What is Integrative Medicine with Dr. Sean McCloy

summary
In this episode, Dr. Sean McCloy discusses the differences between traditional and functional medicine, emphasizing the importance of integrative approaches to health. He explains when patients should consider alternative therapies, the significant role of gut health in chronic conditions, and the challenges patients face in navigating the medical system. 

Dr. McCloy also highlights the various therapies offered at the Integrative Health Center of Maine and the potential for telemedicine consultations for patients worldwide. The conversation concludes with a message of hope for those dealing with chronic illnesses.

takeaways

• Functional medicine combines conventional and holistic approaches.
• Chronic conditions often require a shift from traditional medicine.
• The gut microbiome plays a crucial role in overall health.
• Patients should seek integrative care early in their health journey.
• Hope is essential for patients facing chronic illnesses.
• Integrative health focuses on treating root causes, not just symptoms.
• Collaboration among practitioners enhances patient care.
• Healing often involves removing the bad and adding the good.

About Dr. Sean McCloy

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA, CCT, D-ABFM, D-ABIHM is the Medical Director of Integrative Health Center of Maine. He received his Medical Degree from New York Medical College. He completed his Family Medicine residency training at Maine Medical Center in Portland. He is a board-certified Diplomate in both Family Medicine and Integrative Holistic Medicine. He received his Master of Public Health (specializing in Health Promotion and Disease Prevention) from Boston University School of Public Health and his Masters of Arts in Medical Sciences from Boston University School of Medicine. He is certified in Chelation Therapy from the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM). He has served on the Education Committee of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS). 

Besides offering Holistic Family Medicine, Dr. McCloy specializes in Intravenous Vitamins Therapies, Heavy Metal Detoxification, Functional and Nutritional Medicine, and Bioidentical Hormone Replacement. He also uses Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine in his treatment approaches. He sees all ages of patients, from newborns to geriatrics. By restoring balance to his patients he let their bodies, minds, and spirits heal.

Instead of using pharmaceutical medications to cover up symptoms, Dr. McCloy hunts for the root causes of an illness and tries to correct those using natural treatments. In addition to enjoying his work, Dr. McCloy loves going on outdoor adventures with his family, preparing gourmet vegetarian feasts, making music with his friends, playing ultimate frisbee and squash, furniture building, and exploring beautiful Maine.

To find Dr. McCloy:
maineintegrative.com
207-699-3830

Resources

• Website
• Learn more about Cognomovement
• Try Cognomovement for yourself!
• Book a call with Katie

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:00.718)
Welcome back to another version of the Catapult Effect version, episode. That's the word I was looking for. So I'm really excited to bring on the guest today. So every month we're having a different theme this year and I wanted to kick off March with Dr. Sean McCloy. He is the Medical Director of Integrative Health Center of Maine. This is an absolutely incredible practice and he is coming in today to talk to you about the various different types of medicine that are available.

and when you may want to seek out something outside of your regular primary care, depending on what you're dealing with. So stay tuned. That is coming up next.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Dr. McCloy. And I just want to give the listener a little background. So I found Integrative Health Center Maine a couple years ago when I was looking for a place to do in-person appointments. And it wound up being so much more than I was expecting it to be. It wasn't just a place to rent and to be and to have sessions. I got to know the practitioners there. I got to know the patients a little bit. And it's an absolutely incredible health center that is all focused around you and your health and your wellness and what you need.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (00:38.507)
Thank

Katie Wrigley (01:08.11)
So Dr. McCloy has created a brilliant, beautiful, peaceful, safe space that's in Cumberland Foreside, Maine. So it's pretty reachable to, we actually have people coming in from other countries coming in to work with him for a week. And I say weeks, I've remained an affiliate because I have so much respect, not only for Dr. McCloy, but all of the practitioners there. And I had the honor of getting to fill in for a receptionist when they were looking for someone full time. And it gave me the opportunity to really see up close how much

they really care and all of the other things that are going on in the background that may make you think that your doctor isn't as focused on you as they are. But let me assure you, and we will assure you in this episode, they are working for you even when you haven't heard from them. So I'm gonna stop rambling now and invite Dr. McCloy to the show. He's a functional medicine doctor. He is the leading Lyme specialist in New England. And there is a year and a half to two year wait to see this guy. He is that.

