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Dr Deepa Pattani of Cadillac Health Services: 5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Can Dramatically Improve Your Wellbeing

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Exercise can help improve mental health. Exercise releases endorphins which is a feel-good hormone. It also helps to keep cortisol levels in check which is released when we are stressed.

As a part of our series about “5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Deepa Pattani, Certified Functional Medicine Specialist and a Doctor of Pharmacy.

Dr. Deepa Pattani is a Certified Functional Medicine Specialist, aspiring author, as seen on Forbes, featured in Authority Magazine, CBD specialist, LDN compounder, pharmacy owner, wife and mom of two. Dr. Pattani equips frustrated, stressed professionals with tools to stop feeling fatigued, anxious and hopeless and feel sustained energy, in-control and healthy with her 7 step PATTANI protocol that utilizes diagnostic testing and 1:1 coaching so they can live their best life yet.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the story about how you first got involved in fitness and wellness?

I was born and brought up in Mumbai, India, came to the US at the age of 13 and started high school. Culture shock is an understatement but I have always been the person that figures things out. After graduating from pharmacy school, I practiced in the retail setting for about 5 years. During this time, I also married my husband and we were living the life: married, finally making a decent paycheck and no big financial responsibilities. As much as I enjoyed pharmacy, being in retail made me miss the important transitions in my patients lives, such as hospitalization, onset of diseases, being able to help them live healthy etc due to the sheer volume of prescriptions needing to be filled. It hardly left any time to actually counsel my patients. After retail, my career path turned towards hospital and critical care pharmacy. It was a fantastic opportunity and provided a lot of learning.

This was the first time I saw a lot of cracks in our current healthcare system. Western medicine is very heavily focused on symptomatic treatment and does not look at the root cause of any problems. We would help treat patients and discharge them, only for them to return a week later. After years of observation, I saw a trend. We never were trying to get to the root cause of why that patient was hospitalized in the first place. Therefore, their triggers went unnoticed and untreated. We give people the correct advice: lose weight, reduce stress, eat well but we are not showing them the path to get there. This is when I realized, western medicine doesn’t focus on prevention and so none of us are trained to help prevent diseases.

That is when in 2016, I started my own consulting company with no background in business, marketing, PR or any essentials on how to run a business. All I knew then was I wanted to help people live a healthier life, reduce the number of medications they were taking and help them be healthy naturally. We had relocated to Dallas, Texas and here was my chance to really spend time with my 2 younger ones while doing something I enjoyed. However, without the correct mentorship, there were several holes in my plan. Although I was able to help hundreds of people, I was not able to translate that into financial success.

In 2019 I started my own pharmacy and continued helping my patients in the best way I knew. As a new pharmacy owner, I came across CBD and did tons of research on its amazing healing properties, saw first-hand, how it healed my own carpal tunnel that western medicine claimed would only be fixed with surgery. I was finally having the impact I had always envisioned. As the compounding pharmacy grew, I came across another special compound, LDN (low dose naltrexone). At first, I did not give it much thought but as our compounding with LDN grew, I had no choice but to learn more about what this compound was and if it really was worth all the hype my patients would rave about. Here started my dive into functional medicine.

I had been exposed to functional medicine on and off since 2011 and had found several ways to heal my own family, not knowing what it was called or if there was any special training even available. My research into LDN revealed that there was hardly any mention of it without the term functional medicine or integrative medicine attached to it. As I learned more, I was intrigued to know more and I gave into my curiosity, joined Functional Medicine Business Academy that would not only teach me about functional medicine but how I would bring this knowledge to the masses.

I am not very comfortable being on camera, and putting myself out there. It is still something that I struggle with periodically. However, growth doesn’t occur in comfort zones and my passion to help people heal naturally outweigh my insecurities. So, when I tell my clients to change their habits and do things they are not used to doing, I understand what that takes. I want to be the cheerleader in their corner motivating and inspiring them to walk that path of health and wholeness where a full world of health, travel, and joy awaits them.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

One interesting story that stands out is during my hospital work. I was given the opportunity to precept some pharmacy students and we needed to counsel a patient that was started on warfarin (a blood thinner) and was getting ready for discharge. Our patient was a 42-year-old female who was admitted because she had multiple clots all over her body and while we were treating her with infusions that would dissolve these clots, her body kept forming new ones, even while she was hospitalized. No one knew the reason for these new clots to develop so unexpectedly and therefore this patient was likely going to be on warfarin therapy for the rest of her life.

