Living Well with Chronic Illness

In today's episode, Living Well with Chronic Illness, we'll be exploring how lifestyle medicine can help soothe symptoms and support healing. Our guest today, Sharleen Lucas, is the RN next door health coach. She's passionate about helping people soothe ongoing symptoms associated with chronic illness so they can live fully. After eight years at the hospital bedside, she became a health writer and coach to help people use food, lifestyle and rest to nourish their bodies and combat chronic illness. As an RN with expertise in medical, spiritual, preventive and emergency care, she's enjoyed volunteering as a medical first responder and working for nearly a decade in spiritual care with youth and families after studying theology and business management at Whitworth University.

Transcript

Welcome to today’s podcast! My name is Abbie Cornett, and I am the patient advocate for IG Living magazine. This podcast is brought to you by IG Living to give readers the chance to hear directly from healthcare experts on topics that matter to them most.

Abbie: In today's episode, Living Well with Chronic Illness, we'll be exploring how lifestyle medicine can help soothe symptoms and support healing. Our guest today, Sharleen Lucas, is the RN Nextdoor health coach. She's passionate about helping people soothe ongoing symptoms associated with chronic illness so they can live fully. After eight years at the hospital bedside, she became a health writer and coach to help people use food, lifestyle and rest to nourish their bodies and combat chronic illness. As an RN with expertise in medical, spiritual, preventive and emergency care, she's enjoyed volunteering as a medical first responder and working for nearly a decade in spiritual care with youth and families after studying theology and business management at Whitworth University.   

Abbie: Sharleen, thank you so much for being here today. I'm really excited to dive into this with you. You know, first, I would love it if you could explain to our listeners what lifestyle medicine is and why it's considered a form of medicine.  

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yeah, I'm so delighted to be here, Abbie. I think you know that. And just as an intro thinking about your listeners, I know what it's like to feel like you have a body that is working against you and not for you, and constantly feeling like you're thinking about what's wrong with the body and not what's strong. And so I am delighted to be here and just use this discussion as a way to shore up the whole body — or anybody, any one of us actually, but those with chronic illness and those with immunodeficiency in particular.  

So this is a delight. And lifestyle medicine's a huge, huge piece of managing chronic illness, as you know, for anybody. And again, for anybody who doesn't have chronic illness. And so we can use the word medicine for lifestyle because it works at a cellular level like pharmaceutical drugs would. And so, typically, we use the word medicine for pharmaceuticals. Because they work at a cellular level, we take them in, they go down into the body and they kind of demand the body to do something. So lifestyle medicine is a form of going right down to the very root of our health, which is at the cellular level into the organelles of the cell and how it's working, and lifestyle medicine is a little more gentle. And so it's not going to maybe provide as quick of a change or kind of demand a change, but it's incredibly powerful because it's giving ourselves what we need down to the cells. And so, then, it reduces our risk of disease. It soothes symptoms. It shores up other symptoms that are strong and operating well in the body to help strengthen the weaker parts. And so. It's vital. It's a necessity, is the word I'm looking for, it's a necessity. And can I define what lifestyle medicine is in a real easy way?  

Abbie: I was gonna say that would be great for our listeners. 

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would say in a very simple way, it's living in a way, creating a day-to-day lifestyle that nourishes the cells. And so in every way, our goal is to feed our cells what they need so they can thrive, so they can operate optimally, which is, dare I say, healing to the parts that we can heal throughout the body or soothing. And so it's living in a way that nourishes the cell is the easiest way to put it.   

Abbie: You know, the next question I have is kind of near and dear to my heart because it's something I truly believe in. Let's talk about food as medicine. What is the difference between real food and processed food? We hear so much about it in the media now, how processed food is not good for us and it can lead to chronic illness. Why does that matter, particularly for managing chronic illness? And how, on that note, does eating in sync with our body's natural circadian rhythms impact our cellular health? I know that's a really complex question. I mean, it's like multifaceted.   