Good. So thank you so much for coming back onto the catapult effect. Dr. McCloy, I'm so happy to have you on here again.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (02:13.365)
Katie, the honor is mine. Thank you so much for having me here and I have the utmost respect for you and your work and what you do as well and have seen both firsthand and from the clients that I've referred to you what good work you do for them as well. So the feeling is very mutual and I am truly honored and happy to be on your show. Thank you.

Katie Wrigley (02:32.918)
Thank you. so if you wouldn't mind, we are going to leave, your full bio into the show notes for people. But I really wanted to focus on all of the wisdom that you can help impart with the listeners today. And so if you can just kind of explain just the difference between traditional and then functional medicine and what made you choose that route with functional medicine.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (02:53.451)
Sure, absolutely. So I'm a family doctor by background in training. I'm board certified in family medicine. And when I was going through my traditional training, back in medical school I would say, I realized fairly quickly that while there is certainly a role for the allopathic, mostly pharmaceutical based traditional or conventional medical care, that it's not the be all and end all.

And I knew as a family doctor that a lot of what I was going to be doing in my career was trying to help people be the healthiest people they could be. And a lot of preventative care and lot of strategies to help them live the longest, happiest, healthiest lives possible. And unfortunately, pills don't really do that, right? We kind of know this intuitively. So I knew I needed more tools in my toolbox.

and began to explore what other options were out there besides what I was learning in my allopathic medical school training. And that really led me down the path to discovering integrative medicine. I use that term integrative medicine, meaning combining the conventional medical care with the holistic and the natural and the alternative strategies and really dovetailing them so that we're offering whatever that patient needs at that time in their lives.

So that's the kind of melding of those two worlds. And I still think that there is a role for pharmaceutical medicine in some of my patients. If you walk into my office and you've got a raging bacterial pneumonia, you should probably be on some antibiotics to cure that pneumonia, right? So herbs are probably not gonna be a timely cure for you. But on the other hand, a lot of what we, you and I and other practitioners here deal with,

Katie Wrigley (04:31.182)
Right.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (04:43.975)
is really chronic illness and chronic conditions that lead to illness. And that's where I think the pharmaceutical interventions fall short and that we need to explore other options and all the strategies that we employ here to get people back on that track to health and well-being. So that's where the functional medicine approach exists and the natural strategies really shine.

Katie Wrigley (05:13.55)
Absolutely, and I experienced some of this firsthand when I was going through my own chronic conditions and I ran out of options of the traditional model. So you said a couple of words there that I want to go back to and help really define. So you mentioned integrative medicine, holistic slash natural, and then the traditional and the alternative. So what exactly are those? What exactly does that mean?

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (05:37.471)
I think people kind of throw these terms out there and can use the same word to mean different things. So traditional medicine, some people use that word to mean kind of the Western medicine style, the allopathic, pharmaceutical, sort of white coat doctor medical care that is traditionally what we've done in this country for a century or more. Other people use traditional medicine to talk more about

maybe native people's traditions or traditional Asian medicines, traditional Chinese medicine. So the word traditional really has two very different meanings, I think. Conventional medical care usually refers to that pharmaceutical-based medical care that we might get at a typical doctor's office. And then you use the word holistic or natural or alternative medicine.

There's all these various terms that are out there that people have different strategies over or meanings or understandings of. And so that's really why I like that term integrative medicine, because we're not throwing the baby out with the bath water. We're really integrating all those solutions. at here at Integrative Health Center of Maine, we use that word right in our title, right? So we have a bunch of different kinds of practitioners here, ranging from a medical doctor like myself to

naturopathic doctors and acupuncturists and mind-body workers and nutritional consultants, health coaches, and we all sort of integrate and combine our services and offer a holistic strategy for our patients. So the terminology is different for different people, but I like that term integrative medicine.

Katie Wrigley (07:18.894)
And I think it encompasses everything that you just said so well, that you're not dismissing any one option. You're looking at the whole human and all the things going on inside the human. And these are the things that appear to be the best fit for where you are right now. I believe that's what I just heard you say, yes?

