Integrating Supplements, Nutrition, and Care: A New Era for Whole-Person Health

In this episode of Supplement Source, Jeff Ventura sits down with Dr. Michelle Simon, President and CEO of the Institute for Natural Medicine, to explore the growing momentum behind whole-person health—and what it will take to bring it into the mainstream.

Dr. Simon shares how INM is expanding its mission beyond naturopathic medicine to unify the broader traditional, complementary, and integrative health (TCIM) community under a single voice. At the center of that effort is a new collaboration with Georgetown University: a CME-accredited course designed to educate conventional healthcare providers on integrative approaches, from nutrition and supplements to lifestyle-based care.

The conversation dives into the persistent knowledge gap among clinicians, the role industry can play in advancing credible research and quality standards, and the challenges practitioners face in navigating a fragmented supplement marketplace. Dr. Simon emphasizes the importance of practitioner guidance in helping patients cut through misinformation and make evidence-informed decisions.

They also explore shifting consumer behavior—particularly among younger generations—who are increasingly seeking proactive, preventive health strategies rather than reactive treatments. From lifestyle changes to skepticism of traditional healthcare models, this cultural shift is fueling demand for a more holistic, root-cause approach to care.

Ultimately, the episode highlights a critical inflection point in healthcare: bridging conventional and integrative medicine, investing in education and research, and redesigning systems to prioritize prevention and whole-person wellness.

About the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) 
The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), founded in 1973 and based in Washington, D.C., is the leading trade association representing the dietary supplement and functional food industry. Bringing together manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, and service providers, CRN unites its member companies around a shared commitment to science, transparency, and responsible business practices—advancing a strong, credible marketplace that supports consumer health and industry growth.

In an increasingly complex regulatory and media environment, CRN serves as the industry’s front line—shaping science-based policy, defending market access, and countering misinformation. Through strategic advocacy, self-regulatory leadership, voluntary guidelines, and evidence-based communications, CRN ensures that responsible companies are recognized, protected, and positioned to innovate and compete. Learn more at crnusa.org and follow @CRN_Supplements on X and LinkedIn.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Please note the Council for Responsible Nutrition, the CRN, does not endorse any guests appearing on this podcast or any products or services they may discuss. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of CRN. Thank you and enjoy the episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

You are listening to Supplement Source, the official podcast of the Council for Responsible Nutrition. And now your host, Jeff Ventura.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Hello, and thank you for listening to Supplement Source. I am your host, Jeff Ventura, the Vice President of Communications here at the Council for Responsible Nutrition. I am so thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Michelle Simon, who is the President and CEO of the Institute of Natural Medicine. Doctor, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Hi, Jeff. Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_03 1:00

It's great seeing you again. Last time we saw each other, I I I we were at a show. I can't remember which one, but there's so many these days it's hard to keep track. But it's nice to see and hear you today. I know to ask you about something exciting that you're doing at Georgetown University. Tell me a little bit about what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Yeah, sure. Thanks so much. We're so excited about this. So um just to back up a little to the Institute for Natural Medicine that I work with, our mission is to bring whole person health mainstream. That's really what we're focused on. We've recently expanded that from focusing mostly on the naturopathic profession to really including all whole person health providers. So that's everybody in the traditional complementary integrated health sector, really. We believe we all have a role to play, and certainly the need is great in our healthcare system for more providers like us who look for root cause solutions and use natural therapies and try to bring health about versus just maintaining or managing symptoms over a lifetime, right? So knowing that that is the challenge, we see a gap in knowledge for conventional providers between what they know about these approaches and who the players are already in the healthcare system. So we're bringing out a course, and it's a certification course in whole person health. We're doing this with Georgetown University, and it is a 24 CME credential course for conventional providers. So that means MDs, DOs, NPs, PAs, and nurses. So all the conventional providers, it's for them to help them understand the traditional complimentary integrative health sector and what all the modalities that are used mainly by these kinds of practitioners. So it's a it should be a good course for people to really understand how to integrate these providers better, and maybe also for themselves to understand how their practices can evolve to more closely resemble some of these approaches and understand maybe where they can get further education and training themselves. You know, that that's something else we would love to see this happen.

