Medical Gaslighting Doesn’t Stop in the Exam Room: How to Trust Yourself and Build the Right Care Team with Dr. Efrat LaMandre | E186

Today's conversation with Efrat Lamondre was meant to be a follow-up on our initial conversation we had maybe 6 months ago when I was on her podcast talking about my book, but we got off the rails a little bit. Today she talked about her personal struggle, medical gaslighting, which is one of her platforms, but also her personal health struggle, having a recent diagnosis of stage 4 cancer, how she navigated that, how's that changed her view as a provider, now as a patient, and ultimately as someone who's in the integrative world. Deals with patients. How do you keep from becoming and gaslighting yourself? That's a really interesting topic. I had a great conversation with her. It was really heartfelt. I think you're going to enjoy this a lot. Just how do you deal with your own health crisis and making sure that the system comes along and helps you and get the right team? Hope you all enjoy today's conversation as much as I did. Welcome back once again to another podcast. I'm super excited to have Farah here on our podcast today. She has an interesting story. She actually is an expert medical gaslighting. But as we were talking before we started recording, she's had a little twist in her own life history, health situations. After a brief introduction, we're going to jump into today's podcast. Dr. Fruitt-Lamondre, known as Dr. E, is a nationally recognized nurse practitioner who calls out a problem most patients recognize instantly, but few clinicians are trained to name: medical gaslighting. And those of you who know me, follow me, know we've been talking about medical gaslighting. a lot over the last 6 months. Her work examines why patients are dismissed when tests are normal and why you're fine often ends up in a different conversation. As a nurse practitioner, Dr. E speaks from inside the system, not outside. She's also the host of the Medical Disruptor podcast, where she brings clinicians, researchers, public health leadership, an honest conversation about trust, power, and limits of medicine current. Dr. E's talks reframe how we think about symptoms, reassurance, self-advocacy, Giving the audience practical language insight that changes how patients and providers meet in the exam room. So welcome to today's podcast. I can already tell from my, during my introduction, it's already dated.

It's already dated. I know. I was just thinking I have to send a message to my EA and change it all up.

So why don't you, my, I've been on your podcast before. This is your first time on my podcast. Why don't you just share a little bit about your story, like who you are, how you got to doing what you're doing, and then maybe just flow into—

Flow into it.

Yeah, I know. Exactly right.

I'll start a little bit about my story and then I'm going to, dear listener, I promise there's a plot twist. I won't say it all at once. I want to keep you here so you can listen to the plot twist. So I'm a nurse practitioner, the Dr. E's because I got a PhD later on integrative medicine, but I have one, I have a very large primary care practice. And for years I did the thing that I think many of your listeners are irritated by. I would, my patients would come in and say, hey, I don't feel good. And I would say, okay, let's figure this out. And I would run all the labs and I'd run all the tests and I would say, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, great news. Your labs are normal. You're fine. And really walked around thinking that was the best medicine, right? That was the best thing I could do. I ran all the labs, I ran all the tests. This is good news. Not knowing how dismissive that could be and how the patient perceives that often as medical gaslighting. Because what do you mean I don't feel well? What do you mean I'm fine? I, I don't feel well, right? So there's this big disconnect between our labs or our scans and how we feel. And so I call myself a recovering medical gaslighter because of my wife's journey. Her health issues led me down the functional medicine rabbit hole. I got certified in that and then integrative medicine PhD. And today I understand that Conventional medicine has its limits, but my message today is going to be about what we as patients can do, understanding those limits.

So let's talk a little bit, cause I talk about a lot medical gaslighting and I actually have this little twist to it that Dr. Jinsky is a physician in my practice. We're, we have on the podcast one day and he said the term of becoming a medical feminist, which just rang with me because it's almost like the individuals that we tend to gaslight, overlooked the worst, over the most, just happened to be women. And so could you just explain that whole concept? Like, what is medical gaslighting? Is it ignoring a whole part of the population? Is it— what does this actually even— this concept even mean?

