the day and feeling like I fell short with this patient because their insurance wouldn’t cover this medicine, or um I felt short in doing good counseling for this lady who her husband just died because my day is booked back to back with appointments, and my assistant knocking at the door three times to tell me, Oh, you are late for your next appointment. Like that slowly drained my soul from what I thought was a purpose, um, which now thinking back, it was not really the purpose. I was just the face of a broken healthcare system, and eventually I felt ethically challenged to be the face of this system after becoming a patient myself and see how short this system is treating people. But then the pivoting moment, I would love to say, oh, this happened and that that light bulb, like it is not like that, and that’s another thing I want to talk about is um we think of change and transformation as one big um movement. It’s usually a small changes and a feeling in your heart, like there is more I can do, why I’m feeling limited, what it is else I’m missing. And being in the pursuit of your purpose, you eventually will find it. And it shouldn’t be like crystal clear. Like after my health issues and my surgeries, I decided that I’m gonna fight the insurance more, I’m gonna fight the system more to, and that’s why I changed my like I worked for a different system, and I changed to a new system thinking maybe this is more resourceful, this is a bigger system. But then trying to find the purpose slowly, I eventually ended up with no, that is not the purpose. I’m just dancing around the problem, and the real problem is how we truly listen to people, how we hear them, how we make them feel safe and comfortable and educated and empowered enough to know what is the decision to make. Um like I have a surgeon walking to the room for three minutes, not even looking at me, he’s looking at a computer. And the two sentences he said is, Oh, you need surgery. I’m like, okay, is there’s other options? And he said, No, unless you want to be paralyzed for the rest of your life, and walked out of the room. And I’m like, that is not how a doctor, doctors used to be healers. They go through, they’re usually older, they go through decades of spiritual training and shadowing healers to learn from them before they become doctors. So to me, you are not a healer if you just passed your boards and mashed into your training and finished your three or five years of rigorous training. Um, that doesn’t give you the healing piece, the human piece, so and the empathy and the compassion is the true healing. And I didn’t see that being a patient. Um, so what I do with my new system, um, we have long appointments. Our appointments is an hour to two hours. Um, I sit with patients, don’t have a computer in me. We have a piece of paper to take notes, and we sit and talk. Um, I designed my office in purpose to make the intake room look like a living room. So we have couches, we have a fireplace, and we have a screen. Um, so patients don’t feel like they are in this uncomfortable lysteral box where, and I tell this to my patients over the years, I have a handful of patients who would have perfectly normal blood pressure. They walk to the office and their blood pressure 20, 30 points higher from just sitting in a healthcare facility. So I try to make it where you walk in, you feel comfortable, you feel calm, and then we sit talk for the first half of the appointment about patients’ history, their hobbies, their families, what they eat, what’s their job, what’s their stress level is, and then the last half I move them to this thermal medical grade exam room where we do the proper exam. Um, and then I we you brought a great point about training and what we are taught in school, which I think big part of the problem is we um we are not trained to listen, and we are not trained. Um, I remember one of my old professors in college telling me, you can’t stand far from a patient. You get to shake their hand, you get to tap on their shoulder when you are listening to their heart. Uh, that is the human touch, and the human touch is a big piece of healing. So I don’t think we are training our young physicians to do that. And with the age of AI and computers and everything digitalized, um, it’s becoming increasingly hard to sit with a patient and look them in their eye and have a good interpersonal interaction. Um, so I think we’re missing a lot of this in our training because we are trained for quantity over quality. Um, position gets incentivized on how many patients they see a day, not uh on the health outcome of these patients. And um, primary care in particular, increasingly becoming a referral machine rather than really fixing the problems. So I think the training was a big piece of it. So I went out of my way and did um more training with Harvard Medical School and lifestyle medicine, culinary medicine, and woman health and hormones, which none of those were taught to us. And um surprisingly, being a physician for how long I’ve been, um, never heard that you can fix problems with lifestyle medicine, which is based on the five pillars of health. Um, it believes that 70 to 80 percent of your