The Maxwell Care Program

The Maxwell Care Program - Built to find and address the underlying root causes of disease and health dysfunctions so you can get better, stay better and maximize your wellness.
The Maxwell Care Program
Featured Speaker:
David Haase, M.D.
David Haase, MD, is rather obsessed with finding better ways for humans to maximize wellness. After receiving his medical degree from Vanderbilt University, he trained at the Mayo Clinic and is now double boarded in Family and Integrative Holistic medicine. He speaks and consults internationally on brain health promotion topics, Functional Medicine and Integrative Medicine, Neurofeedback and Regenerative Plasma Exchange. He serves as Lead Faculty for the Institute for Functional Medicine and was one of the first physicians certified. As the founder and Medical Director of MaxWell Clinic, he works relentlessly to help his patients uncover the root causes of their illness and achieve better health.
Transcription:

Bill Klaproth: So let's learn more about the Maxwell Care program built to find and address the underlying root causes of disease and health dysfunctions so you can get better, stay better, and maximize your wellness, something we all want. So here to talk with us is Dr. David Haase, founder and medical director at the Maxwell.

This is the Top Docs Podcast. I'm your host, Bill Klaproth. Dr. Haase, thanks for being here.

David Hasse, MD: Hey Bill. Good to be with you.

Bill Klaproth: Absolutely. So why do you say one of the most important questions to ask ourselves is, what is your health for?

David Hasse, MD: Well, yeah, because rarely ever get anything that you really want unless you are clear upon your goal. . And most of the time people, it's kind of something we don't even talk about. Like why do we just, it's assumed, of course we want to be healthy, right? But why aren't you?

Bill Klaproth: Good question.

David Hasse, MD: Are there health behaviors that you haven't been able to overcome? Are there things that you haven't looked into? I mean, do you have enough motivation behind your desire. do you really know how precious your health is? That if you don't have your health, you can't have, enjoyment with regard to what's going on in your life, you can't have experiences. Your relationships are limited. Your ability to contribute in the world is impaired. if you want to have part of your legacy, being a grandparent, that enables their grandchildren to know that they are loved. all of those things are not possible, but if you're aware of them, if you're asked the question, and I'm asking it right now, for anybody listening ask, what is your health for?

What do you want it for? Is it for to be that legacy grandparent? is it to leave behind, the world better than you left it. Is it for you to experience, hiking Kilimanjaro? Is it that you want to be pain free so that you can be present for those people in your life and be

a net positive in their life? Is it so that you. enjoy the, fun of having a great body and all of the things that you can do with that body so what do you want your health for is a clarifying question. And man, the power it gives people, the power people have when they get really clear on what are they after, then they start getting curious about how do I get it.

Bill Klaproth: So all good questions we should be asking ourself for sure. So what kind of medicine do you practice?

David Hasse, MD: Well, I started at Vanderbilt Medical School and went to the Mayo Clinic and got residency trained family medicine and practiced rural family medicine for a time. I became, Board certified in integrative medicine and holistic medicine, was one of the people who helped start functional medicine. I teach for the Institute for Functional Medicine, but we always just strive here at Maxwell Clinic to practice good medicine and there's lots of brands out there as far as, oh, I do this and I do that. I think, it's always a struggle to say, what kind of medicine do I practice?

But I can say what we try to do is always put the person at the center, always make sure that that individual we're looking at cause. Rather than just the symptoms that may occur, that we are forming a therapeutic partnership with our patient and that we are being curious. We commit to being curious and to listen and to do what it takes to help that person awaken their own ability to heal. Because that's the reality that just blew my mind when I was at Mayo. All of a sudden I was standing there in the hallway of St. Mary's Hospital and I went, wait a second.

I have a license to diagnose and treat disease. And that's great. I love it. And I love my profession, I love my medical colleagues and all the specialists. I love them all. But I realized, I went to medical school to figure out what creates health. And that is a little bit of a different angle, And that helps us for that, we have to understand how does the body function and figure out what are the barriers to that body functioning better and remove those barriers and what are the resources that body needs?

And then put in those resources. And that's the medicine that we practice. The medicine we practice would actually be called salutogenic medicine, which means the creation of health.

