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Blending Care Strategies for Optimal Individual Results with Tom Incledon, Chief Scientific Officer at Causenta Wellness was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the latest audio-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors. Sonix is the best way to convert your audio to text in 2019.
Welcome to the Outcomes Rocket podcast, where we inspire collaborative thinking, improved outcomes and business success with today’s most successful and inspiring health care leaders and influencers. And now your host, Saul Marquez.
Saul Marquez:
Welcome back to the podcast. Today, I have the privilege of hosting Dr. Tom Incledon. He is a world renowned expert in human health and performance and is the founder and chief science officer of Causenta Wellness, where he’s bringing a unique approach to health care and cancer treatment that’s never been done before. Throughout his career, Tom has revolutionized the way over 40000 people have achieved their health and performance goals. And he’s seen it all. With Causenta, he’s pioneering a new data based approach to cancer treatment that combines traditional and nonconventional practices. Tom holds multiple degrees in management, nutrition, kinesiology and also a PHD and exercise physiology. He’s also a member of 30 plus scientific organizations, has trained at the Olympic level and weightlifting, and hosts a regular podcast on fitness, health and cancer treatment. One that we’ll be linking in here in the show notes for you to check out. Tom’s story began nearly 30 years ago when a parasitic illness caused him to lose over 30 pounds in the span of three short days. Had he not intervened against the medical advice of his doctors and took matters in his own hands, his suffering would have continued. This event marked the moment Tom began to rethink conventional medicine and he thought there had to be a better way. So today we’re gonna be diving into some of the things that Tom is working on, as well as hearing how he’s helped individuals from walks of life, all walks of life achieve results. Many said were impossible from what world class athletes to CEOs and terminal cancer patients, it’s exciting to hear him be with us today. When he’s not changing lives, you could find him in the gym lifting six hundred and fifteen pounds or blogging about the benefits of apple cider vinegar and eating a colorful diet. So, Tom, with that, I want to just welcome you to the podcast.
Tom Incledon:
Well, man, that’s a really good intro. I feel like I don’t deserve to talk on your show.
Saul Marquez:
Hey, man, you’re you are certainly welcome to talk on this show. We invited you and we’re excited that you’re joining us.
Tom Incledon:
Same here. I was checking out some of your podcasts and you have some pretty sharp guys there.
Saul Marquez:
I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, there’s the show’s definitely made up of the thought leaders within the industry, Tom. And I’m excited to dive into some of your thoughts on wellness and nutrition and cancer fighting cancer. Cancer prevention. But before we do, I’d like to hear about what got you into the health care sector.
Tom Incledon:
You know, so I was just a young guy trying to work on a gym. I was fortunate enough to meet someone that was a company coach to kind of got me more focused and dialed in to Olympic weightlifting. And that led to my journey of going to Penn State and when I was there, got sick one day at a barbecue. And as you kind of mentioned in the intro, lost almost 30 pounds in three days and had an incredibly frustrating experience with the hospital. The logic made no sense to me. You know, basically, I lost ten pounds in one day I go to the hospital to check my blood pressure and heart rate and I’m trying to explain that’s not where the problem is, you know, and they’re done running tests and tell me everything’s negative. And I ask him a logical question or what did you test for? And then they looked at me like I was an alien, being like, how do I ask such a question about the tests for five things, you know? And I’m like, hey, what if I got number one hundred on the all time popularity chart? How are you to even know if I have and they’re like, well, you probably don’t have that. I just saw this flawed logic and this was back in the late 80s. And Sue basically complained they discharged from the hospital, came back two more times a third time, went to the hospital over three days. I was in the ambulance because I had fainted from my blood pressure getting so low and lost consciousness. And when I’m there now to go and all your blood pressure is low, your heart rate like this, because unless 30 pounds of fluid traffic and there is just so many disconnects. And first doctor I spoke to said, look, I feel like I got like a tadpole swimming inside me. And back then I cannot tell you a parasite from a fungus, from bacteria, from an amoeba, from a protozoa. I don’t know any of that stuff. All I know was something was wrong. I was an elite athlete. I knew my body. I knew you’re not supposed to feel these things. I was feeling like I could not articulate specifically what was going on to the level, you know, from a medical perspective. But the feedback from the doctor was why I don’t want to write you a prescription for a drug because you may get antibiotic resistance later on. My position is I’m dying right now. I’m not worried about 10 years from now. I’m worried about today.
