#129: Dr. Laurie Marbas - Bringing Plant-Based Medicine to You
Dr. Laurie Marbas, co-founder of Plant-Based Telehealth
Dr. Laurie Marbas is - simply put – A FORCE who is on a mission to bring plant-based Lifestyle Medicine available to everyone from the comfort of your own home.
In just two years, Dr. Marbas and her team at Plant Based TeleHealth have amassed nine physicians (including the wonderful Dr. Michael Klaper) to service patients in all 50 states - and Dr. Marbas herself is licensed in ALL 50 States and D.C!
Today, you’ll hear about:
Laurie's journey to becoming a physician, inspired by her younger sister's illness and recovery
Her time in the Air Force with her husband and three children while practicing medicine in rural parts of Colorado and New Mexico
Her own journey to plant-based nutrition, inspired by the astounding health transformations of her own patients
The genesis of Plant Based TeleHealth and the purpose-driven mission of this company that is now celebrating its second anniversary.
Telehealth is certainly on the rise and, with people like Dr. Laurie Marbas at the helm of plant-based Lifestyle Medicine, this type of compassionate care is here to stay.
About Laurie Marbas, MD
Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA is a double board certified family medicine and lifestyle medicine physician, who has been utilizing food as medicine since 2012. Previously, she created a new medical model combining the power of nutrient-dense foods and intensive clinical psychological therapy to treat not only food addiction but also chronic disease. As the Managing Editor for the Plantrician Project’s International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention, she works closely with the journal’s Editor in Chief, Dr. Kim Williams. The journal is focused on bringing plant-based research to the forefront of modern medicine and to the general public. She is also co-founder of Healthy Human Revolution, whose mission is to provide resources that will empower individuals with the knowledge, tools, and mindset to successfully adopt and sustain a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet.
Episode and PLANTSTRONG Resources:
Shop for your Favorite Plantstrong Foods
Join the free PLANTSTRONG Community
Promo Music: Your Love by Atch
License: Creative Commons License - Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
Full YouTube Transcript
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Listen, I have to take good care of my doctors. If I take good care of my doctors, they will take good care of my patients. This is how it works, invest in your people, and they will do everything they can to make sure that the customer and the patient are well taken care of. It's a mantra I've seen that I just cannot live by.
Rip Esselstyn:
What a great philosophy. I'm Rip Esselstyn, and welcome to the Plantstrong Podcast. The mission at Plantstrong is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes, and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your Plantstrong journey. I hope that you enjoy this show.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hello, my Plantstrong pineapples. Rip Esselstyn here for another rocking episode of the Plantstrong podcast. You might be able to hear it in my voice, but I've got a little bit of a head cold that hit me over the weekend. I'm getting over it, but man, I'd forgotten what it was like to have a cold or be sick. In fact, that's because I don't think I've been sick since March of 2014. So it's been a pretty good stretch that I've gone without so much as a cold, but this one got me.
Rip Esselstyn:
Speaking of which, it's appropriate because I know that a lot of us, sometimes we want to see a physician that is up to date with lifestyle medicine and is mission aligned with all of our knowledge. Sometimes it can be really frustrating going to our traditional, the doctors. So, we as a team, we get asked all the time, if we have resources and connections to plant-based physicians. I love that you're all thinking this way. I also know that it is incredibly hard to source and research these experts. That's why I am absolutely so thrilled to introduce you to a company called Plant Based TeleHealth and one of its founders, Dr. Laurie Marbas.
Rip Esselstyn:
A little bit about Plant Based TeleHealth. It makes lifestyle medicine available to everyone from the comfort of your own home, which after the last two years we've had, I'm sure comes as a relief to many of us. In fact, they are celebrating their second anniversary and that's because they launched their service right at the beginning of the pandemic. Now, Dr. Laurie Marbas is... She's a force. Today, you're going to hear her journey through medical school with three kids in toe, no less, her service in the Air Force and incredible stories of patient health transformations just by changing the food on their plate.
Rip Esselstyn:
Dr. Marbas and her team at Plant Based TeleHealth have amassed nine physicians over the last two years, including my friend, the wonderful Renaissance man, Dr. Michael Klaper, and they now service patients in all 50 states, and Dr. Marbas herself is licensed in not only all 50 states, but also DC. I told you, she's a force.
Rip Esselstyn:
Before we hop in, I want to share something else that is now available in all 50 states, Plantstrong foods. If you haven't heard by now, our no added sodium broth and our four ready-to-eat chilies and stews are now available in all Whole Food Market stores, and we're rapidly adding more retailers every week. Also, available nationwide is our Plantstrong pizza crust kits, our no added sugar, no added oil granolas, our Plantstrong popcorn and the ever popular Rip's Big Bowl Cereals.
Rip Esselstyn:
You can order any of these delicious, nutritious and convenient products online at planstrongfoods.com. We're on a mission to help people eat strong food, just like my guest today. So let's get right to it. Please welcome Dr. Laurie Marbas. You're now in Longmont, Colorado. Is that right?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I am. I'm just outside of Boulder. So my youngest just graduated college. That's number three.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. You look like you should be in college.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I'll pay you later. Thank you. No, actually my daughter is a physician, believe it or not. So I got... Yeah. Time just kind of flies.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Well, I want to know about your journey. Where did you grow up? What got you inspired to go into medicine and then why in the world would you do something as crazy as getting to plant-based medicine? I also know that you were in the United States Air Force. I mean, crazy stuff. So I want to hear about it.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. It's been a really blessed life, but a very busy life. I grew up in a family of minimal means. My dad was a truck driver. My mom was a bookkeeper in New Mexico in the desert, so it's not too much exciting there. I was the first to go to college.
