Go behind the scenes with Dr. Craig Hauser to learn about his success formula for health!
Check him out on iTunes being interviewed by Frederick Advice Givers.
Click here to listen to the interview.
Our dear friend transcribed this for those who would prefer to read the interview:
Interviewer: Hello and welcome to Frederick Advice Givers, Episode 33. Thank you for tuning in to this week’s episode. I’m excited to have with us today Dr. Craig Hauser, to learn more about his story, what motivates him, what are his passions. As someone who talks to and meets fellow business owners and entrepreneurs on a daily basis and I’m always interested in finding out about their story. So I created this podcast as a way for my fellow business owners and entrepreneurs to share their stories with you. My guests are some of the brightest, caring, most passionate people that I know and I think that once you hear their stories you’ll agree. Now here’s Dr. Hauser. Can you hear me?
Dr. Hauser: Yeah, I can hear you.
Interviewer: Thanks for joining me today. I’m excited to have you.
Dr. Hauser: Thanks for having me on your podcast. I’m really happy to be talking about health with you.
Interviewer: Beautiful. Before we talk about health, in about three or four minutes, Dr. Hauser, give me your backstory. Where did you grow up? What do you enjoy doing in your spare time? And what did you do before you became a functional medical doctor?
Dr. Hauser: Sure. I grew up in Colorado, right in the foothills near the Air Force Academy and that’s where I fell in love with science and medicine. My dad was a podiatrist. My mom was, and still is, a school teacher. I had a pretty normal childhood, grew up with three sisters. I went to college in New Orleans at Tulane University where I played the saxophone in all the bands. I also was an EMT for the city and the university. Have you ever seen that TV show called Nightwatch? It’s about paramedics in New Orleans, that’s what I did and where I did it.
Interviewer: That’s cool. Okay.
Dr. Hauser: Yeah, it was a pretty exciting four years. After college I went to medical school through the Air Force and graduated in 1994 from the military’s preeminent medical school in Bethesda and then went on to internship and general surgery and a four year residency in radiology. In that time period I found my wife and was married in 1995, we’ve been married since then. We have two teenage daughters who attend high school in Middletown and a son that’s 10 years old. We live five minutes from our office; it’s a pretty cool relationship. Then after that I served in a multitude of different hospitals at different bases around the world. During my time in the military I served as the Pacific Air Force’s Consultant to the Surgeon General. I got my jump wings. I worked my way up through to lieutenant colonel and absolutely loved serving the country. After sixteen years I finally found a great group of radiologists up in Hagerstown, so I got out of military and settled down working for them and that takes us to about eight years ago.
Interviewer: So you have two teenage daughters?
Dr. Hauser: Yes.
Interviewer: How is that time of life? My boys are not quite teenagers. I don’t know if I’m looking forward to the teenage years. How is that treating you? [Laughter]
Dr. Hauser: They are awesome girls, but they remind me all the time of what it was like to be a teenager and how glad I am that I’m not a teenager anymore. One is learning how to drive; she’s sixteen, so that’s very exciting. And the other one is about to turn fifteen. They play a lot of sports. They’re typical; they’re always on their phones.
Interviewer: Right.
Dr. Hauser: Always texting.
Interviewer: In just a few more years just blink and they’ll be in college.
Dr. Hauser: Yeah, yeah, we just went to back to school night and I remember thinking last year when we did the back to school, “Oh good, I’ve got a little bit of time before I have to start thinking about college.” Now this time I thought, “Oh jeez, now I really have to start getting my act in gear so I can help them.”
Interviewer: Yup. So you took us up to about eight years ago, radiology in Hagerstown. So tell me the story since that time that led you to open your own practice this past summer.
Dr. Hauser: Sure. About eight years ago we moved out to beautiful Western Maryland and unfortunately all good things have to come to an end and I started having a bunch of my own medical issues. I had things like anxiety and irritable bowel disease, chronic fatigue, kidney stones, Bell’s palsy, where half of my face was paralyzed for about four months. And typical of US medicine, with each new issue I got a new prescription and my medicine cabinet got more and more full, but I kept getting more and more sick. I turned into a real mess. I didn’t do much else than just go to work and sit on the couch when I got home. I knew I needed something different than Western medicine and decided I needed to take a more holistic approach to my health. So I started studying again, but this time I was looking at things like Chinese medicine, Indian medicine, deep tissue massage, acupuncture, herbs and supplements, and counseling. I worked on my nutrition, my exercise. I went to counseling. I learned successful ways to reduce stress and I slowly, very slowly, started feeling better and getting rid of all of my prescriptions and my medicine cabinet started getting lighter. Once I started feeling like myself again I lost 30 pounds—without dieting. I started doing Pilates and building muscle, and I started feeling happy again. Needless to say I fell in love with this amazing type of medicine and decided that I needed to help others. So I trained under some amazing doctors. There’s a well-known physician out of the University of Arizona School of Integrative Medicine, Dr. Weil, you may have heard of him. He’s an older gentleman with a white beard who’s on Dr. Oz and Oprah and shows like that. So the next logical step for me was to change specialties to integrative and functional medicine and open a practice in Frederick where I can help others.