As I was counseling this patient on proper use of warfarin, its side effects, drug interactions, etc, she happened to pour herself some liquid from a jar. I questioned her on the contents of her cup as it did not appear to be water. This is when the patient revealed that she was drinking green tea and that she had completely stopped drinking plain water and that she only drank green tea. She further revealed she drank about 3–4 full jars of green tea every day. Apparently, her family was also bringing it for her from home while she was hospitalized. Aha moment!!! Our jaws dropped as the root cause of her clots was finally revealed. We immediately paged all her doctors to get her the appropriate treatment and turned out she would not need to be on warfarin for the rest of her life. Upon further conversations, she revealed that no one had asked her about any dietary changes and that she felt since green tea was natural, she did not think it was important to tell anyone. This patient was lucky, very lucky. Let’s say she left the hospital on green tea and warfarin and someday decided to stop drinking green tea, she would have likely suffered an internal bleed and possibly died from massive internal hemorrhage.

Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?

This is not a mistake but it is humorous. I was a new pharmacist and my now husband and I were still dating then. It was a long-distance relationship and he was very sick and down with something. He was given a prescription for a very commonly prescribed antibiotic called Z pak. Of course, I wanted to know what was prescribed to him so I asked him to read me the paper prescription. This was before electronic prescriptions and pre smart phone days so he couldn’t just send me a picture. He said it all looked gibberish to him and could not tell me what he was prescribed. I tried to guide him over the phone for what to look for and to try anyway. Well, after a few minutes of back and forth, he tells me he was prescribed 2 pac (as in the rapper). We both got a good laugh out of it and I identified the medicine as Zpak but it taught me an important lesson. For a non-medical person, the names of the medications can itself be so difficult to understand, let alone the entire slew of directions, side effects etc. that most health care personnel will just rattle off when speaking with patients. This practice leaves patients with so much confusion. As a common practice, I try to ask open-ended questions that will force my clients to speak up and give us a chance to address their concerns.

Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the fitness and wellness field? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?

I believe I am an authority figure in the fitness and wellness field because my experiences have led me here. As a pharmacist, I worked in every area of pharmaceuticals whether that was retail, hospital, industry, consulting and as an independent business owner. I have had the opportunity to witness the life trajectories of both people: ones that rely on pharmaceuticals and those that questioned the norms and healed the root causes.

My unique contribution to the world of fitness and wellness is my seven step PATTANI protocol which has been carefully planned and executed to help clients get to the root cause of their diseases using diagnostic testing and 1:1 coaching. The PATTANI Protocol is a method of helping people naturally, without pharmaceuticals, and live a life full of health, wellness and joy.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

We all need help from time to time. I am a firm believer of 2 things:

  1. When your passion and vision are bigger than yourself, the universe will align itself to help you.
  2. When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

As such I found my first inspiration when I started to listen to the LDN radio show podcast. It was here that I first heard about functional medicine. I had been practicing functional medicine for years, not knowing what it was really called.

I have found tremendous support and learning from the Dhru Purohit podcast and from the teachings of Dr. Mark Hyman. “Functional Medicine is about causes, not symptoms. It is getting to the root of the problem”. This quote really resonated with me as I had always felt it and laid the foundation for everything I have accomplished since.

Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. We all know that it’s important to eat more vegetables, eat less sugar, exercise more, and get better sleep etc. But while we know it intellectually, it’s often difficult to put it into practice and make it a part of our daily habits. In your opinion what are the 3 main blockages that prevent us from taking the information that we all know, and integrating it into our lives?