Yes. Okay. Let's start with the gaslighting and then we'll talk about the populations that are most affected. Medical gaslighting, even if it's the first time you're hearing it, you know the word medical and you know the word gaslighting. It's really this feeling that patients— let's Let me just say, I'm not talking about the 5% who are real jerks, right? I don't know what you're doing here. So let's just eliminate the jerks for a minute because you should never go back to a jerk. So if someone's really jerky to you, I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about this feeling where you go into a clinician that you vetted, or maybe you already been with a few years and you're saying, I feel X. I really truly feel X. This thing is not right. It hasn't been the same. And At the end, you're told it's normal, and there's a bit of an insinuation that maybe you're being dramatic, maybe it's in your head, maybe it's anxiety. It's a bit dismissive, not maliciously, but when the clinician is looking at these normal labs, the clinicians are often indoctrinated to say, therefore, everything— the conversation is ending. So when a patient walks out feeling that their complaint is dismissed, basically anything other than, I believe you, even though the labs are normal, that is the feeling of medical gaslighting. As far as which populations experience it the most, it is a mirror of our society. Women generally are less believed. The men's statistics just show it. Even when women present with heart attacks, we have to learn We call it atypical presentation 'cause it doesn't always show up holding the chest, sometimes holding— so we have to learn, and we call it atypical as if the male presentation is the typical. So we have women, but then also all marginalized communities, right? The Black and brown community experiences differently, people who present from socially demographic challenged communities, LGBT communities. So it's a mirror of the society itself. So it's not surprising that this— women in marginalized communities experience it the most.

Okay. As we talk about medical gaslighting, what would you say the top 4 or 5 diagnoses or things that— there's nothing wrong with you. But one of the things I say, it's nothing wrong with you. It's all in your head. You can't be helped. Right. And people come see me and we connect the dots to realize it's mold, it's Lyme, it's whatever. What would you say the 4 or 5 top things that you see?

Fatigue is high there because fatigue, when you go into primary care, is like, Your thyroid's fine. You're not anemic. Maybe you need to sleep more, right? So fatigue is one of those. So I have to say that a little bit has changed in the last few years with the big push for HRT and really normalizing it. So for a lot of women in the perimenopause, menopause age just need to get on their hormones. I'm glad to see that around. But anyone who is still clinically trained years ago probably did not go for that new training. So fatigue is one of them. Body aches. Things hurt, like nonspecific body aches. What do you mean your pain moves around? Does it? We're trained as clinicians to ask questions. When did it start? What makes it better? What makes it worse? What is— and you're like, sometimes it's on my shoulder and sometimes it's on my hip and sometimes it's— when your pain starts to migrate and be vague, that's a big problem, right? For clinicians, they can't figure that out. And then any type of sensations. That are not readily connected. So I know that a lot of patients who do the mold and Lyme and MCAS have weird zaps or weird paresthesias. And we are taught as clinicians to be like, okay, this must be the nerve. Let me check your spine. Let me do an MRI. And if it doesn't match, then it's in your head because there's no exploration of weird sensations. I think I would— oh, let me say the last one. Stomach issues, right? If you have stomach issues, nonspecific, sometimes I'm bloated, some— everything I eat is bloating. Sometimes it's dairy, sometimes it's not dairy. Sometimes I have constipation, sometimes everything I eat makes me feel— so we do the testing and your endoscopy looks fine, your colonoscopy looks fine, so you get a label of IBS. So things that are not easily seen as like A to B. Those are our top players.

Gotcha. It's really interesting. The hormone things is really interesting to me. I always have to, I have a playful with patients. I'm kind of joke around, laughable, but I have to, I always joke with them. I'll say, if we don't, if you don't, if you're not crying, if you don't laugh about it, you get angry, you cry. Right. But it's just interesting. Like how, as of November of 2025, hormones are back. And all of a sudden now it's like we recognize the FDA has removed the black box warning. And oh, by the way, if you get put on hormone replacement therapy, you'll Surprise, surprise. It can lower your risk of dementia 50%, lower your risk for heart disease 38%. It's back now. And I have, I kind of frame it like that with some patients because it's like, they don't realize, wait a second, this actually has a medical outcome that actually has a risk associated with it. And the treatment, oh, by the way, lowers your risk for heart disease 38%.