Rip Esselstyn:
And Your family? Family? You have brothers and sisters?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I have a complicated family history, but a few sisters, sister, and brothers. One has passed, but... Sorry, I'm about to sneeze here. But it's been a really very interesting journey. I grew up with a family that understood a Popper's diet, which was a lot of plants, right? We grew our own vegetables and we had a lot of beans. I had a lot of beans. I had good microbiome growing up, so switching to fully plant based has no problem.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you still like beans?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I love beans. So beans-
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, that's good. That's good.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Beans are staple. I understood the value of at least coupon clipping and the food that way. But growing up in New Mexico, we didn't have health insurance. So my mom and dad really struggled to put food on the table, much less pay for insurance and jobs were scarce. There was a lot of moving around. My sister six years younger than me got really ill. When she was little, she would have recurring fevers. We were told by the local primary care doctor that it was normal for a two year old to have 102 fevers and urinary tract infections recurring.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
My parents, not knowing any better, just trusted the medical professionals. She continued to decline in her health until we were finally actually referred to a small town urologist in Clovis, New Mexico, if you even know where that is, and she had surgery. She had been born with between the kidney and the bladder, there's a ureter and it was kinked, so to speak. She kept having infections because of that back. You know, you couldn't fully discharge all the urine into the bladder, and so she would get recurring infections.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Anyway, she went from this four year old, when she had this surgery who was very ill and sickly to a really pain in the neck little sister, was like running around, getting into my stuff. I was like, wow, that's really cool. But it was cool she's getting my stuff. It was really cool to see a doctor who did this surgery. I remember being in the hospital thinking this is the coolest place ever because this is where my sister got well, and I was like, I want to do that. That's how it started.
Rip Esselstyn:
Isn't it-
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Amazing.
Rip Esselstyn:
I just want to pause for a sec. Isn't it remarkable sometimes how you can have an experience like that and it totally influences the direction of your life?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh, absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
Very powerful. Okay. Go ahead.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Absolutely. Yeah, no. So then I made it my mission to do well in school. I graduated valedictorian in high school, the nerdy doc type kid, and went on to college at the University of Portland where I met my husband.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm going to stop you. I'm not going to let you recite it all. We're going to get some color in here.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh Lord.
Rip Esselstyn:
You're the valedictorian, but is that because you just worked really hard? Was it because of-
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Was it because it came easy to you? Do you have a photogenic memory or something like that?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh, if only I could have a photogenic... I could tell you medical school has some interesting stories I can get into about how I use cartoons to make it through medical school.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, I know about that. You wrote six different books-
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Seven.
Rip Esselstyn:
... on mnemonics, cartoon mnemonics.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. Six in mnemonics and the seventh one was basically using clinical procedures. But no, I had no talent or special skill. I'm very thick-skulled, slow learner, just a hard worker, understood the value that the more I put in, the more I got out. That was a parent's work ethic just beat into me.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, valedictorian. And then where did you go after high school?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I decided I didn't like the deserts. No offense, New Mexico. You got amazing sunsets, but I was like, I'm off to the trees. So I went up to the Northwest to University of Portland and that's where I met my husband when I was 19. He's my first boyfriend.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
We've been married almost 30 years, and God bless his soul. He dealt a lot with me. So I went ahead and I finished. I couldn't afford more than four years, so I squished it all together in three and a half. I stayed home for six years and had three babies, such blessings, Emily, Jonathan, and Gabriel. Then I went back to medical school when I was 28 and I got my MD MBA. I had a whole lot of stuff going on. My grandmother lived with us for eight years during my third year of medical school. She had breast cancer and a stroke. I was overwhelmed with the amount of information.
Rip Esselstyn:
Why was she living with you and not somebody else just the way it happened?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
You know, there's that one person that always kind of steps up and wants to help and says, come, come.
Rip Esselstyn:
You decided to step up and do that.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah, we had to because... Yeah, she had left a very difficult situation with her marriage. It was physically violent. So there's a lot of messed up history in this family. I love them, but oh boy.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's not unique. It's everywhere.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
No, absolutely. I learned the value of finding people that you love and holding onto them tightly and really appreciating them and my grandmother was that person for me. So when I grew up, my grandmother was my person. My stepdad wasn't a kind human. And so when I needed someone, she was the one that was always there. She really encouraged me just like, if you want to be a doctor, you will do it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Was this your mother's mother or your father's?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yes, this is my mother's mother. My mother was an only child. So we took her in when things got really bad. It was such a blessing. I mean, I remember when she had the breast cancer and she was going through chemo, she was fully white hair at 40. There's a lot of those genetics. It killed her. She's losing this gorgeous thick mane of hair, kind of like your dad's. One night at midnight, she goes, "Laurie, could you just please shave my head?" We both cried at midnight while I'm shaving her head and all her hair is just falling to the ground, but those are the moments that just, they stick to me.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
She has since passed, but my children had an opportunity to live with their grandmother. My in-law's actually lived with us, too, for six years. I had a cousin lived with us. So, we're just kind of multi-generational come on, stay. We've had my daughter's friend live with us for three or four months. You know, the more the merrier. We feed them plants and-
Rip Esselstyn:
Great attitude, love.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now where'd you go to medical school?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I went to medical school at Texas Tech. Guns up.
Rip Esselstyn:
Whoo.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah, Guns Up Red Raiders. When I was in medical school, like I said, I had a lot of stuff going on. My husband went into active duty Air Force at the time. He was driving a hundred miles, one way to work, 100 miles back every day. God bless him. This is back in the late nineties. They sent me this stack of papers for pharmacology one day. And I'm like, "Oh, is this all it for the whole semester?" Like, "Oh no, this is just two weeks." I'm like, "Oh." I was like, "Well, this will be fun."
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I'd always love to draw. So I started drawing cartoons as mnemonics. So for example, I would draw a Pepsi bottle as peptidoglycans. It's a drug class. Then I would draw a little van for vancomycin, which was the particular drug. I would color it red for the flushing syndrome. And it'd be driving over these little mean looking sugars, because it does something to amine sugars.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Anyway, so a lot of my classmates started using them, and before you know it, we're publishing books with Blackwell Publishing. I think Lippincott, I don't think they're on... They're not even in publication anymore, but I had a patient last week who I see regularly. I take care of her little one, who's a type one diabetic. And she holds up one of these books. Now these things were published almost 20 years ago. She's like, "Look what I got, Dr. Marbas." Like, "Oh my goodness. Where did you get that?" She goes, "I don't know, but I heard you talking about that, and I just had to get one." I was cracking up. I never had anyone do that before, but what a joy. Anyway, I literally tell people, I could take it for what it's worth, but I made it through medical school drawing cartoons. So I'm not sure if you want to trust me or not, but I'll do my best.