SPEAKER_03 3:03

Boy, what a carpe diem moment. We're hearing out of the administration. You know, certainly the Secretary has been pushing for, uh Secretary Kennedy has been pushing for more education uh for clinicians around nutrition. That is something that we have certainly gotten behind uh here at CRN, at least conceptually, but it's nice to actually talk to somebody who's gone from concept into real-world training. What do you think the state of play is with regard to that knowledge base? Do you think it's gotten better over the years and we're at a point now of refinement, or do you think that some clinicians are really starting at ground zero in terms of their kind of understanding or appreciation of natural medicine?

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Oh, that's a really great question, Jeff. And I think I think it's all of that. I think there are a lot of providers who really do understand that there's an emerging evidence base for natural therapies to help advance health. And we we certainly know that the patients, the consumers, are demanding this. Like there's 38% we know already utilize supplements in their daily lifestyle practices already. A majority of physicians actually do as well. So there's an emerging awareness out there in the consumer landscape, but I will say that practitioners themselves, because the evidence base has not quite caught up yet, are still a little bit skeptical and a little bit skittish, I think, about it. What I will say is that we need to invest in research for this. And I think industry can play a huge role here in this by helping academic centers with unrestricted grants to study some of these natural therapeutic agents and understand the effective dosing regimens, understand the drug-nutrient interactions that could occur alongside a pharmaceutical approach as well. So there's many ways that we can advance the awareness and understanding. But where we're at now is there's a lot of curiosity. There is a lot of integration, but there isn't as much as I think there will be once we, in my view, change the healthcare system to be more health promotion and rather just a reactive medical system that addresses only things when they become a problem. Like let's really dig into prevention, right? Like we all think about it conceptually, like that makes the most sense. But our system is not really designed to do that yet.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

Yeah. We were uh it's funny, the guest that I had on before you um was Dr. Pizzorno, and uh we were talking about this exact same topic, you know, the idea of that people have the outlook among a lot of practitioners, their understanding of natural therapies has has certainly matured from sort of where it was. Uh, he was also talking about the need for this education. I mean, so you know, the idea that you're actually doing it is certainly something that people are talking about for sure. I want to talk a little bit about the industry, the supplement industry. Specifically, how do we embrace this moment where you know you've got programs like yours that are uh attempting to really develop a baseline of understanding among HCPs? What what can the industry do to help facilitate this kind of education?

SPEAKER_02 6:25

Wow, it's a great question. It's a as we know, it's a huge industry. There's a lot of resources there, and it would be wonderful to see a more concerted effort by industry to really effectively engage with policymakers to prioritize, I would say science for sure. So investing in research, funding independent research, but also transparency and aligning with public health goals. Like I think there should be better partnerships between industry, practitioners, and the public really for this overall goal of advancing health in America. Like we're all in this game for the same reason, I do think. And some of us are more dedicated to the mission of it, and some of us are more dedicated to maybe the business and financial interests, but they align if we do this right, I believe. Industry could continue to embrace the quality standard, so the third-party testing, accurate labeling. I think those are really important things and helping consumers understand which companies are really leaning into quality versus others that might be flashing the pan, taking an advantage of a momentary influencers, cachet, and looking for just the quick business out of it.