This is a really big issue, right? This goes back to what I talk about with like how patients come into the exam room because on the one hand, we're talking about medical counseling. Hey, I'm a 45-year-old. I can't really sleep so well. So then maybe we give you an Ambien. I'm feeling more anxious. We'll give you Lexapro. It was never really, it's not part of our clinical training to recognize that the woman in her 40s and 50s is probably experiencing these things, not because all of a sudden she developed anxiety. All of a sudden her life was so stressful. I bet it was more stressful when she was 20 and raising 3 kids and not knowing how she was going to pay the bill. So I don't think this is new stress. So on the one hand, clinicians were not ready, not understanding that she's probably not sleeping cuz her progesterone is low. She probably has anxiety cuz estrogen is low. She's probably losing, she's not, doesn't have stamina anymore cuz her testosterone is low. And so there wasn't this understanding. But to your point, a lot of patients come in and say, and they come in and I'm like, whoa, has anyone talked to you about HRT yet? Hormone replacement therapy. And a lot of times they say, I don't have hot flashes, I don't have symptoms. And then I have to educate the patient and I'll say, that's amazing that you don't have symptoms. I'm like so excited for you. But the hormones are no longer about your hot flashes. It's great if we can help you there, but we're really talking about a longevity play. We're talking about decreased risk for heart attacks, decreased risk of strokes, decreased risk of osteoporosis. Of dementia. The amount of things that are decreased as a result of putting back the hormones you had all your life. Why do women suddenly, why does their morbidity go up after, after postmenopause? It's because of that. So you're right to point out that there is an education deficit on both sides, the clinicians who are not seeing it, but patients, a lot of them coming of age, remembering that hormones are dangerous and they're going to cause cancer. So like, I don't have hot flashes. I don't want to be on it. Please don't talk to me about it. So we need to reeducate the patient as well.

Every fall, the schedule tightens and most of our attention goes to getting the kids ready. Almost none of it goes to the person holding the whole thing together. So I put together these 3 things just for that: a daily multivitamin in the active forms your body can actually use, quercetin and nettles to support your immune and respiratory health without the drowsiness, and NAC and acetylcysteine to help your body rebuild its own Antioxidant Reserve. This is what I take every fall. That's aaronhartmanmd.com/backtoschool. Yeah, I've found with patients I've been working with for years, some even now it's usually the 5th or 6th or 7th time we've talked about before they're like, okay, I think I'll consider that. Osteoporosis and joint aches and pains, and my memory is not as good as it was. I've got some joint inflammation. It's like estrogen's anti-inflammatory and it's— progesterone helps with sleep and muscle mass. One of the big issues with particularly with older frail women, Is your muscle mass? Yep. It's interesting. Thirty percent of women in their seventies will have a normal testosterone level, which means seventy percent don't. Absolutely correct. What's we talk about? Thirty percent normal. I know, but seventy percent.

So I'm saying that.

No, it's so it's so last time we talked about medical gasoline, etc., probably a year ago. Seems like it's been a bit, but things have changed for you, and you're a patient now.

Yeah, I'm a patient now. And yeah, since last we focused on. July 5th, I was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, a specific type of lung cancer that is for non-smoking women. This is really important because I'm someone who did everything right, lifted all the weights, walked all the walks, drank all the supplements, and ate the right way for most of my adult life. And this really blindsided me. So I'm dealing with something that was totally outta my control. My oncologist was like, there's nothing you could have done. 'Cause I asked him, maybe it was Diet Cokes I drank, maybe it was aspartame. I asked everything. That was literally my only vice. And this whole scenario, for those of you who are viewing this and not listening to this, I'm wearing a backwards cap because I lost all my hair in radiation. This experience did was double down on my previous beliefs. I wrote a book about medical gaslighting. It's coming out in March. And in that book, what I say, what I suggest is that, yes, doctors are indoctrinated. Yes, we know the system is broken. We are not going to fix that. How do we show up as patients? And the whole book is about empowering people to use the skills that they have elsewhere I know how to present a case at work. I know how to present the case for my child for their teacher or their principal. I know how to advocate for my pet when I go to the vet. And we yet, we forget to do that for ourselves. And so that's the message of the book. And apparently I wrote it, but I didn't read it because for 6 months I had back pain that I ignored. The book is called The Problem with Good Patients. I think for many women with my, in my age group, women in general, but certainly in my age group, we are taught to be strong, to push through, not to complain. When we go into the doctor's office, we pre-apologize. I'm sorry to take your time. It's probably nothing but. And so we pre-apologize, we pre-correct. Oh, maybe the labs come back normal. We're like, oh, maybe it is in my head. So we do a lot of gaslighting ourselves. And I did that for 6 months. I'm like, oh, it's probably nothing. I pushed through it, changed my exercise routine. I won't lift so heavy. And I did that for a good 6 months until finally I woke up in the middle of the night in screaming pain because my T4 had completely collapsed. That's how I found out that I had cancer and had it metastasized. So we really need to unlearn the lessons that we were taught about being a good patient. That's what it is. So, so my take on medical gaslighting is not about being mad at doctors or being mad at the system. There's plenty of blame for them. My take is how are we showing up for ourselves as patients? And I think you probably see that all the time with your patients.