Rip Esselstyn:
So you made it through medical school, not only drawing cartoons, but also being a mother. How many kids did you have when you were going through medical school?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
They were five, three and 10 months.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh my gosh.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. Emily and I started medical school and kindergarten the same day. I cried. She was all excited, but she's my doctor. Emily's also my doctor. She's the doctor in my family.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah, I'm very excited.
Rip Esselstyn:
Did you all move to Texas Tech when you were going to medical school?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yep. Yep. Yep. So I lived in Lubbock. My husband was stationed in Clovis, New Mexico at Cannon Air Force Base. That's a hundred miles away, and then he would drive a hundred miles. For two years, he did that. He drove a 200 mile round trip, so I could pursue my dream of being a physician. There's not many people in the world that would do that type of sacrifices. So I've been really, really blessed. I am so thankful every day.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's amazing. So tell me this. You also, when you were at Texas Tech, I read that you got the Golden Headed Cane Award. What award was that?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
My husband got it framed for me. It's hanging up here. Well, there's an award that they... And they don't tell you about it till the day you graduate, which is really exciting, because then they want you to give a little speech. You're like, "Oh, Okay. There's a thousand people here." It's an award that basically they say exemplifies the care and compassion of a physician. Being a mom, it makes it a little bit easier to have a little compassion. I was one of the two moms in my class, my medical school class with kids. So it was such an honor to be voted that by faculty and the students. I was truly honored. That was undeserved, but thankful.
Rip Esselstyn:
And that award goes out to one student.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
One person. Yep.
Rip Esselstyn:
One person.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yep.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. You are very, very humble. Way to go. That's a lot.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Thanks.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Okay. So you graduate, and then what do you do?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh, I graduate. Then I go off to... Well, I stayed in Lubbock to do residency, a family medicine residency, which was an incredible educational experience. We were so busy and I absolutely loved it. I fell in love with my patients and it was just a wonderful time. But then I went off to active duty air force at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and got deployed a few times and got to see some-
Rip Esselstyn:
Now who's watching the kids? Who's watching the kids?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
My poor husband and my in-laws at that point.
Rip Esselstyn:
Not your grandmother? Your grandmother wasn't-
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
No, she had passed the year that I moved to Virginia. She had cancer. Well, we think it was another type of cancer in her colon, and died after surgery. My in-laws moved in with us when we moved off to Virginia. My husband is Filipino, so it was a lot of fun. The really fun thing about having my in-laws with me and a different culture is all the fun stories and the interviews.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
My father-in-law eventually passed in 2011. So this was in 2006 to 2011 of lung cancer. And just he was there. He helped to take care of his uncle who was in the Bataan Death March. I videoed him a few months before he passed telling his life story. It was just an incredible, amazing experience and journey. So just amazing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Okay. So you go into family medicine, right?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yes. Family medicine.
Rip Esselstyn:
You love family medicine?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I do. You know the joy... When you go into medicine, remember it was the healing process. It's the whole healing journey, helping people feel better and taking care of multiple generations. I was actually one doing pediatrics, because I loved kids so much. But when my grandmother had breast cancer during medical school, the family medicine rotation that I was in, they really stepped up and they gave me such support. I was like, wow, this is really what I want to do.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Family medicine has been such a joy since then. The interesting thing is, as you learn to practice real medicine and the reality of the standard American system, because it's no different in the Air Force. I mean I had sick people. I had people with diabetes. I had people who were overweight, except we had to discharge those who had certain disqualified them to be active services. You have to be ready to go at a moment's notice overseas, wherever they call you.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
It was really disheartening to see, you're just writing prescriptions after prescriptions and drug after drug, and people aren't getting better and they're still suffering, right? The suffering is still there. So I'm like, this is not what I signed up for. I signed up for the healing part. This is more suffering. That really just started to weigh. I mean, I think maybe in the beginning unconsciously, but then also just the limitations of what I could do and with these medicines and just procedures and it was just a tad bit frustrating.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I have some incredible friends from the Air Force. I had some amazing experiences. I was in the Middle East, I was in South America really serving those who needed it, but the politics of medicine were just as strong here as anywhere else. I tend to be a little bit of a got to do my own thing. And so I chose to get out and then we moved to Colorado. But yeah, I learned a lot with the politics of medicine. The limitations of what you can do is just a standard approach to someone who's ill. I think that left me open to be ready for the experience of switching to a plant-based diet.
Rip Esselstyn:
Or your next chapter.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Who introduced you to plant-based medicine? How did that evolution begin?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
There's a fun story. I was actually in Rifle, Colorado. Okay. We went from Langley Air Force Base to Rifle, Colorado. It's in the little town in the Western Slope. Whenever I see your dad, he's like, "Laurie from Rifle." I'm like, "Yes, Laurie from Rifle." Because I actually met your dad not too far from there in 2013. It was a lovely time.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Anyway, it was back in 2012. I had a patient. I had been there a couple of years in this little rural town of about 10,000 people named after a gun because they found a gun. I'm like, you can't really... Okay. So there's steak houses, there's ranchers, hardworking blue collar people. These are my people. I grew up with these people. They're amazing people, hardworking.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
It's a critical access hospital. So we were very busy. We did inpatient, outpatient, nursing home, you name it. We did it. But I had this patient come in one day, she's like, "Dr. Marbas, meet and dairy upset my stomach." I was like, "Okay, stop eating meat and dairy." She was like, "Okay." It's like, you know intuitively that would leave her other foods, but it didn't dawn on me that that was strictly plants. I'm a little dense sometimes, a little slow to come around, but I will eventually.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
What was interesting, she came back in 30 days and I had made notations in my notes. She'll be back in 30 days, we'll discuss it and maybe add foods back in, thinking more of an elimination type diet. But she brought her 16-year-old daughter to her appointment. Okay. So now I'm thinking to myself, what did this 16 year old do to deserve to be pulled out of school and come to her mother's doctor's appointment. I was like, "Ooh, wee."