Saul Marquez:
Right. Right..
Tom Incledon:
So it was just a disconnect there. I asked for another doctor. The next doctor wrote me a prescription. I have no idea what there is now, but I’m guessing things like Cipro or something. And next thing you know, two hours later, I’m fine. I’m back on track. It took three days of suffering just to get to a simple medication could have helped me three days earlier, and of course, the other possibility is just time alone. That is what got me through it. Just because having three days of having, you know, osmotic diarrhea, you get pretty depleted. And that could have certainly been just time. Could have been one of the reasons why I got better. But I feel like it was due to the medication.
Saul Marquez:
Well, that’s that’s a hell of a story. Tom. And just thinking through the suffering that you went through, the learnings that you made, and now you’re you’re doing what you do, I totally get it. You went through it yourself. And so today, as you think about what health leaders are thinking about, what would you say needs to be front and center for them and how are you and your organization approaching that?
Tom Incledon:
So first thing that needs to be done is health care and education. The massive reform, not just United States, but globally. The financial interests in health care are they outweigh the optimal biology type of perspectives. So right now, there’s far more money to be generated from drug revenues than there are from actual treatments that may cost pennies on the dollar. So when you go to a large multibillion dollar center, they’re not going to stop you know treatment protocol that generates hundreds of thousands of dollars from millions of dollars in subsidy to a for all or a month program simply because they would go bankrupt. A Mayo Clinic has already reported this in 2012. They published in an hour in a journal article that we got to get these things aligned because right now people are becoming just a lifetime value. Not only human beings or numbers. And those strategies are employed to string people along the not to solve the problems permanently. And the smartest people in the world are being misdirected in this skewed to not be and focused and appropriately way. So this was an athlete who got a bunch of coaches together. There’s a simple goal. This athlete has to get the football into the end zone or they have to run a given distance and a faster time or lift heavy weight like for the most part, pretty straightforward goals. And you get different coaches working together. And most of the time, athletes can perform way better than when they first started without the coaches. And what we’ve done is taken that same athletic model and applied that to disease to produce incredible outcomes for pennies on the dollar. And just coming back from Costa Rica and watching all these doctors present their results and then the results that we’re presenting, I’m absolutely convinced we’re a war leader right now because I don’t know of anyone that can claim every patient that walks in their building in a wheelchair is now walking. And we throw out wheelchairs here. We don’t store them. We have a wheelchair graveyard because our patients are so much stronger. They don’t need a wheelchair. Those are the kinds of things that has to happen. And if we I see that we’re going to force this change, because I don’t think you’re going to get you’re not going to get a CEO willing to take the chance because they’re going to get missed. They’re going to get replaced by their board. If they lose billions of dollars for their institution. So we’re going to transform the world by moving from a revenue based treatment model. We’re going to start treating disease for free. I’d say the next two to three years will start with certain cancers and then we’ll expand upon that. And when it trims the format into an education model for doctors worldwide, because it’s clear education is failing physicians and teaching them how to integrate all these different technologies that we do so well here. So those have people getting stronger while they’re getting rid of cancer, they’re not doing one or the other. They’re doing both in time.
Saul Marquez:
So I’m curious about your approach, Tom. Can you walk us through a specific example of how you’re creating results or getting better outcomes by doing things differently?
Tom Incledon:
Yeah. So let’s just say right now. Let’s say someone comes in diagnosed with lymphoma, say a non Hodgkin’s lymphoma case. There’s a standard of care model. So many oncologists can sort of, you know, let’s say they don’t never see lymphoma. They could literally look up what to do. Right. So there’s like a playbook that’s already written. That playbook is based on bodies that were studied previously and it’s not based on the individual that’s not before the oncologist. So it’s a bit of a disconnect because they’re taking data from the wrong people and forcing them on a unique body. And one of the things we already know from research on exercise, nutrition, looking at pharmacokinetics data, no two people respond exactly the same way. So even if we limit our awareness suggests the human genome and the microbiome, the interactions there, if you have for some simple lives, get hundred people, feed them all banana instead of glucose responses, you got 100 different glucose responses. You don’t have like a glucose response.