Yeah. The idea of pre-apologizing, I've not actually heard that stated like that before. My patients do it all the time. They come in, I'm sorry. Sorry I haven't been back to see you in 3, 4 months. I'm sorry for XYZ. And I'm always like, you're— I'm your consultant. You pay good money to come see me. Don't be sorry. I want you to talk about that a little bit, because that's something I've never actually thought about before. It happens all the time. And I've, in the last year, I've kind of had this realization that I'm a female health expert because 80% of my patients are women. And just kind of the way it works in my— because I collect people who've been to multiple doctors and seen multiple specialists, but I'd never really thought about the whole idea of pre-apologizing, coming into the doctor's office and saying, I'm sorry to be here and bug you and waste your time.

Yeah.

Like that happens all the time. And I literally, as a female healthcare expert, never really realized that was a thing until you literally said those words. So, but talk to me about this, this idea. That's, it's kind of new to me.

Yeah. So the idea starts with, first of all, being a good patient. We're taught from pediatrics what a good patient looks like, right? Because as soon as we walk into pediatrics, the authority is the doctor. It's no longer our parents. Whoever has the white coat is the authority. We learn about being a good patient. We don't cry. We don't make a fuss. We don't take time. We get a sticker at the end. There's a lot of behavioral training that happens from pediatrics. In adolescence, now you're coming in, you're talking, suddenly talking about periods and menstruation and sex, and you just make it quick. Sometimes your parents are in the room, make it quick. You just, you learn that the doctor's room is not really a place to come in and spill. You're just like, let me get it done. You see a big waiting room full of people. There's this kind of this pressure. And then sometimes you do get a complaint and then you find out everything is normal. So now you're a little bit crazy. And now we add to it societal messaging, right? For women to push through stress, right? There's a lot of messaging for that. And the same is true for marginalized communities. So by the time you become an adult going into the exam room, You are already indoctrinated yourself what it looks like. How do you impress your doctor that your doctor's gonna like you? You want your doctors to like you. It's a very important thing. You don't wanna be perceived as that patient, that difficult. And I'm not advocating for someone to come in and throw tables or throw papers, but we would not show up this way at work. I know for a fact that one of my patients Is used to— she's a lawyer and she used to present at the Supreme Court, but yet when she went to the ER, they told her she was fine and she called me and I was like, no, you're gonna stay and ask for XYZ. And turns out she had heart failure, but she was ready to go. So we are strong in other places. We go, we know how we need to interact at business. We know if our kids don't do well, how we advocate for them. We know how to go and say, my pet's not the same. I don't know what to tell you, doc, but the pet's not the same. It's not eating the same way. For like, so we do this everywhere else, but for ourselves, you said you're a female health expert, you have mostly women, and that is how they're trained. So by the time they come, by the time they go in the exam room, they're already pre-apologizing. I see, I see it all the time also in primary care. And I'm like, you already waited in my office for 40 minutes to get in here. Why are you apologizing? I'm sorry that you waited this long. This is your time. Tell me what you need to say. But they're always shocked by that. So this pre-apologizing, not just in what they say, but in how they think. And I think I was a model of that too. I was like, I'm not gonna go get an MRI. Like a clinician and getting an MRI, it's like double, come on, they have to be really serious. It really affects our care. So we are angry at the system, we are angry at doctors and providers, but how are we showing up and advocating for ourselves is a really big question. Yeah.

