Marla Miller 0:35

Welcome back to Open Minded Healing. Today we're going to be talking to all of you out here who have struggled with chronic illness that no doctor can diagnose or treat properly, and how the doctors may be dismissing one very important element in their assessments, which is the mind-body connection. My guest today, Haresh Patel, spent over 50 years struggling with an undiagnosed condition that stumped a dozen doctors, leading him to challenge the limitations of data-led healthcare. By remaining curious and determined to find answers, Haresh began down a path that ultimately led to not only answers, but to profound healing. Welcome, Haresh.

Haresh Patel 1:21

Thank you, Marla. I'm honored to be on as a guest.

Marla Miller 1:24

So you have a fascinating story which you have turned into a book called The Ghost in My Body.

Haresh Patel 1:31

It's called The Ghost in My Body, what 12 Doctors Couldn't Find the Answer For.

Marla Miller 1:37

Let's start with when did this chronic illness that was undiagnosed, when did it begin? What were the first symptoms?

Haresh Patel 1:45

Yeah, um, so the problems actually started much early in life. You just don't notice them because you're young and you're invincible. And so at middle school, I started getting dandruff and dry skin or on the elbows or on the knees. But you know, you just kind of move on and it got progressively worse. I would say the chronic stage hit roughly about the time I started my company Mercatus in 2009. And it ebbed and flowed and got continuously worse through the entire journey. And so the peak of this rash, and the rash was like a thousand mosquito bites with welts that were, if they fell on the joint, it was really painful. And a lot of times I look like Elephant Man when it got out of control. And it was just painful to experience it. And it peaked at the beginning of when I started the company, and it peaked right about the time we were selling the company to State Street Bank. We became the world's largest private market asset management platform connecting disparate data and documents to create a picture for investors. And so it was during those 10 or 12 years that I also had the curiosity to say, what the heck is going on? Why am I not in charge of my own health? Why am I just taking these shots called Zoler, which are $3,000 a shot, and I can't leave anywhere and have to come back to Stanford every four weeks? And so I built the mental curiosity to say, enough is enough. I've got to figure this out because modern medicine doesn't seem to have an answer. So it was a lifelong journey for, like you said, over 55 years. But that story had to be excavated as to why. And modern medicine was busy poking and prodding with tests and MRIs and endoscopies and colonoscopies and looking at everything possible except for if you look at the cover of my book, it's a surgeon with his mask and his complete outfit, and all he can see is the protective eyeglasses. And the image of my mom and I are there in plain sight. He just can't see it. And we'll dive into that story, but the symptoms were there from the beginning, but they became chronic between 2009 and 2021.

Marla Miller 3:48

Those symptoms you're talking about that began early, even with the dry skin and the dandruff. Did you ever go see a doctor or a dermatologist or anything? And what were they telling you?

Haresh Patel 4:01

So let's talk specifically about when you're growing up, yeah, you see the doctor, right? I was being bullied in school. And so I was throwing up in the morning or dry heaves. And so at some point my parents noticed and said, well, let's take you to the doctor. Well, it's just stress, the kids are bullying you. And I didn't even share that with the doctor, but it was just calm down, whatever it was, just move on. I don't think he even noticed the dry skin or the dandruff, didn't poke into that. But let's talk about that 10-year period. When I got it the first time, it started at a farmer's market in Saratoga. I'm with my son, and I'm a foodie. So we got some curry and chicken to a nan and nan. And I took a big scoop of it and heaved it into my mouth, and well, it was tasty. But then I sat down in the car and all of a sudden I just I slumped in my chair and I said, Amir, Philick, I'm having a heart attack. My, you know, my forehead is sweating, and I kind of felt a bit of an anaphylactic kind of choking reaction, but it went away. So in hindsight, stupidity, I should have gone to the hospital because what if I was having a heart attack? Luckily, I wasn't. But that was my first kind of like, oops, something went off. And then that evening we went to a party and it got worse. I was beginning to start getting a rash under the neckline over my chest. And then the next two, three days, it just got progressively worse and worse. To the point when I woke up on the third morning, I didn't realize it, but my eyes were puffed up, I couldn't