Bill Klaproth: The creation of health. I like that. I wanna follow up with you. You said earlier you work to get to the cause, not just treat the symptoms. Why is it so important to get to the root cause of disease?

David Hasse, MD: Yeah. And it's not just myself, but all the clinicians here at Maxwell Clinic, we have had multiple clinicians and multiple different area individuals who have various areas of interest but it's a unifying idea that we want to treat people as we want to be treated. What's the healthcare I want? I don't want to keep going back to my doctor just so I can maintain my disease or, if you're going to actually create healing, maybe, resolve that problem, you have to find out why that problem occurred in the first. So Hypertension's a good example.

We're gonna be doing a, webinar on hypertension this week, and I'm excited about that. Hypertension is such a dang boring topic. So boring. and actually the official title for hypertension is like, essential hypertension. What a stupid name. And it basically means like, well, you just have it and that is just bs. I just call BS on that one. Right? That means either we're not looking hard enough or we're not being curious enough. And I'm going to correct something you asked, you said, why is it important to find the underlying cause? We should almost always make cause z because health is a very multifactorial process.

It's not just one thing. This. People have kind of been lied to by the pharmaceutical industry that you just need one pill for your ill. You know that here it is. It's one pill for your ill but health is the connectedness, the wholesome connectedness of many things that has a very high level of resiliency and a high level of adaptability. Health is so much more than just the absence of a disease or a diagnosis. And so when we're trying to create health, we actually have to be really curious and think from multiple different angles about what are the causes of that individual being in the situation they are in.

Bill Klaproth: Right. So let's talk more about that testing and finding that out. One of your philosophies at Maxwell Clinic is test. Don't guess. Why is that important and what type of testing can you offer patients they might not find else?

David Hasse, MD: Hmm. Well, even before Test, don't guess. the first thing we do is listen. because there are all kinds of places nowadays there's direct to consumer lab testing available on every webpage. And there's, all kinds of people who would love to take your blood or your body fluid and tell you what to do. BSM computer program and the number of patients who have wasted so much money. thinking that, and with good intention, and I wanna say I have huge respect for people that take their health in their own hands and want to dig into that. But the problem is that that's often more marketing than medicine.

And if you're going to really address your underlying cause, It would be good to talk to somebody who has had a lot of experience in the complexity of that situation. When something's too simple in healthcare, you're being marketed too. All right. if it's too good to be true, too simple to be true, it probably is. And I love things to be simple. I don't want things to be complex, but God darn it, you know, the human brain is the most complex structure in the known universe. And that's just one part of our body. So anyway, I think it's always important for us first to listen even before we test. So that's the first part.

And I, think that things like functional medicine, often, some individuals who have gone to doctors that practice functional medicine, they've got a bunch of tests and they're recommended to, change this diet and take this supplement and do this, but they haven't been listened to. So I think listening is really the most important first step, then testing. Gosh, do I love objective data and I like objective data because the human brain is biased. Every one of us has shaped a brain according to all the experiences of our life.

Every doctor that you have seen, you're seeing them with all the context of every patient they have seen before and all of their training, and they have certain ruts that they live in. They have certain belief patterns that they live in and you have those ruts and belief patterns yourself. And so here you have a person with a biased brain meeting another person with a biased brain. And unfortunately it now, well, fortunately, sometimes it works out and it's just what you need, but sometimes it doesn't. And so I really don't like to, you know what we call smoke your own dope, right?

LEt's be cautious not to, believe our own assumptions. . And so testing is a wonderful way to either confirm or deny clinical suspicions. Because When you do a test, even when you're doing these broad-based tests like we do, we always have a suspicion in mind, what is it? What's underneath there? So now coming back to your question about, well, what kind of testing do we do? It's arguable that there's very few clinics in exist that have more contracts with various labs across the world than we do. I think we're up to over 35 different labs all from all the way from Greece and Japan and Australia, labs that have individual capabilities that maybe we use those labs very infrequently. our main lab is LabCorp.