Yeah. So advocacy, one of the things I talk about a lot with patients is trusting your gut. It's really interesting, some of the newer neuroscience with actually the gut intuition or whatnot. And you get a feeling, you get a hunch, trusting your intuition, trusting yourself. How often do you see that? And it's not unusual. You think the primary caregiver, you know, between, in a family, which tends to be the female, you expect them just to have a higher sense of awareness or intuition. How does that get minimized in our current system where the special power that a female has, like, I know this, something's wrong, but help me find the thing. How does that get turned around sometimes where—

Oh yeah, this is actually, I wrote a whole chapter on this. So first of all, there's a few parts of that. Part one is that we have all learned to trust data over our bodily experience. So if I'm really tired, And my labs come back as normal, then I start questioning myself. Everything's normal. That data must be more important than my data, which is I am tired. So we have learned, first of all, to weigh information differently. But you are tired. You know what it used to feel like with before. And so the conversation shuts down as soon as data disproves your bodily experience. We don't really honor bodily experience, which I—

Mm-hmm.

You might not resonate with some listeners, but I really want you to think about How you go to your pediatrician with your kid, like, he's not the same. And the pediatrician might be like, ah, whatever. And you're like, no, doc, I'm telling you he's not the same. Like you would double down on what, but with ourselves, we know this. That's part 1. Part 2, it's interesting that you said the word intuition, cuz intuition is actually pattern recognition. It's the, when we see something over and over again and then something's a little off, we may not know exactly what's off. But we feel like something's off. That's what intuition is. And we actually applaud that in a lot of male-dominated fields. A firefighter might go in and be like, something's different about this fire. They can't tell you exactly what's different, but they know that they have to handle this fire different. A pilot might see something. A stockbroker might sense something in the market. They may not be able to tell you exactly what changed, but they can say, and people praise that. People say, Wow, they really saw it coming. They really were able to. And so we really praise early pattern recognition, but when women do it about their health, we call it intuition and it's already downgraded. It's not pattern recognition, it's intuition, it's gut instinct. And we, all of us have downgraded it as opposed to saying, I have pattern recognition. I know what it was. Now it is now. So it doesn't hold weight. So it's something that we've done societally to how women tell the stories of their bodies. It's now intuition. It's woo. It's gut instinct, but it's given a whole different name at work. Yeah.

Well, it's, it's kind of interesting, that whole idea, because Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink talked about the whole idea of splitting and the idea that you have an expert. He gives a story of actually there's this David statue being sold to the Getty Museum and They were going to spend $20 million on it. All the experts came in and looked at it and said, it's legit, it's real, blah, blah, blah. They had another group of experts come in, older experts, not younger experts, not technicians, but actually people who dug up statues. And one lady was like, it made me sick. I wanted to vomit. One person said it's grotesque. And it's like, this is the perfect David. And what they had was literally tens of thousands of hours of digging up pieces of statues. And they got a hunch, an intuition. Come to find out it was a perfect forgery, but it was forged in the early 1800s with the same kind of tools that were used for the original ones 2,000 years before from the same material. But the nuances of it, the shimmer was gone because of rainwater. And, uh, they knew that intuitively, their gut intuition knew that. And it took a year to figure it out. And by that point in time, the museum had already spent the $20 million. But it was just funny. This is something we, to your point, we recognize it in experts in different fields, but If the mom, I know my kid.

Okay.

What do you mean you know your kid?

You raised your kid. Yeah.

And you raised your kid. You literally raised this kid for 10 to 12 years. I know myself or whatever. It's interesting how we do, to your point, minimize it in one group and then praise it in another. That's, I just want to say that out loud to hear it myself. Also let people, I tell people all the time, trust yourself, trust your gut intuition. If I don't give up on patients, if they keep on digging and it's interesting in my world, I want to speak to this a little bit because I think you probably have some clients like this as well, patients like this as well. I see a lot of people who go to these high-level experts that do— I do heart evaluation. They do a Cleerly heart scan or whatever. I do gut stuff and they do this fancy testing. They do labs and they're a technician, but then the patients don't get better. And they go from place to place, functional integrative, whatever. And no one's looking at the big picture and they still get overlooked because people are only looking at lab tests. They're not actually looking at the person, repeating a physical exam. Taking a deeper dive into their history. And that's how stuff gets missed.