Saul Marquez:
Right.
Tom Incledon:
When you average it all together and you get the mean plus or minus a standard deviation. Now you have something that you can talk about. Problem is that. Doesn’t really exist. That’s a made up representation of all 100 people that we just study. That’s how it is with a lot of medicine and unfortunately then it gets people looking at things the wrong way. The way it should be done is you study the individual, you find out what makes them unique. Do they have something in their body that doesn’t belong there? They have some inflammatory markers that are high. If some micronutrients that are low, what’s going on here, some mutations that are not normally seen. Once you know those details, then you look at the literature and say, oh, what’s been reported to help people with these details that we now know? And that’s how you get sort of the right treatment in place that can actually help that person. And this is where you find sometimes some challenges. Let’s just say like there’s a drug that could help this patient. But that drug was approved for, let’s say, breast cancer patients, non Hodgkin’s lymphoma or standard of care is going to wreck and basically say to the patient, you get non Hodgkin’s lymphoma, approved drugs, you fall. So drug approved for that diagnosis. So we’re seeing that the science is growing faster than would say, the laws or the guidelines or the rules, whatever term you want to use. Right. not changing fast enough. So people are not getting optimal biology type approaches to getting like this is what we could do now. Type of approach treatment scientists moving faster and fast forward. We’re not seeing those things implemented because there’s still tremendous fear of liability and fear of litigation. So most Law Center is going to say, let’s just follow the same playbook, everyone else.
Saul Marquez:
So is it fair to say, Tom, that you you’re you’re conducting DNA tests, figuring out people’s unique situation and then really centering your approaches around precision based health?
Tom Incledon:
One thing I would say is we don’t necessarily do genetic testing or DNA best testing for everyone. Sometimes people come here with that data already and it hasn’t proven successful like there could be. What it challenges specifically what cancer is, our awareness and understanding of cancer has grown dramatically. There was a time where cancer was all cancer Right.. Then it was our geographical type of diagnosis. Then over time became cancer of the breast, the colon side. It’s like a geography aspect to it. And they start learning. Well, even within breast cancer, there’s different types of breast cancer, and colon cancer is different types of lung cancer, different types. And I started finding that as the more modern techniques have become available, what I can isolate single cells from the blood and study those cells. There are differences between the single cells. So a protocol has to be robust enough in order to us. It’s kind of can I really find one enemy to fight our enemies? So the protocols like the come implemented have to take that into account. And so I didn’t quite share yet. Is that what we do is we take we have a couple of different ways that we could help people. So if someone comes here, we have a medical oncologist that sits down with him and says, OK, this is what the standard of care approach recommends or what it is. And here’s the best way to get that approach implemented. Meaning like we could find a center for them that takes a chance. So it minimizes the out-of-pocket expense for a patient. Because we understand that the expenses that people encounter can be astronomical. So we look at strategies to help them, you know, kind of manages expenses because the idea is that they have to be able to afford the treatments where they simply may die because they can’t afford to get what they need. And so then we create complementary strategies that target, for example, the cytoplasm, other parts of the cell that the chemotherapy or radiation may not be targeting. And then while we’re doing that, we’re also doing things with different modalities like light or sound or magnetic field or exercise or something. Most of the time, I guess a combination of all those that counter, let’s say, the more negative types of reactions from chemotherapy or radiation so that the patient gets the benefits of everything but doesn’t experience the hair loss or the neuropathy or the issues with their heart and a brain or their hormone systems. And then when they go back to what say they’re centered, let’s say we have patients going to M.D. Anderson, Mayo Clinic here in chemistry in Central America, Sloan Kettering, as they go back to, let’s say, the center to get the chemo and they look around and like, wow, I look way better than everybody here. And so they then get positive confirmation immediately that I’m doing the right thing.
Saul Marquez:
Got it. Now, that’s really great. And so what would you say one of your proudest experiences has been to date?