In my opinion the 3 main blockages that prevent us from integrating the useful information into our lives are:

  1. Simplicity: Yes, you read that correctly. Sometimes the most impactful habits are the simplest. However, we are used to making things complicated. So, when we hear a simple change, such as chew your food before swallowing, we waive it off as insignificant.
  2. Lack of knowledge: We may have heard of a lot of ideas and no one can implement them all. If we knew how powerful small changes can be and how it can positively influence our lives, we would be more inclined to implementing the change. For example, everyone knows sugar is unhealthy but knowing that won’t make a change. However, if we explained what that means: Less inflammation, no more brain fog, better sleep, more energy- now there may be more implementation.
  3. Converting motivation to habits: Motivation only lasts for so long. We have all created resolutions that we haven’t stuck with before January even ends. That is why we need to adapt micro habits (small changes in daily behavior) that can slowly be changed into permanent habits incorporated into our daily life. Implementing new habits is a tedious process and the amount of time it takes to instill a new habit is directly proportional to how complicated the new habit actually is. I recommend start small: 1 extra glass of water a day, broken down into exactly when you would drink it and do not skip any days while incorporating the habit. Motivation can help us get started, but habits will keep us going.

Can you please share your “5 Non-Intuitive Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”? (Please share a story or an example for each, and feel free to share ideas for mental, emotional and physical health.)

1. Hydrate. Most of us are chronically dehydrated. Dehydration can also disguise itself as hunger which can make us overeat. Hydrating simply with water helps to flush out the toxins that otherwise cause inflammation. I’m sure we have all heard of friends that gave up alcohol, caffeine or sugary sodas and replaced those with good old water and lost a ton of weight. That is not hype, that simply is the power of hydration.

2. Rest. Yes, rest is underrated. Sleep is a time when our bodily systems repair themselves. Building a healthy sleep routine is a foundational step to improving wellbeing. It is a crucial time to detoxify our organs. Our stressful lives make us feel guilty or incapable for resting, however, we cannot pour into others if our cup itself is empty. Rest is important for mental healing. I have been helping people heal for over 17 years, and during that time, I have seen countless women over stress, over extend, put themselves last, all for the sake of others. However, when they learn about self-care, rest and sleep, there is a shift in mindset which is extremely powerful as they take the time to rest and heal.

3. Eating a balanced meal. Eating clean, unprocessed foods is just the beginning. Functional medicine teaches us that food is medicine. Our chronic diseases are a result of years of junk food at the end of our forks. It took years of neglect with food to put us into our current situation. If we want to turn our lives around, we absolutely can, by putting real food inside us. Real, unprocessed food can provide the nourishment you need to function, thrive and be your best self. Also, it is important to note that just because a food item is healthy, does not mean it is right for you. I had several clients that believed they ate well and healthy but upon further diagnostic testing, it was revealed that they had allergies to avocados, corn, eggs and nuts. These foods, although considered healthy, were adding to their inflammation and disease.

4. Movement. Exercise can be a huge stress reliever. 30 minutes of exercise a day can significantly improve your overall health. No one exercise fits the bill here. Find what you enjoy doing whether it’s walking a pet, a jog, dancing, pilates, stretching, aerobics, strength training or yoga. I tend to utilize a client’s interests and medical ability and try to meet them where they are when designing an exercise routine. Another thing I like to recommend is to commit to any changes for a minimum of 90 days. 90 days is enough time for people to see results from their actions and it continues to provide the motivation to keep going. 90 days is also enough time to help turn that motivation into habits that can last a lifetime.

5. Mindfulness: In today’s world, we are all glued to our screens and the majority of us are operating on auto-pilot. Small tweaks such as family screen free time in the home an hour before bedtime and an hour after waking up can have tremendous health benefits. It is the difference between quality meals, real conversations, proper melatonin production, restful sleep, waking up rejuvenated, having time to meal prep or exercise in the mornings, and that is just the beginning.

As an expert, this might be obvious to you, but I think it would be instructive to articulate this for the public. Aside from weight loss, what are 3 benefits of daily exercise? Can you explain?