Rip Esselstyn:
I don't even know where you're going, but I bet you it's because she also saw some kind remarkable result.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh, yes she did. What was funny though is her mom goes, "Now, you tell Dr. Marbas what you did." I was like, "Oof." I'm thinking I'm going to have an STD type of talk or something. I'm like, no. I'm thinking that. That's where my mother mind goes. She said, "Well, Dr. Marbas, I wanted to help my mom. So we cooked." In Rifle, you have to go buy your food and cook at home, because there's no plants available at the regular restaurants, at least, things that you want to eat regularly. So she cooked fruits and vegetables, beans, and whole grains with her mom. She goes, "I felt so good. I stopped both my ADD meds." I was like, "You did what?" She goes, "I feel amazing. I stopped both my ADD meds. I don't need them." I'm like... And her mom's like, "Yeah, why was she able to do that?"
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Now her mom wasn't upset, but she was a tad bit frustrated that her daughter had been on these medications with potential serious side effects, and nobody had bothered to say, "Oh, just eat some plants. So you'll be fine." And her mom's like, "Yeah, why was she able to do that?" I said, "I don't know, but that's the most awesome thing I've ever heard. What were you eating?" She's like, "Oh, my goodness, we were eating what you said. It's anything, but meat and dairy." I was like, "So you're eating..." We talked about all their foods, they were preparing and it was all fruits and vegetables and beans and whole grains and lots of yummy foods. I was like, "Wow."
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
So the moment they left, I literally got on the computer. I Googled plant-based diet, ADD. China study popped right up. Amazon, that guy right over Reddit in two days, convinced, went plant-based. Pretty much I was in my mind going, going plant based. But I wanted to try it one more patient because I was trying to wrap my brain around this whole situation. I was sitting there reading this thick book, which was an incredible book and my husband would walk by. I was like, "Look, they could turn off cancer with plants." He's like, "Okay." I was like, "You don't understand what this means."
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
So what happened was two weeks later I had a lupus patient come in on a multiple load, multiple medications. When you're in rural Colorado, there's not even a pediatric ICU on the entire Western Slope. Okay. And there's rocky mountains, which I know you're familiar with. These are some serious mountains, and you don't just go see a specialist without really planning a multiple day trip, or at least an all-day trip. And if it's in the winter, definitely multiple day trip.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
So when you have patients, you get patients, you're managing some pretty severe illness. This patient had 12 medications, including methotrexate, which is a very strong immune suppressant, a chemo type drug, high doses of prednisone, 50 pounds overweight. She's telling me all this stuff and I'm thinking to myself, and this is within a week or so of seeing the last patient. I was like, "Oh yeah, this is the one." So while she's telling me this, I'm going, "How am I going to tell her I want her to eat plants?" She's telling me how she can't even sure she can keep working. She's having migraines five days a week. She's just hurting.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
She's done telling me this and expecting me to give her some new drug treatment I'm sure. I said, "You know, I don't think there's many drugs left we can provide you. But how about we change what's on the end of your fork?" She's like, and I said, "You know, I think if we change what you're eating, I've been reading about this plant-based diet and the properties, the anti-inflammatory properties." I really kind of pushed that side of it. "Let's see what happens." She's like, "Okay, I'll try anything." God bless her. She was an amazing person. We measured her CRP before she left, which is an inflammatory marker, three times high normal. Two weeks later, I said, you got to come back in 14 days. I can't have you come back longer. I'm too excited about this.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
She came back. Wow. Her CRP had dropped to just outside of normal, like 0.1, and she had lost eight pounds. Her migraines were gone and fast forward five months, 50 pounds lighter, off of seven to 12 meds, including steroids, including the methotrexate. Anyway, that two-week point when she came back, I went home, overnight cleaned everything out of the house to a 13, 15 and 18 year old, and my poor husband. My husband is like, "Wait a minute." I was like, "Are you still cooking?" I said, yeah. He's like, "Okay." I'm like, "How was it?" He went on to lose 70 pounds.
Rip Esselstyn:
Your husband did?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
My husband. He was thin when we got married. But then over the years, life happens. I didn't have a weight issue, but he liked to snack on things on the way back between work and back. What was interesting, the kids, I'd raised and listen, I'm not a short order cook. You get what you got. You'll eat that. You'll be hungry the next day if you don't eat. I'm pretty sure you'll be all right. It served them well. I allowed them to give me like thumbs up, thumbs down if the food was bad, because I took it as a challenge. I said, "Oh, I will make you go back for seconds. Just wait."
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Anyway, so I cleaned out the whole house overnight, stayed up to 1:00 in the morning trying to figure out what to do. That was a Friday. I had a quarter of a grass-fed beef in my refrigerator or my freezer, excuse me, in the garage. I had no idea what to do with this. You just don't put it out because they're wild animals that will eat you in Colorado. You don't want to attract these things.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I was trying to figure out in my brain what to do with these things. I wasn't going to give it to a human. What happened on Sunday, we went to church, we came back and we opened the garage door and the freezer had broke and there was all these... The juices and the smell of rotting carcass filled the garage. My husband is like, "Eh, Laurie, if you hadn't been with me, I'd sworn you unplugged it." I was like, "Uh-uh (negative), that is the big man upstairs saying we are done." I haven't eaten meat since then. It's been 10 years.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
That's the story of the plant-based diet in the Marbas family.
Rip Esselstyn:
As you can hear, Dr. Marbas has seen some radical health improvements from her patients and we here at Plantstrong have witnessed the same. In fact, here is a recent podcast review from a Plantstrong listener.
Rip Esselstyn:
"This podcast helped me lose 21 pounds, treat my blood pressure, neck pain, back pain, GERD, decreased my heart disease and cancer risk, kept me motivated to exercise and has kept me on track for my whole-food plant-based diet. Now I don't have to take a ton of medicine. And this podcast also informed me that there was a specialty called lifestyle medicine, five stars."
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you. Love getting those five-star reviews and those wonderful comments. Thank you. It means a lot to know that this podcast and the guests that I am having on the show are changing lives. We'd love those five-star reviews to continue. So if you love what you hear, please rate, share, and follow us on your favorite podcast apps. Now speaking of lifestyle medicine, let's get back to the incomparable Dr. Laurie Marbas.