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (07:36.625)
Absolutely, absolutely. And the other term I guess we might want to define is functional medicine. So functional medicine, think it really is a systems-based approach. It's a very individualistic approach that looks at the interplay of everything that we are. So it's looking at genetics and nutrition and metabolism and our environment and the circles of health and wellness around us and what our role is in the world.

Katie Wrigley (07:41.933)
Yes.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (08:04.135)
and as well as our cardiovascular systems and our gastrointestinal and neurological systems. And it looks at all of these interwoven webs of who we are and how all that comes to mean, my back hurts, or why that diabetes is there. And so using that functional medicine approach, it's a very science-based strategy of sort

Katie Wrigley (08:21.458)
Yeah.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (08:30.929)
unpeeling the layers of the onion and doing the detective work to figure out that root cause of illness and also ways of fixing those root causes of illness usually using natural methods rather than just covering symptoms up with pharmaceutical drugs. So that functional medicine term is sort of a buzzword these days but that's in general what I mean by it.

Katie Wrigley (08:56.182)
And thank you for making that distinction too. And it brings to mind an analogy that I've heard a few ways and let me know if you agree with us or not Dr. McCloy, but let's say, you there's like a river and we keep seeing all this crap go down in the river. We pick it up, we pick it up. At some point it makes sense to go further up the river and see why do we keep getting this stuff here and fix the problem where it's coming from, not from where we see it. And that's basically what functional medicine is, is it's going up the river and saying, okay,

Hey, what's going on here that's causing these things and is there something we can do up here to stop this from coming down the river? Is that accurate?

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (09:34.315)
It's a great analogy, I love that, beautiful.

Katie Wrigley (09:37.324)
It wasn't mine. I don't remember where I heard it, but I'm like, that makes a lot of sense. I like that. I like that. So now I'm using it. I just wish I could credit the person I heard it from. But I hear several of those out there. So for someone who is dealing with chronic conditions, we already mentioned that's the wheelhouse for both of us and for most of the practitioners at Integrative Health Center. At what point should a person who's being diagnosed with diabetes or chronic stress, chronic anxiety, chronic pain, chronic

whatever, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, the list is endless. And as a practitioner, I'm working with the nervous system, not with named diseases. As a doctor, you're working with the named diseases. So any of those and going beyond those as well, at what point should that person consider stepping outside the traditional allopathic conventional, whichever the word is you like to use, model to look at something more natural or functional and more

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (10:36.139)
I guess my biased answer would be always. The first day you're born is a good day to be a healthy person, right? So in general, I think that the integrative medical strategy is a really good strategy as really as a national healthcare plan to create a healthy population of people. But really to kind of focus in on your specific question, in the world of

Katie Wrigley (10:43.501)
Yeah.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (11:06.087)
of allopathic medicine, we're actually kind of specific when we talk about an acute problem and a subacute problem and a chronic problem. So acute really means like it just happened. You just got in a car accident and broke an ankle, right? That's an acute problem. Let's say you've got an up respiratory infection, an acute bronchitis. You've had your symptoms for say a week or so. That's an acute problem. The term subacute typically refers to eight weeks or less.

of a problem. you know, subacute low back pain. Let's say you tweaked your back a month ago when you're shoveling snow and it still kind of hurts now, it's still there, but it's slowly getting better. That's more of this subacute term that we use. And then we use the word chronic, usually meaning a condition that's lasting eight weeks or longer and it could go on for years and years and years. And I think that what we have to offer in that pharmaceutical allopathic world

it typically is not as effective when we're moving into the realm of chronic disease. And so that's, know, when you've had a problem and it's lasting more than a few weeks and it's looking like it's going to be a longer term problem, it may be time to sort of expand your mindset and see what else is out there besides these pills that my PCP is offering to me that are maybe helping with symptoms in that acute period, but aren't really designed to actually fix the issue.

So that's when you may begin to explore some other options.