Interviewer: And you opened this practice last summer?
Dr. Hauser: I did, yes, July 1 we opened the doors and we’ve been running like gangbusters since then.
Interviewer: Awesome. Congratulations. I’m glad that you finally found your niche and you are taking your personal experience and now you’re—you’ve found a way for you to get out of it and now you’re helping others. Correct?
Dr. Hauser: Yes. It’s really neat that I find that most times I can relate to my patients. A lot of doctors maybe can’t, because if you’re a healthy cardiologist and you’ve never had a heart attack or a stroke or something like that, it’s hard to relate to. But I’ve had a lot of the same issues my patients have. Irritable bowel is becoming a major epidemic in our country. And anxiety is driven, in large part, by these underlying diseases. Chronic fatigue, oh my gosh, how many people do I talk to that, 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon hits and they’re just worn out. They can’t lift their head off their desk and they’re reaching for a cup of coffee or running to Starbucks.
Interviewer: That’s what I was going to say, doesn’t coffee cure that? [Laughter]
Dr. Hauser: Yeah, in mega doses.
Interviewer: All right, Dr. Hauser, the next three questions I call [inaudible]. Take about a minute on each question. What has been your biggest challenge in opening your own practice?
Dr. Hauser: The biggest challenge was to make the decision to leave a secure job and open up my own medical office. I really was kind of paralyzed by that decision. Leaving a practice that had a steady income and was a well-established business to set out on my own was really nerve-wracking. They don’t teach business courses in medical school and I had to learn how to write things like a business plan, and track inventory, balance a budget. Once I made the decision to commit to functional medicine life really became easier because I knew I had a goal and I knew I had a destiny and I really could get myself on that track, but man, it was a whirlwind.
Interviewer: Yes, it is. Pretend we’re in a time machine and go back to right before you started your practice—and that’s not that long ago—knowing what you know now, what is one piece of advice you would give your former self?
Dr. Hauser: One piece of advice, I’d have to say, is to not be afraid to go see a therapist or a counselor. I think asking for help reveals your strength, not your weakness, which kind of sounds like a motivational poster that you’d see in your high school English class, but too many people, and men especially, are afraid of what others might say, like it’s a dirty little secret. I personally thought I could cure my own anxiety and then I started having panic attacks. It really came down to my wife kind of forcing me to go, and it absolutely changed my life. Anyway, I think that would be a big mistake, not to go seek help.
Interviewer: And the final question, take me to a time when you thought, “Wow, I’m making a difference.” Tell me that story.
Dr. Hauser: Have you heard the commercial on TV about the amazing new drug that will solve your irritable bowel problems or your love life? The only catch is that there are 100 other issues that this drug causes. You know, “I need a pill to counteract the side effects from the other pills I’m taking.”
Interviewer: Correct. I never quite understood those commercials because it gives you one positive, but then it’s got like 84 things that might be negative.
Dr. Hauser: Exactly. It only works half the time, but 100 percent of the time it will cause side effects. Well, nine out of ten times my patients are taking medications like this when they come to see me. One of my first patients had an inflammatory bowel disease and terrible bowel issues, really bad fatigue, joint issues, rosacea, weight gain, all of that. She was on one of those really terrible drugs that cause terrible side effects and it wasn’t working. Her GI doc wanted to switch her to another terrible drug and that’s when she’d had enough and decided to come and see me. I put her on a really safe medication with no side effects. I ran a few specialized tests that diagnose things like adrenal fatigue, bacterial overgrowth of her bowel, parasites in her gut, and I got her on a great nutritional program. Now I love when she visits the office because she just looks so darn healthy.
Interviewer: Awesome. So now I want to [inaudible], Dr. Hauser, I want you to think our listeners are on a journey with you. Imagine you got dropped off on a desert island and the natives have no idea what a functional medical doctor does. You need to give them the five pillars of functional medicine and tell the natives why they need your services.
Dr. Hauser: I love that because the US has been on a deserted island when it comes to healthcare. We’ve only known one type of medicine, our Western medicine. The World Healthcare Organization ranks countries and guess what the US is ranked? Number 37. The only category we win in is expenditure per capita. Basically what that means is that we spend a ton of money on healthcare, but we don’t get very good results. That’s where integrative medicine comes into play. It allows me, your typical Western medicine trained doctor who has also been trained in alternative and complimentary medicines to combine or integrate the two. Integrative medicine gives us the best of both worlds; as Dr. Weil always says, “If I leave this interview and get hit by a bus, take me to the best level one shock trauma hospital and stabilize me with Western medicine. But after that we’ll address all the other issues and the fallout from conventional medicine with integrative and functional medicine.” Functional medicine is basically built on five pillars. Think of it this way, if you woke up tomorrow morning and walked barefoot into your kitchen and stepped on five tacks, you would be in a lot of pain. If you removed only one of those tacks, your pain wouldn’t get that much better, not until you removed all five would you be happy again. In functional medicine those five are: nutrition, sleep, exercise, social, and nutraceuticals. I’ll go ahead and explain each one?