Rip Esselstyn:
What you've done and where you are right now with your plant-based telemedicine. How long have you had that? How's it going? Tell me a little bit about that technology, and how it's working for people.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I would definitely need to say this was Anthony Massielo's brilliant idea about... Goodness, this was almost five years ago now. I had an opportunity. I was working as a medical director for an... where someone would come and stay weeks with you, and we transitioned to a plant-based diet. I had amazing results, but that clinic closed when the funding dried up with the investors pulled out. So I had a friend say, you should do telemedicine. So I started doing telemedicine thinking this was just a short term gig to the next brick and mortar type thing. What I was finding was that patients were calling in for these acute illnesses. Oh, I've got a cold, I've got this. But I would see their past medical history and go, oh, they have diabetes.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Once you do as a physician and you see the healing that occurs, there is no way you cannot share this message even if it's as brief as two minutes. I was like, "Hey, I see you have diabetes. I know you called for UTI. We'll get to that in a minute. Let's talk about your diabetes. Have you ever heard of these things called plants?" I would have my little... I call it, I tell, I think we had to be better advertisers than the McDonald's down the street. I have to sell you on the idea that there's a better future for you. There is joy, there is less pain, there is less medications, there's healing if you just maybe take this journey with me. So I had the spiel down. It's like my 90 second elevator pitch, and I was having amazing results.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I was having the C-suite of this very large telemedicine company come to me and like, "Marbas, we're seeing some really interesting things. You're kind of skewing the lab results here. We're looking for some marketing data and we're seeing A1Cs drop from 11 to six in three months. Because what are you doing? Are they working with another doctor? What meds?" I'm like, "No, I'm just feeding them plants." They're like, "No really? What are you doing?" I'm like, "No, I'm really feeding them plants."
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
So I was telling Anthony, who's a good friend of mine who lost 160 pounds on a plant-based diet 15 years ago and has kept it off. He's like, "Laurie, we should start our own telemedicine company." He's not a physician. I was like, "Are you insane?" I'm like, I know I was invited to go to company meetings with this company. I was seeing they were very transparent. They're in the red, the forecasting, how difficult it is to get the doctors, the licensing on each day. I'm licensed in all 50 states, myself and DC. That is no easy feat. We're cheap.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wait, wait, wait, before you go on. Because I went through that site and I saw that you are licensed in every state. I think you're the only physician that's licensed in all 50 states. What's that process like?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
That's a multi-year process in a very expensive and administratively heavy burdensome process. So each state governs how medicine is run in their state. I already had Colorado. I had picked up Texas and a few other ones doing the other telemedicine. But in the last three years, I picked up the remaining up to 50, plus DC. So it's 51 licenses. Each one, you have to be fingerprinted. So I've been fingerprinted more than any other criminal in the United States so I will never be able to go reprobate. Then you're having to send records for medical schools and then you have to send your board certifications and all these different things to each state.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Now there is a interstate compact where they're working, where you can already live in one of the rural states like Colorado and get multiple states at once, which was very helpful. There's been more and more states being added to that, but the majority are not part of that. It's anywhere between $75 to a couple of thousand of dollars to do that. But as the co-founder, we needed to get to every state as quickly as possible. I don't want to be the every-state doctor. I want my other doctors. I have nine doctors totally including me, including the amazing Dr. Klaper, and I want these guys, and we're going to be adding more doctors in multiple license and I'll be pulling back and running more of the company.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
We're building an incredible network of physicians who work together with about patients and the brain trust here is incredible. I mean, we have a doctor who was a previous rocket scientist who worked on the space shuttle, who now works with us.
Rip Esselstyn:
Which doctor is that?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
This is Dr. Niki Davis. She's incredible. I've got Dr. Chris Miller who has her own lupus recovery story. He was an ER doctor, internal medicine, integrated medicine. I've got doctors who speak Spanish, speak French, who do sign language.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I mean, it's so fun to talk to these people. I'm like, wow.
Rip Esselstyn:
Did you hire most of these people?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
All eight of them, we contracted them. Yeah. They're our plant-based docs. We're growing our network and we have monthly meetings. We do live webinars. We answer questions. Anyway, we launched March of last year right when COVID was really...
Rip Esselstyn:
Actually, perfect time. Perfect time.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
It was. It took us a year to plan. There was a lot of logistics. We have an EHR that's HIPAA compliant. We use Zoom technology with it. We can order meds, order labs. We see patients internationally as well. We can of course order meds or labs that we can give some advice. But our patients in the United States, I mean, I have patients from the interior of Alaska, Delaware, South Dakota, you name it, Hawaii, random places. They're like, "You are the only person I can speak to in this entire state." I'm like, "I'm sorry, but I'm here."
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
It's been a blessing. It's been really fun to see, but we launched March and... You know, it was such a silver lining for us for COVID. Not that I would want another pandemic, but if you're going to launch a telemedicine company promoting health, well, that kind of worked out well for us. My worry was the perceived difficulty of taking care of someone with telemedicine, but the pandemic literally just obliterated that concern. So patients were looking for it. Physicians were looking for it. And here we were, we're like, come eat some plants and get better and decrease your risk, when you contract COVID, of being really ill. We're even contracting it all together.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
So we were very, very lucky to have that opportunity to have some extra push as we became successful. So we'll be two in March and we are growing. We actually closed on our first round of investors today. Wow. For people to reach out to you and want... We did not seek it. We had to turn people away who are like, "Here, we want to give you money because we believe in your message." We have thousands of patients. There is nowhere in the world that I am aware of that there is a database of all the information and trends that we're seeing with the plant-based patients. I mean, it's just absolutely astounding what we've amassed in a lot of good stuff. Sorry, you're saying?
Rip Esselstyn:
So what you've got going on as far as you know, there's nothing else quite like it.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
No, I don't think so. Not that I'm aware of. We do a lot of market research and nothing that I'm aware of.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm going to interrupt you.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yes, please.