even open them up. And when I looked in the mirror, I saw an elephant man. It was scary. I said, How am I ever going to function? How am I ever going to go to work? But my scientific brain kicked in and I said, Oh, I ate something red here, I ate something red here. There's something in the food. And so I just went on a water diet. And the longer I stayed on the water diet, the rash dissipated. So my natural inclination was, I've got some sort of allergy. So my doctor, who was a concierge doctor, started doing, I would say, more comprehensive tests than you normally get. And he identified low iron. And you're going to find that in all these diagnoses, there's always an issue on oxygenation. So iron is what carries oxygen to all the parts of your body. So he said, Your iron is so low, I'm surprised you're even standing. There's got to be internal bleeding. So we did endoscopy, colonoscopy. We didn't find anything. We dropped a camera that, you know, tumbled to the small intestine, didn't see anything. So he said, Well, just take iron supplements. And then meanwhile, he sent me to an allergy specialist. We took a blood test that identified 30 or 40 items that could be potentially causing the rash. And since I was noticing red, I tied it to paprika. As soon as they eliminated the paprika, I could keep it under control. But it took me a year to isolate paprika because paprika is in golden french fries. To make them golden, they soak them in paprika. To make mustard, that golden yellow, they add paprika to it. So the last mystery was mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is made out of paprika extract. It's gelatin, so it's actually the highest form of concentration. The point is it went away for 10 years, life went back to normal. And then it struck like a vengeance, right about when we're negotiating selling the company. And I remember texting my doctor and he said, Well, sounds like you know what to do. And I said, Yep, I'm going to eliminate the paprika. And it didn't help. And every week it got more and it kept taking more and more histamines. I said, Dr. Chu, you have to send me to a specialist. This is crazy. It was worse than what it was the first time. So he sent me to an allergy specialist at Stanford who happened to work with an immunology specialist in tandem, but she herself was an allergy specialist. She was going to give me an allergy test, which she poked the back with, you know, all kinds of substances. And she did something very unique, part of connecting the dots. She spent an hour with me. You don't get an hour with the doctor. And she spent a lot of time understanding what was going on, why it was going on. And then it wasn't until the very end of the hour. She said, Oh, five more minutes. She goes, I forgot to play doctor. I need to look at your nose. I need to look at your ears. I need to look at your throat. And she looked at my nostrils and said, Oh, what are they small nostrils? Your oxygenation may be an issue. Again, back to that same thesis, but from a different angle. And the theology team was in the room. And then she said, Oh, I forgot one more thing. And remember, patients sometimes don't know if you're then on asked. Yeah. Sometimes doctors don't know what to ask. And in her particular case, had she not asked this question or request, I might have continued to be undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. She said, Oh, I forgot to listen to your heart. I said, Well, Dr. Choi, I forgot to mention to you, when I open my shirt, you're going to see that my hair stands up. I'd get goosebumps. And she, for a five-foot-five woman, you know, fairly mild mannered, she shrieked about as loud as I've heard somebody shriek. Oh my God, you don't have an allergy. You've never been having that. You've been misdiagnosed. You have this thing called uticaria. It's an auto-isease. And she was just so excited. She goes, she told the allergy team, leave the room, don't need you here. And her ass, sorry, I took you off antihistamines for four days, which means I was puffed up like a balloon. And uh she goes, I'm so sorry to put you through this. And here, take one Zertec or Xyal. Here, no, take four. Let's get you under normal. And then she diagnosed that what ureticaria is. It is a submarine level kind of cells that are below your skin surface that float all over that are histamines. In your case, the submarine hatches open all the histamines that escaped, so you can't fight inflammation. So anything will trigger inflammation. And there's only two solutions take Zolaire, which is a shot designed for asthma patients that happen to work on euroscaria by accident, or you have to go on presinodone, which is a steroid. And I would highly recommend you don't do that. Let's hope that Zolaire works because for you, as a diabetic, presentone has come as like a killer. Your blood sugars will go out of control. So we were thinking cost would work, right?