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yeah, and I smile because I kind of get giddy on these topics because they're, they're really... 

Abbie: Well, proper diet is really important to me. 

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Again, and you do an amazing job at it. And at the baseline, as you know, what nourishes the cells, because that's again what we're working towards, what nourishes the cell is real food. And to the best of our ability, there are multiple things that nourish the cell. But when we're talking about food, real whole food is going to nourish the cells better than processed food. And what is processed food? What is both of them? Processed food is really anything that we as humans had to put our hands on in a manufacturing way to get it to the market, and so to sell it. So the further we get away from the farm, the more processed food gets, as you know, to the point of ultra processed food, which is the biggest danger. And that's like the sodas and the chips. 

Doritos, Fritos are all great examples of highly processed packaged food. And that's the challenge. Yes. And so I teach my clients, I don't accept in certain bodies. And so each person needs to decide for themselves, how intense do you need to go on only whole food and what percentage of processed food can you eat? And that's a little different for each client. 

People really need to figure that out for themselves and their bodies. But some people can go with, most of us can go with a certain amount. You could say 80, 20 whole food to processed food. But again, I caution everybody that's one's own journey. So yeah, whole food is as you know, close to the earth. So can we get as close to the farm as we can? Including animal products. So, and just real quick too, real whole food can be, can fit a vegetarian diet. It can even fit, and this could be controversial, but it even fit a carnivore diet if you do that correctly, amazingly. And so it really has some flexibility. Yeah, go ahead. 

Abbie: No, I was just, I was, I agree with you in that it can fit any diet style. It depends on the products you're buying and how you're preparing them.

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yep. Absolutely. And to make a note on the food as medicine phrase, because in my work, I like to say lifestyle is medicine, food is medicine, movement is medicine. And food as medicine, I don't know who coined that, but Dr. Mark Hyman is one who has this great quote, and he is a leading physician with Cleveland Clinic leading in the functional medicine space. 

And so he's an MD with a functional medicine specialty. And he says food isn't like medicine, it is medicine because it goes again to the cellular level, brings molecules through our digestion, gets it to the cells, and then the cells can do things with it to provide health and create action in the body that's incredibly brilliant. 

So also to the circadian rhythm point then, one way that we make food into medicine is doing our best to eat with our circadian rhythm, which likes to eat in the morning with the sunrise. That's not everybody's gig. And it depends on how some people fast if they fast. But in essence, eating in the morning when the body's waking up and getting chemicals going for the day, that's one of the best times to eat breakfast and then eating dinner. Kind of close to the sunset if we can and then not snacking afterwards. The snacking is a huge circadian rhythm thing after dinner. Let the body do what it wants to at night, which is detox and a lot of other things, but eating just, it makes it digest at night when it wants to do other things. So just trying to eat with the way the body wants to work is a big deal in supporting the cells. 

Abbie: You know, you mentioned when you were speaking about food, one of the other aspects that you work with is movement as medicine. And again, like food, movement is something I truly believe in. How is muscle more than just strength and actually considered a metabolic organ? What small ways with people with chronic illness can maintain muscles even when they're feeling sick? 

And why is our cardiovascular fitness so important for longevity, especially for those managing some more, you know, the autoimmune conditions and chronic conditions. And I, when I asked that, I’m fully aware that a lot of the people listening to this podcast really have limited mobility from autoimmune disease or limited ability because of chronic illness to work out in the traditional sense of working out.  

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: You bet. You bet. Just all the things that come with having a body that's just not doing everything that we want it to is so hard on the mind too. And as a nurse, I used to work with bedridden patients in trying to still move them. And that fortunately was mostly a physical therapist and occupational therapist job, but. 

