The Art of Healing

Going Beyond "A Pill for an Ill"

October 31, 2022
The Art of Healing
Going Beyond "A Pill for an Ill"
Show Notes Transcript

I'm reviewing my favorite recommendations to 4 common conditions that you can treat, improve, or support your healing with modalities other than medications.
These recommendations can be applied to common conditions that my patients often request prescriptions for.

Insomnia
We will all  have insomnia at some point in our lives.  Going beyond prescriptions, it's important to try:

  • A Good Bedtime routine
  • Working With Your Mind
    • Meditation
    • Reiki
    • Journaling
  • Healthy Movement During the Day
  • Aromatherapy
    • Lavender
    • Spearmint
  • Yoga
    • Legs up the wall

Anxiety
Anxiety can be improved no matter how severe by taking some steps on your own.  Even if you're on medications, consider trying the following:

  • Meditation: Focusing on breath work
  • Exercise: Purposely using the Sympathetic Nervous System (Read about the Autonomic Nervous System here).
  • Therapy:  Learn more about how therapy helps on Dr. Smith's Show here. as well as Brandi Gibson's episode here.

Chronic Pain
Get the right diagnosis is the key, so you may have to advocate for your care.  

  • Learn to meditate
    • Be patient with your experience, its okay if you aren’t able to sit
    • Try laying down, standing, be creative
  • Food:  You diet should reduce refines sugars and be Anti-Inflammatory;  Here is a free Anti-Inflammatory resource here.

High Blood Pressure

  • You have to work with your doctors and pharmacist
  • Exercise-walking, yoga, at least 150minues/week
  • Anti-inflammatory diet, take out processed foods
  • Breath Control, especially through meditation