Marla Miller 9:39

Yeah, that's not two very good choices at all. The no, they're not. The shot limits will limit your travel or doing anything, but the cost is crazy. And the fact that any kind of shot like that, I'm sure, has its own side effects. And then the prednisone, like you said, is not something anyone should be on long term, especially. And although it's supposed to help with inflammation, right, it can create a lot of serious side effects. It can affect your vision and depression and your teeth and bones.

Haresh Patel 10:18

No, it's something we want to avoid, like the plague, if you can.

Marla Miller 10:21

Yeah, yeah. Well, so she gave you these two choices of the shots or the prednisone. And so you decided to do the shots?

Haresh Patel 10:34

Yeah, I mean, she gets it two options. She says, I'm not gonna go with option two, which is the presno-done. We have to go with Zolaire and let's hope it works was just working a couple of my patients. And so it worked. That was the good news. The other good news was we had sold a company by then. So we were part of State Street Bank, which is the world's largest custody bank. So their insurance policy was way better than what we had as an independent company, as a startup. So luckily that was covered. So I felt really good and it went back to normal. But this time I had that curiosity, why? There's got to be the solution. And anything I found online, there's no answer for your Dakaria. Live with it, suppress it. I didn't find anything. So it happened to be that we were in celebration mode that we sold a company. So my wife and I went down to Costa Rica, and she picked a retreat called the Retreat Costa Rica, randomly, right? It was a wellness center that was up and coming, had great reviews, and she wanted to do the weight loss program. And being a foodie, I could afford joining her in that program. And so that was the intent. And then we were going to tour the rest of the country, possibly even look for a second home there and just, you know, enjoy the spoils of victory from selling the company. But everybody there was, this was right after COVID. So everybody was there for more mental anxiety. Something happened in their life. There were people that quit their jobs, they were part of the mass resignation, and everybody was there raving about this doctor from India, this Ayurvedic doctor. And I was a little bit taken aback here. We are in the middle of Costa Rica in a rainforest, uh high perched above the ocean. And you've got an Indian doctor and an Indian couple, kind of random. I just said, Told Vina, I said, we should meet him. Everybody's talking about his life-changing, game-changing, walks on water. And so it was more just social, right? To meet somebody from our origin country. And uh he piqued my interest. We did meet one night for about you know half an hour. And I said, Vina, we should sign it for his paid program. Me for my rash and your decaria. Let's find out the why. You've got to get to root cause. If you don't get to root cause, you can't solve the problem. Only getting treated. You need to get cured. And I said, In your case, Vino, he said, you struggle with weight loss and you know, you try all kinds of stuff, but nothing seemed to drop. So maybe there's something he can help uncover. Now he did another thing similar to the first doctor. He gave me a two-hour appointment, reasonably priced. And then he also did another thing that nobody else had done. He goes, I want to see your medical records. Yeah, I'm at a wellness clinic. There's no way for me to give you blood tests and stuff. But if you can collect all your records, now two and a half years ago or three years ago, it was very difficult. Today the world has gotten better in terms of collecting your own records. But he said, Can you collect? And I learned how hard it was. HIPAA doesn't apply to the patient, it applies to the industry or the apparatus. And so struggling to get all my records emailed or faxed, all kinds of excuses from every doctor on how it was impossible based on HIPAA. But I managed to do it and I keep giving it to him. And then he did something we did at Mercados. He plotted it. He manually plotted on a graph paper what it looked like. And there, I saw the rash back when I was in middle school. Right? It was from the beginning, it was just escalating like a horror movie, getting worse. You know, 93, new job, second child, first big spike of a rash, you know, for three days that was uncontrollable. And then that 2009, 2021 was all there in plain sight. You just don't see it until you connect the dots. So he did something we did at Mercatus, collect old records, make a picture out of it, longitudinal picture. And then the two hours. And those were kind of the recipes that we all need to understand and excavate our story. And he went through one hour of medical questioning, like Dr. Choi did, the allergy special at Stanford. But then he shifted to a different mode, almost like a psychiatrist. It didn't feel like it at first. But he asked a question that every doctor asked it just differently. It's all the art of questioning. Everybody else asked, Are you stressed? Because remember, stress creates about 80% of our problems that are medically related. It starts somewhere in the mind with stress or anxiety or depression. Uh there it is the source of the what I call the pearl under the 20 mattresses. Remember that fable of the princess that gets irritated by the pearl, and you have to peel every layer of the mattresses to get to what the problem is. Yeah, Princess and the P. Princess and the P very summarized it faster than I did. Uh, but he asked me a different question because when's the first time in life you were stressed? He was making me time travel. I said, Well, middle school, I told him the story about being bullied, right? Only Indian kid amongst 2,000 students, dressed a little funny, looked a little funny, had a weird name, and life wasn't pleasant. But he didn't want to accept that answer. Let's go back further, let's go back further. And he finally came to my age five or six. And he happened to ask another question: what's your emotional levels at that age? You have to really dig deep in your memory. I said, Well, that's the joke in the family. I don't have emotions. I don't cry. I don't understand why people laugh at movies, I don't understand why they cry during movies. I don't even laugh during a comedian thing. And I said, My dad always says, You're like your mom, you have no emotions. Well, tell me about your mom. I said, Well, she passed away in a car accident. I was in the car with her. And it was a single car accident. We tumbled off the freeway, she got thrown from the car. I got saved by all the blankets in the back. See, we were moving from Colorado to New Hampshire because my dad got his first job as a professor in Manchester, as a physics professor. And we didn't make it past the first day of the trip. And so uh he wanted to go deep. He said, Can you, because we're Hindu from religion perspective, you want to move to spirituality. Did you bury a cremate? In Hinduism, we cremate. In our case, we buried her because that was one of her weird wishes. She told my dad a month before this whole thing happened, only a 27-year-old, hey, I don't want to ever be she's sitting on the porch with him. I don't ever want to be burned. Just scares the heck out of me. He said, Why are you saying that? I'm just telling you how I feel. And the other thing is, I don't want to ever go back to India. She apparently had a really miserable time the four years he was studying here, and we, she and I were in India by ourselves in a joint family. And it was just odd, but the conversation moved on. So he honored her respect. And also, you're in the middle of a Kansas-Colorado border. In the late 60s, there's no Hindu priest. Even though as a 29-year-old, he didn't even know the rituals of what to do, right? So we, you know, small cemetery in a small town in the middle of nowhere, buried her, and we buried the story. And when I explained all this to him, he closed his book. It was now 10 in the evening. We had my two hours are up, and he said, Harash, it goes, I've got bad news. There is no cure for your rash. It didn't surprise me because that's what I'd heard from 12 other doctors, right? Yeah.

unknown 17:01

Yeah.