Rip Esselstyn:
What I love about it is I can't even tell you how many people ask me, where can I go to see a plant-based physician? I'm like, let's see. Let's go online and maybe go to what plantbaseddoc.com and maybe give you a listing in your area, your zip code. I don't know if that ever really works. So I love the fact that this is a resource, as you said. I think that people are very much open-minded now and very much Zoom competent that they feel like telemedicine, Zoom telemedicine, you can connect with the doctor. They may not be able to put their hands on you, but I'm sure that you can do probably what 80% of what... You know, you could do as if somebody was there with you. Was that accurate?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. A hundred percent. I think the three years that I was doing telemedicine prior to launching this really gave me the confidence to know what to do, what to say. And then those docs who join us, I'm very comfortable teaching them what to say, what to do. We have templates. We have over a hundred handouts. I'm creating more handouts as we go along about, you know that I've seen questions. We have amazing amount of resources.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Of course, we build those relationships with people like yourselves who have an amazing audience who are willing to share our message and refer patients to us. We work very closely with Chef AJ. We have Cyrus and Robby from Mastering Diabetes. They've been sending me patients even before we launched. We've just been so lucky to have an amazing network of friends who are willing and trust us with the care of the people that care for them. So we're really happy.
Rip Esselstyn:
What is the URL?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
The URL plantbasedtelehealth.com. It can't get much easier than that.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's really cool. I spent about 15 minutes on it actually this morning. And then you can see all the doctors. If you want to schedule an appointment, you put what state you're in, if you have Medicare or not.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Right. That's another story.
Rip Esselstyn:
Another story I'm sure. And then it pulls up the different physicians that you can choose from in your state and all that, and you show up every time.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. Yes. Every time.
Rip Esselstyn:
And the wait time for you is usually four to six weeks because you are ubiquitous.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yep. I'm booking into late February. Trust me, I don't want to be that way, but I'm working as hard as I can, but we really we're working on bringing on a few more docs and my docs are getting more licenses as we speak. So that burden of wait time should decrease as they'll have availability for other physicians. Unfortunately, America has made it very difficult for physicians, for patients to have access to certain doctors with certain knowledge that may not be in the same locality or state. So it's an interesting place to try to navigate, but we've done our best. I feel like we were very lucky to be somewhat naive when we started this whole thing because if I think if we'd understood all the obstacles that we had to overcome, we had walked away and said, "Oh, that was a close one."
Rip Esselstyn:
Isn't that always the case? That is always the case.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I could only imagine.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank goodness for ignorance.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
I also noticed you do 30 minute and 60 minute appoint.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
To me, they're very, very reasonably priced, 150 for 30, 300 for an hour. In the medical world, that seems extremely, extremely affordable.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. We have tried really hard. Honestly, we even played around with as lower price as possible. We run a very lean company. We have been profitable since day one and it's a very slim profit, but there's two objectives here that we wanted to meet. One, we want to make it accessible for as many people as possible. We have not jumped the hurdle yet of accepting insurance. Most practices have an entire department to run their billing department, and it was just me and Anthony. We bootstrapped this sucker together. So it just took a little, the brain, the bandwidth was a little bit much just to get started, but we're hoping to bring in insurance as quickly as possible to make it even more affordable, but we want to make it affordable for patients most as we can.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
And then we wanted to be able to pay our doctors that they could actually make as much or more than a brick and mortar job. The last thing I want is a doctor who is passionate about literally caring for these patients and spreading this amazing message of a plant-based diet and the healing properties that come with it and not be able to really move forward and do this as an entire practice as their career, because that is the best thing to lead to burnout when you're trying to do your regular job and then you're trying to do your passion and side hustle in the evenings or weekends. You're taking away from your family, which is completely opposite of the message we tell everybody that community, time with your family relationship.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
We wanted to be able to have a place for them and want to enjoy working with the people that they're surrounding, but it's convenient for them and they're able to make a living as a physician doing this. Because going to medical school and residency, it ain't cheap. So there's a big burden there. I don't think people quite understand most medical students walk away with about a quarter million of debt just finishing medical school, and that doesn't include the debt they may have had in undergrad.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
So it was a really big thing for me. I was like, Listen, I have to take good care of my doctors. If I take good care of my doctors, they will take good care of my patients. This is how it works, invest in your people and they will do everything they can to make sure that the customer and the patient are well taken care of. It's a mantra I've seen that I just cannot live by.
Rip Esselstyn:
Love that philosophy that you're taking care of these physicians. So you've got nine right now. Are they working as hard as they want to?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. Some of them want to do 10 patients weeks. Others would like to see more, 60 plus, and some of them are doing that. It's just a really growing opportunity. So our next phase, the first phase was just getting started learning the hurdles, the technology. We switched EHRs about a year ago because the first one was too cumbersome and this one is a much more nimble EHR. So there's that part of it, the website, then we have the marketing aspect of it.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Now that we have more funding, the marketing will be definitely ramping up and we have a few opportunities. We're going to be doing part of a study, a two-year study working with an insurance company in California, starting in February. That's really exciting and we're doing everything we can to get the word out that we exist and bring on more doctors as the demand increases.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Do you find right now that... Are most patients coming to you because they're interested in plant based and they want to see you or are they being referred to you guys, like they've been told to see you from somebody else?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
We have a wide spectrum actually. I would say we have the healthy whole-food, plant-based eater who just wants to make sure that everything nutritionally is sound. Right? So we can look and do some labs. I put together a template of my... I call it my plant-based eater template of labs. We check for certain nutrient status and we adjust things accordingly.
Rip Esselstyn:
What are those? What are those? What are some of numbers you'd like to check.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Of course, you get your basics, right? You have your CMP. This is your liver, kidney. Make sure you're not anemic, a CBC. We do a lipid panel. If I have someone who has a history of heart disease, a high cholesterol, hypertension, we'll do a more advanced lipid panel where we're looking at the size of the LDL, their inflammatory markers. We look at their Lp little, a, all of those things. Then we do other things like zinc. We have magnesium, selenium, iodine. That's a 24-hour urine test. That's always a real fun one. We check an A1C. Many times you'll-
Rip Esselstyn:
What is that? Wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait. Stop for a sec.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. 24-hour iodine.
