Robert Kress Functional Pharmacist, Newburgh, MI (2026)

09/04/2026

THE CURIOUS CONTRARIAN 🧭

Because sometimes the answer isn’t wrong.
The question just isn’t big enough.

Years ago, I wrote a weekly newspaper column about supplements.

I remember writing about waking between 2–4 a.m. with your mind racing and connecting that problem to a GABA supplement we carried.

It flew off the shelves.

And maybe the GABA helped. That’s not the point.

Today, I’m much more interested in the question underneath it:

Why are you waking up at 3 a.m. with your mind racing in the first place?

What’s happening in your life?
What’s your nervous system carrying?
How are you sleeping, eating, recovering?
What is your physiology responding to?

Sometimes a supplement is absolutely part of the answer.

But the supplement shouldn’t keep us from asking the question.

That evolution in thinking has changed the way I practice medicine, the way I look at health, and ultimately became part of the foundation for Orientation-Based Medicine.

Stay curious. Sometimes there’s a bigger question waiting to be asked.

09/04/2026

I caught myself this morning.

I had promised myself I was going to get outside and walk before I started working.

And yet there I was.

Sitting down at the computer.

Almost unconsciously slipping into the screen before I had even stepped into the day.

Then I looked up.

And I saw the screen beyond the screen.

Trees.
Sky.
Sunlight.
Movement.
A much wider view.

So I closed the computer and went outside.

The work will still be here when I get back.

And I’m learning that some of my best work doesn’t start at the computer anyway.

It starts out there.

Walking. Wondering. Listening. Letting my system orient before asking it to produce.

Sometimes the most important thing we can do before deciding what needs our attention is remember what already has it.

The screen beyond the screen.

09/03/2026

STOP GRIPPING THE FLYWHEEL

Here’s something I’ve been practicing in my own life lately:

Move the flywheel. But stop gripping the damn flywheel.

Send the email.

Make the call.

Have the conversation.

Make the offer.

See the patient.

Do the work.

Take the action that’s yours to take.

And then?

Let go.

Because there’s a difference between taking action and trying to control what happens after the action.

I think this shows up in our lives, our businesses, and especially in medicine.

We make the recommendation. We create the plan. We give the patient the protocol.

And then we have to pay attention to what comes back.

Did it land?

What changed?

What didn’t?

What new information did the territory give us?

Then we orient again.

Intention → Action → Release → Receive → Respond.

That’s navigation.

And increasingly, I believe that’s what great clinical practice requires.

Not another perfect map.

The ability to orient to where someone actually is, take the next appropriate action, receive feedback, and navigate again.

Move the flywheel.

Just don’t spend your life gripping it.

That’s part of what we’re teaching inside Orientation-Based Medicine.

Learn more about OBM:

Get OBM → https://tinyurl.com/getobm

09/02/2026

CAMEL → LION → CHILD

For a lot of my life, I thought there were basically two ways to succeed:

Carry more s**t.

Or push harder.

Nietzsche described three transformations that I keep coming back to.

The Camel carries. Responsibility. Expectations. The weight of what needs to be done.

Then comes the Lion.

The Lion says, enough. It challenges. Pushes back. Creates its own path.

But there’s a third transformation we don’t talk about nearly enough.

The Child.

Curiosity. Creativity. Possibility. Wonder.

“I wonder what happens if I go this way?”

That doesn’t mean becoming passive.

It means learning to move without unnecessary force.

And I’ve realized this applies to medicine too.

Sometimes we become so focused on fixing the patient, interpreting the labs, and finding the right protocol that we lose our curiosity about the actual human being standing in front of us.

Maybe better medicine doesn’t always begin with another answer.

Sometimes it begins with a better question.

Who is this person, where are they standing right now, and what do they actually have the capacity to receive?

That’s part of the philosophy underneath Orientation-Based Medicine.

We don’t need more practitioners who simply collect better maps.

We need practitioners who know how to navigate the territory.

Our next Orientation-Based Medicine Cohort begins tonight.

Learn more:
Get OBM → https://tinyurl.com/getobm

09/01/2026

The Functional Medicine Matrix is a powerful map.

So is the Timeline.

They help us organize complexity, understand how someone arrived where they are, and begin seeing the connections underneath their symptoms.

But there’s something a map can’t teach us:

How to navigate.

What happens when the patient doesn’t respond according to plan?

When the “right” intervention creates too much load?

When life changes their capacity?

When do we push forward?

When do we hold?

When do we recover, pivot, or completely change course?

And maybe there’s an even bigger question…

What if getting someone 20%, 30%, 40% or 50% better isn’t the end of the journey?

What if we help them build enough capacity, resilience and awareness that they begin moving toward something they couldn’t even imagine when they first walked through our doors?

Not simply returning to baseline.

But discovering greater energy, engagement, purpose and possibility.

Going somewhere that wasn’t even on their original map.

That’s where I believe the magic really begins.

And it’s a big part of why I created Orientation-Based Medicine.

OBM isn’t another map.

It’s about becoming a better navigator—of physiology, capacity, environment, intervention and ultimately the human being sitting in front of us.