health problem could be fixed by fixing your diet, exercise, sleep, stress, and having health um loving and connections in your life. Um, I think when I tell patients that, they’re like, oh, is there is evidence? I’m like, yeah, there is overwhelming evidence. People who have love and connections in their life live longer, live happier, have less uh risk of having metabolic syndrome or cancer or mental health issues. So it’s not new knowledge. It is just we are not taught that because that is not aligning with our reactive healthcare system that we run in this country. So I think learning all of that in my own, um, I felt guilty as a physician because I’m like, I’ve been a physician for 10 years and I counsel people on diet and exercise, but we never talk about stress. We never ask patients, you are not losing weight, what is the cause behind it? Are you so busy that it is easy to grab a drive through McDonald’s and beway, then stop at the store and grocery shop and cook for you and your family? Um, is your stress so high that your cortisol is always high and your body is confused and stuck in the fight or a flight? Are you living alone and you are elderly and you don’t have the love and connection that give you all these good hormones and neurotransmitters that make your heart stronger and make your muscles stronger? Um are you living with purpose? Living with purpose definitely helps people live longer and healthier and happier. And again, a lot of people think of purpose like, oh, I don’t know, I tried to change the world and I failed, so I gave up. Like they don’t think of purpose as these small intentional actions that we do day to day to help other people feel good and help us feel the rewarding of having a purposeful day where you wake up excited and want to do what you are doing. So I think we are short in training our young physicians and the um silo of structural silo of healthcare now is just uh perpetuating the reactive care and sending people to the hospital. And we have the best treatment for cancer and um all kinds of really big diagnoses, but we lose people every year for preventable health conditions because we don’t have time and we don’t allocate resources to screen and do health coaching and health education. So I think um that is a big problem that’s been going on and getting worse, honestly. Being I’ve been in healthcare in the US for over eight years now. I’ve seen it firsthand getting worse uh slowly, especially in the last two years. And again, with now a days like AI and all the other things, um just making it it’s make me feel scared what’s the next step will be in the future of medicine.
Yeah it does scare me quite a bit. I’ve when I worked in pharmaceuticals I would see doctors’ noses stuck in computer screens. Very rarely would they look up for these guys. I remember working for my father he was one of two urologists. Also the demand I think for doctors um there’s just some left after the pandemic and so whoever was left got left with all that workload and they just got so I mean they get burned out because it’s hours and hours. I know my dad when he was one of two urologists where we lived it was nonstop in those years. I can’t imagine now um and but my father was old school like in his approach. He he got trained in Mexico right so he went to medical school there and did a lot of the clinical and then moved to the United States in 1967 but he moved to Chicago did his I don’t know what is it residency there. Because I I forget how it is residency. I know fellowship is like towards the end of your training because first you have to do kind of like the first rotation of general surgery if you’re going to be a surgeon and then from there then you can specialize. So that’s another specialty like another two years. I think that’s the fellowship. So you ended up doing all these specialties right because you to be a urologist and to do like treat prostate cancer you have to do the oncology training that goes after I mean that’s like a lot. So I know that part of what’s like affecting medicine is you go through all of that training. And that means that you’re paying into a system like you’re going into debt just to go to school. And so I think what’s happening also is those physicians are just trying to get out of their own debt from medical school at least the young ones that you’ve encountered and and see as much as they can so they can pay that debt off and actually start making money because right now they’re in the red it they’ve made it so expensive to to be a doctor in this country that you almost beg them to have the status you know that’s that other piece that plays a big role here of why they want to see so many because they want the money and the status that goes along with being an MD or a DO or whatever it is that they are. And so I think there’s a lot of factors. The insurance companies also don’t make it easy for y’all um in that they prevent us as patients from having adequate support. Like the the support you were talking about the holistic approach the life coaching the uh exercise the is there any change that you’ve seen the last eight years at the insurance company or is it getting worse?