It does get missed, but I just wanna say that's okay because I know that's, that's, it might be like, what do you mean that's okay? Everybody has a lane, right? Not everybody's functional medicine, not everybody's integrative medicine. And a lot of times I used to practice functional medicine one-on-one. We have the The privilege of now seeing all those tests that were done and being able to look at it differently. This is really important because this changes— I don't want patients to be angry at their primary care for not seeing the whole patient or their cardiologist for the whole patient. When you plan a wedding or a party, you don't expect your DJ to also bake the cake. You have a DJ for the music, you have a florist for the flowers, You have somebody, and then if you're lucky, you have a party planner and you're not the one who planned it, but you never expect one person to go outside of their scope and do more. So when we go into the system, when you don't feel well, your first job as a patient is to go into the system, primary care, and then go to every specialist and run all the tests, run all the labs. If they find something, it's great to know. 'Cause like me, if I found my cancer earlier, I probably wouldn't be stage 4. It's great to know you're in the system. You're probably going to need some form of conventional intervention if they find something. If they don't find something, or they find something that was not life-threatening, then this is the part where the patient comes in and says, and I'm not telling you to go back to your primary and say, hey, I just read this book. I just listened to this podcast and it said I should listen to my gut. Your primary care ran out of tools. So you're not going to go back and reeducate your primary care physician. You're not going to go back and reeducate your cardiologist. It's not your role. It's not your mission. What you need to do is believe yourself and say, even though this doctor couldn't find anything, I still feel the same way. I'm very thankful that you ran all your tests and that you did all your tools, but now I need to go find another person. And like you said, by the time they reach you, they've been to a lot of specialists. And it's really important that they've been to a lot of specialists because I imagine that when I practice, I wouldn't take someone that didn't do all those things. I wouldn't, I have people calling me when I have functional medicine, I have a stomach issue. I'm like, great. Did you get an endoscopy? Did you get an ostomy? No, I haven't gone to a doctor in 5 years. Ma'am, I'm not even talking to you until you get all those tests done. So there's real value in going to get everything done. And then, but then as patients to continue to ask, you need to build a team.

Yeah.

Should you continue to ask all the questions, continue to believe yourself and continue The investigation until you find someone like you to put it all together, but it's really important to go through that process.

So maybe the way to reframe it a little bit is acknowledging or knowing the limitations of every specialist, every doctor. The cardiologist isn't going to do rheumatology. Exactly. The rheumatologist isn't going to do orthopedic surgery. The primary care doctor is not going to do chronic Lyme and mold and MCAS, right?

Exactly.

And so if you have chronic Lyme, mold, MCAS, an autoimmune issue, or 5 autoimmune issues, right? You've got thyroid and lupus. lupus stuff and inflammatory bowel, like the person who kind of oversees all that is the integrative functional person, just recognizing the limitations even of, I think to your point, even of the integrative specialists, because you want to have your, I do agree with you 100%. If someone comes in with gut issues, have you had your colonoscopy? Is it colon cancer? Is it inflammatory bowel? That will inform me what I do, but also I don't have to worry about the colon cancer or whatever.

Exactly.

If a female comes in with GYN issues, have you bleeding? Have you had endometrial biopsy to make sure you don't have endometrial cancer? You don't want to. I tell people, you don't want to miss the big things. They'll fill in the room and focus on all these other things.

That's exactly right. And that's why it's really important that you go and get all those things. That's part of the journey. Part of the journey is to get the DJ and the florist and this and that. And so at the end, you have this wonderful thing. And that's how you have to approach your health. You're not going to find one person that's going to do everything. They might come to you for their complex issues, but they're not coming to you to get their mammogram and pap smears, right? So it's really important that we keep everyone on our team and understand that we need a team for our health when we have complex issues. Gotcha.

Every fall, the schedule tightens and most of our attention goes to getting the kids ready. Almost none of it goes to the person holding the whole thing together. So I put together these 3 things just for that: a daily multivitamin in the active forms your body can actually use, Quercetin and nettles to support your immune and respiratory health without the drowsiness, and NAC, N-acetylcysteine, to help your body rebuild its own antioxidant reserve. This is what I take every fall. That's aaronhartmanmd.com/backtoschool. So in your personal journey, being diagnosed recently with stage 4 cancer, what would you say are the 2 or 3 lessons, insights that you've learned As a patient now that you could tell your former self, right? Not, not ignore those symptoms, but as far as the whole thing, or even the audience, what insight would you have gotten that you would like to share?