Because sometimes the greatest destination isn’t the one we originally planned.

It’s the one we couldn’t see from where we started.

The next OBM cohort begins tomorrow.

If this way of practicing speaks to you, I’d love to have you join us.

https://tinyurl.com/getobm

The map is not the territory. Learn to navigate.

08/31/2026

YOU DON’T NEED THE WHOLE MAP 🧭

Every big leap begins before you actually know how the hell it’s going to work.

We tend to wait for certainty.

The perfect plan.
Enough money.
Enough time.
Enough information.
Some guarantee that everything is going to work.

But most meaningful change doesn’t happen that way.

Usually, it begins with a decision:

I’m going in that direction.

And then you start walking.

As you move, more of the territory becomes visible.

That’s one of the ideas at the heart of Orientation-Based Medicine.

The map is not the territory.

And that applies to our lives just as much as it applies to the patients we serve.

We don’t always need to know the entire path.

We need to ask:

Where am I?
What direction am I moving?
What’s my capacity right now?
What’s the next appropriate step?

Then move.

Receive feedback.

Reorient.

And navigate again.

Because great practitioners don’t simply learn how to follow better maps.

They learn how to navigate when the map runs out.

Our next Orientation-Based Medicine Cohort begins this Wednesday.

If you’re ready to move beyond collecting more protocols and develop a better way of thinking, seeing, and navigating the person in front of you, I’d love to have you join us.

Learn more:
tinyurl.com/getobm

08/30/2026

Sometimes the path gets quiet enough for life to look back at you.

I was walking through the woods when I caught this little face watching me from behind a fallen tree.

And for a moment, neither of us moved.

It reminded me how much of life we miss when we’re always trying to get somewhere.

We’re looking for the next answer.
The next opportunity.
The next milestone.
The next thing to fix.

But orientation begins differently.

It begins by noticing.

Where am I?
What’s around me?
What have I been moving too quickly to see?

Sometimes clarity doesn’t come because you searched harder.

Sometimes it appears when you become quiet enough to notice what was already there.

Maybe we don’t always need to move forward.
Maybe sometimes we just need to look around.

🌲🦌

08/29/2026

What if the problem isn’t the protocol?
What if it’s the navigation?

In functional and midlife medicine, we have more labs, interventions, supplements, medications, wearables, and data than ever before.

But more information doesn’t necessarily create better outcomes.

Because the patient isn’t a collection of symptoms to fix.

They’re a human being moving through a changing environment, with a unique orientation and a finite capacity.

That’s why Navigation sits at the center of the OBM Client Flywheel.

We orient first.
We assess what actually matters.
We build a strategy around the person in front of us.
We implement according to capacity.
We review, refine, and course-correct.
And ultimately, we help the patient grow beyond simply managing symptoms.

That’s the shift from following protocols to learning how to navigate.

And it’s exactly what we’ll be teaching practitioners inside the next Orientation-Based Medicine Cohort, beginning September 2.

If you’re ready to move beyond collecting more tools and start building a true system for thinking, navigating, and leading your patients through complex midlife health—

Join us.

Learn more and secure your spot:
tinyurl.com/getobm

08/29/2026

Start the day with the excitement of a child.

No idea what’s coming.
No guarantee it’ll go as planned.
Just pure excitement to get out there and see what the day brings.

Watching these guys head into the sunrise this morning was a pretty good reminder:

We spend a lot of time trying to control what’s ahead.

Maybe sometimes the better orientation is simply curiosity, excitement, and a willingness to move toward it.

Come on. Let’s go see what’s out there.

08/27/2026

I WOULDN’T EVEN CALL IT AI.

Yes, Orientation-Based Medicine uses AI-enabled technology.

But calling it “AI” misses what actually makes it different.

The intelligence isn’t the product.
The clinical architecture is.

There are increasingly powerful tools that can analyze labs, symptoms and history and generate functional medicine recommendations.

That’s useful.

But OBM was built around a different question:

What does this person need next?

That’s why practitioners in the OBM Cohort first learn the clinical architecture themselves:

Orientation → Capacity → Navigation

Where is this person right now?

What can their physiology, nervous system, psychology and life realistically hold?

What direction makes sense next?

And only then:

What intervention fits?

We teach you how to think through the relationships between labs, symptoms, hormones, medications, nervous-system state, metabolic health, gut and immune function, environment and lived experience.

Then the OBM technology supports the same architecture you’re being trained to use.

That’s the difference.

You learn the architecture.
The technology reinforces it.
Your clinical judgment navigates it.

So no, I don’t really think of OBM as an “AI platform.”

I think of it as a clinical operating system for navigating complex human beings.

AI just happens to make that operating system extraordinarily powerful.

Don’t buy better maps.
Learn to navigate.

Learn Orientation-Based Medicine and join the next cohort:

tinyurl.com/getobm

Robert Kress Functional Pharmacist

09/04/2026

09/04/2026

09/03/2026

09/02/2026

09/01/2026

08/31/2026

08/30/2026

08/29/2026

08/29/2026

08/27/2026

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