Tom Incledon:
Ok. This is a pretty recent, too. So family contacted me in December of 2017. They referred to me. But when I say me, I mean, the company sent out my man band, you know, but just a lot of people here. But a lot of times because I’m involved in research with companies, send us medical devices to test reactions like what, your hormone levels or inflammation levels? Things like that. So the CEO of this one company happened to be in South Carolina, meets his family, tells the mother of a young lady with basically a terminal lymphoma, non Hodgkin’s lymphoma, that you get to go see this guy and put you in touch with the president. And, you know, he can get you started right away. So the woman initiated contact and essentially decided to go somewhere else. And so the family spent a year traveling the centers all over the world to major centers, United States, couple of centers in Europe. It’s now a year to the date. Families back in the states, they’re at a place in Texas and the tumor. This woman now, the young lady, not a tumor that was so large it was choking her airway so she couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t breathe. So I reached out to me and we had texted back and forth over that year. So I finally said, look, why didn’t you just come here? Why did you wait a year? And our answer was, you know, I never heard of you before. OK. How many scientists would five degrees in world records and five sports, do you know? She doesn’t know any. That’s because we’re not out there. I mean, I worked in a lab and, you know, in a gym, unless you’re in those environments. I’m not running a marketing agency where my name is in big lights everywhere you go. I’m actually doing stuff. And so she says I get it now. So on the way in, they were supposed to come in Monday morning and it’s like 2:00 o’clock in the morning. I get a text and she’s like, my daughter stop breathing. I said, Okay, get her to the E.R. and I’m going to get our ecologist on the phone with doctors there. So we never saw the girl. She’s physically in the hospital. My doctors here talk to their doctors there. And we said, look, she’s gonna be coming here for treatment. We have not met her. So legally, we do not have a patient relationship established. But here’s what we believe will help. So luckily, ecology docs at the hospital, oncologist where we connect, we got a little bit of radiation, a little bit of chemo. And three days later, the tumor shrunk dramatically. So the mother then says, you guys get more results in three days without actually seeing our daughter. Then only centers around the world did. And the reason is, won’t we will we actually looked at all the medical records and we looked at the details about the case, even though we didn’t do any testing. Everybody else Right.. We’re able to leverage that data and ways the other places worry. So now the young ladies in the hospital gets discharged on a Friday. And I said, well, we’re normally closed Saturday and Sunday, but I feel like I need to see you guys Saturday so we can keep the momentum going. So to show up at young ladies in a wheelchair, and I said, well, how long has she been a wheelchair ago? Maybe six months, a while now. All right. We’re going to have her walking in an hour. So family stops at a base like this guy’s a total quack like this case as though know he’s talking about like there’s no way. We just traveled across the country to come here. And we met this quack. Like you could see they were accepting my, you know, my statement, getting to the gym and explain to them my background in neurology and physiology went to great things about coming from an exercise background is toward integration, because when you’re studying exercise after study, lots of systems at the same time, it’s very different. And lot times in medicine, doctors are so focused on one system, they forget about the rest. And it just it’s kind of like out of sight, out of mind. So essentially, when someone is that frail, weak, the brain is not connecting to the muscles as well as it could. And we have all kinds of ways to help the brain reestablish those connections. I’m saying that in a very simplified stage, some on net, but essentially got her walking and squatting and lifting weights. She was so weak she could barely curl about a 1 or 2 pound dumbbell. And in terms of a philosophy, we believe that when a patient comes here, every family member with them has to exercise as well, has to eat right as well, because we understand the power of community and yes, the machine change. So we had three family members. So basically her boyfriend, mother, father. And so my position was, well, if you guys are here, you’re not sitting on your butts. You’re actually in a gym doing something.
Saul Marquez:
That’s great. So you had the whole family working out?