No, it’s worse. I remember when I did my training with Harvard for the lifestyle medicine um there were a few of us from United States a lot of the trainees in the course were from all over the world and um we have a private chat group the physicians who are US and we keep like what is this because they would be talking about spend this and do that and do workshops and they have a program called Cook with your doctor where a doctor once um quarterly have a Zoom meeting with their patients and they zoom from their own kitchen and show them how to prepare meal prep and so we are chatting like what is this how do they get insurance to cover this and then we asked and then there is like a very convoluted process to get this through insurance and it doesn’t pay you have to have six patients sign up for that training and you have to build certain ways like many layers of billing to get it to be covered and I remember bringing this to one of my places I worked at and like no that takes an hour of your day and you can see four patients in that hour. So four patients still pay more than the one hour of counseling or coaching culinary coaching you do. So definitely not getting better um definitely worse than any other country um I think you are very right about the cost of training and schooling and the med school built in a way you can’t practice until you do your residency. And when you do the more training you do if you are a specialist or have a fellowship and more training, your choices become smaller and smaller. We joke in medicine that it is the Gucci handcuffs because they pay you a lot but then you’re also working a lot and not taking care of yourself and getting burned out and you become obsessed with compensating this burnout by buying expensive stuff or traveling more. And so we are like at least what I’ve seen with my um colleagues we are in this vicious circle of we have to work more because we are expensive malpractice insurance is expensive office building is expensive support to the staff is expensive. So you can work part-time you have to work full-time and you have to see this many to justify how much they are paying you and you have all these debts you’ve already collected over 10 years of training and schooling so it is making it harder for people who wanted to change the system or do their own thing to do so. And I think the burnout between before the pandemic we were burned out but I think after the pandemic it became a health um hazard like you are working with patients and a lot of older physicians unfortunately passed away from COVID or decided to retire because COVID was scary. So we lost a lot of good old physicians and we’re already short I think we are 20% short in primary care doctors in the United States. So we are already short and we are not making anything to make this better. Everyone knows the burnout is a big thing in healthcare but you don’t see doctors see less patients or have more time off or have longer appointments. I think every physician went to med school with this purpose in their heart to help people and change life. So I don’t think they are not willing to do it.
It is just all this um all this added layers of stuff added that they have in front of them to just be able to provide what exactly needs. Because insurance companies make it nearly impossible. I remember uh when I sold products back in the day I’m talking about like 20 years ago with Pfizer in primary care which I would have been calling on you for example as an internist just to get a prior authorization when they would like per stay like for Medicaid for example and I was in South Texas and Medicaid represented about 80% of the patient population in in Brownsville Texas in South Texas right and it would have these newer uh medicines being brought out that had more promise than the old ones less side effects all night that they would block them they would want these major contracts these insurance companies would would negotiate with these big pharma giants and say we want the cheapest price you can give us I mean the very cheapest and sometimes they were selling it for pennies like just to get on the contract right and so then you have not the best options because not everybody’s going to negotiate. I I remember Pfizer being one of the ones that would not negotiate with the government like with Medicaid and Medicare. So then it was up to us reps oh because our the way they structured it for sales just for people listening is they they didn’t change the quotas to reflect that they were unwilling to negotiate with the government right? They left the quota the same to kind of put pressure on us to sell but we were facing no prior author I mean like you have to sit on the phone for 30 minutes to an hour in those years. I bet nowadays it’s like two hours or three or four just to um discourage physicians from even getting on the phone in the first place. Because these are tactics they use to to not pay for the the necessary things that the patient needs to thrive like in in their health so I remember just sitting there and doing this having to create these booklets like how to do a prior authorization. We had to break it down for staff and then it was like asking the physician who on your staff does this well we don’t have one well we need to assign it to somebody and then I would sit there and train them this is how you I’m gonna call this number this is how to get prior authorization for this product this is what all the loops are going to throw you on it was like a learning process because it every every insurance was different.