Katie Wrigley (12:37.366)
Nice. Thank you for that. How often in your practice do you see a link between chronic conditions and a gut microbiome that's

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (12:46.443)
Great question, yeah. Almost always, I would say, one of the hallmark rules of functional medicine in our training is heal the gut first. And there's a lot of wisdom in that saying because the evidence is emerging more and more every day that there's a huge connection between the microbiome, the good guys and bad guys that live in our gastrointestinal system, and the rest of our body's health. So if you've got

Yeast overgrowth or something called the dysbiosis which is more bad guys and good guys growing in your gut Those little microbes will release a lot of different chemicals that will cause inflammation or damage in the lining of your gut that Inflammation can lead to what we call leaky gut syndrome another term is intestinal hyperpermeability and that basically means we're losing the protective barrier between

Katie Wrigley (13:35.776)
Mm-hmm.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (13:44.137)
the outside world that are inside body. So now some of these nasty chemicals can cross over the gut wall and get into our bloodstream and get into our lymphatic system and begin to circulate systemically through our body. And some of those can cross the blood brain barrier and get into our central nervous system and lead to inflammation and damage in our brain. you know, things ranging from mood disorder, depression, anxiety, ADD,

to longer-term dementia, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, vascular dementia, autoimmune diseases, joint pain, muscle aches or pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, diabetes, cancer, all these nasty chronic diseases often are thought to start in the gut, in the GI system, years and years ago, perhaps. So we're now understanding better and better

the interplay between what we eat, the chemicals that are added to the foods that we eat, those forever chemicals that we hear about, pesticides, other pollutants, and how they will affect the gut microbiome and potentially lead to many of these chronic illnesses.

Katie Wrigley (14:47.96)
and

Katie Wrigley (14:57.69)
thank you for that breakdown in there. Cause that was going to be my next question is like, happens if we don't get this under control, but you just brought that around full circle. So thank you for that. And it is, I love that you started off with like, Hey, we actually, you want to start going to a natural way to live from the day you're born. You're right. It's just a lot of us don't start to even have an awareness of what other types of medicine are out there until we get into our thirties, forties fifties.

start to experience things that the traditional conventional model isn't really helping with anymore. And we're like, well, what now? Like that was my story because I grew up with a physician's assistant and she's a fantastic diagnostician. And so that was what I thought was available until it didn't work. And I'm like, OK, well, now what do I do? Now I'm disabled. I have high amounts of pain. I have no idea what I'm going to do. And it was terrifying.

And a lot of times, I don't know if you see this in your practice as well, but by the time a client comes to me, they feel like they've been gaslit by the community, by the medical community. And one of the things that comes out of the messaging, and we had touched on this before we started recording, is a lot of times with chronic conditions, the doctor's going to say, you need to live with this. When that's delivered that way, it feels like you're saying, screw you, I can't help you, deal with it.

And that is not supportive. That doesn't feel compassionate. That doesn't feel helpful. It feels like you're getting dismissed or like you're being told it's in your head. So just figure it out. Whereas what I think they're actually saying, I would like to think they're actually saying, hey, this is your reality. Let's figure out a way to make this easier for you to live with this. But how much do you see of that gaslighting going on before patients are coming in to see you?

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (16:50.187)
Well, I've had an interesting journey to get to this point. I went through the conventional medical school training and got my medical degree. And so I know the limitations of that training. And I know what my colleagues have trained themselves in as well. So I think that when a patient gets to that point where they've reached the limits of what that allopathic approach can do, that the doctor's kind of out of ideas.

that hopefully they're not purposely gaslighting or trying to fool the patient or anything like that, but the three hardest words for a doctor to say are, don't know. And so when we have reached the end of what we know and we've run out of tools, right, because we're out of pills at that point, then we're kind of throwing our hands up, but the patient's still expecting us to give them something, right? So we say, learn to live with it or.

Katie Wrigley (17:32.077)
Yeah.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (17:46.751)
you know, work on some mind-body work or go see a psychiatrist or psychologist. And so that could just be a subconscious way of saying, I don't know, I'm of ideas, right? And there are certainly limits to what allopathic medicine has to offer, especially for chronic illnesses. hopefully, hopefully your doctor will be open-minded and you might ask about other solutions or other, you know,

acupuncture or mind-vide work or whatever it is, the work that you do which is wonderful and the doctor will say, well, if you want to try it, go right ahead. What's the harm in trying it? Unfortunately, we at this center have a lot of patients who have seen five or 10 or 20 other specialists and practitioners and have kind of gotten the run around and so they sometimes come to us in desperation, really looking for something.