Haresh Patel 17:01

But there is a prescription I have for you. And this is where things get strange. Remember, I'm in Costa Rica, the jungle is speaking, it's loud, it's dark, it feels like I'm in a tree house, um, it's raining outside. And he said, What happened is that your mom's spirit never rose. It hung on to you so tightly you can't breathe. Remember, breathe, oxygenation, the low iron, the small concept, just from a different angle. And because you don't express emotions, you're boiling inside. So no wonder you have a rash. So what you need to do is you need to go to a town in India called Bodhkaya and perform a prayer, and you will be cured, she will rise, and you will be cured. And I'm like, oh my god, I'm an engineer from Notre Dame, you know, been a tech executive. She did hit me with a bat on my head because she opened up, she hit a harness nest around all the emotions that were locked up for years, right? Because that story, we didn't talk much about it. My dad can't live that pain that he called accident, right? It was a single car accident, so he's still living in that grief, and I'm his counselor almost. Every week will he'll break down, and I'll say, Dad, it was an accident, right? That's what accidents are. And uh, but it stunned me enough that I don't know, I can't describe it. I didn't sleep that night. But I've got these two I've got the haresh on the right hand side saying that's a bunch of croc. Right? I'm an engineer, we're scientists, this doesn't happen. The other side saying, You fool, your mom's speaking to you. Listen up. So I've got these conflicting voices going on in my head, and just in how I'm processing this information. I probably at that stage would have left it alone and dismissed it as kooky. But a month later, I'm at a wedding in LA. So now two continents later, random wedding, we're not like close to the family. We don't even know the groom's side, we know the bride's side. There's no way that story could have leaked out. And I've never shared a lot with a lot of people the accident and what happened and blah, blah, blah. But I happened to run into the groom's mom after she gave her toast at the wedding reception. What I didn't know at the time is that she was a medium and evidential, which means she's not able to speak somebody else's voice, but she is hearing things and she can ask questions and be a communicator in between. And there was a voice she kept hearing the night before she met me that you're going to be helping somebody. You're going to be helping somebody. A woman's voice that kept saying, Bring me home, bring me home, bring me home. And it had jarred her the night before when she should be thinking about her son's wedding. And so after she gave the toe, she also felt really restless. And her, what she calls her soulmate sister, said, I can see, Sherry, that you're you need to go help somebody. It's okay, I'm fine, you can leave. And that's how we booked each other in the lobby. And uh when she saw me, I I don't know, I normally don't go and socialize, but she is the groom's mom. So I I walked over and uh she had this strange hand locked together, her right hand trying to hold her right hand down. And the voice is getting louder, like, you need to help this person. She bring me home. And all of a sudden her arm flung open. She goes, Can I scan you? And I said, Oh, wow, this is kind of bizarre. Now, but if it was anybody else, I'd probably say no, but it was a groom's mommy. You don't want to be insulting. So I said, Uh uh, okay. And she normally does a scan from top to bottom, from head to toe, without touching you. And then she makes you turn around to top to bottom. That's her approach. And she doesn't even finish that. She goes to my heart and she goes, Oh my God, I can feel your mother right here. What's with this guilt? She goes, Your mom is holding on to you so tightly, exact word for word, a month later, different continent, different venue. Serendipitally, she's giving the same, she's holding on to you so tightly that you can't breathe. In her case, she said it's malicious. She said she wants to take you now, but she's so lonely. She wants you to be with her. And you need to tell mom, let me go. Now my head is not hit with a bat, it's split opening too. I it this just doesn't happen.

Marla Miller 21:02

What was your reaction? I mean, you're in the middle of a wedding celebration. So how do you handle that news?

Haresh Patel 21:10

I I I didn't. I mean, I I like I said, I don't express emotion. I don't think my dad's ever seen me cry. My kids haven't ever seen me cry. And I started cheering up, and then she goes, Oh, there I go again. I know my son's gonna give me a hard time because I keep making people cry everywhere I go.

Marla Miller 21:24

So she she really kind of removed a block, actually.

Haresh Patel 21:28

She removed the block, yeah. And her whole thing is tell mom, gotta let me go. If I die now, my spirit will rise and I'll reincarnate and you'll still be here for eternity. We'll never reunite. So you've got to let me live my life and die the way I've been intended to die, not because you want me to take me. So um I had already started the process, quite frankly, after Costa Rica to figure out how to re-exhume my mom's body. And that fast forward the whole process. We did that. Um, Sherry, who is the girl's mom, um, helped me communicate with her. I followed up with her on a Zoom call like this. And um, she helped me communicate with her. We got her permission to exhume her body and cremate her, and she was okay with that. And then we had a big discussion on again. I can't hear her. Sherry's kind of locking her fingers and asking the question is it okay to reexhume you? If it unlocks easily, that means I forget which way it works, but if it stays locked, I think it's no. If it opens up, it means yes. And uh well, where would you like to be cremated? It wasn't uh it wasn't with my dad in New Hampshire, it wasn't back in our Colorado home, uh, definitely wasn't back in India. When she finally says, Sarah. Toga, she goes, yeah, that's where she wants to come back home. Remember that voice she was hearing? Bring me home home. And so um we brought mom home, and that's when I cried, um, like I should have when I was six years old, or throughout my whole life. All those emotions poured out when the hearse, you know, pulled up into our driveway, and then we cremated her and we eventually scattered her ashes in Hakun Bay. That was a bit of a diversion. Remember the other thing she didn't want is to go back to India. I had planned to take her back to India to the holiest river, the Ganga River, which is where every Indian wants to be spread. But remember, she never wanted to go back to India. She had a really rough time those four years with the extended family. So I got COVID at the same time, and the Zolaire stopped working. I was probably at the worst stage of my life, and I'm dealing with her ashes coming home and uh and the COVID and Zolair is not working. They have to put me on presnodone. It's the only option to breathe. And so we had like a seven-day, 24-7 vigil between cardiologist, diabetic specialist, my concierge doctor, and we talk about coordinating activities to make sure that Presno didn't do something worse. But that was the only way to suppress that rash. But the message from her was I don't want to go back to India. I was able to finally communicate with her, speaking to her, not again, not hearing her voice, but kind of talking to her. It's like, mom, calm down. I'm taking, I'm cremating you because remember, we said that if we want to reunite, your your soul has to go to a different place and reincarnate and got mom to calm down. And this all sounds crazy. Again, remember, you're talking to a son of a physicist, a guy that got an electrical engineering degree and lived in tech world here in Silicon Valley. Um but here I was.

Marla Miller 24:10

So you're saying that what was increasing your symptoms was when this was all happening, when you were making these choices to cremate her body and to then take her back to India.

Haresh Patel 24:24

I'd already gotten permission from the Indian government, from the Indian consulate to carry the ashes back on the flight to India.

Marla Miller 24:30

Oh, so that's when it increased was when you were planning on taking her back to India. Yeah. But she was saying no.