But it’s so unfortunate so I think it is a healthcare meant to be a service and somehow along the way someone made it a profitable industry and we are stuck there. That is bizarre to me because healthcare it’s like putting a price in education for kids it’s putting a price in healthcare is the same you are just limiting access and making it so unpleasant and I’m telling you this being a patient I the year following my surgeries and health issues I don’t want to go see my doctor I don’t want to open my health app. I get a call I see it is some lab or an imaging facility I don’t pick up because I’m like I don’t want to hear that I need this procedure or that medicine or um and bills I got bills for a year after um my hospital stay so being a physician and being in the system and feeling that way I can only imagine being a patient who’s 78 years old living alone and having a flip phone and now they are put through all these hoops to go download this and sign this and submit this they will say no I want to die peacefully in my house without dealing with all of that. So we made it so difficult and convoluted and it’s unfair like healthcare should be a service and a care not a business and a profitable very profitable business.
Yeah I know it’s I’m in agreement with you and it’s because I’ve been in in I mean I was the daughter of physician and the sister you know sibling of two physicians I hear how they talk and my brother is like you in that he does like hour long consultations he listens he does he wanted to be in um practice with Patch Adams when he first saw the movie he was like I’m gonna go work for him well I can see why because it’s a true partnership it’s why you became a doctor in the first place because you wanted to help people and and they lose their purpose and their focus when all of this happens and I I want for people to understand that not every doctor is bad you know there’s there’s bad scenes like there’s good scenes you know they just get they got stuck in a system that does not help them. 100% yeah and when they became like when my father became a patient it was oh Dr. Jabert it was so he saw what he couldn’t see when he was a physician. When you become a patient and you see how people just don’t even listen to you they they don’t care to hear you or your symptoms they just kind of like completely pass over you. I remember a resident came to see me when I was hospitalized in 2012 I was dating who would become my second husband he’d never had a biological child I wanted to give him a child and I had pulmonary embolisms due to birth control pills right and Bud Carry Center. So big medical complication and this resident walks in and goes I don’t think you’ll ever be able to have a baby and walked out just it was like I sat there like bawling my eyes out until a physician came in and said a hematologist specialist she said that’s not true. You can inject yourself with Louvinox shots and you can have a baby it’ll be okay. But but the thing is that you know you can’t be like that with patients. Can’t walk in and just be so preoccupied with your next to-do list that exactly look at the patient in front and I remember in the movie Patch Adams it was like he would ask the patient their name and the and the one training them you don’t need to know their name.
Yeah no we often talk about patients with numbers um I’ve had arguments yeah with my assistant and I’m like you can just say patient number 335 like they are a father of someone or a son of someone or a husband or a friend like those are real people who have life you can do that. So I think yeah there is a huge gap of care and healthcare unfortunately and I this gap is just getting bigger and bigger. There’s many reasons but I don’t think necessarily any of these um issues are being addressed or fixed. I think that’s when I become happier when I founded this because I’ve been in fight with the system for so long and I was defeated for so long and I wasn’t able to find out like how can I be me? I remember talking to a physician friend a few weeks before I left and I was telling him like I am dreading coming to work and I’m counting the days to the weekend and that is the single sign you are burned out and you shouldn’t be working in that place. And he was his answer was like you think too much about it. It is nine to five and you don’t work weekends or holidays and you clock in, cloak out, go have a hobby, enjoy your family, enjoy your life I’m like but this is a big part of my life is doing what I like and having a purpose and feeling like I’m helping and