Yeah. 2 insights really. The first, and I'm going to say this to women of my age, especially because I do find the younger gen— I have children in their 20s and 30s, and I do find that the younger generation does listen to themselves more. And I love that for you guys so much. But the first is get it checked out. Who cares? Whatever the thing that's bothering you, who cares? If it comes back normal, great. But what if it comes back crazy like my situation? Who cares? If you have insurance, God bless, and then you're able to afford it, go get it checked. Go get it. Don't do the gaslighting to yourself. There's enough people are waiting in line to gaslight you. Don't do it to yourself.

Yeah.

So that's the first lesson that I would say. The second is less of a lesson and more of a doubling down, because when you get diagnosed with cancer or your listeners who are dealing with chronic issues, everybody around you suddenly has advice for you. Eat 5 strawberries a day, go keto, walk this. And when I had cancer, I did this every day. And everybody's well-meaning, God bless, but it gets overwhelming and you have to figure out Who do I listen to and who do I put on my team? And for that, I've really put the same litmus test that I do with my podcast. And that is you first need to be a clinician or researcher, someone who understands the science. You cannot just be an influencer. You cannot be my cousin down the street who went through something similar and feels great. Good for you. Can't be anecdotal. Has to be science-based. So generally speaking, the people on my podcast are clinical first, and then they go on to study more. Then they go on to functional medicine, or then they go on to a PhD in integrative medicine, or they go get really great in Lyme, or they go get really great in mold. And so that has been my litmus test for guests on my show. And that is my litmus test of who I'm going to listen. So I first have my conventional team. I have my oncologist, my primary. My radiation specialist, that's my insurance-based team. And then I went and I got a functional oncologist. So she is an oncologist first. She went through all the training and then she went for functional. Think about the type of person that is. That is somebody who has spent their entire life, more resources, more of their time to go back to school to learn more on this particular— who's constantly on top of the latest evidence, generally speaking. And that has helped me figure out who to listen to, who to put on my team, but also who not to listen to because a lot of people just send you messages like, oh dude, I'm like, okay, thank you, but you are like a finance guy and I really appreciate it, but I'll call you when I need financial expertise. So I think those are the 2 lessons. Oh, I will say one more thing. Even when you create your team, and I'm sure many of your patients feel the same way, once they find you, they feel relief. It's great to find someone, but then you go home. And sometimes the advice is really overwhelming. I have to change my diet. I have to change where I have to go to saunas. I have to go to cold plunge, hyperbaric chamber, whatever it is. And it becomes really overwhelming. And sometimes you're like, but if I don't do this, I'm not going to get better. And so for that, I would say, take a breath and do what you can. You don't have to make all the changes all at once. You do what you can, what you are able to do, because Lord knows if you have a chronic issue and you're so fatigued and we're telling you to walk 10,000 steps a day, it's not going to happen. So do what you can. Being on the right path is what's important. And when you feel a little bit better, you add a little bit more.

Yeah. I think that's a good point right there. What you said is not— because I routinely have patients almost become paralyzed because they get overwhelmed. And instead of doing something, they do nothing and they come back. I've had One patient come back 2 years later after the intake and it was like, good to have a membership model. So he's paying something every month. And I'm like, wow, I feel like I've neglected you. And his, and the thing was like, I didn't want to disappoint you.

Yes.

Yeah. I'm like, oh, okay. Wow. Now I feel really feel bad. How did I give you that impression kind of thing?

But no, that's part of the patient indoctrination.

Yeah, it's, it's real. And I also like what you said, don't gaslight yourself. Cause I've had routinely have patients like, I don't want to do this. What if they find something? They've said that over and over again. And more often than not, you'll get the biopsy or get the colonoscopy or get the chest CT or whatever, and it's fine. But you want to catch it for when it's not fine. And that's where it's interesting. Gaslighting can be external and it can be internal. Yeah.

Some people don't want to hear it. That is true. I can't convince you to overcome fears. Fears are really real. Anxiety is really real. I could just tell you in general, in medicine, the earlier you catch something, the better.

How are you doing with your journey? How was— how, where are you at with that? You're— this is a 100% different conversation I had with you before. Yeah. And I do feel a little wisdom coming out. Wow. Where are you at?