Yeah, I mean, we're just passively sometimes moving arms just to get movement going on a patient that can barely move or encouraging people to the best of their ability to just stand up at the bedside. So wherever anybody is at working to move, so in general, let's just talk about general exercise. Movement increases blood flow. Movement also starts to amazingly, and this can be gentle movement to intense movement, it actually begins to create new neurons. It generates new stem cells. And so this is one reason why we think movement in general is good for depression. We know it's good for depression. Studies have shown us that. And so when the body's not working well and it's depressing, if we can find ways to move, that is going to begin to just do something in our body more than we understand and is gonna support our mental health, as well as getting blood moving to the places that it needs to move to and getting new cells generated. And so that's just a huge power in exercise in and of itself. I'm gonna look at my notes real quick and make sure I don't miss anything on that point. 

Well, the other point too is it boosts mitochondrial health. We now know mitochondria are, we've like 500 trillion, we think of mitochondria and they're doing thousands of things all day long. They're little powerhouses and they're kind of a bit of the brain of the cell. They're directing work more than I learned in school. And so exercise begins to help them do that to say the least, so in very complex and impressive ways. And so just moving in general, and I'll get back to that point, but on the metabolic point of muscle, I just think this is so neat because you don't learn this in nursing school, but you learn a lot about metabolic health from a diabetic standpoint. And so this really resonated to me as an RN. 

Muscles aren't just for movement. They're not just a skeletal muscle thing that help us move and be strong. They're actually, they're creating a little peptide, small protein called a myokine that signals work throughout the body. It communicates with the brain, the pancreas, other muscles. All throughout the body, muscle is communicating with the body via these little myokines. And so it's way more. That's metabolic work. Metabolic health, by the way, is cellular function. How are the cells working? How are they taking in nutrients, food, sunlight, water, oxygen, and creating energy, and then also creating all the proteins, enzymes, hormones that we're just using constantly all day. 

And, so, metabolic health is, I like to just say, it's cellular health. Let's just make it simple. It's cellular health. And yes, it's connected to cardiovascular disease and diabetes as we've always thought of it, but it's connected to all function of the body. So your muscles are helping with that entire function. It's brilliant. And again, just look at my notes to make sure that we're not missing anything on that point. And of course to muscles helping us utilize and store protein, fat and sugar. So if you can manage those macronutrients well, that's going to reduce some risk of chronic illness.  

Abbie: And/or improve symptoms of chronic illness.  

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yes, thank you. Chronic illness, yes. Go ahead.   

Abbie: I was just going to say, because besides reducing the risk, if you have a chronic illness, you have one of these conditions, anything you do, no matter how small it is, with inside what you can do will help. 

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yes. Yes. Yes. And just to relate, I have a family member who's got severe primary immunodeficiency in their family. And so I understand there are some things that instead of being able to change and fix them, we're going to have to shore up around them. And that's tough. What's that? 

Abbie: Build up a support system in the body. Yes. I said it's kind of like building a support system in the body.   

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: I think that's really a great way to put it. How do we support the cells so that it's supporting all the other stuff that's going to shore up and help really support symptom management in immunodeficiency?  

Abbie: That's a good way of being well, and or any of the autoimmune diseases. Now you touched earlier on circadian rhythms and that kind of morphs into my next question. How about rest and how does that connect to the nervous system and how did the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems impact our health and why is shifting into parasympathetic dominance so important for soothing chronic illness? 

And can you explain what that means a little bit? A lot of our listeners might not understand the difference between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. And once we have a little bit of understanding on that, what are some of the techniques for triggering that parasympathetic system and how can they help, how can our listeners help improve immune health and just in general health and nervous system function? And I know that's a really large question.  

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: It is, but that makes it fun. And so let's see if we can boil it down to some simplicities. 

Abbie: And I was going to say, and this is kind of our first, this is our first podcast together. So we're just going to go over kind of the shotgun approach to the things that you work with. And then later we can do podcasts just in depth working on these topics.  