so that we become like people who are surviving this system, I think, beyond the ones who are stuck and they can’t quit because they have 300K or more in loans or they have family they have to provide and the only thing they know how to do is medicine. So beyond those, the few who are still doing that willingfully are the ones who found a way to mask the purpose of it and treat it as a regular job. And that is good for them but I don’t think a physician who cares and who did medicine for the right reason would be able to just go home and plug and forgot um about this. I remember the week where I was I wrote my resignment email and it is like ready to be sent um and that week I was going to send it in a Friday so it doesn’t disturb the office. So Monday I’m walking to the office and I’m like oh I just want a sign that is this is the right thing like I want to do it I’m gonna do it I just show me a sign that this is the right decision. And exactly that day I saw a patient who I’ve seen for a while she has high blood pressure high cholesterol sleep apnea and she’s overweight and she just changed insurance and she asked her new insurance before she signed up do you cover the GLP1 medications? Because I think losing weight will help with all my issues and they said yes. So she saw me weeks before and she was excited and um she’s like oh you can order them now Dr. Tober they I ask and they cover it. So we ordered it and we do the prior off now just to update you we have a full team to do a prior off in the back end uh to check all the boxes and send all the papers. So we do the prior off and we she got rejected and the reason why I got on the phone with the insurance doctor and he’s like yeah we cover it but she had to fail phenetramine first and pentramine is a stimulant we use for ADHD but it also helps people eat less and lose weight and it’s an old weight loss medicine. So I’m like okay but she has high blood pressure and fentramine raises your blood pressure and he’s like yeah we don’t care give it to her and if her blood pressure goes up we’ll write this house failure and then we’ll move to the GLP1. So I’m seeing that patient that day and I’m like listen I I’m I will do it but don’t take the medicine. If I’m a physician and I’m looking at your chart and you are on high blood pressure medicine and on FN that’s raised pressure I will be like who’s the idiot doctor who prescribed two things that’s antagonize each other. So I’m like if they want to play the game we can put you on it and maybe like in a few weeks we’ll say you failed it and we can do the GLP. And she was very frustrated and I was very sad because I can’t help her. And of course I could have gotten in trouble for telling her I’m prescribing your medicine don’t take it and we’ll say you failed it because it’s bad for you. So I remember walking out of that room and I’m like this is design this is not how I am supposed to do medicine and um I’m not a licensed drug dealer to be like oh there is this drug oh this doesn’t work let’s do this drug like there is years of research behind why we are doing what we are doing and now we are sitting here dictated by what insurance covers and doesn’t cover.
So and they’re not really some people that are answering on that other end now you’re you’re dealing with a doctor but in those years when I was a rep it was just a person denying like over and I mean they did so many movies on it in Hollywood right there’s so many movies about this because it’s about the bottom line and it’s not something that a patient is not a bottom line it’s a patient with a family and when you put them up front and center everything you do you’ll never be wrong ever.
You know I did that as a rep continuously they would say oh but you could sell your product to everybody I said no is it because I think of that patient being my mother or my father exactly my grandmother or grandfather I would I always did things ethically because my father was very ethical like his integrity was he was old school he was an old school doctor that not once a date he would tell the patient they’d come and see him right he’s a surgeon right so how do they make money they do surgery that’s how they make money okay they’d come in and he would check them out you don’t need to have surgery and they were like what but my doctor referred me for surgery and he said you can do the surgery I’m just not willing to do the surgery on you because you don’t need it right now you can do this and this and that’ll be sufficient to that’s amazing recall a single surgeon and have said that.