Rip Esselstyn:
24-hour iodine. What does that mean? I don't know what that mean.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
This means when you check for iodine, the blood iodine is not very accurate. Iodine is really important for thyroid function. I've been hypothyroid for 25 years since the birth of baby number two. When I switched to the plant-based diet, my thyroid actually improved, not completely resolved, but I had to decrease my medications. So the iodine is really interesting. We've had some very strict, what we call the SOS eaters, right? There are no salt oil, sugar, which is fine, but many patients will get their iodine from iodized salt. That was enacted by the World Health Organization back in the mid-nineties, because goiter... If you don't have enough iodine, your thyroid can't make its thyroid hormone and you'll develop a goiter. That decreased dramatically when they iodized the salt.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Now we have patients who are making mindful choices, not to consume high sodium foods, which well, that's table salt, and we'll see. I've had patients come in, they're eating this really healthy plant-based diet. They're told by their doctor they had thyroid issues or they're developing symptoms of hypothyroidism. We check it. Sure enough, they collect a 24-hour urine iodine, meaning they get a little jug from the lab. They get to collect their pee for 24 hours and then they get to chart it in and we see how much iodine is actually in their system. Honestly, once we correct that, the thyroid many times will heal itself if it's a more recent case and it's not an autoimmune type of thyroiditis, but yeah, there's that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Okay. Thank you for that explaining. Got it.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Zinc, selenium, and then we do checking for diabetes, things like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. Anything with omega-3s?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yep. I do an omega check as well. That's been interesting. Not everyone is low, but many are low. There's not really what we call a recommended daily intake or RDI as far as the omegas, but there's certain what we call you should be taking how much you should be taking. It's not uncommon that I'll see patients who are a bit low so they can increase certain foods like flax seed, chia seeds, walnuts, things like that. But we only turn a little small amount of that short-chain omega to those long-chain, preformed, or they can supplement. What's interesting I've had a few patients, so I've seen enough patients over the years regularly, thousands and thousands at this point, just a handful that when switched to a plant-based diet, they started developing some joint discomfort in their hands, their small joints.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Once I put them back on some walnuts, I have them supplement with a small amount of the long-chain, preformed omegas that every single one has resolved and I'll put them on ground flax. That was really interesting. I think there're certain people who just don't convert that very well if they don't have a large enough intake. So yeah, so there's those little tweets that we could ask someone who feels good to make them feel even better but then we actually have... Most of my patients are diabetics. I have type ones. We have type one and a half. These are ones who have later onset, autoimmune diabetes.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I try to get every single one of my diabetics on a continuous glucose monitor, so I can monitor their blood sugars, 24/7. Not that I'm looking at their blood sugar 24/7, but they can message me over the weekend. Hey, Dr. Marbas, I'm seeing this happen. Can you tell me what to do? Because as you switch to this diet, diabetes improves so dramatically so quickly. I need to be in close contact with you so we can de-prescribe your medications. Many times I will take someone's insulin if they're type two insulin-independent diabetic, and cut it in half the very first day.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I had to learn that lesson with a patient.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's what we do at our six and seven-day medical retreats. Yeah.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I shouldn't say we. I don't, but Dr. Klaper or whoever our medical director was.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah, absolutely. It's really important that you do that because there can be some really serious consequences to those low blood sugars and low blood pressures. But then we have folks who are referred to us who are plant curious, those who are trying plant-based diet, struggling. I have actually many who are coming in with a plant-based diet who had definitely some improvement in the cholesterol, but maybe not the cholesterol where they'd like it. We look at what they're doing and we tweak some things and get some more improvement. There's some other things you can do.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you have them keep a food log so you can see?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yes. Yeah. We have a food diary that we have them fill out before we see them. We have a very extensive what we call a lifestyle medicine questionnaire. We're asking, how are you sleeping? How's your relationships? What are your stressors? Are you exercising? Are you smoking? Are you alcohol? What are you eating? People have really been very thoughtful when they fill those things out and it's been very helpful. So it makes that half-hour appointment very productive.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, I can't even imagine. Yeah. This is so exciting to me. The leap of faith that you took with Anthony, however many years ago, where you are now with this at your second birthday just around the corner. You just have a lot of blue skies in front of you. It's very exciting, and you're doing such great work and helping people. I mean, man, I am so happy and proud of what you're doing.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh, well, thank you. It's been a true blessing to be a part of this community. Honestly, anytime I go to Plants Doc or if I go to Plantrician Project or the ACLM conferences, my husband's like, "Oh, you're going to go plug in back to the mothership." I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm going back to the other aliens. We're getting recharged for the next year."
Rip Esselstyn:
But speaking of plugging in, I mean, are you still the managing editor for the Plantrician Project International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
The IJDRP. Yeah. No, I left about a year ago. I turned it over to a very capable young woman. That was a really fun project. I was on the phone with Scott Stoll and one other individual, and they're like, "Laurie, we think you should help us develop the first plant-based medical journal." I'm like, "Uh." I was like, "Have you guys ever started a medical journal?" And then he's like, "No, but we know you can." I'm like, "Okay."
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Literally, it was started with post-it notes on my hallways of the biggest blank wall I had and just put it all together. I reached out to some amazing friends, we got some incredible peer reviewers. Then we were lucky to bring on the incredible and the most adored Dr. Kim Williams, who I just appreciate so much. I've learned a ton. I was there from 2017 till last year, but yeah, it was really fun. It was really nerve-racking. The first time we launched our first journal, it was well received and it's still going well. I still get emails from folks and it's been really good. I'm so proud of them.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, again, I'm going to come back to just how spectacular I think it is what you're doing. I had Dr. Dean Ornish on the podcast just recently. And I said, "Dean, here we are, it's 2021. Our annual healthcare bill this year is going to be $3.6 trillion, which is 10,600 per person, which we're paying more than any other country on the planet. He said, "No, Rip, it's not 3.6. It's 3.8 trillion."
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Wow.