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yeah, diving in because they really get complex, which is delightful. Yeah, and the complexity is delightful when you're a scientist. It's a little rougher when you're the layman just wanting to apply these things. So yeah, let's see if we can just boil that down and apply it for your listeners. And this is again, such a cool thing. And a lot of those of us who are health coaches, we talk a lot about food, a lot of movement and a lot about rest and stress. And so I kind of like to call this cellular rest is medicine because we're actually, because there's a lot of ways that we know how to rest. We know naps are great. We know taking a day off is vital. But there's deeper rest that we can bring to ourselves. And that's what I love because it's kind of, it's, it's a way to shore up your body from, from really deep in. And the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous systems are involved because they are kind of there are so they're the two parts of the autonomic nervous system and that autonomic nervous system is the way that the brain really communicates to the body for the involuntary things that our body is doing. And so we are either going to be triggering our sympathetic nervous system, which is our stress, fight or flight nervous system, or we're gonna trigger the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest nervous system, based on what's happening in our lives. Things outside of us are gonna trigger one or the other at times, but there are tools where we have the choice to trigger one or the other, and we want to trigger the parasympathetic nervous system because that's our daily restful, as Donna Nakasawa, the one that wrote the, sorry, The Last Best Cure, that fabulous book. She likes to call the parasympathetic nervous system the PSY, PSY Now nervous system. And you can just feel in your body when you even just say that, what it does, that's what we want to live in. And so we want to find ways in our lifestyle to trigger that system. 

And excuse me. And so the parasympathetic nervous system, when that's triggered, and that's called parasympathetic dominant versus, you'll hear this often, sympathetic nervous system dominant, which one are we living in more often? And so most of us are living in the sympathetic nervous system. 

And even just talking about all the stuff that Abbie, you do is amazing. And a lot of people couldn't accomplish that much because it just kind of triggers that busy sense. And your personality has a brilliant way of managing that. The busyness is one of the triggers of our sympathetic nervous system. And so I'm just going to go through and kind of answer each of your questions, but feel free to interrupt me at any point, because I feel like I'll end up talking for a long time on this. Yeah. 

Abbie: Well, I know that what you already mentioned a little bit ties into my next question, which is stress. And you've touched on how stress affects the parasympathetic nervous system. just explain a little bit about that and have at it. We're here to listen.

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yeah, so stress is one of those things that can come externally for sure and trigger our sympathetic nervous system. And some of those physical stressors, I'm gonna call them physical because of course you have emotional, relational and psychological stressors that are all so internal. Then there's physical stressors like chemical toxins are going to be a physical stressor for the body at high levels. 

So anything that's foreign to the body at a high level, that's a physical stressor to the cells. Infections are a physical stressor. That was one of my big pieces of my story is in my 20s. I picked up a single cell amoeba traveling and carried it for a long time. They thought I had rheumatoid arthritis. They didn't know why I had chronic fatigue and joint pain and GI issues and brain fog. And well, my body had a stressor in the form of an infection. 

And we'll talk about what this does to the cells in a minute. And thankfully we were able to eradicate that infection, but then I had a ton of damage that I had to heal from. 

Abbie: And I was going to say, and lot of our patients, particularly immune deficient, have chronic infections. And so that's something that definitely applies to them. 

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yeah. Yes, that's huge. And I'm glad you said that because all, we'll talk a little bit about what there's a cell danger response. And the cell goes into a response when it senses danger. And any one of these physical stressors can create that as well as the emotional and other stressors, but damaging food, what we eat is what we become at the cellular level. And that can stress the body if it's got to deal with stuff, it just doesn't recognize. 