I’m not gonna touch you I’m not gonna I’m not gonna do that to you because now and or in other circumstances like he would deal with the for-profit hospitals for example right and there’s all of them like here in the states there’s so many and he said well I have to do the surgery on you they’re gonna charge you because they they are that I can’t stop them from charging you. However I’m not gonna charge you for my service because you cannot pay you can pay me in in whatever way you need to pay me in because people wanted to pay him because he was such a good doctor and he fixed problems for them. So one Christmas Eve my mother opens up the trunk of her car and both myself and my brother we were like 11 months apart were had high fevers that day and it was Christmas Eve. And my mom’s like what is this and my dad’s nurse was like well that’s payment and it was a pig that they had slaughtered as payment and it’s in the trunk of the car and she’s like I can’t I don’t know what to do with this and I love that but that’s how he was paid sometimes because people were so poor in that area that they were willing to they were farmers and you know whatever they they would pay him tamales or you know tamales is that wonderful Mexican very heavy and fat and cholesterol don’t eat that if you have high blood pressure or cholesterol um they would pay him with that because that’s all and so he was that type I mean of course he also had patients that paid him but um but I was raised that way. So when I became a pharmaceutical rat, even for the pharmaceutical giants like Roche and Pfizer, that’s who I worked for. Um I was a single mom at at some point already with a little boy. And uh and I remember a doctor coming to me and saying, I have the perfect patient for your product Zybox. And I was like, okay. And I listened to him. And within the first two sentences, I knew it wasn’t a good patient for me. And but I let him finish. And then when I got to the end, I said, Oh Dr. Older, I really appreciate you know you thinking of me and that’s so kind of you. I really appreciate it. However, this is not a patient for this product. And here’s why. They’re 85 years old. And I went through the whole case study and I said, um and you’re asking for um it’s not indicated for this bacteria. But I do know uh the my competitor, uh their product is indicated for this particular bacteria. And I can give you their cell phone number, but I don’t I don’t know if it’s covered by insurance so I can’t cover that for you but but here’s my competitor’s number and I gave them the number and I was like it’s just not available via pill form um like Zybox is but but you know you may have some other arrangements that they can maybe some program that can cover the cost or I don’t know get them to an infusion center or something you know and he was just blown away. He’s like you are giving up six weeks of therapy. You’re a single mom and I said yes but it’s the ethical thing to do doctor I mean like the product is gonna fail the patient will likely die because these are big time infections and it you know osteomyelitis is not something that you will survive at that age if you don’t treat it properly or I think it was endocard it was endocarditis or something like that. And I said this drug doesn’t cover that so it’s it’s not gonna help you and he said but I’m I’m he goes I I love that you know and he was he was a physician that had very high positions in hospital. I didn’t know that at the time I just I answered truthfully I said no this isn’t for for this but but here’s the solution that might help you and I think if people were to operate that way you know ethically we would be able to move forward in the system but unfortunately everybody’s like what what can I get out of this instead of how can I serve people and I think that concept that’s a God concept you know that’s a a follow of God would would be if you have God at the center of every action you take every day you’re not gonna be led astray you know and doing the right thing even if no one’s working even if that’s not benefiting you I think and that is what I remind myself every day because um starting a c office my office is a concierge so we don’t take health insurance um which makes it harder because people pay a lot for health insurance in this country and to pay extra to see another doctor is hard.
And um with medical corporate healthcare system you can’t open an office within 15 miles from your last location. So I’m opening in a place where I’m new my clientele is all far. So it is challenging to do what I’m doing and especially the first few months when we opened um there is this doubt like is that the right thing I’m doing is that the right choice I made in my career and I think the piece that kept me composed and together is thinking why I’m doing this, the why behind it and how noble and important this is to patients. And beyond like the purpose I always loved doing medicine and serving patients but I think every time doubt rise up and to the and it was like for months every morning I’m waking up asking myself is that the right choice I made and um was that truly worth it like walking away from the comfort and the stability and the certainty of it to this very challenging very uncertain path but then I remind myself the reason behind this I have a list on my desk actually saying you are doing this for the right reason and I look at this every day when I’m logging in and I think that makes it all worth it.
Yeah. And I bet the patients that you’re seeing like who are you primarily seeing in your practice?
So we do um it’s a primary full service primary care but we use a holistic approach. So if patients are on medications and they need them, I’m continuing that and refilling it. But I see a lot of people who are interested in changing their health and lifestyle and seeing if they can come off a medication or if they can try that before going on medications. We also see a lot of women who need hormone therapy um we see people who um basically trying to live longer and stay healthier so we do a lot of longevity approach and patients totally see the valued like the minute they walk into the office because they are like oh we are you are always in time we don’t feel rushed we wait walk out feeling we have a very solid comprehensive plan and we feel like you are following through we call one time and the things are done regarding special referrals and coordinating care with pharmacies instead of calling and being on hold for 45 minutes and being sent around. So patients absolutely love it and absolutely see the value behind it. But I think at the beginning just starting a new business in a new neighborhood and um with a new approach to medicine was scary. And I would lie if I said no I was sure 100% is gonna work I have doubts every day for a few months and I think what kept me going is believing in the serve the service I’m providing believing in the message and in the purpose that I’m serving is what made me go going every day.
