There's More Out There

I opened Front Porch Family Medicine with my friend, Eric Lovin, in 2022.  We only had 3 patients and worked on Saturdays.  I finally had time to think about my patients' symptoms.  I wasn’t bogged down with checking boxes and paperwork.  I started to notice that the thyroid lab was “normal” in my thyroid patients, but they still had symptoms of low thyroid.  My chronic pain patients were still in pain despite working on sleep and diet.  The medication I did have to help many times caused side effects that made the patient feel worse.  I struggled with this.  I had some patients with mysterious illnesses who had seen every specialist and doctor with no answers, and I lost sleep over it.  I’ve never really been one to just settle for mediocrity, and I genuinely care about my patients.  I take things personally when it comes to them because being their doctor is part of who I am.  I kept thinking, 'This can’t be it.'  There must be more out there that can help my patients.  I also lost the trust and respect of organizations that I used to think were absolute authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic, when they issued guidelines and restrictions that prevented me from actually helping my patients recover from the global pandemic.  They did things that didn’t make sense and didn’t seem to prioritize the health of the public.  Things that were not based on evidence or scientific fact. I felt disenchanted and abandoned by these organizations, which seemed totally out of touch with scientific evidence and what I did from day to day actually caring for patients.   

I began a journey that has led me to a total paradigm shift in my medical career. I did training in perineural injection therapy, which started to help a lot of my patients with pain.  It was a great add-on for OMT therapy.  I began researching cellular health, mitochondrial dysfunction, and the root causes of chronic diseases.  My mind was blown by the vast amount of science that exists, backed by real evidence, which can help patients, but traditional medicine doesn’t use or care about.  Even things that traditional medicine should do (even guidelines say to do), but most doctors miss or don’t do.  For example, cardiologists should be recommending coq10 supplementation for heart patients because the evidence for improved outcomes is clear in the literature. I also learned about CT calcium scores 6 years ago and have been doing them since but I still see patients all the time who are started on statins who haven't had one. As I continued to read and learn I figured out that the term “evidence-based” meant the approved narrative of treatments that groups of elite doctors decided should be included in specialty society guidelines and didn’t necessarily include all the actual evidence. I learned that there were treatments that I could implement that worked and were safe that weren’t part of this narrative of approved things. Treatments like IV vitamin C and NAD+.

I started to meet other doctors like me who wanted more and I talked to them and asked them questions. I made friends with a naturopathic practitioner, and she taught me a great deal about food and nutrition that I didn’t know before. I talked and prayed with friends and close associates and asked them to pray.  I spoke to my patients with the mysterious illnesses I couldn’t figure out (you know who you are).  They all told me to go for it.  They all wanted me to keep digging.  I was scared.  I like adventures, but I’m also a big rule follower.  I know there is a board of medicine overseeing my medical license and my livelihood so I knew that if I was going to go down this path I was going to do it the right way with only the best training and guidelines of the doctors forging this path before me.  

I had to make a decision: Stay on the traditional medicine path or start down a path of performance, functional, and integrative medicine, and completely revamp our practice.  This was a huge decision. It would take thousands of dollars in training and even more hours in studying and reading.  Eric (my practice manager and co-founder) and I were very successful.  We had a thriving Direct Primary Care practice that was almost full and a waiting list of people who wanted to sign up with us.  We did this in the poorest city in Georgia…which proves that DPC can and will be successful anywhere.  People wanted and needed what I already had to offer as a trained, board-certified family medicine doctor who cared. I had the time needed to provide good care in a traditional DPC model.  I could coast.  I could see 4-5 patients a day, go home, and be done, and all my bills would be paid.  However, my patients would still be sick. I wouldn’t find out why they were so sick. It didn’t seem like the right thing to do.  

“Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson   

We chose to leave a trail. We have never been normal, why stop now? January of 2025, we launched a new branch of the practice called Front Porch Performance and Aesthetics.  

I’m now on this journey of advanced training in functional, integrative, and performance medicine. I keep saying I have one foot in and one foot out of functional medicine, but the more I delve into this path, the more I realize that the rest of my career in medicine will be an ongoing journey of discovery and adventure.  There is no “coasting”.  The last 20 years of my life in traditional medicine are priceless, and I will forever be grateful for the education and training I received during that time; however, that is just a foundation for the new training I am undertaking. I’m not the same doctor I was 3 years ago. 

The wellness and longevity space is rife with unregulated misinformation and pseudoscience, often fueled by the latest new fad. It's my job to weed out what has objective evidence and what doesn’t, and what is safe and what isn’t. That was the first oath I took and is the foundation of what we do: DO NO HARM.  The safety of our patients is our absolute priority at all times.

I’m only one person, and I love seeing our team grow, develop, and learn a new way of doing medicine together.  It's the right way, and we receive confirmation every day from patients who tell us how much better they feel.  It keeps us going.  It makes the long hours worth it.  We are on the right path.

When Eric and I founded Spirit-Led Expeditions in 2008, our tagline was “There’s More Out There.” That seems to be our life theme. There is so much more out there, and we are reading about it, and we are looking at it, and we are wading through it...we may offer it in our clinic.  We took the road less traveled so that our patients can utilize all that science has to offer to truly heal.  The body is a unit of spirit, mind, and cells, and it wants to heal itself.  Full, complete healing.  Have a seat on the Porch…we have the sweet tea ready, it’s just got honey now instead of granulated sugar.    

-Stephanie D. Phillips, DO