and usually we have something to offer to them. We have other patients who come in and they have PCPs who are really into it and open-minded and even want to learn about what they're doing here. So I'm seeing a very gradual sort of generational shift, I think, in the practice of medicine in terms of that open-mindedness and that acceptance of this integrative solution. One thing that gives me hope is that

As of now, every single US-based medical school has a department of alternative medicine or complementary medicine. They're training their graduates at least to know what these terms mean. What is acupuncture? What is yoga? What is herbal medicine? So at least the doctors being trained now have heard of these words before. That's maybe a start. If you look at acupuncture, right, back in the 1970s, it was a sort of weird, framish thing that came out of

Katie Wrigley (19:15.864)
Thanks.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (19:38.779)
Asia somewhere, not lot of people did it, and nowadays insurance pays for it. So we are seeing a shift, I think, in the US healthcare system in terms of the acceptance of some of these solutions because perhaps the US healthcare system is realizing how effective these solutions are and how cost-effective they are, how much money are they saving the insurance companies because the people exploring these solutions are actually getting well. So I'm seeing some hope out there.

We have a long way to go, but you know seeing a little shift. guess that's a little off topic I'm sorry. I didn't quite answer your question around that

Katie Wrigley (20:15.328)
Not at all, actually. I take that as fully on topic because, know, there's a lot there. I don't want to unpack all of it because I want to stay focused on your wheelhouse specifically and everything you guys do at Integrative Health Center Maine. But I don't think any doctor is intentionally gaslighting any patient. I think that depending on where they are in their own personal journey, they're going to have a different level of emotional maturity than another doctor. And someone who's done a lot of work is going to be able to show up with compassion.

and not have that shame and be like, I'm not going to be able to help you anymore. I'm going to send you here. Whereas someone who may not have that much experience may be really uncomfortable hitting the end of their rope and going, my God, what else can I try? And it comes out as you got to deal with it. And they don't mean to be off putting, but that's where they are on their personal journey. And so that's what you're going to get. But you're expecting a medical professional that we've put on pedestals because that's kind of what we're taught. You guys have got a huge level.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (20:55.915)
Thank you.

Katie Wrigley (21:13.934)
of education that people who are outside of the medical community do not have. And that makes a big difference. You have a lot of knowledge that a lot of us don't have and you learn how to correlate things in the body that we don't. And so we're looking to you guys as experts. And so there is going to be more of an emotional disappointment when a doctor may not be the God or goddess that you think they are. They're human. They're going to make mistakes. So

I hate to say it, there's no perfect humans, including your doctor.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (21:49.141)
Yep, unfortunately true, that's right.

Katie Wrigley (21:51.032)
Yeah, it is. So let's shift over. You guys do a lot of different things there that people can't get anywhere else. So I'd love if you could take a moment and highlight some of the therapies you do there and some of the use cases for the therapies. Like know you've got a really strong IV practice. You've got a hyperbaric chamber. You've got red light therapy. You've got lasers. You've got infrared sauna. You've got all kinds of goodies.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (22:13.163)
Lots and lots of tools in the toolbox here. the number's always changed, but I think we currently have, I think it's 16 or 17 practitioners here, and it's a really diverse group of people here, which is so much fun. I really love coming to work in the morning with joy in my heart and knowing that I'm surrounded by like-minded peers and colleagues who really understand the mission that we're trying to accomplish here of providing comprehensive wellness and getting our patients better.

and really appreciate the teamwork and camaraderie that goes into that. it's really truly a fun place to work as a doctor and it's kept my energy and my enthusiasm up about what I do and kept the burnout away. So that's been great. As far as some of those individual strategies, yes, you're right. We've got a very robust intravenous therapy center here where we offer

high dose vitamin therapies that can address various chronic medical conditions and acute medical conditions as well. I think what sets us aside from some of those IV, know, sort of retail drip bars out there is that we really customize those strategies so we can do some very specific nutritional testing and metabolic testing and really home in on what's going on with that individual patient and design a treatment plan that's going to very quickly address

those deficiencies and get people feeling better fast and we've always got clinicians in the center to oversee the therapy so it's not just some technician or maybe a nurse at a center but there's always a clinician around for safety checking and to make sure things are being done appropriately. That sets us apart as well. We also do a lot of chelation therapy and that's just a couple of kinds of chelation therapy.