And then every time you see a patient that benefits from what you’re doing like when you see then feel heard the way you want it to be heard when you were a patient I think that also lifts your spirit and keeps you going. And I bet if you were to release every all these doubts to God, he’d take them from you Dr. Jabert because he knows that you are in your purpose and he sees everything you do. Yeah.
Absolutely I tell the story of a patient I’ve seen in the last year who has diabetes for 30 years and her diabetes is controlled on the same medications and uh all of a sudden in the last year her blood sugar is through the roof and no one can help her. And seeing regular doctors in a traditional healthcare system they kept applying her medications and she’s still not the her sugar is still high and then they add insulin and she was very scared of going in insulin because she’d been diabetic forever and didn’t need insulin. So she called the office and she’s like can I just come for a consultation and then we she comes we see her and she ends up being our patient and then in the very first visit when we did the full thorough evaluation I asked her a very simple question what did you change in the last year? What is different? Are you eating differently are you sleeping differently and she all the answer was like no everything is the same. And then talking more I find out her husband passed away her husband of 40 years passed away last year and she was telling me every night I’m home alone we used to watch shows and go to bed together and now I’m alone and I’m bored and I’m sad. So I started eating ice cream which like she did say that when I asked her did you change your diet to her that’s not a change to diet and then she’s like yeah I’m eating about a pint of ice cream every night since he died I’m like okay that’s why your sugar is not good. So let’s just not change your medication this time and have you not eating ice cream and I gave her resources and the um area like we have few really good groups here who does um senior supports and grief support groups and um so we are treating the root cause which is her loneliness and her sadness and her grieving her partner instead of just keep pushing more and more medications and then sure enough three months later her sugar is back to what it used to be. So there is magic it’s magical how we can change an outcome just by taking our time and doing um spending more time talking to people knowing about them understanding where they are coming from I love that and I I do wish you all the luck in the world because what a blessing to have a doctor like you I wish I lived in Colorado now.
I would totally be in there I would totally be in there because I’m having you know I mean my changes are starting uh but I did um talk it was an MD it was not an MD but he does uh teach the nutrition class in chiropractic school and he does did have his PhD in microbiology and so he understands and and he I had been recommended through one of my pickleball buddies who is a chiropractor to go see um meet with Dr. Grobowski and Grobowski put me he took my entire medical history since I’ve started with him I’ve not had to use my inhaler I’ve not needed to do um any real allergy meds unless it’s an acute allergic response to like petting a dog and touching my eyes for example but because I was in Austin Texas my allergy it was through the roof it was awful I was being seen for sinus infections at least seven times during the year it was getting really expensive by the way and it just I was tired of it. But since seeing him I haven’t seen a doctor in over a year not needing to see one because of the supplements he put me on my sleep got better I dropped away I stopped eating foods that caused inflammation inside my body and so that alone caught like removed the whole reason I was getting sinus infections like day in day out because there was just no inflammation in my body because I wasn’t eating things like right now it’s having hot chocolate but it’s with plant milk because I can’t have anything with lactose in it right um he goes you can do the cocoa organic powder right and the only sugar I could put in there because I’m not allowed additional sugars is Splenda because it’s the only one that my body won’t react to with inflammation. So I put a little bit of Splenda I do the coca organic powder and plant milk.