And the lack of circadian rhythm is a bit of a physical stressor, lack of sunlight, lack of time outdoors, being on our devices constantly, that actually begins to stress the cells. Over-exercising is a physical stressor too that can really stress the body, especially for women at certain times of their cycle or at perimenopause when estrogen levels are being goofy. So women need to really understand that. And so other stressors, I really work hard with women, particularly in helping them to slow down their lives because a lack of margins in life can really start to make the cells sense danger. So let's just talk about that real quick. Cells, mitochondria in particular, they're amazing little sensors. And when they sense a stressor, a toxin, an infection, something wrong in the body, they will go into, they'll lead the cellular danger response, cell danger response. And I go like this because the cell has a membrane, right? And the membrane is brilliant. There's so many things to a cellular membrane, and it has to be healthy for cellular health. And so cell danger response causes the cell to actually stiffen its membrane a little because if there's an infection in the body, that cell does not want it.  

Abbie: Not want it. Yeah, it's a way of warding off that infection.   

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yeah, it's a coping mechanism. It's like, let's tighten up because we don't want that infection. Meanwhile, the body operates best over time with a fluid membrane. So that stiffened cellular membrane does begin to injure the body, injure the cellular work, just like the coping mechanisms that we pick up as a kid to survive and then carry them into adulthood and they start hurting us or damaging our relationships. So really similar with the cell danger response. And so what's important for people to know is that when the cells sense danger, at any level, relationships, emotional stressors, trauma for sure, that can all trigger the cell danger response.   

Abbie: And physical illness.  

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Yeah, yes, physical, yeah. And all the stressors that come with having a chronic illness, man, I so get that. Just, I couldn't work as well. I didn't feel like I was thriving as well. And when you have family members who really care about you, you stress about them because you don't want your kids to stress about you. And it just, all of that can become, yeah, such a stressor. And so learning.   

Abbie: The cycle.  

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: In fact, I just want to say too, learning all of this stuff is one way to love our family members who don't have our issues so that we can shore them up and continue to strengthen them in the process of living with, you know, a loved one with chronic illness. That's so important.  

Abbie: I always, and it's one thing I preach all the time to both the patients I work with and their families is educate yourself, not just specifically about your illness, but about everything, about what lifestyle changes you're going to have, how this is going to affect you, how you can combat that. Learn about your illness and everything that that encompasses. 

Sharleen, we're going to kind of move to wrapping it up a little bit, but I would like to touch a little bit on something we discussed before, what stimulating the vagus nerve is and how is that a powerful healing tool and how does it work for relaxation? And maybe explain a little bit to our listeners what the vagus nerve is and what some of the practices are that can help them. Breathing exercises, cold therapy. And what is most effective for activating that?   

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: Some of them might be a little surprising to some of your folks, but stimulating the vagus nerve is at the core of switching from a sympathetic dominant system to a parasympathetic dominant body, meaning again, that the parasympathetic nervous system is in charge more than the sympathetic nervous system. We only want to trigger that when we need to fight or flight or even freeze. 

But we really want to live in the rest and digest system. And the vagus nerve triggering that helps us because the vagus nerve is the main nerve in the parasympathetic nervous system. And it runs from the brainstem all the way down through the torso and innervates the normal functions of the body. And when we trigger the vagus nerve, that triggers the parasympathetic nervous system and the whole body, like a household that's coming down into a peaceful day can just take a deep breath and start to do what it's supposed to, which is digest well and create all the molecules it needs to function. so triggering the vagus nerve is really simple. And what I like about it is that it's kind of low hanging fruit for learning to release stress because dealing with trauma, that is a long process. That's a tough, tough thing. There are spiritual practices that are really good for the body for those who are in that space, but those take a while to learn. But the vagus nerve tools are quick and easy. And like one of them, this is funny, but gargling is a vagus nerve stimulator because somehow it, yeah, it is actually a fabulous one in the same vein as singing... 

Abbie: I had not heard of that. 

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: loudly like when you're all by yourself and you're just singing away and you shut the doors or you get in the car and you throw the music on or even humming if it's a little vigorous in the back. And these things. 

Abbie: Okay, sidebar, 

A couple weeks ago, I kind of tried the singing thing in the car and my dog looked at me like I was howling. no. 