SPEAKER_03 7:30

Aaron Powell With regard to uh you mentioned skittishness, and now you're talking about quality. And I I imagine that some of the skittishness among some practitioners has to do with this exactly what you're talking about, where it's so hard, not just for the consumer, but obviously for any clinician who's trying to be open-minded and integrate some of this into their own practice to figure out what is and is not a credible supplement backed by research. I don't know that there's any easy answers to that. We've seen a lot of third-party organizations like SUPCO and I mean to a lesser degree Consumer Reports, but there are others who are trying to fill the it's a vacuum that now people it's sort of like this race to quality, or at least a race to understand what makes a quality supplement one to be trusted for you know efficacy and so forth. I guess my question within all of that is is there a s there is no easy solution there given the current landscape. I mean, it it really is tough to figure out what is and is not a viable, good product. What what would what would you say in terms of you know cutting through a lot of that noise?

SPEAKER_02 8:45

My default is always going to be to work with a practitioner who's educated and trained in this area. I think that helps cut through a lot of the sort of marketing uh mystery that you might find with some supplement companies that are out there. Most of them, I think, are doing good work, but honestly, it it takes a lot of education and training to kind of be able to understand what is a what is a double-blind placebo-controlled trial, how do you read that evidence? You know, is it published in a peer-reviewed journal or not? Is this just a systematic review or is it just a single case? And how do you grade that scale of evidence? Well, I think practitioners like naturopathic doctors, like functionally medicine-trained MDs and others that are in this kind of whole person health world, do have that background in education and training to help patients and become a trusted resource for them in kind of wading through what they should consider as an augmentable like lifestyle intervention for themselves. So it's not an easy answer, and we don't have like one quality standard, as you say. And a lot of labels uh have quality seals on them, but they're mostly marketing seals, right? So you have to help be able to understand which agencies are doing a good job at that. And I think it's there's an opening there, and actually we're considering stepping into that a little bit with the Institute for Natural Medicine because we are a public education nonprofit. We we don't sell you know supplements, we don't have a horse in the race, but we do understand the complexities of the issue and we understand how to talk to patients about it. So one of the things we just recently did with the Sustainable Herbs Institute is to publish a consumer guide to buying botanical medicines. So this is 10 questions you should ask when considering purchasing a botanical supplement. Now, is it the end-all, be all resource for this? Maybe not, but it does help to unpack a little bit what all of the quality uh metrics are that a consumer should consider when purchasing a botanical medicine uh for themselves.

SPEAKER_03 10:56

My background is I I I spent several years doing public affairs for FDA, and I'm always uh kind of amazed at how I encounter this with with new news media uh and their misunderstanding of supplements and how there's there's there's this sort of bias uh where they they seem far more comfortable and I'm I'm generalizing, but they seem far more comfortable accepting for face value the safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals without knowing a heck of a lot about supplements. And they're very quick to point out they accuse us of being unregulated. I mean, you've seen these, there's no that there's the wild, wild west, and you know, and and I you know, and uh and you touched on it, right? There's there's obviously bad actors that uh contaminate the reputation of the industry. Do you think, though, that there has over the years been a certain degree of skepticism that has come up among modern consumers, this younger generation of consumers that I think are doing the research themselves. They are online. I mean, we can talk about bad actors proliferating on the internet, but I think also there's a healthy amount of self-educated folks who are maybe skeptical of pharma rightly so, skeptical of pharmaceuticals as much as they are of anything else, and they are open to the idea of a natural um a natural therapy. Um do you see that in a younger, in a younger crowd? Like can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So I practiced for 20 years here in Seattle, Washington, and for the last few years, the change that I noticed with patients that were coming in is they were coming in younger, and they were coming in without really presenting health complaints. They came in looking for proactive information on how to be well. And that was a huge shift for me over the 20 years. And I would say that I think that's a trend that's happening nationally. And I think that the COVID experience that we had accelerated that to some degree. Because there was a lot of concern about the education or at least the information we were being given, and people felt that there was probably more things they could be doing to advance their health, you know, beyond vaccinations, masking, and distancing, like what proactive things people were curious about. And so they kind of started to do their own research, and I think the younger generation is just more facile and able to do that kind of research. They're, you know, they're they're digital natives, they understand how to use the intercept really well, and they can do all that research themselves. And the other thing that I noticed is that patients were coming in, they didn't, they certainly did not want pharmaceuticals. They didn't really even necessarily want a supplement. What they wanted to know was what are the diet and lifestyle things that I can do to make myself healthier. And so that that shift is continuing to grow, I believe. And I think that's where this whole person health movement is really emanating from, is the younger people, but not just, but certainly from them.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