And we can get a huge amount done with basic laboratory testing. But then, sometimes looking at, stool testing, what is, going on with the health of the gut. Immune testing, looking for markers of genetic health, toxicity testing, nutrient testing. but all of that still needs to be targeted because everybody has a limit how much blood there is to be taken. Number one, let's just start with that limit. People have limits on the amount of information they want. People have limits on the amount of money they can spend to do some of these tests. There aren't even if they're covered by insurance. Right.

And that whole covered by insurance business, the number of people miss out on getting information that they need because, well, it wasn't covered by in my insurance is terrible. And so remember, Insurance Companies are never been known to be the most progressive organizations in the world, right? The insurance companies are some of the most regressive organizations in the world. And so, we not don't just do laboratory testing, we also do quantitative, EEG , measuring the brain waves and comparing those against FDA registered databases of average normal brain waves. We do optical scanning.

We have scanners that measure the micro circulation, which is your capillaries. And what are the protective lining, inside the capillaries? that's something called the glycocalyx. , we measure body composition analysis, analysis and cellular health. And again, these are, it's not that everybody needs every test, it's a fact of what are you after? First of all, what do you want your health for? And then is the future you desire? And then what we wanna know is where are you now? And then we figure out a gap between where you are now and where you want to go. And then Let's discern.

Let's take what we know and let's take a little time to think about, well, what would be the, best approach where we could hit the most thing simultaneously? What's gonna require the least investment of your limited resources of time, money, energy, and effort? And apply those so you can have the most benefit possible. And then we run that experiment. Every one of us we call, I call life an experiment of one, right? There's nobody like us. Nobody has our genetics and has had our whole life, even identical twins. They didn't have the same life. And what we need to do in good healthcare is to, partner with our patients to devise. the most wholesome experiments we possibly can and then run those experiments and then track them in relationship. And relationship is really then the next most important ingredient.

Bill Klaproth: Yeah. So where are you now? Where do you want to go? And then test not guest to confirm your suspicion. So your clinic also provides services and capabilities not available under one roof, anywhere else in the southeast. Can you tell us about that?

David Hasse, MD: Well, sure. We are the largest center for outpatient therapeutic plasma exchange, which is really a remarkable therapy that has potential for known ability to treat, severe autoimmune disease but also potential for treating neurodegeneration and supporting healthy longevity. Super exciting field there. But we're really the largest center, outpatient center of its kind in the southeast. we have an integrated center where we provide some of the most advanced quantitative EEG and, EEG neuro feedback. We have an IV suite that we can utilize intravenous nutrition and, other IV therapies for treatment. We have hyperbaric chamber.

We have a regenerative orthopedic medicine specialist who is a, 20 year veteran of, doing regenerative orthopedics, basically helping people's joints feel better and stay. he's a former Olympic athlete and just a wonderful, wonderful human being. We have, multiple diagnostic, facilities. We just received our OCTA, which is a advanced machine to examine the retina. And assess the health of the vascular system in the retina. That's gonna be in one of our research trials. We have multiple IRB approved research trials that are going on at our facility.

And, we have a diverse number of practitioners that each have their own individual strengths. We provide, IV ketamine services. IV Ketamine is amazing for helping to address people that are stuck in very severe depression, anxiety, or trauma. Really everything that we have here, has come about because of my passion of how do we create health? It's not just to do something different. Oh my gosh. The number of things that we've gotten rid of is huge because they just didn't help. And there's, all kinds of folks out there that have a magic pill or a magic potion or a magic test that is appropriate. And I think everything has its place.

Bill Klaproth: Yeah, so your clinic definitely does offer things available, not anywhere else, that's for sure. You also offer a program called MW Care. What is MW Care and is that the best way for people to get started with you?

David Hasse, MD: Oh, Maxwell Care. We're gonna celebrate our 20th year, this year, and we're very excited about that. So this has been a long time coming, and I have been experimenting with what's the best way to get the most out of your care? we stayed inside insurance for 16. I tried everything possible to provide this advanced care inside of the insurance network. And when you have to choose between bankruptcy and continuing your passion, then I'm gonna continue to pursue my mission. So we left the insurance framework and interestingly enough, the cost of our patients went down.