Exercise has tons of benefits besides just weight loss. Some non-conventional benefits of exercise include:

  1. Reduced risk of heart disease, helping to manage blood sugar levels and maintain insulin levels.
  2. Exercise can help improve mental health. Exercise releases endorphins which is a feel-good hormone. It also helps to keep cortisol levels in check which is released when we are stressed.
  3. Exercise promotes better sleep, helps improve energy and can also put the spark back in your sex life. Now, who’s up for some push-ups?

For someone who is looking to add exercise to their daily routine, which 3 exercises would you recommend that are absolutely critical?

I am a firm believer of doing anything that you actually enjoy and doesn’t feel like work. Rule number 1 is to have fun!! For those that need some sort of structure, here are my recommendations:

  1. Aerobic exercise: Brisk walk, jog, Zumba, spinning, etc.; pretty much anything that gets the heart rate up.
  2. Strength training: helps to build muscle that protects our bones as we age and protects us from arthritis, fractures, joint pain, etc.
  3. Yoga: whether it’s flow yoga or breathwork. Yoga teaches us to focus on our breath and remain calm and composed under pressure and helps us in our practice of mindfulness. Yoga helps us deal with the stresses of everyday life by keeping our central nervous system in the parasympathetic mode which is crucial for healing and relieving inflammation. The practice of yoga is very beneficial for spiritual health and overall wellbeing.

Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?

One of my favorite books of all times is Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris. I love that the book is divided in 3 sections: Fitness, Financial and Spiritual. Tim Ferris has tons of examples in the book where he has interviewed the best in the world of fitness, finances and spiritualism. On any given day, I can read any one example and just learn something new. It talks about daily routines of these titans and is very relatable. It somehow makes me feel that if they could do it, so can I. One of the quotes that deeply resonates with me is “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion” -Tim Ferris.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

This is an exciting question. If there is one thing that I feel very strongly about is the number of medications we take as a society. We are only one-third of the world’s population, yet we consume over 90 percent of the medications in the world. Yet, we’re not the healthiest bunch. Clearly, we are doing something wrong. If I could encourage people to do one thing, it would be to always ask the question “why”? For example: Why do I have high blood pressure now when I did not have it the first 40 years of my life? Why do I need to take this medication for the rest of my life? Do I need to continue this anti-depressant that I started 5 years ago when I went through a divorce?

If we can get into the habit of questioning the norms, we will be able to get to the real problems and then maybe begin to heal them. We all need help at times and need to take the prescribed medications for us to remain healthy, however, we need to question if the purpose for starting the medication has been met. If so, do things need to continue or can we explore alternatives with our doctors and so on.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

My all-time favorite quote is by Paul Coelho: “Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you”. This quote really helped me when I was going through a pretty rough time. It helped me understand that I am enough just the way I am. Instead of focusing on doing more, and changing, maybe we can focus on doing less of something that doesn’t help us in our journey.

Unbecoming is like peeling the layers of an onion and shedding and leaving behind all the things that are holding us back. Maybe it’s a bad habit, a toxic relationship, whatever it may be. It’s about recognizing those items that are not fulfilling and letting them go so we can finally step into becoming the person you were always meant to be. I am a sociable person but enjoy my quiet time just as much. I don’t think I quite understood that until the pandemic. In our busy go, go, go lives, there was no time to slow down or smell the roses. When the world shut down and we all had to turn inward, I learnt so many things about myself that I had known for a while but had just forgotten in the busy pre-pandemic lives. I finally had the time to tap into my creativity and my vision and was able to create this incredible business I have today. We all have just this one life, if not now, then when?

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

I would love to meet and have breakfast or even a coffee with Mark Cuban. I am a huge fan of shark tank and I owe a great deal of my entrepreneurial nature and curiosity to shark tank. Meeting Mark Cuban would be a huge dream come true.

What is the best way our readers can follow you online?

Website: DrDeepaPattani.com

Facebook: @Deepa Pattani.

Instagram: @Dr.Deepa.Pattani

Linked In: @Dr.Deepa.Pattani

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

Thank you for the opportunity to share my story. I thoroughly enjoyed this interview!!


Dr Deepa Pattani of Cadillac Health Services: 5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Can Dramatically Improve Your… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.