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Art Healing Podcast. This is Charise and thank you for joining me for today's episode. Today's episode, I wanna continue the topic we've been covering all month. Um, we started the month with a great episode with a practicing pharmacist, Dr. Wynn. Please go back and listen to that episode cuz no matter who you are, no matter if you're healthy and you're a caretaker or you're the person who's taking multiple prescriptions, she has got so much knowledge to share about managing prescriptions, deprescribing, getting to a healthier place. And that's very hard to do when you are having to rely on prescriptions. Many of those, you can't just stop because it can make you sick if you just stop them suddenly. So please go back and catch that episode if you did miss it. But today I wanna talk about, uh, four conditions for diagnosis that people are frequently treating with medications and what we can do to go beyond the pills. What steps can you take with these four conditions that I have personally identified are conditions that you could manage and you don't have to have a prescription. As I was creating this list, I don't have the hard numbers that would come from my practice as far as the percentage that presents with these, these topics, but I, I know that probably, um, asked about the Middle East, um, 10 times a day. And the conditions that we're gonna discuss, I think, are important to address as far as the steps you can take in your home, in your daily routine in your life that can make them better. And particularly conditions that I feel that we've become overly reliant on prescriptions and often leaves patients and practitioners frustrated because we're not getting, um, the results that we want and why that is. And, um, approaching these from more of a holistic approach. So the first one's gonna be insomnia. So one of the most common complaints that patients come in with is, I can't sleep. Um, why can't I sleep? I can't fall asleep, or I fall asleep and I wake up too soon or I'll fall asleep during the day but not at night. Um, I wake up with racing thoughts, I wake up thinking about things and can't fall back asleep. All forms of insomnia. So when I'm evaluating someone insomnia, um, my job is to make sure there isn't something going on medically. So I typically need a lot more information cuz a lot of, uh, patients will come and just say, I can't sleep. And then the more we discuss it, they can't sleep because their legs are aching or they feel like they have to move them. Um, and when we dig a little deeper, they're having restless leg, but because their iron is low, their iron is low in their blood cuz they're anemic. And the very worst case cases I've seen of this is they're anemic because they have early colon cancer. So colon cancer actually leading to restless leg syndrome. And this, this actually does happen, but the first thing we have to do is, um, when you can't sleep, you don't wanna start with just, I just need a pill to knock me out, which many people do say, and I understand cuz they're desperate, they're tired, the insomnia is destroying their day, making it hard to get along with people at home and at work. But really we need to get the diagnosis first. Then what else can we do to help? Aside from some of the prescriptions for sleep, which can be downright dangerous, you know, they work, but they can have kind of dangerous side effects. They can lead to hangover. And, um, the thing that, uh, the most worrisome when we have to rely on medications for insomnia is that we aren't using your body's normal God given physiology. That helps you wind into a restful sleep and wake up from sleep that we're chemically overriding that and your brain is gonna lose its ability in your body to find sleep on its own. So to get beyond the pills with insomnia, the first thing you wanna do is have a good bedtime routine, which means the screens have to go off. So the television needs to be off. Um, you might even need to remove it from the bedroom. If the temptation's too much, you have to stop using your phone, even if you've got, uh, the, uh, the, the blue light filter on it. Just the activity of looking at the lit screen is overstimulating to the brain, cuz that light's gonna travel down the optic nerve through your brain to the pine gland and start suppressing melatonin production. And you've got to start making melatonin early in your evening to dos a a natural state of drowsiness. Um, we don't wanna use laptops in the bed, so just no more computers in the bed if you wanna sleep. If you don't wanna sleep, that's a definite way to train your body that you're gonna be working on your computer even during the daytime. Don't use your laptop in your bed or your computer in your bed and then having something that helps you unwind when possible. So nice cup of herbal tea to take, um, a book that you find relaxing or inspirational. So I often have a book at my bedside. Is, is something that I'll read to help just release the day. Um, in addition to that, um, if you're finding you're the type of person that has the worry thoughts that wake you up or keep you from going to bed, um, having a journal at your bedside and what you can do is just everything you're gonna worry about, just write it down. Um, you might wanna follow up with an affirmation to release it or, um, um, for reiki practitioners you can do reiki on the list to help you know, good energy, get to all the things that stress you or where you out. Um, or if you're one of those people that unfortunately wakes up with worry thoughts and they're recycling your head, then if you can find a way to get up peacefully without disturbing your partner, finding a place you can journal and write down those worry thoughts so that you can get them out of your head and release them. And then try to try to relax. Exercise during your day helps you sleep and it's a number of reasons why that happens. But in short is this automatic operating system in your body called the autonomic nervous system. And, um, the autonomic nervous system, we've discussed some on the show, um, and it's, it's basically the, like your phone has operating system, it's either Android or it's apple. Um, your computer runs on either apple or windows. Your human body runs on the autonomic nervous system, which is governed by your, your Vegas nerve and then your sympathetic nervous system, which is a chain of nerves that go up and down your spine. So when we exercise, we can use the autonomic nervous system and we take one system and we rev it up. That's the sympathetic nervous system. So that's the stuff that helps with fight or flight raises. Your heart rate gets you ready for action, you wanna actually intentionally activate that during the day. And then it creates a nice balance so that in the evening and at night your parasympathetic nervous system can naturally start to work cuz the