There is IV chelation to remove heavy metals from the body. So we see a lot of environmental toxicity that's making people sick. We also do chelation therapy for cardiovascular health. And the NIH is closely studying the efficacy of that chelation therapy and seeing some good quality results coming out of those trials. So anybody who's had a heart attack or a stroke or atherosclerosis on their blood work testing, that chelation therapy can help to prevent

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (24:29.055)
further heart attacks and strokes, et cetera. So really happy that we have that to offer. We do have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber that we can rent out so people can do sessions at home in the comfort of their own house and do longer sessions or more frequent sessions at an affordable rate that way. We have a far infrared sauna that's also helpful for toxin removal and cancer support and weight loss and athletic performance. rent out those.

those far-infrared saunas as well. We do have a low-level laser therapy here that's a sublingual treatment. So the idea there is using certain wavelengths of light under the tongue will treat your bloodstream through the sublingual veins and have all these really interesting effects on the body in terms of lowering inflammation, helping with energy production, boosting your immune system.

Katie Wrigley (25:12.11)
Hmm.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (25:22.473)
lowering circulating stress hormone responses, helping with mobility. So really good kind of quality of life approaches there for that machine. So, intravenous ozone therapy, also very, very helpful for removing and reducing biofilms, which we see with chronic illnesses such as Lyme disease and other chronic infections. Ozone also helpful for energy production, mitochondrial response.

inflammation, immune modulation, lots and lots of approaches for that too. So those are some of the specialty strategies that we have here that really are pretty unique and very, very powerful tools. And if you go to our website, you'll see all the services that we offer and all the practitioners that are here as well. So it's a fun group.

Katie Wrigley (26:11.862)
It is. as I was sitting there, I'm like, my gosh, it makes me just want to like book a week there and just like get some acupuncture, maybe do a little bit of vitamin infusion. I am actually going to see Dr. Morrill, who is a naturopath at Integrative Health in two weeks, actually. yeah, yeah, she is. And I actually follow the integrative approach for myself. I've got a primary care Dr. Sarah Davis with Maine Health, who is a huge

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (26:29.738)
She's wonderful. That's great. Good

Katie Wrigley (26:41.544)
advocate of integrative wellness. She is thrilled. I see her once a year for her to just praise me on how healthy I am. That's it. Like she's like, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. It's working. I'm like, cool. Okay, I will.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (26:50.443)
Great. Good.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (26:57.771)
I know you do so much to take care of yourself, so it's take off.

Katie Wrigley (26:59.726)
Well, I learned what happens when I don't. So I didn't take care of myself and I ignored everything. wound up disabled. When I started to take care of myself, I was able to do a half marathon. So there was a big difference there. I was just thinking of something else that I wanted to bring to light. Let's go with it before I've come up with it. Where can people find you, Dr. McCloy? What is the website and phone number?

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (27:25.183)
The website is mainmineintegrative.com. We are located in Cumberland, about 10 minutes north of Portland. And the phone number is 2076993830.

Katie Wrigley (27:44.288)
Awesome. And then the email, if they want to email in it's info at Maine integrative. Am I remembering that correctly? Okay. I have it all memorized. I'm proud of myself. Not that I'm proud of myself. was so much fun. So actually I remembered the other question I want to have. So I did notice when I was there and for the listener who's listening, who's out of the country or out of state, if you do have the budget to come out here,

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (27:48.819)
info at meanintegrative.com, that's right.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (27:54.283)
You did a bang up job as our filling receptionist, so I'm not surprised that you remember that.

Katie Wrigley (28:11.182)
Part of what the front desk people are trained with there is to figure out how to have the space to be there for multiple days. So the office manager there, who's there in the process of changing out amazing women, both the one that's about to leave and the one that is brand new, and they can help design what you need for that week. But if it is someone who's coming from out of the country, Dr. McCloy, what would you recommend that they do as a starting place? Or.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (28:38.185)
in terms of where to stay or what kind of services to explore here.