And then that way they’re gonna have all the additional junk that regular hot chocolate has and I sleep better I’ve drop weight uh I’m I’m not moody anymore you know like I was like going through all these like major shifts like waves it was crazy um and food is medicine like and this is not new evidence like it’s food is medicine and eastern um medicine and culture forever but unfortunately we just not told that and like I did training twice and I’ve been in medicine for more than half of my life I went to medical school in the year 2000 so I’ve been in medicine for 25 years. How many minutes or hours of nutrition and food as medicine classes or training I’ve had zero with all this training and you think of it this is the fuel you put in your body I use this um with patience about like our bodies like buying a brand new car from a dealership and you put the right gas you do your maintenance you change oil regularly the car lasts forever and then you buy a new car and you put cheap gas you don’t take care of it you drive it off-road the same car would just give up and short so like if we take care of our cars that we love that much it is a way more important to take care of our body because things that happen unfortunately and that is why I’m so big um advocate for proactive overreactive medicine because there is stuff we can change um and reverse early on but once if you build blockages around your heart there is not much we can dissolve these blockages we have to go put a stent and you have to be on four different medications for the rest of your life while if we discover your cholesterol early and teach you how to eat better and keep checking it until we make sure our approach is working and efficient that saves you from a heart disease. So and back to our talk earlier preventative people dying from preventative health conditions all the time and we have this very advanced research in medicine and advances in medicine that we are not utilizing the right way unfortunately.
Yeah it is so do tell me if I wanted to work with you um and I’m in Colorado because I think you guys have patients have to be in Colorado correct?
Yeah because I’m licensed to practice on Colorado if I live in Colorado how do I find you do you have a web page or yeah absolutely it is called solisticmd.org and our website lists all the services we do um lists our membership uh model and um all the things we do and it has our contact info our address our phone number our email the email and the website actually come directly to me so people who email having questions or wanting to set up a consultation um I will see them before anyone else we offer a 30 minutes free consultation for people just to come and see our space I meet with them we I don’t necessarily treat or give uh medical advice in that consultation but we can kind of chat and see if they believe this model is the correct one for them. We also have payment plans people can pay monthly by yearly quarterly or yearly so the goal from this is just to make it affordable and accessible and convenient so patients don’t feel like oh my gosh I’m gonna go see my doctor it’s gonna be bad news I wanted them driving in coming in feeling good because like oh man I changed this let’s see how this is gonna be reflected in my blood work or oh I lost weight I’m sure we’re gonna celebrate because I she gave me all these advices and now it’s working and I’m feeling that exactly what you said like I’ve seen patients not needing to use their inhaler or I took one patient to all 14 different medications he was put on over the years and they weren’t necessary but no one reviewed them and told them that is something you don’t need to take for life. So um I think I like seeing my patients excited to come in and excited to share their health improvements and share their health journey with me. And that’s really what makes me happy and feel I’m doing the right purpose every day.
Oh thank you my goodness thank you for being you Dr. Jabert I appreciate you so much and thank you for sharing with me for pivoting for for pivoting out of that horrible job and actually creating this space for patients because you may empower another doctor to do the same in their state and if this just continues it it may be our saving grace in all honesty.
So I love that and I hope for it I think I hope good doctors get who are burned out and getting frustrated with the current system make the move because it’s totally worth it. It’s feeling that you are doing the medicine for the right reason and the right purpose and the blessing of seeing people feeling better how rewarding is that I can even put this into words seeing people feeling better and um doing better and feeling good about themselves is really the true price.
Stick with it no no worries like remove that doubt tell yourself your list is in front of you every day you just that’s your mantra that’s what you say to yourself every day so that you stick with it. And just remember um for the listeners on release doubt reveal purpose to be the light be the light like Dr. Jabert don’t be afraid to pivot especially when your soul is pulling you in the direction of your light uh doubt will always be there it it does the enemy is just waiting for an opportunity to come and tell you that you’re not worthy that you need to stay there because what were you thinking?
None of that is going to give you the fulfillment that you are seeking the peace the joy accept the spirit the spirit if you’re spirit led you you will reap the fruit of the spirit and and she’s doing it right now but she it’s in your heart if your heart makes telling you there is something better you can do listen to your heart because your heart is your campus uh don’t doubt yourself don’t question your abilities when you have that purpose in your heart everything will fall in place and you will get the help and the purpose along the way definitely gonna end there.
Thank you Dr. Joubert for joining us and for the rest of you have a lovely and blessed day by now so that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show.
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