sympathetic nervous system got used. It wants to be used but not that much. But we can help at night with the relaxation. So, um, for a lot of my patients, I strongly encourage'em, even if you're tired during the day, you wanna do general exercise when the sun's up, when you know you're feeling good and that will help you with sleep at night. One recommendation people often forget aroma therapy is one of your safest, uh, remedies that you can do at bedtime. Um, essential oils, uh, two that I can think of off the top of my head are lavender and spearin can be a great way to help you sleep. So if you've got a diffuser, um, maybe running the diffuser one caveat diffusers, um, a lot of them are making, they make a slight noise. Um, now I find it disruptive. So, um, I recommend to people if you run a diffuser, place it far from you in your bedroom or if you have like an ensu bathroom, maybe let it run in there so the air will get diffused, but that buzzing it may make isn't going to disrupt you. Um, but diffusing lavender or spearin, um, some people find fra incense, um, relaxing and those are readily available everywhere. Or finding an essential oil, um, formulation that you can apply like a drop or two to your temple or a drop or two to your chest and taking several minutes to inhale and exhale and just that action alone can help you activate the parasympathetic nervous system and wind down into sleep. And finally my personal favorite and I do this most night, is a yoga position of putting your legs up the wall. Um, now depending on your furniture and your setup and your abilities, um, uh, I actually just, while I'm in the bed, I've just be, while I'm reading, I'll just actually turn around backwards so that my legs are angled up the wall and my head's the other direction. And I'll read for a few minutes, but you might need, I have to have access to a floor or just elevating your legs with like several pillows as you're falling asleep. Um, helps our body to revers a blood flow, get some of the flow back into your belly and your chest is very relaxing on the back and it can help you ease into sleep. The next condition diagnosis that you can begin management of not necessarily requiring prescriptions is going to be generalized anxiety disorder. Anxiety can be a mood or a state, but then it's a diagnosis if it's impacting your life, if it's having effect on several spectrums of your life and it's gotten beyond control, um, no matter where you are on the spectrum, having noticing you're feeling more anxious more often, or having full blown generalized anxiety disorder, even with phobias and things, um, and you require medical treatment, there are things that you can start. And this is one I speak to with great sensitivity because I have so many patients that are suffering from anxiety of unfortunately, you know, with the pandemic and people having loss, they didn't know what was gonna happen. Their personal life, business career, so many enforced changes that they're experiencing anxiety. So, um, I speak, there's a great sensitivity, but even if you make attempts at some of the things that we'll mention here, um, understand that the state of anxiety does make it difficult, but you actually wanna make attempts to try what you can because you may found out that you can lower your anxiety on a day to day basis, even with your prescriptions. Or you may find out that if you do some things right now, you may not have to go on to prescriptions. And with these things they really do speak to getting to the root cause of why you're feeling anxious. Anxiety as a state comes from multiple factors. It comes from psychological factors being driven by certain thoughts that are repeated physically. Um, I often describe to my patients that if they're in a state of having poorly trained breathing with most, most of us are, don't take deep enough breaths, we start taking shallow breasts or even holding our breath at times that it triggers our autonomic nervous system to fire into different mode in which there's a threat that's coming and you need to prepare for the threat. But there's really no threat. Just your body's reading this information because of breath holding and a number of things where it can become just a state of feeling anxious, having more thoughts all the way to anxiety attacks and which is actually an explosive combination. A release of adrenaline from your adrenal glands that creates dilated pupils, sweating, racing, heartbeat, chest pain, nausea or vomiting because blood is being taken away from your digestive system to your periphery cuz your body is preparing for a fight or to run. But that's not happening. It's just created in your body because the state that's been there, your body's been interpreting this as stress or threat. So with anxiety and like with all these conditions, you have to get a good diagnosis first. Cuz you know, we can imagine anxiety could end up looking someone with, uh, hyperthyroidism might present with anxiety, someone with anemia might present with anxiety, someone with heart disease may present with anxiety like symptoms. So it really needs to be evaluated. But once it is, there are few things that you can do to help manage it even if medications have to become part of your routine. Um, our first one is gonna be meditation. The practice of meditation. The first thing it can do for you is train you on breathing properly. So that sounds silly because we all breathe, we're alive cuz we're listening to the podcast. But we often learn, even for myself, this is a habit that I am constantly working against. That is before I walk in to see a patient, especially if I know that this is gonna be difficult cuz I know the patient is going through pain, suffering, uh, something that's a serious illness, that I will take some deep breaths before I walk in. Then as I walk in the room, as I sit down with the patient in an attempt to be attentive that I'm actually holding my breath and I don't want to take a deep breath cuz I don't wanna look like I'm sighing, I don't wanna appear bored. So in an attempt to feel it, you know, be attentive that I actually am holding my breath. Now because I've studied meditation and I am studying meditation, I'll always hope to be a, a student of meditation. And I've studied reiki, I can tune in a little bit more to when I can take a breath and, you know, not that it turns into a size so I don't appear bored, but just to, you know, catch my own breath and slow down my own heart rate by taking an nice deep breath and that I can be more present as a person is talking so that I don't refocus on myself, but make sure to give the focus to them. But for folks, my patients that are suffering from meditation, the general advice I give them is you wanna start the practice with an intention. You're gonna do it every day When you're anxious, there may be days you feel like you cannot do it, you still wanna try and even if