Haresh Patel 24:38

No, and so then I talked, I talked to mom. It was a planning phase. I was close, I had my plane tickets booked. I had the permit issue to take her ashes with me on the flight. And so it was all planned, but she had different plans. And so when I finally got to Half Moon Bay, uh, Half Moon Bay, as you know, is foggy. It's always kind of I've never been there in the 35 years I lived in the Bay Area, where it's a nice day. That particular day there was no fog, bank out. There was incredibly bright. And uh, you know, we scattered our ashes and I felt like a thousand pounds of weight had lifted off of me. It didn't cure my, by the way, it didn't not cure my earticaria. I think I had a bit of a hidden agenda. Maybe this release of this grief might help. I still didn't really believe in the whole go to bodgaya and perform this puja called Pindan. Um, so that's the journey. Ultimately, I did get a chance to go back to New Delhi. I was celebrating my going away party from my team. And I was an hour away as I studied it. My wife could see I was looking at something on the phone. She goes, Oh, you're looking at trying to go to Bodh Gaia. She's kind of rolling her eyes. And I said, Yeah, I said, I'm just realizing there's only one flight a day from New Delhi to Bodh Gaya. It's a small rural town. We might as well try it. I don't want to live on these shots. And nothing else has worked. You know, releasing her ashes and stuff all kind of was nice and really important for me to do, to complete the cycle of grief. So we went to Bodh Gaya. She supported me. She organized the priests, the town. It was where Buddha got his enlightenment, and they built a Hindu temple on that, on around that tree. It was a nice ceremony, but I can tell you there was nothing spiritual that happened. It was not a very pretty town. There was nothing much to do there. Um, the hotel was nice, but everything outside the compound was icky and gross. There was no light that parted, there's no rain that came down while the sun was shining. We walked away pretty disappointed. In fact, all the priests were kind of crooks, they were just trying to shake down more money from us. And we left, flew away and disappointed. Like, okay, oh well, we tried the last possible option of what it'll take to cure. Finished our vacation. Remember, I'm four-week leash, I have my flight flipped back to the Bay Area, Silicon Valley. To get the shot. Get the shot. And we stopped by in London because my daughter was doing, my youngest was doing an overseas program. So we followed our schedule and came back, and I was two days away from my shot. And by now, I normally begin to feel the itch and the tingle. I didn't feel it. So I just said, okay, well, I called Dr. Dr. Choi. I said, Can I push it out? She said, Yeah, let's try. And pushed it out, pushed it out. And it's been three years now, three and a half years. That's amazing. Yeah. So in my book, I talk about maybe it was a placebo effect. Maybe it was really the spirituality connection, but somebody got to my root cause. Maybe it's all of the above, we don't know, right? I think there's so much of science we don't know. But if there's something for your listeners, all I can say is, you're in charge of your own health. If you can tell your full story to a doctor who can actually listen and comprehend and connect the dots, you can get to root cause. And that's the company I'm building now. If I, you know, if there is a reason for this journey that my mom put me through and why I had to go through it, is I was able to connect the dots. And I said, aha. With diagnostics, which is not really a discipline in itself, that whole show, Dr. House MD, that function doesn't exist. There is no chief diagnostic officer in a hospital. And so if I can put in AI the ability for us to excavate our stories, that's what the IP will be. And you can take that story with you when you see a practitioner that may or may not be in modern medicine, they might be able to get to that aha sooner, like Dr. Vinod did. And so hopefully I'm in we can end years of suffering because there's five major ailments that we have between sleep and anxiety, depression, pain, headaches, that have 133 million of us floating around, either suffering or taking medication or drugs or whatever you want to call them. We're not solving the problem. We're just masking it. 133 million people are spending $136 billion outside of what insurance covers to try to solve those five ailments. It's crazy. So my mission in life now is to build this technology platform. I'm launching the funding process now. I've got a nice team built up. But we want to build a place where people can get optionality of things beyond modern medicine, uh, things that we don't understand. Uh, that's not to say modern medicine is bad, but it's it should be part of the choice, not the only choice. And hopefully, the real secret sauces of finding out and extracting or excavating our story. There's a lot of things we don't remember, a lot of things we don't want to talk about. But the more you can help explain what happened to you in life and put it longitudinally and overlap it with your symptoms, that's how you connect the dots. So that's my mission in that knowledge to is to build this technology platform to hopefully help people that are stuck like me.

Marla Miller 29:30

Well, that's an awesome mission, by the way, but your whole story is so incredible. And, you know, just the people that were put in your path and the information because you remained curious. So many people shut that down, you know, that go to the doctor and shut that off. And they just take one answer as the answer, even though it's not providing them with a solution. I'm very impressed at how you remain curious and determined to find an answer and how you used your background, like how your background has come into play. And whereas now, you know, you have this engineering background, and now through this whole process, you've come up with the idea to create a platform that will help, you know, millions of people. It it's possible that it could help millions of people.