Tom Incledon:
Her family work out. And so I love that she cannot bench 16 lbs one time. So this was a separate workout. So basically, I established that she could walk now and that she could do things she has not done in six months. And there were just blown away. And so now we’ve got it. But she was so, so frail. I can’t tell exactly I would say 40 pounds underweight, very petite woman as it is, as you might imagine, skin and bones. You know. Then we started work with the muscle and the family starts seeing are getting stronger. And she said, I haven’t felt this good even before the cancer. And then one day she was like, maybe the first week. So let’s say now the next Saturday, if you will. She’s still fairly weak, but stronger than she was before. But still way below where she should be. And so she added, trying to bench press something and she couldn’t lift 16 pounds. So I showed it to the family before she leaves 30 times. And if she does that, then every one of you works out from that one. And so when she left, she did it 30 times and the family is blown away. How could you get someone can’t move something to do it 30 times. And the mom’s response is, well, I guess I have to buy some workout clothes now. The mom working out. The mom was very attractive woman. There was a good looking family and the reason why I share this is because as they were getting in better shape themselves, people started asking me, is that your fitness director? So I don’t know. Anyway, they just got discharged recently. And you know it was kind of a touching moment because, you know, we’re basically we were practically living with these families for, you know, four months. And I’m as you’re helping your loved one get better, so you get pretty close. You know, at times we’ll do some social events and connect and try to stand a human being and and see we could do to help other people.
Saul Marquez:
Well, I’m a firm believer that some things have to be believed to be seen and you certainly and feeds them with that belief and and and voila. So really appreciate you sharing that story, Tom. And I think that you and I could do prior like a series of the five guests here. So transitioning to the lightning round, I got a few questions for you. Followed by a book that you recommend to the listeners. You ready? What’s the best way to improve health captions?
Tom Incledon:
I would say for every every doctor to ask some basic questions, other patient like how much spontaneous activity are you doing and how many different foods can you now eat that you couldn’t eat before? Because as people get healthier, don’t provide you food to eat without side effects, improves any amount of spontaneous activity that they can do goes up.
Saul Marquez:
What would you say is the biggest mistake or pitfall to avoid?
Tom Incledon:
People reading stuff on the internet and thinking they know what you’re talking about.
Saul Marquez:
Agree with that one? How do you stay relevant despite constant change?
Tom Incledon:
Well, we’re leading constant change. I think that makes us relevant. I’ve not seen any center in the world that knows how to integrate all the different things that we’re doing. And I can go on any stage in the world and blow people’s mind. Whether there’s electricity, whether it’s no electricity, whether it’s in the dark or it’s in the light, doesn’t matter. We have ways of both in people’s minds as we understand the human body all that time.
Saul Marquez:
And what’s one area of focus that drives everything in your organization?
Tom Incledon:
I think I have this the athlete’s mindset, kind of like a win at all costs. I don’t for second place. I don’t want to be the first place loser. I only want gold medals. That’s my competitive nature and my competitive background. And the people that come here and see the drive and intensity that I have and it transfers into a lot of people say I’ll do whatever it takes. But they’ve never had to really face a challenge like that was life threatening before. So no one really knows what that means until they’re actually in the driver’s seat. And then they realize, wow, this is going to be hard. It’s not going to be easy. So you need someone that’s really strong that could be behind you, that can help push you up those hills. And I certainly got plenty of strength for that.
Saul Marquez:
So these next two hour more on a personal note for the listeners to get to know you. What is your number one health habit?
Tom Incledon:
I tried to go to bed and wake up at the same time and I try to do some form movement three times every day.
Saul Marquez:
What do you mean by that?
Tom Incledon:
Well, you know, like when you look at let’s say let’s you see you look at a person, it’s 80 or 90 or 100 and they’re very physically fit.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah.
Tom Incledon:
Everybody focuses on their musculature on the outside. No one thinks about which driving the muscle. The real difference between frail people and, let’s say, healthier people is the brain controlling the body. Granted, I’m not going to say, you know, the microbiome matters and, you know, nutritional biochemistry matters. There’s other things that matter. What tends to happen is people don’t use their brain enough. So over time they lose all these abilities and all these very simple. Use it or lose it. Yeah, well, I try to incorporate new and varied movement patters every day, so my brain is constantly forced to learn new things and interesting reading new material but learning new movements.
Saul Marquez:
Yeah, that’s interesting. Couple of years ago. Five years. So my wife and I took some some dance lessons, and I got to tell you, talking about new movements. I felt my brain stimulated in a big way. It was very, very interesting. And I love to hear your habit. It’s a very interesting one.