you have a meditation session that you don't finish. Even myself, I as a, I was meditating last week and going through some of my own difficulties. I couldn't finish my meditation, but I still felt the benefits later on. And then I returned the next day and found that it was fine and I felt very good. So, um, if you're gonna do it, you wanna try to do it every day, you wanna make a habit of at least three weeks to get started to get the benefit. Um, I like 21 days such as my 21 day meditation journey, my book, um, and returning to that every day and then anticipate the changes are subtle. So don't expect anything that's gonna be huge, but hopefully you'll start to have more awareness of your breath. You'll start to notice your thoughts when they're really running. How to, you know, not that you need to control'em, but you'll just have awareness of when thoughts are different by anxiety, is that really you, Is it something else? Um, and it helps you maintain some control just as with insomnia. Um, you can really help your anxiety with exercise and kind of the same thinking that you can activate your sympathetic nervous system so that it works when you want it to during the day, bright day, you know of the sun. And then your body can reverse and relax better at night. But particularly in anxiety, when you are relying too much on your sympathetic nervous system, so your body's staying in a fight or flight or overdrive. Um, if you go ahead and get get some exercise in, it helps you to rein that in. My final recommendation with anxiety is, uh, clinical studies have shown us that anxiety and I did forget with insomnia, actually respond more effectively to cognitive behavioral therapy. So this is therapy that you have with a professional and probably, um, this is not as popular with most patients because it takes time, it takes effort, it takes vulnerability. However, it can actually be more effective in dealing with anxiety and dealing with insomnia to undertake therapy. Particularly c B t kind of behavioral therapy in which you are gonna be working maximally with your nervous system cognitively to help lower your anxiety. I have a few previous episodes I've had as guest, uh, Brandy Gibson. I've also had Selena Smith. Both are practicing therapists who, um, offer some sage wisdom on when therapy works, how it works. I would recommend listening to those shows, especially if you've thought about therapy, but you've been on the fence. I think it's good to hear them talk about how it could be helpful as a physician. I'm pre I'm, I'm recommending it quite a bit, but I understand that as I recommend it briefly, it probably doesn't sink in as much as listening to the people that do it in the benefits. And, um, and I I think definitely in modern times now when everyone's stress levels are so high, they don't, you listeners may not realize how you could benefit from something like working with a therapist. So I'll put some links in my show notes with those episodes, but I would have a listen if you've thought about therapy, but not sure if it's for you or where to get started. And the final, uh, oh no, not not the final, sorry. But, um, the next condition that I think you can help yourself, even if you're relying on prescriptions chronically and there's strong prescriptions, is chronic pain. Chronic pain is defined as pain that's been present for at least six months, um, that is causing physiologic and neurologic changes within the person. And chronic pain can be from any source, it can be from the muscles and that might be fibromyalgia, It could be from the joints such as osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. It could be from the nerves which would be neuropathy. Neuropathy that could come from diabetes or neuropathy related to chemotherapy. Um, it could be, uh, generalized pain, a leftover inflammatory response to having had c So many conditions can lead to chronic pain. Chronic pain as a disease is gonna be one of the toughest cuz for one, the person that's suffering from it is in pain and it affects your mood, it makes you depressed, it takes away your hope. You're relying on medications that are side effect, heavy opioids that cause constipation make you more depressed. Opioids that disrupt your sleep, uh, non anti-inflammatories or NSAIDs, which can bring brief pain relief but they can affect your stomach or raise your blood pressure. So chronic pain is one of those conditions that when I work with patients, I feel that we, we need to emphasize anything that we can do to alleviate the pain that goes beyond the pills. Anything that we can do similar anxiety, um, I explain to patients and even for myself, if I'm having pain from something that, um, undertaking these things is gonna be hard. So it's gonna be hard to sit be still. It may be hard to focus, just make the attempt and then hopefully the next time it'll be easier. So one of the things I like to recommend to my patients that are having chronic pain or if you're a listener who's suffered from anything that's been painful for over six months, The first one is make sure you know the diagnosis. So the pain source should have a clear and obvious name. If it does not, you should advocate for yourself, find a physician, get second opinions, find specialist, but the source of your pain, you should have a very clear diagnosis. So one thing I've noticed, some people say it's right leg pain, so the location we've got, but we need to get the obvious diagnosis. Is this right leg pain from a blood clot or is this sciatica that's affecting the right side of the body and causing a pinched nerve in the right leg? And that's where the pain is. So the first thing, and now this is a difficult one. I mean the most difficult journey chronic pain is to make sure you know the diagnosis cuz that's gonna be where, you know, to get relief. So you should have an obvious diagnosis and you've got a treatment target. My next recommendation similar to anxiety, is gonna be learning to meditate, but being very gentle with yourself. So, um, meditation does a number of things in the nervous system that it can help with your body's response to pain. Now while you're working on getting the firm diagnosis and understanding what's hurting, you can be starting meditation. If nothing else, it helps reduce your stress and coping with the pain on your end will become easier, especially if you're in modern medicine in the United States. You'll have to be your own advocate and unfortunately you'll have to be strong when you're not ready to. But starting a meditation practice and being gentle in that, you may do better, meditating, laying down, you may do better, laying down, supporting your knees, um, you may do better doing a alternative of sitting where you're highly supported or even forms of meditation that are particularly gentle like yoga Nira, uh, may be the most accessible. And then when you're attempting meditation, understand