Haresh Patel 30:28

So yeah, I think they had to come together, right? They were all there and they came together in kind of one moment. I was visiting a doctor before I did that one that trip to India to Bodkaya. I met a doctor in Sacramento. He's actually a vet. Then he got a degree in medicine, didn't like what he saw, and so he never finished his residency. He went and got a degree in holistic medicine. So he actually runs two clinics, a vet clinic and a human clinic, different part of town, um, treating people and treating animals. And uh, it was the session with him. I still was not ready to believe the spirit and the consciousness. So I was still digging to understand why. He also gave me two hours and he also did something unique. His his office, you know, made me fill out the same forms. We all fell out that we're tired of filling out. His one nurse came in, did all the vitals, ask all the questions, why are you here? All the history of medication, blah, blah, blah. And he comes in, she hands him the envelope or the manila folder, and he says, I don't want to look at this folder, Haresh. I don't even want to know why you're here. I want to know who you are. That's the secret, right? Is that they need to know who you are. We lost that connection when we had family doctors that were the family doctor, they visited your home, spent time, had coffee. Yeah. But the parameter they knew about the issues going on. And again, stress is the root cause of a lot, a lot of ailments. So it was after he was finished with two hours and grilling me, and it didn't feel like a grilling, but it was grilling. He went on the whiteboard and I told him the story that I've shared with you and the and your listeners. And he simplified, he goes to her harass. She goes, I'm going to play Sherlock Holmes. The issue that you've had is you've seen 12 specialists who each were right, but they were wrong because they reached behind the curtain and felt only one part of the elephant. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take the entire curtain off because they're all connected. And everything you told me, my mom is simplified. It's the energy quadrant. Energy includes stress, trauma, PTSD, right? All the things that happen in your head, they're connected. And when he's put those eight quadrants up on his whiteboard, I lost my mind. Because that's exactly what I solved in fintech. Our customers were multi-billion dollar investors in private market assets, which are like real estate and infrastructure and energy power plants and stuff, physical assets. And they had the same issue. They had thousands of documents, millions of financial models that were very sophisticated, which are equal to our doctor notes and the financial model kind of are equal to all the data that you get when you get tests taken. And what we did is we centralized all that, we structured it so they could plot it and make show them a picture. And they go, ah, I get it. Now I can make better decisions. In their case, we helped them with scenario analysis, which is why the Trump, you know, the Supreme Court just struck down the tariffs and oh, but he retaliated and added 10%. Nope, he made it 15%. Well, each of those have butterfly effects on valuation of portfolios. They took six weeks to figure out what that means into hours. And so in the body, it's lots of notes, lots of tests, and the only difference is the scenario is a symptom. It's something new that happened. So the light bulb went off, it's like, oh my God. And this was right about when ChatGPT was the only thing we could all talk about. It just kind of was a new toy. And I said, I can solve this because it's a systematic diagnostic methodology that's missing. And if you just get people to unfold their story, whatever you put into giving a doctor or chat GPT is going to be a whole lot better of a set of answers to get to the root cause. So that's the the aha moment for the technology came.

Marla Miller 34:01

God, it's so fascinating. So you saw all these quadrants, and the one that was missing was the energy quadrant.

Haresh Patel 34:25

And they're doing a mutual podcast with each other. And the psychiatrist says, you know what? Yeah, I realize that what happens in the brain or the mind sometimes can be affected by the gut. So I had to go study and educate myself on what does gut do with mind. And Dr. Hyman said, I did the opposite. I realized that there are things that signals coming from the brain that aren't making it to the gut. And they both have to learn each other's disciplines. And I like the sentence they said, you know what? Yeah, the mind and the body are connected. There's a neck in between. We just kind of forget. Yeah. So that's really our differentiators. How do you connect the mind and the body? And it's not the brain and the body, but the brain and the body is still part of the body. But it what happens inside. And there's just so much that we don't know. And as long as we don't know it, it's kind of considered the cookie world. I was reading a book and they talked about different people. Originally, we all thought that the sun revolved around us, right? For hundreds of years, we were the center of the universe until this particular astronomer looked at why is Mars going back and forth kind of in this weird pattern? And he disproved everybody, but he was written off as cookie, right? We thought the world was flat. So there's a lot of science that says that's not right, but I think that there's so much that we need to learn. Um, I was listening to another podcast on Fascia, Bashi, I think they call it. Yeah. And he was saying, I don't know what I'm doing, but it's working, and I'm hoping that scientists figure out and untangle it and explain it in a scientific way, you know. So that's kind of I think where we're at, is that um there are options out there that we should all consider. But it is your right. Be curious, stay curious, be open-minded. Because if I had not been, you know, I said I was still narrow-minded, right? I didn't, I made the same mistakes you talked about. I took the medication, felt really good, moved on. You got career, you got family. But at some point I said, okay, no, I I've got to stop and I've got to take control. I got to be the CEO of my own health.

Marla Miller 36:17

Yeah. Well, that's why I love having people like you on this podcast to show people the possibilities and to say, you know, and maybe this isn't their particular answer, but the fact that there are answers out there that are unique to each person and for each person to be given that inspiration to continue their journey and not just get frustrated. I mean, of course, people get frustrated when you're living with something a long time to want to just, you know, throw in the towel or be like, fine, I'll just be on this medication for life or something like that. But it's so important to get rejuvenated. And I hope that these episodes and stories like yours can trigger people to start again and continue looking.

Haresh Patel 37:07

I think we're at the cusp. I think there's more and more people fed up with the system. Quite frankly, doctors may not publicly say it, but they're quite fed up with the system that, and it's not the system is designed to be malicious at the beginning, it's just whatever happened, happened. But it's it's not set up to solve a problem. It's not set up to cure anymore. It's not set up to heal, it's set up to treat. And there are more and more doctors that want to explore beyond what they knew. Like Mark Hyman said, I need to know more about psychiatry. And the psychiatrist said, I need to know more about what goes on in the body. And I'll share one example with you, tinnitus, right? Tinnitus is about 20 million people that live with it. Go search on anybody that's on this call, go search up tinnitus. The first answer is because even the LLMs are trained to give you the same answer, which is there's no cure for tinnitus. Period. Or the next one is, well, go see your ENT specialist because it's an ear problem. And so I developed tinnitus February last year. And uh it didn't bother me enough to do it, but I just got curious again, think why, and I got those generic answers. But I spent eight, 10, 12, I don't know how many hours listening to podcasts searching because now AI lets you curate more information. And I finally stumbled on to a doctor that uh in Germany that had really been AMT and then specialized in tonight, has said there's got to be an answer. And his podcast lit a bulb for me. And I think for all your listeners, first of all, he said for 80% of the people it's not even an ear problem. Uh which that was shocking. It's a brain problem. There's a part of your brain that processes sound. That's its job. And so if you've had hearing loss, it gets confused. Wait, there's not enough sound coming. Let me create some sound to make myself happy that I'm doing my job. So that's what tonight is creating sound to create for the absence of sound.

