In season 3 finale (Episodes 8 and 9), Ramey reflects back on her journey to form her unique Health Strategy.

She now understands health in a whole new way. The key ingredient is noticing.

Going Over Ramey’s Health Strategy 

In Episode 9, Ramey completes her Health Strategy consult, and reflects on all the components that inform her health now and in the future. 

She understands the power and value she brings to her health through balancing lifestyle, relationships, and nutrition.

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Imagine a healthcare system where you actually matter. Not just the symptom you walk in with, but who you are as a person, the struggles you face, your family legacy, your family secrets. Imagine all of these things matter. 

In the season 3 finale, Episodes 8 and 9 reveal Ramey’s layers of family history in the context of relationships and identity. By looking backward, Ramey moves forward with the knowledge and confidence to form her own Health Strategy.

The Genogram

In Episode 8, Ramey takes a deeper dive on how peo...

Sometimes good medicine is so simple that people don’t even try it. In Episode 7, Ramey is prepared to practice a powerful self-care tool for emotional balance called EFT. When you learn to become a systems thinker, becoming healthier is not only possible, you believe in yourself again.

Be sure to also listen to Episode 6 on Ramey’s preparation for this transformative tapping experience.

Ramey Discovers the Power Within  

Ramey has years of experience in therapy, as a teacher, and now working in the healthcare system. She reached a place in her life when...

In episodes 6 and 7, Ramey discovers a self-care technique for tapping acupuncture points to relieve negative emotions.

One of the most studied methods is called EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique. EFT is an emerging, research-based example of how Eastern medicine bridges beautifully with Western psychology.

Listen to how Ramey prepares for her first tapping experience.

Mental Healthcare in America Could Use a Healthy Dose of Chinese Medicine

Most mental health treatment in America includes prescription medicine and psychotherapy. But results in the last century show that the biomedical healthcare system, a...

In episode 5, Ramey starts her six-week Health Strategy program, and she’s ready to work on her wellness unlike any health visit she’s had before. 

It starts with the skills to become a systems thinker. This mindset doesn’t just expand outside the box. Embracing the best of traditional and nontraditional medical models is both an art and skill you need to navigate today’s fragmented healthcare systems.

How Did We Get Here?

To understand your current state of health, you need to look back in time to the root causes.  Roots are easier...

In Episode 4, Ramey is at a crossroads with her health, and she is ready to learn about the Health Strategy program at Third Opinion MD. What's motivating Ramey to take this giant step now more than before? Listen to our conversation on how you can achieve so much more when you move beyond a linear and passive way to address your health.

The Bird’s Eye View

Part of forming a Health Strategy involves taking a step back to get the broad view of what’s going on with you, health wise, and exploring the best...

In Episode 3, my client, Ramey, shares how she feels after learning a qigong form in class for the first time. And there's a very special surprise in the second half of the episode where we go over how Ramey responds to practicing qigong for the last two months. I also reflect on my health journey with qigong because, in community, we can achieve much more than we can alone.

The Power of Self Cultivation

The healing path is usually not a straight line, but a cycle of ups and downs. I like to call it...

When is it the best time to work on your health? When you have more time? After you get sick? 

Welcome to modern life! 

But real preventive medicine always starts and ends with YOU. And the best time to address your health is NOW. Listen to this episode on how the practice of qigong puts you back in charge of your health.

Self-Care is Everything

Just look at what the ancient physicians wrote over two thousand years ago about their ancestors:

“In the past...

The power of healing is in the “Why.” In a rare opportunity to go behind the scenes, you’ll get to join Ramey on a unique health journey. 

Ramey is a healthcare worker for eye issues. But she's also someone who's had eye problems for most of her life. She has that special insight from both sides of the healthcare fence. In this episode, she’s taking my class on self-care and prevention for the eyes. 

Now Ramey wants to become a client and dig deeper. Through my Health Strategy Consult program, she learns to better man...

Creating a Health Strategy

In Season three, all episodes will follow one guest's journey to understand and achieve her best health potential. Each episode is recorded in a real-time sequence over the course of a 6-week consult to show how you can address your health in a more creative and individualized way.

My client, Ramey, graciously offered to share her time and health story with you as we work together on her Health Strategy from start to finish.

This approach doesn't exist in current mainstream healthcare, which is largely about gathering the information t...

Self-care and lifestyle medicine are undervalued in the current healthcare systems. But I believe that you can redesign these systems that are not working for you by forming your own third opinion. When you learn how to think critically about the systems of healthcare and how to navigate through them, you now have the power to take care of yourself and be in charge of your healthcare journey. In this episode, I review the first two seasons, which helps you start the process to develop your health strategy.

How I Started Third Opinion MD Podcast

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The elegant language of Chinese medicine starts with Yin Yang. Don’t let the Taiji (Yin Yang) symbol deceive you into thinking it’s only black and white. Yin Yang dates back to ancient times, and it still offers solutions for the world we live in now. It’s a significant foundation for Chinese medicine. In this episode, you will learn the major principles of yin yang and how it informs your health in the modern world.

Restore Rhythm and Connect Through Language:

We are all little ecosystems inseparable from where and how we live. We can ref...

A 15-minute appointment with the doctor rarely allows you to discover the root behind the decisions you make with your health unless you are prepared. This is why I approach clients with a thorough curiosity about who they are, who they were, and who they wish to be in order to live a healthy and purposeful life.

Strategy goes beyond the symptoms and diseases. It relieves the fear and stress that come with your health going out of balance. In this episode, I have the opportunity to sit with one of my clients to really talk through h...