that if you can't continue because you're uncomfortable, the meditation still worked. Just your intent to help calm your mind, recenter and focus, um, is enough to help, uh, reduce your discomfort. Don't expect to notice improvement right at that moment. Typically, you notice the next day or two days or three days, you can also make sure that your diet and your nutrition don't create more pain and inflammation. Anyone suffering from any chronic pain of all sources, the first thing you really wanna do is eliminate excessive sugars. When you have chronic pain, there is something that's happening in your brain after several months of pain that certain centers in your brain are being triggered that will drive you to want carbohydrates, sugars, and sweets. And you may even begin to feel that consuming these things reduces your pain for a little bit, but then it comes right back. Or sometimes consuming sugars, sweets, sodas, those kind of things seems to be a temporary distraction from the pain. And there is a physiologic reason why this isn't just you being weak or not trying hard enough, but when you can, I would ask that you reduce those sugars as much as possible. Understanding you may go through some cravings, some withdrawals, but by reducing those, especially like joint pain and nerve pain, especially for diabetics, will start to back off. Caffeine consumption can have benefits, but excessive caffeine in addition to disrupting your sleep, is gonna activate your nervous system and possibly make you more sensitive to pain. So I usually ask people to just make sure not to consume it close to bedtime, really not consume caffeine if you're within three to four hours of going to bed and to keep it in moderation. So no more than one coffee cup of coffee a day, or no more than two to three cups of brewed green tea a day. So you'll still reap some of the benefits, but not more than it's gonna activate your system. And then finally, um, not consuming inflammatory foods. Uh, inflammatory foods like sugars, certain fats, highly processed foods will make you hurt worse, leave you feeling more hungry and are getting the nutrients you need that you need to heal from the chronic pain. Um, an anti-inflammatory diet, which is, um, essentially just as unprocessed as you can find, can really support your efforts in healing. And, and in show notes I'll include, um, an example of what an anti-inflammatory diet can look like. It'll have some free recipes and you can test the waters with that. But in general, if you consume enough omega three s and you consume enough fiber and you're consuming enough nutrients, it optimizes your body and it helps you to heal The final condition that benefits from things you can do beyond the pills is high blood pressure. So high blood pressure or hypertension is serious. You've gotta get your blood pressure checked in the doctor's office. You should be monitoring your blood pressure at home if you've been diagnosed. But, um, even once you're given prescriptions, you actually can affect your blood pressure. You do by your daily habits, what you eat, your stress levels. So even if you're taking two, three or four medications to control your blood pressure, this is definitely stuff you wanna do at home so that if the time comes, your doctor can prescribe less, You can start de-prescribing like, uh, we talked about with Dr. Wynn, uh, some weeks ago. Um, but of course the first thing that you wanna do, um, once you have clearance, because if you've been diagnosed with high blood pressure, there's a chance you could have heart disease. So make sure your doctor isn't watching you for other heart disease like corny artery disease or congestive heart failure. Um, movement or exercise at least 150 minutes a week has been what's been proven to benefit your cardiovascular health. Even if you've already been diagnosed, it's worthwhile undertaking. Um, my patients will ask me often and I will tell them that in general I say 150 minutes a week, I always recommend walking cuz for most of us it's a safe exercise where we're not gonna likely get harmed. Um, if you can get outdoors has even got that benefit of, you know, some sunshine improving your mood, outdoor air, and, uh, walking is something you can do even if you're busy. So even if you've got a jampacked day, there's probably places you can get your steps in. And if you've got a smartphone, your phone can track your steps. It probably already is if you haven't even been using that part of your phone. Um, I always recommend yoga. I practice yoga myself every morning and that's a good way to get in some movement. And then if you wanna go beyond that, but, um, if you have the diagnosis of high blood pressure, you really should make sure your doctor knows what you're planning to do, make sure it's safe, make sure your doctor doesn't need something like a stress test for you. Just like with chronic pain, making sure you've got a diet that includes plenty of inflammation, lowering foods and anti-inflammatory diet. Processed foods will give you high blood pressure. And if your diet is full of foods that are processed, and when I say processed, I mean the food has a label. So you have to check the label. Um, you have to be aware of it that unfortunately that could be raising your blood pressure and regular consumption is giving you high blood pressure and you wanna replace those foods with something that's non-processed where you can. And a lot of people overlook that. One of the best things you can do for high blood pressure is learning to deep breath, breathe more effectively, learning some breath work in the form of meditation. And I've been even surprised myself when some of my patients I've recommend they try meditation and they start like 10 minutes a day and their blood pressure drops by 20 points. Quite incredible. But it's probably because their stress level comes down, their, their autonomic system works better, gets tuned up, and they reap the benefit with decreasing their blood pressure. And some folks have done it enough that they can actually start to come off some of their prescriptions. It's really cool. So thank you so much for joining me. We will be getting back together soon where we'll complete, um, this round with a brief meditation together. Um, my weekly newsletter, um, is one of the easiest ways to keep in touch and you can actually be signed up and I'll send you every week when the podcast comes out, I'll, I'll remind you and it'll actually be a link where you can download. And then I like to include other freebies, other information, um, programs online that I discover that, um, I like to attend because staying healthy requires self education and being your own advocate. So don't forget you can't sign up for that and that way you don't, you can have the reminder come directly to your inbox. Thank you so much for joining me. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.