Marla Miller 38:57

So how can how can people differentiate whether they have true ear damage or or they have this miscommunication with the brain?

Haresh Patel 39:07

Really good question. So, first of all, they said go get a hearing test. If you had an older one, then compare the two. If you haven't, at least you can map it against where are you relative to where you should be, because we all have hearing loss over time, right? So if you're let's say a 60-year-old, they can still map it against average of 60 year olds, needs to be here and you're here, you're off, and therefore, first thing you should do is get um hearing aids because hearing aid actually then creates the sound the brain is used to, and it'll stop creating the tinnitus sound. So that's one option one. That's something new. It goes, you go to ENT, and again, they don't have an answer. So but there's 20% of people where there is a middle ear problem. So maybe you rule that out. But this is the one that was the aha. Remember going back to doctors sometimes don't know the questions to ask. He said, There's the questions that I ask. Tonites will happen 12 months after these three, one of these three events. If you've had a serious injury where your neck or jaw is displaced, uh again, it creates a missed signal, right? Because there's a misalignment in the spinal cord. And that'll cause tinnitus. If you've had severe stress or trauma, which sometimes are very they're different, but they're synonymous. And within 12 months of those, one of those three events, you will develop tinnitus. And so I said, Oh my god, that's my problem. Well, I went and got the hearing test, first of all. I rule that out. And then I went and um um looked at what happened to me in 12 months uh December 24, our house is getting re-roofed. And unfortunately, the roofing company badly managed the job, and they missed the window to finish the roof. So around midnight or 2 a.m., we our entire house looked like the Titanic. We lost our home in 24 hours through rain coming right through the house.

Marla Miller 40:54

And you mean they what do you mean they missed what did they miss?

Haresh Patel 40:58

To do my roof or any roof, they they look for a 10-day window to make sure there's no rain. And so they typically need only five days to finish a roof, rip it off, and do a new one. And in my case, they just didn't manage the 10 days. The storm date didn't change, the storm time didn't change. They just blew the window of getting the roof done. Oh. In time. And the part that they did, it was just a it was catastrophe all over. But my point was I slipped and fell that night on a on my wet steps. I was working on my back, right? Because it was barely, I'm I was lucky that I didn't hit my spine. It was very close, but it was a pretty serious fall. And I was so I was getting help for my back, but I immediately shifted that uh chiropractor to say, hey, tinnitus, what do you think? It is, oh yeah, we took a whole course on that. Let me start adjusting your neck and the certain pain points around your um sinuses, right where your jaw meets. And there's like nine pressure points that he was fixing, and it's starting to disappear. So there's actually answers out there. And so our first part of our strategy for our business is to take these five, six elements that we all live with, saying there's no cure to say, let us do the research for you. Let us become the new Web MD that'll give you, you know, insight into possible things. And so in his case, it was I had all three, right? The slip and fall. Obviously, it was a very traumatic night, right? We still have a PTSD when it rains, thinking our roof is going to start leaking or our ceiling is going to start leaking. And on top of that, insurance decided that they weren't going to play nice. And so having to deal with suing them and trying to claim our money, that was a stress. So I had all three that happened. No wonder I had tinnitus three months later.

Marla Miller 42:38

That's incredible. I I know two people offhand that have tinnitus that have struggled with that. So to find an answer or give people direction, like go get your hearing tested and then check these other three things.

Haresh Patel 42:55

Check these three things for the last 12 months or 12 months prior to when you got the tinnitus, and then you gotta go figure out how to unlock those things.

Marla Miller 43:03

Yeah. Wow, so amazing. We've shared so much not only fascinating information, but so helpful. So just like you said, just understanding, first of all, that there are always solutions out there. We just have to keep searching for them. And then that um I totally forgot what I was gonna say just now.

Haresh Patel 43:29

Welcome, welcome to my world.

Marla Miller 43:32

Do you have something for that? And we need a cure for that. I'll have to investigate further.

Haresh Patel 43:37

There's always fear, like, am I getting you know, Alzheimer's or dementia, right? That's that's the biggest fear when you do that, or when you go to the refrigerator, you open like, why did I come to the refrigerator?

Marla Miller 43:45

Yeah, yeah. Well, I like to ask three questions. So when someone is going through that process of trying to recover and find healing, what was your biggest obstacle, would you say?

Haresh Patel 44:02

My biggest obstacle is my own self, first of all, right? Is like there's the quick treatment, move on. You need to do it to feel better, don't get me wrong. If you've got a headache, take the aspirin. And if you have an emergency, go to the emergency room. But I'm just saying when you have the time, start digging. Be curious, can be open minded. And uh there is an answer out there if you search enough. And the curiosities get to the root cause, and the root cause is there. And I love Steve Jobs' uh commencement speech that he gave at Stanford. He says stay foolish, stay hungry, which is the same thing as stay curious, stay open-minded. And he also says you can't predict the future unless you connect the dots. So connect your own dots. Tell your own story. Make sure that you've got it front and center. Go see a doctor and make sure he listens. And if you're not listening, go to a different doctor.