Interviewer: I know what sleep is. I mean, I know about exercise. But I don’t know— [Laughter]
Dr. Hauser: All right. Let’s start with nutrition then. The first thing out of the box is we need to focus on eating three healthy meals a day and two healthy snacks. Just like Grandma used to say, “Eat three square meals.” That should center on quality proteins and fats. So reduce or eliminate the unhealthy grains in cereals—and sugars—but get plenty of fruits and vegetables. Don’t forget to keep hydrated. I’m always asked how much water you should drink each day and my question back is always, “What’s the color of your urine?” If it’s clear or very light, light yellow, you’re drinking the right amount, but anything darker and you need to start chugging. The second pillar that I mentioned is sleep. It seems like such an easy category, just lay your head down on the pillow, but strive for seven to eight hours of quality sleep each night. The buzz word to remember is “sleep hygiene.” So that means clean up your environment so that you set yourself up for success. Eliminate extraneous lights. Move the iPhone away from your pillow. Drop the air temperature in your room to 68 degrees or lower. The third piece of advice I have is on exercise. This is a double-edged sword. You want to move your body every day, but you don’t want to overdo it, especially if you have underlying issues like adrenal fatigue. So taking the dog out for a walk or grab your friend or your spouse and head out outdoors. Everyone needs to move every day, but it doesn’t need to be at a heart rate of 180 beats per minute. The fourth one is social. This is where you find happiness, peace, contentment, where you find comfort and joy. It’s almost a too simple category because who doesn’t want to be happy and peaceful? The problem is that we don’t actively work on making ourselves happy; we just take it for granted. So maybe we occasionally go out on date night with our spouses for fun or we attend church on the weekend for prayer, but what do we do about it on a daily basis? Do you go to yoga? Do you meditate? Do you knit? The last pillar is nutraceuticals.
Interviewer: That one I have no clue. I definitely need help on that one. Nutraceuticals?
Dr. Hauser: Nutraceuticals, it’s a fancy word for vitamins, minerals, supplements. Our bodies are constantly being depleted of these. You can no longer fix your body solely by eating good foods. An apple grown on today’s depleted farm fields is not the same as an apple 100 years ago. So supplementation becomes an important factor in health. I personally would recommend being tested for adequate levels of nutrients, but in general a high quality multivitamin is always a good start. Fish oil or, even better, cod liver oil—again, just like Grandma used to say—and of course, a good probiotic for good gut health. Outside of these five pillars the other major component of functional medicine is getting to the root cause of disease. If you recall the young woman I talked about a few minutes ago? I mentioned she had rosacea, which is a skin disorder on her face, it kind of looks like a mild sunburn on your cheeks. Well, in a non-functional medical practice she might have been given a cream for her skin, but by getting to the root cause of her problems—the terrible inflammation that was going on in her body—we were able to get that under control and the rosacea turned out to be just a symptom of her underlying disease, and went away on its own.
Interviewer: Cool. I learned a lot from that, that was awesome. I’m pretty sure the natives learned it too. One last question before we wrap up, Dr. Hauser, think of an internet resource or an app, like Google calendar or [inaudible] that you could not do without. What is it?
Dr. Hauser: I have two off the top of my head that I can think of that I absolutely love. The first app is called Headspace. It’s a ten minute meditation app that you can download for free, great for reducing stress and learning how to meditate. It’s an Australian guy who just walks you through it. I used to use it during my lunch breaks when I work up at the hospital and just needed a little stress reduction. I’d go out to the parking lot, get in my car, and for ten minutes I would meditate with his help. The second tool that I love is Evernote. If you’re familiar with that, it’s an app for storing your documents, whether it’s an article or picture. It has become my default storage for every article and medical note that I have ever wanted to save.
Interviewer: Leave our audience with one parting shot. What is a book that you’ve read or a quote that you live by that has helped mold you?
Dr. Hauser: All of the books that I’ve been reading lately are medical books and magazines, so the quote I love is by Sun Tzu. It’s, “Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all that I can.”
Interviewer: That’s deep. I have to think about that one for a second. So how would our listeners get ahold of you, find your practice? Make an appointment? Schedule an appointment with you? Give me your contact information, please.
Dr. Hauser: They can get ahold of me by visiting our website. It’s staging.monica.flywheelsites.com or they can call our office directly at 240-670-4802. They can also contact us directly through the website. We’ve got a link there as well.
Interviewer: And Hauser is H-A-U-S-E-R?
Dr. Hauser: Correct.
Interviewer: Listeners, I hope you enjoyed today’s interview as much as I did. I got a ton out of it and I got to learn what nutraceuticals are, so I am now smarter today than I was 30 minutes ago.
Dr. Hauser: Thanks for having me on the show, Eric.
Interviewer: I appreciate it.
[End of podcast]