Where I'm at, let's see. It was, I was diagnosed on July 5th. I couldn't even walk or get outta bed for a week. I had to use a bedpan in the hospital. They had to do emergency surgery on me. So I'm able to walk now, which is great. They had to do Quick radiation. I started treatment. I am far away from my baseline or where I need to be. Like after this podcast, I'll have to take a nap, whereas before I could do 5 podcasts a day. And it's been, it's been really humbling for those of you listening who are dealing with chronic issues. It's humbling when you know what you're capable of and suddenly you can't do that thing. It's really, I would say that having a chronic illness The mental game is the hardest part of like, when will I get better? How long will this take? What if I do all this and I don't get better? Re-upping the optimism, like waking up in the morning, still not feeling good and saying, okay, I'm, I'm gonna still do the thing today. The, the mental piece of chronic illness, I've always known it cognitively about my patients, but I've never felt it. Like the, every day you have to convince yourself to start again. So for all warriors out there, doesn't have to be cancer. I know anyone dealing with issues where you just, you can't get outta bed. If you got up and got dressed, like you won today. So the mental part is the hardest part. So I just wanna tell you all, I'm sending you love.

Yeah, that's, you're 100% true. I've had patients with chronic fatigue fibro who were literally bedridden. One was actually a young kid who was 8 with really bad POTS dysautonomia and Having the support, believing you can get better. I have this innate— one of the things I say is your body was made for health. You were made to self-heal and self-repair. It's just finding the things that are blocking your body's ability to self-heal and self-repair, giving it what it's lacking. Your body will do what it's made to do. And just, that sounds super simplistic, but just putting one foot in front of another, believing that your body's going to do what it's made to do. You just have to find the team, therapies, interventions, and not blaming yourself. Or regret, just looking forward and having hope. Having hope.

Hope. Hope is really hard when you're not feeling well. It's hard to have hope.

Yeah. What would you say your biggest motivator to push forward right now is? Or biggest motivators?

My family. My family very much still depends on me. We have plans, we have things. We had 10-year plans and 20-year plans that suddenly now I don't know how many years, you know, If it was just me, I probably would've given up a while ago. But coming— wow, I didn't want to get emotional. But in the day, you're like, okay, I have kids, I have grandkids, I have a wife, and we're not ready. We're not ready for this. We planned this at 70, at 80. We didn't plan this now. So getting it together for them is really important. And where I find a lot of comfort though is also in work, 'cause I have the privilege of still taking care of patients in primary care. I think I've been a good clinician for many years now, but I find myself now being even more empathetic. And are you sure? Do you understand everything? Because sometimes I walk out of oncology and I don't know what the heck they just said. So are you sure? Do you have it? Do you understand it? And so I'm grateful to be like, while on the receiving end as a patient, I'm grateful to still also be a provider and be able to give as well. So those 2 things really motivate me.

That's awesome. I really appreciate your time talking with us today. I didn't really, you know, coming into this, I didn't realize you were at where you're at. When literally you're going to sleep after talking with and sharing with us today, it even helps me appreciate you more and what you've given and what you're sacrificing to be here. So I really do appreciate it. If you had any parting words of wisdom, what would those be? And for people who, I assume you're still active in your social media and stuff, are you sharing like your story on social media and how things are going? Okay.

Yeah.

So maybe your parting words, and then if people want to Follow along. Where are you sharing that?

Of course. So I want to say broadly, don't gaslight yourself. Okay? Don't participate in your own medical gaslighting. And that just means you don't have to learn anything new. It's use the skills that you have everywhere else and just remember them in the exam room, whether that's pattern recognition, whether that's how to present yourself, how to build a case, Whether that's team building and using the discernment, you have these skills everywhere else. You just forgot to bring them to the exam room. So you need to do that. And where to find me, my name is Dr. Efrat Lamondre. So my socials are all @DrEfratLamondre. And the podcast is called Medical Disruptor. We don't sell anything. We have no supplements, no consults, no books. We are just a resource. For people who are struggling, who want another vetted clinician, know where to go, where it's, and they're not just going to some random person with a ring light. And yeah, that's the whole spiel.

Thanks. I got a couple of ring lights here, so it's so funny you said that.

I have ring lights too, but you're not just a person with a ring light.

Yeah, exactly. That's, that's, I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna steal that and start using that. I'm not just a person with a ring light because that's so true. It's so true. Thank you so much. I'm honored for you to share your time with us today, especially in light of everything you're going through and Nothing but the best for you. I thank you for your time and just really appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you for letting me be here.

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