Marla Miller 44:50

So initially the obstacle was you not going far enough.

Haresh Patel 44:56

Being like everybody else. I mean, we don't do that for a reason, right? We just have so many things going on in our life. We have kids, we got family, we got career, and we got to get back to work and got to go back to parenting, and you name it. And so we all are victims of not really taking control. And for me, the bigger aha was that there is a story that's deeply buried. I call it that princess in the pea. You have to take each layer off and find what that irritation is because that created some butterfly effect years later. Decades later.

Marla Miller 45:26

Well, my second question for you was what was the biggest lesson?

Haresh Patel 45:30

No, well, the biggest lesson was that aha, this has been solved in fintech. And yes, we're a machine too, much like an airport that had a lot of moving pieces. It's definitely more complex. We have something called the mind and the spirit, but the problem is the same: fragmented data scattered all over the place, never connected to create a story, to create a pattern. And what do people do? People predict the future, they look at patterns, right? Okay, this happened in 1929, and this is what happened before the stock market crash, and therefore we're seeing similar issues and similar problems, and there are people that are ahead that predict what's going to happen. So this is not just about root causes, also predicting and preventing.

Marla Miller 46:10

Yeah. Well, and the last question what is the kind of thing someone did for you during that time?

Haresh Patel 46:18

I think it was the act of compassion of the three doctors that I met. They didn't charge me like a boatload. I mean, they they were genuinely curious about who I was. And they figured out how to make time. And maybe they're not the most wealthy doctors. So that was an act of kindness, right? When you say, I don't want to see your chart, I don't want to know why you're here, I want to know who you are. That's an act of kindness. That's real compassion. And I think um I call them messages from God. They figured out, you know, to listen to me, get me to speak, which I wasn't planning to talk about my mom passing away. I don't talk to anybody about it. I didn't. Part of that was bottled up, but he found a gentle way to lift that mattress, keep lifting. No, it's not middle school, it's not there. It's it's there somewhere. We're digging. He he was at playing archaeology with my body and my mind.

Marla Miller 47:17

So how are you feeling today? And do you have hope of completely eliminating the tinnitus?

Haresh Patel 47:25

I'm optimistic. I'm like I said, I'm using my pattern recognition, my systematic. That seems like a credible story. And I I could see how it connected with what happened with me. So I'm optimistic. There is one more solution. The doctor that is actually hosting these podcasts is a gentleman named Dr. Ben Thompson. And he's just gone deep into tinnitus, and he's the one who interviewed his German doctor. And I think through education, he's being um selfless or not, not selfish is the word I'm looking for. Because quite frankly, uh his solution is the last option, right? It's kind of like my Zolaire, right? Or my going to Bodgaya. I mean, so his solution is expensive, but it's a sound therapy that you wear kind of these hearing aids to generate the sound that that brain wants to hear and you can reverse it. But because he gave me the logical try this and eliminate before you come to me, try this, I'm I'm going through each one. So I'm hoping that I don't have to spend the money to fix it, but I will if these other things don't work. But so far, it really feels like the work that my chiropractor is doing at Golden State Chiropractic, the work he's doing is actually I can feel the right hand is almost gone, but it's making the left hand feel louder because this one is gone. And the left once in a while is fluctuating. Every once in a while, notice it I didn't really notice it. So it feels like it's in the right direction.

Marla Miller 48:44

That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing this deeply personal story and your struggles and the story of involving your mother and giving a lot of other people, like I said, not only hope and inspiration, but also point them in a direction that can provide solutions. Thank you so much.

Haresh Patel 49:07

Doing what you're doing, you're bringing a lot of stories like this. So there are people out there that are, I think, are curious and want to be open-minded. And I think you're helping bring different stories and different perspectives. Mine may or may not be right, but um I am going to pursue this company called Diagnostic M D. And I'm hoping that people enjoy the book because it's the the why behind them, what I'm doing.

Marla Miller 49:27

Um, so can you tell people where they can find out more information about your project and also about your book, like the name where we're then getting?

Haresh Patel 49:37

Oh, it's my it's on my website. It's called Haresh Patel, uh, H A R E S H P A T E L dot AI is my website. There you can sign up for the pre-release. Um right now I'm um put 4-1, April 1, April Fool's Day. I may change it because I didn't think about it, but I've I've said 4.1 is a release date. You can buy it and sign up in advance for Kindle version if you'd like now, when it gets released. And then stay tuned on the same website as we roll out our new platform, which is around the first phase, is just these five major areas, and we've done the research for you. My whole university of Notre Dame is behind this initiative. I've got students that are really passionate around doing good in business, so they're helping us do the research and go through the work that I do with genitis to find that you know little golden nugget of information. So hopefully you don't have to spend the eight, 10, 12, 16 weeks in some place people search for a long time to find something that they haven't been able to solve. So hopefully we make that easier for you. And then that same website, right now we've labeled the company as the Diagnostic MD or DXMD for short, but we're going to rebrand it. But my website there, hareshpatel.ai, is the best place to stay tuned and sign up for both the platform and the book.

Marla Miller 50:49

That's perfect. Well, thank you so much for this incredible conversation.

Haresh Patel 50:55

Thank you for having me. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And as we promised each other, since you're a neighbor, when you are not traveling, we'll definitely get together for coffee. Perfect. Thank you.