Yeah. Dr. Bizarre and I were also talking about the psychology of when you take a drug, you're oftentimes taking care of the symptom of something, and the effects are instantaneous, you're shutting off the negative symptom, whatever it is. I mean, it at baseline, you know, Advil takes care of a headache or, you know, whatever. But the more subtle phenomenon is when you're taking uh, let's say, a multivitamin, you don't nothing happen. You need to be educated to know that this is the long game and it doesn't work like a pharmaceutical, right? It it comes into a whole person health plan.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Yeah, exactly right. It's it's really an investment. It's not a reaction, it's a forward-thinking movement that takes time to accumulate, which is harder, it's a harder sell.

SPEAKER_03 14:59

Yeah, I bet. What's uh what's a what's one of the biggest challenges that you face in your line of work these days? What's sort of uh your Sysyphus boulder, if you will?

SPEAKER_02 15:09

Yeah, that's a great question. There's there's just there's several of them. I guess I'll pick one, and the the biggest one that I see is that there's a lack of knowledge about the body's inherent ability to heal itself. Like, and that seems so simple. Like you cut yourself, you get a paper cut, it heals. You don't have to do anything about it, right? So we know that that is our nature is to heal ourselves and to and so in order to facilitate that and to help that, you have to understand what the body needs to be in balance, right? And so that means diet, lifestyle, nutrition, food, are you getting enough water? Are you sleeping? Are your relationships healthy? This is a complex thing. Those kind of questions are complex, they take time to kind of unpack and unravel with patients. Those visits take longer, and our conventional medical system does not really allow for that kind of investigation. So to really fully deal with a person's whole being, you know, their whole self, we need to have a different type of approach in our health care. And that I think is our biggest challenge.

SPEAKER_03 16:14

Yeah, wellness seems to be infinitely more complex than sickness in in many regards.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Well said. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Yeah. And I mean therein lies the you know the proliferation of a lot of these concierge medical. We go to here in DC, we go to one medical, which is now owned by Amazon. I was shocked the first time I went there at the notion that my, you know, I looked at my watch and my doctor had been talking to me for 20 minutes. Yeah. And I couldn't believe it, you know, that I was still in this consultation for that long. Uh and it occurs to you that you never got that, or very rarely did you get that unless you were ill. Certainly you didn't get a real long conversation about how you're eating and your exercise. And I mean, that was all very that was all very new to me. And I think that's probably you're, you know, you're right. It seems like that's where things are headed, hopefully.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Yeah, I mean, that's such an important point you bring up about the time. You know, reimbursement reform is paramount, I really believe, for us to advance into a more evolved healthcare system that really is capable of restoring health versus just managing symptoms. Like we need to expand insurance coverage for evidence-based natural medicine services. And they need extended consultation times if necessary for the comprehensive assessment to really take place. And there's there's there's also some financial barriers like Medicare and Medicaid don't necessarily license naturopathic doctors or or allow them to receive reimbursement or acupuncturists or any other credentialed TCIM practitioner, which I think would help if they would expand their um their reimbursement strategies to include other types of providers.

SPEAKER_03 17:54

Well, it's it's this it's it's similar, it's similar to you know our push to be included with within FSA, HSA, reimbursement, you know, for supplements.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Right.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

Well, Dr. Simon, it has been so lovely having you uh on uh supplement stores. I hope this isn't the last time you'll be on. Please come back and and keep us updated on any uh new developments uh over at the Institute. It really is a pleasure having you uh be part of our show today.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Yeah, thank you, Jeff. I really enjoyed it. Appreciate what you're doing.