Tom Incledon:
Thank you.
Saul Marquez:
What would you say your number one success habit is?
Tom Incledon:
Gosh, I’ll just say I’m not afraid of hard work. I mean, if I’m going to get down on the ground and scrub floors, if I got to do some advanced mathematics, I don’t care what it takes.
Saul Marquez:
That’s awesome, Tom. So what book would you recommend to the listeners?
Tom Incledon:
That’s a tough one, so historically, I would say I got a lot out of a book called Peak Performance by Charles Garfield because it helped me understand how to train my mind to accomplish a goal in my back down. I was focused on Olympic weightlifting that’s like to snatch clean and jerk. And I use that book to do a lot of mental imagery to imagine myself if I was going to expand upon that today. I would say it’s really a form of controlled fantasy. So I’m doing something that actually has happened, but I’m incorporating elements of, you know, sight and sense of smell and sense of touch and taste to make it appear real to my brain. So now it enabled me to get to a point I could lift heavier and heavier weights. Most people, though, you know, they may not be looking at it to compete at Olympic level, but I would say that if you could learn the strategy, you could then use it for anything in life. But historically, because of all the different disciplines that we use here, felt all kinds of books over the years, I’d say, wow, that really changed my way of thinking. But more recently, I spent most of my time reading research studies online. I don’t read as many books because by the time it’s in a book, it’s really outdated in terms of the research side of things.
Saul Marquez:
So good. And that’s a great point. And that fascinating to hear about your your pathway to success in both Olympic weightlifting, but also helping your patients. And that’s what we’re all about here on the podcast is improving outcomes. And folks, if something that Dr. Tom Incledon mentioned today resonates with you, check out the show notes. Go to outcomesrocket.health and in the search bar type in I N C L E D O N and you’ll be able to find all the show notes there. This has been a really interesting episode with your time. I’d love if you could just leave us with the closing thought and then the best place for the listeners could continue the conversation with you.
Tom Incledon:
So closing thought would be we’re on a mission to transform the way disease is treated worldwide, not just the United States, but two questions. I think every human being should know when in front of a physician like an oncologist, questions they should ask would be one. How will you treat the cancer in my body? And the significance of that question is to help the individual and the patient understand. They are a human being at the center. They’re going to. And a second question would be, what will you do when that doesn’t work? Because then you get a sense of, OK, does this place even have a plan B? Many of the patients that come here tell me my doctors did the same thing with me, that they did what everyone else, and that when it didn’t work, they told me there were no other options. And if you know those answers in advance, you probably will want to go somewhere else, because the less place you want to go to a place that’s going to give you a dead end. Waste time and money and not kept the result looking for unless you happen to be one of the lucky few that responds. I think that will save a lot of lives as people discuss those types of questions. I would avoid asking questions like success rate. I think that’s useless information because everyone assumes they’re going to be on their lives. They never assume they’ll be in a smaller percentage. That doesn’t make it. And you can’t determine how someone responds until after you see their response. And then in terms of how people could reach us, our web site is www.causenta.com and net c a u s e n t a .com, there’s a free form that people just fill out a form and then basically they get schedule, free consult that we can review things and just see if we’re a good fit for them. Someone calls us and says, Hey, I only want to do, you know, one thing, probably not a good fit because it’s unlikely they’re going to know what treatment they need in advance. I’ve never seen one that fortunate before. Usually what I see is people try lots of things that don’t work and you don’t realize they’re just approaching a problem the wrong way to look to study the outside and trying to force it on their inside when they should be studying their inside. They’re looking what’s best on the outside.
Saul Marquez:
Some great takeaways there, Tom. Appreciate is walking us through that and kind of highlighting and living the fact that impossible is just an opinion. You don’t have to accept that. And I really appreciate the inspiring message you left us with. I look forward to staying in touch with you. Thanks for making time.
Saul Marquez:
Well, thank you. And yeah, please do, man, I’d love to come back and tell some other stories.
Thanks for listening to the Outcomes Rocket podcast. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.outcomesrocket.com for the show notes, resources, inspiration and so much more.
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