Katie Wrigley (28:41.89)
Okay, so let's yeah, let me get a little bit maybe it's someone who They have chronic pain and they're coming in from let's say Canada and They have enough tests that you know that there's some heavy metals they have they probably have some vitamin deficiencies because of the heavy metals and They're exhausted all the time because the pain levels are extremely high. So for that person, what would you recommend?

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (29:08.971)
Yeah, well fortunately many of our practitioners are able to do a telemedicine consultation, even internationally. So typically I would do an intake over the telephone or via video, a HIPAA compliant video, and get a sense of what's going on with that patient and review their history, review their labs, and help to put together a comprehensive treatment protocol for them. You mentioned I've got a long waiting list, which is true for my primary care and my functional medicine practice.

Katie Wrigley (29:15.523)
Nice.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (29:36.415)
For intravenous therapies, like for chelation therapy, we can get people in right away for that. Same thing with cancer supports. We do a lot of high dose IV vitamin C therapies here and other strategies to help people get through their cancer care with their conventional oncologists. So those folks can typically get right in as well. And then we really collaborate with our schedules here. So at the center, we really, again, try to integrate those services.

Katie Wrigley (29:41.815)
Nice.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (30:05.843)
You can, for instance, get an IV and get acupuncture at the same time, or get a massage right afterwards, or do a sauna. So it really is pretty easy to refer back and forth to the various practitioners and services here and put together that protocol for people.

Katie Wrigley (30:22.102)
Awesome. And I love that you aren't limited by state lines. So I kind of totally forgotten that part. So that's beautiful. And it makes it a lot easier and a lot more affordable to start to get help without having to put in the extra investment of traveling to a location. there were plenty of people that were coming in from out of state when I was there too. I was like, really impressed. Yeah.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (30:43.893)
pretty special place here so we are pretty unique I think in what we offer.

Katie Wrigley (30:48.332)
Yeah, it really is. So wherever you're listening from, hope you heard Dr. McCloy just say, basically, we are available anywhere in the world. If you are someone who's needing an IV or cancer, you can get in pretty quickly. If you want to be an established patient, there is going to be a while, a wait to be able to see Dr. McCloy directly, but there may not be for another doctor within the practice. So want to encourage you to go to mainintegrative.com and just call them.

and get information. Whoever answers will be able to guide you to the best place for you to go for the next steps.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (31:21.749)
Wonderful, well thank you for that Katie. I really appreciate being on your show today as well.

Katie Wrigley (31:25.506)
Yes, thank you for your time again. Is there any last item or tidbit or advice that you want to give the listener today who is just feeling like they're at the end of the rope with whatever chronic condition they're dealing with?

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (31:37.163)
Yeah, I would, one message I give my patients is there is always hope and I think that hope is a realistic hope. There are often strategies that haven't been explored yet. I've always been amazed by the healing power that we all have inside of our very wise human bodies and you know, it's a bit of an oversimplification but I find that a lot of what I do, my practice is simply taking out the bad stuff and putting in the good stuff and your healthy body knows what to do with that.

So I'm always amazed myself at how quickly people do get better even when they're feeling very, very ill. And it's just a wonderful way to approach it.

Katie Wrigley (32:17.036)
Yeah, I love that. And I see a lot of truth in what you're saying too of when you give the body the energy or the resources it needs through some of these different therapies you've mentioned, it knows what to do. When it has the energy, it has the resources, you don't have to tell your heart how to beat and the rest of your body works the same way. It just knows what to do when it has the proper resources. We'll just do it.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (32:18.315)
Thank

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (32:41.651)
Absolutely, we are all people that want to be healthy.

Katie Wrigley (32:44.63)
Yes, yes, at least I would like to think so. So thank you again for your time today, Dr. McCloy. It's always a pleasure and please keep doing the work you're doing. I'm a huge fan of Integrative Health Center of Maine, plan to stay on as an affiliate for the foreseeable future and continue to support you and the other amazing doctors and practitioners that are all part of Maine Integratives. Thank you so much.

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (32:46.251)
and

Sean McCloy, MD, MPH, MA (33:06.559)
Katie, thank you and be well.

Katie Wrigley (33:08.824)
Thank you. And to the audience, I will be back again next week with another episode. And until then, you as well, please be well.