Foundational Health

Remnant | MD

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to health. Vitality emerges when the pillars of life align with your physiologic constitution. Why does one diet work for your friend, but not for you? Your personal physiology determines the conditions in which you thrive. Traditionally, this has been called temperament. Your temperament informs the Four Pillars of lifestyle: 1. Activity 2. Consumption 3. Habitat 4. Meaning When you align the Pillars of life with your Temperament, Vitality emerges. This is the basis of the Foundational Health approach, and what drives me to have conversations with people that can shed light on the Foundation and the Pillars.

Episodes

  1. 26 Jul

    the 3 traits you want in your doctor (most have none)

    Dr. Nathan Riley is a board-certified OB-GYN who trained in conventional hospital medicine before stepping away from institutional practice after recognizing what he describes as an irreconcilable tension between what the system incentivizes and what patients actually need. He now focuses on home birth support, education, and advocacy. Not for home birth as an ideology, but for the sovereignty of each woman to birth in the way that feels right to her. I invited Dr. Nathan Riley onto the podcast with the initial intent of discussing obstetrics and home birth. As a complement to the conversation I had with Dr. Stuart Fischbein - an Ob/Gyn who practiced hospitalized birth for decades before conducting home births. But, it quickly became a conversation between two doctors who walked away from institutional medicine after being fired by an industry that doesn’t seem to care about the people it serves, nor the providers which do the serving. Neither of us planned to end up here. But we are both grateful we did. What follows is a more philosophically rich conversation ranging from Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and what it reveals about who we select into medicine, to the three traits that might actually make someone a good doctor: humility, curiosity, and courage. The conversation ends on a nuanced discussion on the value of giving newborns vitamin K. Beneath all of it is a shared conviction: that medicine has become a discipline of technicians operating on behalf of administrators, and that recovering the art of medicine requires doctors who are willing to say ‘I don’t know.’ This was my first conversation with Nathan, but certainly will not be the last! We have so much more to discuss… Topics Covered -How pregnant women and couples find physicians like Nathan Riley -The difference between home birth, free birth, and what Nathan actually advocates: listening to what the woman wants -Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences and what it reveals about who gets selected into medicine -The type of intelligence medicine selects for -Descartes, Bacon, and the separation of body from soul: how the pendulum swung and never came back -Newton as alchemist, Paracelsus as philosopher -The three traits of a good doctor: humility, curiosity, courage -Paul Farmer, and the physician who brought a dying patient a six-pack of beer -Saying ‘I don’t know’ in medicine -Doctors in the home birth space -COVID as a proof of concept for medicine’s failure of courage -The physician fired for prioritizing patient autonomy in a vaginal breech birth -Nathan Riley fired for removing his mask to sit with a dying man who hadn’t seen a face in 18 months -The physician as partner, guide, and fellow traveler -Vitamin K for newborns: why we give it, what the actual risk numbers are, and the argument that neonatal blood may be thin for a reason

  2. 26 Jul

    the Ob/Gyn who started doing home births after 24 years in the hospital

    Dr. Stuart Fischbein trained as an Ob/Gyn at Cedars-Sinai and spent the first part of his career doing exactly what the system taught him to do. Then midwives started bringing him their home birth transfers, and everything began to change. After 24 years of backing midwives from within the hospital, he left entirely. Today he teaches breech and twin delivery skills to practitioners around the world, and has delivered babies at home that the system had long since written off as impossible or dangerous. In this conversation, Remnant and Dr. Stu trace the full anatomy of a system that has turned a normal biological function into a medical event - and in doing so, has made outcomes worse, not better. They cover the cowardice and economic incentives that drive obstetric decision-making, the use of fear as a management tool, the difference between relative risk and actual risk, and the specific claims made about breech delivery, twin birth, VBAC, and routine hospital interventions that do not survive scrutiny. RemnantMD also shares his own experience: his first child born in a hospital, his wife depleted and hollowed out after; his next two born at home, the midwife arriving too late, his wife radiant immediately after. And what that contrast taught him about what birth is supposed to be — and what medicine has taken from it. Topics Covered: -First do no harm: and the paradox that the medical license exists to cover. -How cowardice is manufactured in medicine. -The C-section rate: from 5% in 1970 to 35% today -Why hospitals cannot afford to let normal births be normal. -How fear is weaponized against pregnant women. -Fetal growth restriction: the definition changed and generated more business -Breech delivery: the actual risk numbers -How to correctly perform a breech birth -Twin birth: actual stillbirth statistics by week -Pregnancy as preparatory medicine: the system programs fear before conception and monetizes it through delivery Stuart's website: birthinginstincts.com Stuart on Instagram: @birthinginstincts Stuart's podcast: Birthing Instincts with Stuart Fischbein and Bliss Young

  3. 11 May

    Does Virology Stand Up to Scrutiny? Jamie Andrews on Contagion, PCR Fraud & Terrain Theory

    What if the foundational claim of modern infectious disease medicine — that viruses spread between people and cause illness — has never been conclusively demonstrated? That is not a fringe question. It is the question this episode explores in full. Remnant | MD sits down with Jamie Andrews, an independent researcher who has spent years methodically examining the evidentiary basis of virology — from the controlled human infection studies of the early 20th century, to John Enders' 1954 isolation claim, to the PCR testing infrastructure deployed in 2020. His process: ask the childlike questions that industry insiders are too institutionally embedded to ask. Then follow the evidence. More specifically, Remnant | MD pushes back on the assertion that viruses do not exist. Jamie's answer was quite surprising. Topics Covered The epistemological problem with modern medicine: a tower of unexamined assumptionsWhy virology may be the most pseudoscientific field in medicineThe controlled human infection studies — and why a century of attempts to transmit disease failedJohn Enders 1954: the moment virology changed, and what the control experiment actually showedThe PCR test: what it measures, where it failed, and what 'positive' actually meansTerrain theory, Avicenna, and the Unani medicine framework for infectious diseaseJohn Snow, cholera, and what the Broad Street pump study actually provedPsychological transmission of disease: if fear makes you sick, that is contagionThe 'simplex' model of cellular biology — on/off, charge/discharge, alive/deadWhat was lost when the family doctor was replaced by a pharmaceutical pathwayThe physician as partner — and why patients who feel unseen don't comply

About

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to health. Vitality emerges when the pillars of life align with your physiologic constitution. Why does one diet work for your friend, but not for you? Your personal physiology determines the conditions in which you thrive. Traditionally, this has been called temperament. Your temperament informs the Four Pillars of lifestyle: 1. Activity 2. Consumption 3. Habitat 4. Meaning When you align the Pillars of life with your Temperament, Vitality emerges. This is the basis of the Foundational Health approach, and what drives me to have conversations with people that can shed light on the Foundation and the Pillars.

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