Rip Esselstyn:
And then the fact that of that, and you know this, of that 3.8 trillion, 85% of that is comprised of all these chronic Western diseases that we know are either preventable or reversible by the prescription that you are basically giving your patients, which is whole food plant based.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
And the fact that of that 3.8 trillion, not even 3% is devoted to prevention. It is ludicrous. It's like, what are we going to do to turn this tanker around? I mean, how many Laurie Marbases do we need? Right? And Ornishes, and Esselstyns and McDougalls to make a dent and reach that 10% tipping point?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
You know, that's a really interesting question. I think it needs to start... Dr. Klaper has got the Moving Medicine Forward. It really needs to start with the messaging we are giving our young medical students. One, they're impressionable, they're passionate. They're willing to put their life on hold in their twenties to become a physician. I mean, there's a many year decade process here. If we can give them the message saying, listen, we're going to teach you the foundation of health, which is we're going to give you a healthy human, and we're going to teach you how to keep them healthy. That is the foundation. What are those elements that we need to partake in a person's life to maintain health as best we can. And then we'll teach you when things go awry, what to do with medications, with procedures, with diagnostic tools.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
That is really the message that we need to be setting forward and just build around that. Because if you do that, then they're coming in with the same principles and the same belief systems all together, regardless of what specialty they're going to... And then patients will hear the same message. Well, what are you doing to maintain your health? Are you doing this, this, this, and this? Are you sleeping? Are you eating well? Are you exercising? Are you decreasing your stress? Are you taking care of yourself? If we could change that message from the very beginning, I feel like you'll have an army of people who are influencers in their communities, right? We have touchpoints.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Any primary care doctor has approximately 1,500 to 2,500 patients on their panel and then in a community where those people have families and coworkers and churches and synagogues and places that they go of worship and all these other interactions, imagine the ripple effects it has, right? This is a serious contagion that can start happening. So I really feel like physicians need to step up and be the leaders to health. I really think it can happen, and that's why I do what I do. That's why I come on podcasts and share, why I have my own podcasts. Those are the things, and bring on amazing doctors.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I hope I can have hundreds of doctors doing what we're doing? I hope we can bring on because there's such a demand, but that really needs to start with the messaging. So we change the belief system of our doctors because we want to align our actions with our beliefs. If we do that, I feel we will see a very rapid change.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. Tell me this, and then I'm going to let you go. You've got the podcast, you do all these other things in addition to... Are you considered the CEO of...
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
No. Anthony is the CEO, the front desk person. Although we did hire our first actual employee, Susan, who's answering her phones, which is awesome. Yeah. So I'm more of the... Probably I'd say the chief health officer, chief medical officer type.
Rip Esselstyn:
How many hours a week do you devote to seeing patients? Do you have a set number?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. I see patients two and a half days a week, and of course, there's hours outside that, but then there's the other things just building the business. I have patient direct contact hours, I'd say close to 20 hours a week. And then the other, however many hours that's left, I'm devoting to making sure more and more people learn about Plant Based TeleHealth and the incredible work that we're trying to do.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Laurie, this has been an absolute pleasure. I love all the work that you're doing. I love your passion, and man, I look forward to going on your podcast sometimes.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I am very excited about that actually. Oh my goodness. Yes, I am beyond tickled. Your dad was one of the very first folks I had on my podcast and I'll never forget. Because I met him in 2013. I actually flew to Cleveland and spent the whole day with him on his one day seminars that he does. Because I had dinner with him, my husband and I and your mom, they sat next to each other. We had such a fun time. Anyway, so I got him on the podcast and I'm sitting there. Your mom is... She'd walk by and she'd make a comment, and she'd walk out. Your dad's telling his incredible story and giving the advice and then suddenly the cuckoo clock goes off. I don't know if they still have that cuckoo clock. And he's so calm and he goes, "Bet you never had that happen before." I was like, "No." But I said, "This is so cute. I'm keeping it in."
Rip Esselstyn:
No, they gave that cuckoo clock to me actually.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh no, you have the cuckoo clock?
Rip Esselstyn:
I have the cuckoo clock and I am so embarrassed to say that we were doing a move from this little house here that's 900 square feet where I raised the family. In the move, it broke.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh, no.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's just kind of like in pieces. And so I don't know what I'm going to do with that, but...
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh, you can send it to me. I will get it put together.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's a family heirloom. I mean it goes back a long way.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh was it?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Oh I love that. No, that cuckoo clock. It is one of my special memories.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know. That's the one thing I asked for when they were getting rid of some stuff. Yeah.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Aw. Well, yeah, it was an absolute delight, but yeah. So yeah, the podcast is Healthy Human Revolution and the whole point was there. It was we got to make our humans healthy. So let's start a revolution. That's how that started.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, before we say goodbye, anything else that you want to let the audience know?
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I want to say thank you so much for allowing me to share our message with you. I just think of it an honor anytime someone invites me to hear my story. Number one, I think if you're out there listening, and if anything interests you or intrigues you, don't be afraid. Sometimes it's okay. You just got to have a little bit of courage to take a unknown step and you just don't know what's waiting on the other side. And if you need a little help, there's Rip and other people like myself willing and waiting, just hoping that you'll take this step and invite us to join you because you don't have to do that alone. The community is really important. So plug into whatever online community or in person community that you can and just take that first step because honestly, you will not regret it.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
I have worked within a decade doing plant-based medicine and nobody's had negative side effects. It's all been positive. Oh, my goodness. I call it veggie crack. I get you to eat vegetables. I get a little dopamine hit and I'm onto my next high. It's like, we just keep this going. You eat more vegetables. You get better. I get a little bit more. That's my veggie crack.
Rip Esselstyn:
Three times a day.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Yeah. Three times a day.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right. Laurie, talk to you soon. Peace.
Dr. Laurie Marbas:
Thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Engine two. Keep it Plantstrong. Yeah. Thank you Dr. Marbas.
Rip Esselstyn:
To learn more, visit their website at plantbasedtelehealth.com and be sure to listen to Laurie's podcast, the Healthy Human Revolution where I'll be a guest in just a couple of weeks. We'll have all the links in our show notes at plantstrongpodcast.com. Keep it Plantstrong and I'll be sure to see you next week.
Rip Esselstyn:
The Plantstrong Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true seekers, who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
Podcast Sponsors