When a word like trauma is used frequently in society and in the media, we think we know what it means. But, when we apply more than one medical model to understand trauma, it’s an opportunity to go “back to the drawing board” to understand and treat trauma more compassionately and effectively. As we emerge from the pandemic’s toll of loss and isolation, a growing mental health crisis surrounds us. The status quo for treating mental illness is no longer sustainable. This crisis is the best time for reflection and integrative approaches to healing.

In this epi...

In this episode, I turn to history to find out why and how selective types of healthcare become mainstream.

Do you ever wonder how some medicines are acceptable and other medicines are alternative or fringe? Who made these decisions and how did we get here? What does this have to do with your access to good healthcare and your ability to care for yourself?

Everything.

What Makes Medicine Mainstream?

There’s plenty of health fraud to go around since humans first tried to heal other people. In fact, health fraud was har...

This marks the beginning of season 2 where I explore how to make integrative medicine possible in our healthcare system from the inside out. In this episode, I sit down with my guest, Alisha Harrington, to talk about how doctors are trained today, how we combined two models of medicine in our training to deliver whole-person care, and how we imagine changing medical education to create the integrative physicians of tomorrow.

Alisha and I are each trained in Chinese and Western medicine, but we had to gather our training in different ways. Alisha is currently a fourth-year medical...

Season Two of Third Opinion MD launches on May 10, 2022. For this second season, the overall theme is the true integration of our healthcare system, from the inside out.

I’m excited about where this theme will take us! I'm bringing guests to share insights about how doctors are trained today, and give you an idea of how integrative healthcare can happen with how we train doctors. I'll be talking with an expert on how to take an integrative approach to trauma. And I'll be digging deeper into the history of how we inherited the healthcare system we hav...

Part of my mission in starting Third Opinion MD is to offer you a blended perspective about healthcare, and to provide you with simple tools to restore and maintain your health. In this short guided meditation, I’m introducing you to something that I learned from my studies with qigong: the Inner Smile Meditation. I first learned this from qigong master, Lee Holden, who had learned it from his mentor, Mantak Chia. In this bonus episode of my podcast, I’m sharing my version of this meditation with you.

The Inner Smile Meditation

As part of t...

In the season 1 finale of Third Opinion MD podcast, I’m taking to the streets of Portland, Oregon with my friend and colleague, Alisha Harrington, to speak to real people about their experiences with the healthcare system. You see, I strongly believe that true healing comes from real listening, and I wanted to hear the unfiltered stories of people in everyday settings. Alisha and I visited food carts and a local park and interviewed people about their experiences with doctors and healthcare.

I know that many of their stories will sound familiar to you, and you may ha...

In this episode, I want to take you with me on a scavenger hunt, to look  at my past, present, and future. In episode 1, I talked about my mother, Christina Stemmler, M.D., who was an integrated physician. She studied Chinese medicine, she was a family physician, and she had a profound effect on me and my interest in healthcare. She died in 2008. Throughout her career, she gave several talks and was a prolific writer; so, I have the opportunity to introduce you to her in this episode from rare audio recordings. I’ll be talking about her because I’m...

In this episode of the Third Opinion MD podcast, I’m honored to be interviewing a renowned qigong master, Master Liu He. Master Liu is a part of the Ling Gui lineage of qigong, a school with teachings that have been passed down for 2,000 years. I have worked with Master Liu since 2015, and have found that her presence and teachings guide me and ground me in profound ways.

Master Liu began her training at the age of 4 under the guidance of her grandfather, a highly respected qigong master and Chinese medical doctor who treated the last Emperor of...

This is the second part of a two part interview with Dr. Shelly Smith-Acuña. You can read about, or listen to, the first part of this conversation here. I highly recommend tuning in to part one first.

For both parts of this interview, I’ve proposed that Dr. Smith-Acuña and I take a unique look at the health care system. We are blending her background in Psychology and Systems Theory with my own experience of the healthcare system as a doctor. We set the scene for this discussion by having all of the “family members'' of the...

Recently, I discovered a fascinating book, Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy by Dr. Shelly Smith-Acuña. She is the dean of the Graduate School for Professional Psychology at the University of Denver, and is a licensed  psychologist who specializes in couple and family therapy. While I was reading her book, I couldn’t help but imagine how each of these different players in the healthcare system struggle for different reasons. In this episode, I’m sending all the players of healthcare to get therapy because, let's face it, healthcare systems are really dysfunctional. 

In...

Welcome to the first episode of the Third Opinion MD podcast!

As a medical doctor with a background in the American medical system, I’m concerned by the level of care that patients receive and more informed of the constraints in the current medical system. I’ve left the traditional medical world to create something new because I want more for all of us as patients and more for myself as a professional. My guess is that you also experienced some of the setbacks of our current healthcare system, and that you want to find something that supp...

Interview with healthcare mediator, clinical chaplain, and ontological coach, Kelly Childress. We discuss challenges and experiences for patients surrounding trauma.

Get an insiders perspective on how being a physician has changed over the years, and how corporate medicine exacerbates and band-aids burn out. In the trenches of medical training, doctors forge strong bonds with each other along the way. My two guests and I have been colleagues and fast friends since our training days. We'll start to take a deep dive into the reasons why medicine today creates challenges for physicians who have heart-felt intentions to make a difference in the lives of patients.

Season 1 trailer introduces an innovative podcast on how to liberate your perspective of health through a better understanding of Chinese and Western medicine. Recognize what your body tells you, know what to do. It’s time for a Healthcare Evolution in each of us. Listen to episodes about the existing healthcare system (the good, the bad, and the ugly), how to navigate through it to get the best care, understand the differences between Eastern and Western medicine, and what makes Chinese medicine unique and important for being and staying healthy.