We have some really interesting analyses on that. And then we said, wow. now that we're outside of this, these ridiculous rules and regulations of insurance, how do we provide what people actually need rather than what just checks this box or that box for insurance? And it turns out that people need relationship. Almost every amazing outcome that we happen that we saw happen happened in the context of a longer term relationship. It was a partnership with a clinician and a patient that had enough. , and each person committed to a positive outcome.

So in our Maxwell Care, we have put aside the time necessary for clinicians to hear, to listen to patients. We have a very extensive intake process, so, we can make that time the most efficient for patients as we wanna always, deliver the best that we possibly can for the minutes that we. and, our Maxwell Care process, puts together what are the most high value evaluations that are going to give us a, great, initial understanding of anybody that walks through our door.

And, that process is something that we continue to hone. We continue to see how can we do that better. So, our Maxwell Care program partners, at the current time, a clinician, with a patient. and that clinician is selected amongst the clinicians. We have medical doctors, we have physicians assistants, we have nurse practitioners, psychotherapists, orthopedic specialists, as I said. But we really think about what is the personality, what are the challenges that are represented? What does that individual patient need?

So that's our first step being mindful of the importance of relationship. And then we have a very unique, group of individuals we call patient advocates. And the patient advocate is there to do two things. One, to be an advocate for the patient with regard to what their needs are, if there's anything that they're not getting from the clinic or that there's a trouble with communication, they are there to make sure to jump in and make sure that happens, but also they're an advocate for that patient with regard to that patient's commitments to themself and what did they say they were going to do so that they can follow up and actually get the results that they desire.

And that has been amazing. So we have a team structure here, and we're, and it's also wonderful how many people that have come to us as patients and turn up working here, end up working here because we have a really wonderful community of people. it's an amazing team that cares for each other. And then, leaks out, that seeps out into what happens, with our patients. Healthcare should not be something that causes sickness unto itself. And, we're trying to be really aware of how can we, not just wholesale transform the health of humans, but also of the healthcare system itself. It's very exit.

Bill Klaproth: Yeah, well, you talk about relationships and listening something everybody wants, but unfortunately when you go to the doctor a lot of times that's not what you get. So you're changing that model, if you will, and certainly the success of the Maxwell Clinic is a testament to that.

David Hasse, MD: Yeah. It's rewarding as can be. It is rewarding as can be. When people engage, listen, you have to have a lot of compassion for somebody that is going to say, gosh, I am struggling. They have to overcome their own denial. They have to overcome their own shame sometimes, maybe they feel bad about the fact that they haven't made the changes that they said they were going to make. Or, there's a whole host of things that keep us beaten down, and some people have terrible trauma from the healthcare environment itself. Just look at how many people have white coat hypertension, right?

That's when your blood pressure goes up, just when you go to the doctor's office. Well, there's a good dang reason for that, right? People back in their past kind of felt traumatized around it. And, immediately their stress goes up when they walk in. And it's often cute how many people say, wow, I get my blood pressure ed here and it's normal. But go to this specialist and it's high. And yes, we've checked our blood pressure machines and they're working fine. But yeah, it's an honor to get to engage with humans from a wholesome or a holistic basis. It's again, we just try to deliver the care that we would want for ourselves now, and we have all kinds of room, we're very, very proud of what we deliver and we're always, endeavoring to continue to make it better.

Bill Klaproth: Absolutely. Any of you left us with some great phrases here that I know that we'll remember. Pill for an ill test, don't guess, And then more marketing than medicine. I mean that really, rings true when you think about our current state of medicine today. Dr. Haase, thank you so much for your time. If someone wants to learn more or to book an appointment with you, what should they do?

David Hasse, MD: Yeah, go to maxwell clinic.com and that's the best way to start engaging with Maxwell Care and our clinicians that are here at Maxwell Clinic to be partnered up with the right one given your circumstances. So that would be maxwellclinic.com.

Bill Klaproth: Dr. Haase, thank you so much for your time. This has really been informative. Thanks again.

David Hasse, MD: Oh, thank you very much, Bill. Take care.

Bill Klaproth: You betcha. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out the full podcast library. For topics of interest to you, this is the Top Docs Podcast. I'm Bill Klaproth. Thanks for listening.