Sharleen Lucas, The RNextdoor: That's a good one. Okay, well, I think maybe you just need to gargle. For some reason, and I don't know that I've totally looked into the mechanisms on this, but when you get the vocal cords working and vibrating, and also it has to do with some of the muscles in the backside of the neck, when you kind of vibrate against those, it helps to trigger that vagus nerve that's running down through the body. And so, amazingly, it begins to help trigger the vagus nerve. 

So, gargling, they say for about 30 seconds to one minute, and even before each meal to help also stimulate healthy digestion, because that's what happens when you stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, that that's recommended. But it has to be vigorous, because you really want to get things kind of moving and vibrating in there. 

But you also mentioned breathing and breathing is incredibly important because just imagine when you're running from somewhere, when you're stressed, you begin to breathe from that upper half of your lungs and your shoulders just kind of moving. You're just breathing part of the way. When you breathe deeply and open up the diaphragm and really get air down to the bottom of those lungs, which is what we did with our surgical patients, you really can oxygenate the lungs. But that triggers the body that everything's okay because you don't breathe deeply and restfully when you're stressed. So, if you're gonna breathe shallowly, you're triggering sympathetic nervous system. When you breathe deeply, you're triggering the parasympathetic. And there's different mechanisms on how to do that. And you can look that up. There's a lot of data online on how to do that. But just think about when you're running errands, breathe deeply so that your body kind of relaxes rather than kind of that stressed out running around shallow breathing. 

And can I throw in there too, amazingly, yoga is really an impressive vegus nerve stimulator, as well as any mind body exercises. When you're thinking about your breathing, connecting to your body, you're not distracted with a podcast or a movie, or really distracting music, you're actually connecting with your body. And feeling how things are moving and thinking about your breath. It is a great vagus nerve stimulator. And just to throw this out there, in The Last Best Cure, which is a book I just highly recommend to your listeners Her story, your people will totally relate with. It is an incredible personal journey of autoimmune disease and how she really helped it with mind-body exercises. I think meditation, acupuncture and yoga, think, she cites a study in there that where some patients in a study actually greatly reduce their irritable bowel syndrome or disease, I can't remember which one, with yoga and even healed some chronic lesions in their GI tract because they're simply, again, to bring it all back around, they're nourishing their cells. They're giving their cells rest so that the cells are like, okay, we're all okay. And the cell danger response actually takes time to change. It actually goes through a process of getting out of its danger response. So it takes time. You've got to do these things over the long haul, but it's a way to nourish the cells. 

And so again, to bring it all around and wrap up, when somebody has an autoimmune issue, chronic illness, immunodeficiency, or just life, this is a huge way to strengthen, allow the cells to start to work in every part of the body to shore up whatever our weak systems are. And then hopefully within our weak systems, begin to shore up whatever we can in those systems, if there is anything, and really begin to help the cells do their work. And that's what's going to bring a body into greater health is feeding the cells because they're brilliant little buggers and they know how to work. The ones that are functioning well, the ones that we can really get functioning well, they will know how to work when we feed them well.   

Abbie: Sharleen, today has been really fun. I have enjoyed this so much. I want to thank you for being our guest today. And your insights on lifestyle medicine and chronic illness, I think our listeners are going to find truly valuable. And I want to let you know how much I personally have gained from this conversation. And I look forward to having you again as one of our guests so we can dive into some of the topics that we touched on today a little bit deeper. 

Thank you again for being here. Listeners, you can connect with Sharleen at rnextdoor.com or reach out to her on Facebook and LinkedIn. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time. Thank you. Bye bye. 

Listeners, thank you again for joining us today. Additional information regarding this podcast can be found on our website at www.igliving.com. If you have a question that was not answered, please contact me at acornett@igliving.com. Look for the next IG Living podcast announcement on our website for the opportunity to submit your questions. IG Living Advocate is a copywrite production of IG Living magazine, published by FFF Enterprises, the only magazine for the immune globulin community comprised of patients who suffer from chronic illness and their caregivers.