Stroke and Burnout Recovery with Dr. Doni! | How Humans Heal Podcast

Hi, I'm Dr. Donni and welcome to how humans heal. I'm so glad you're joining me today. I want to talk about a topic that's very near and dear to my heart, which is that my father recently suffered from a hemorrhagic stroke. And so this is why I have a different background behind me today because I'm in my parents home while I'm here helping to collaborate and visit him in the rehab center as he's recovering from the stroke. And so it's giving me really an opportunity to implement what I write about in my book, master your stress, reset your health. And if any of you don't yet have the book, I encourage you to go grab it at Amazon or wherever you like to buy books. It is available Kindle and will soon be available audio as soon as I have a chance to narrate it, which is going to be as soon as I get to get my dad to a certain place with his recovery from the stroke. So what happens is if some of you are not familiar, because actually I find that even though most of us have heard of a stroke, a lot of times we don't really know what it is, what it means, what causes it, and, and the fact that you can recover a lot of times from a stroke. So the simple breakdown is that some strokes are caused by a blood clot that decreases the blood flow to the brain, certain part of the brain, right. Other kinds of strokes are caused by a bleed, meaning the blood vessel breaks open and the blood goes out into the brain. And that also causes symptoms of a stroke, which is when the brain is not getting the nutrients it needs. Or like in my dad's case, with a hemorrhagic stroke, there's pressure on the brain because of the blood, so it causes the brain to shift. It's kind of fit inside of the skull, right? So there's only so much space in there. So if there's blood taking up space, it squishes the brain and that causes the symptoms of a stroke. Now I really want to start by making sure all of you listening know the symptoms of a stroke. Because sometimes it's sneaky, sometimes you would think, oh, I'm going to notice if this person starts behaving differently. But actually sometimes, sometimes it's confusing or kind of subtle. For example, one of the most common symptoms of a stroke is vomiting. So you might be wondering, does this person have food poisoning? Do they have a stomach flu? Do they have Covid? Like you're wondering, why is this person have nausea and vomiting, it might be because they had a type of a stroke. For me, I had lots of nausea and vomiting back in my life when I was getting migraines all the time. The migraines and pain cause vomiting. So it's always important when a person has vomiting, nausea and vomiting. To find out, check in with your health practitioner and say, why is this vomiting happening? Do we need to take additional steps to determine whether this person is having a stroke or had a stroke? The thing about a stroke is it's actually really better if they can get treatment so sooner as soon as possible. So this is why it's really important to identify if a person is having a stroke or recently had a stroke, you want to get them to the emergency room as soon as possible. So when my mom called me, she called to say, not that my dad really had vomiting, but he was having trouble swallowing. This is another common symptom. So if out of the blue someone is kind of choking on their food, or maybe they're not eating because their appetite has changed, or they eat, but then they're coughing up their food or they feel like they can't swallow correctly, that's a symptom of a stroke and they need to go to the emergency room. And that's what happened. My mom called and said my dad was eating his lunch and he, he couldn't swallow right? And I said, he needs to go. My mom had actually called the ambulance. 911 had come. They determined that he was breathing and not choking. And so the 911 left and my dad was still at home when called me. And I said, wait a minute, if, if he's not able to eat and he hasn't eaten for 24 hours, and when he does eat, he starts choking, he needs to go to the emergency room. So I'm saying this to all of you so that you can understand the thought process in case one of your loved ones and I would encourage you to talk about this with your loved one, say if you notice these changes. The other symptom that my father had is that he was not talking as much much as usual. So he was still walking around and he was still sitting in front of his computer doing what he normally does on a usual day. But he wasn't talking to my mom, he wasn't engaging. She could say to him, hey, it's time to have lunch. Let's have lunch together. And he walked into the other room to have lunch. So you would think, oh, this person's walking, they're responding that they're okay. But actually, when I asked her further, she. She said that he had been not talking about. Not his usual level of interaction and communication. And that is a sign of a stroke. If a person isn't talking in their usual way or they might have different expressions, they might be. Maybe they're even laughing more than they usually laugh, or maybe their emotions shift or they have more of a flat. More flat affect. Maybe they don't have the emotions they would. You would usually expect when you're speaking to them. If you're like, wait a minute, why is this person not responding when I made a joke to them or said something that usually makes them laugh? These can be signs that they had. The person had a stroke. Also, dizziness, vertigo. If a person out of nowhere is like, why is the room spinning? Or why do I have such a headache? Now, my dad did not have dizziness or headache that he told us about anyway because he wasn't communicating. But that's what my mom experienced when she had a stroke a couple years ago. She had a lot of vertigo and headache. So I just want to put these out there so that if, if you come across this, that you right away think, this person needs to go to the emergency room, because then in the emergency room, they can get a CT and MRI to see if there was a clot, if there was a bleed, do they need surgery? Do they need a medication? How do we stop this? We don't want more damage to be done. But the amazing thing that I've really heard from my father's neurologists and doctors over the past few days since this happened is that the neurologists often expect a recovery, especially from a hemorrhagic frontal lobe stroke like my father had. That what happens is as the. It causes a lot of inflammation in the brain, similar to inflammation in the brain that happens with a concussion or any kind of traumatic brain injury. When we get inflammation in the brain, even inflammation from gluten, same thing when we get inflammation in the brain. It makes. It causes our emotions to change. It causes our memory to decrease. This is why even dementia is associated with inflammation in the brain. Anxiety and depression are associated with inflammation in the brain. We don't usually think of inflammation in our brain, but. But I'm putting it out there because that's how I want to. This is what the research shows. This is what the neurologists know. And so we. I want you all to be thinking of it that way, too. If you have symptoms, whether mood, sleep issues, pain, it's inflammation in your nervous system and it's, there's something you can do about it. Your brain can heal, inflammation can decrease. We need to change the diet. We need to use a diet that's anti inflammatory. So what did you know the first thing when I show up in my and start calling my, my dad's doctors and I show up in the clinic, I want to know what they're feeding him, what is he eating? Because he is able to eat. He's not on a feeding tube, he's able to eat. And they start by having him eat, you know, very smooth small pieces of food so he doesn't choke. There's a lot of work that he's going through to help him swallowing without choking. And he's getting better every day. And so what are they feeding him? Well, it turns out they're feeding some, you know, like say mashed potatoes, cooked carrots which are also soft and can be very, made very small. Right. Yesterday he had a white fish which can be right. It's in its flaky soft pieces. But what I found out is they are also giving him these meal substitutes. So maybe it's in the form of like a protein shake or a ice cream that is actually filled with dairy and sugar of some type. If not straight sugar, then it's filled with artificial sweeteners. And to me, dairy, like anything made from cow milk or whey and anything made from sugar or artificial sweeteners is more inflammatory. Why would we want to add more inflammation to his body when his brain is inflamed? Why would we want to do that? And so I said to them immediately, no, we're going to switch to my pea protein shake. We're going to have no more dairy and we're going to have no more sugar. He doesn't need it. He doesn't even need they offering him diet coke for to drink with his dinner. I'm like, no, he needs water, we need water. All humans need water. And we especially need water when we're inflamed and we're trying to clear the inflammation out of our system. Right. We need to be encouraging him to be drinking water through the day. So this was some of my initial communications with his practitioners is how do we change this? I also went in and got him all set up with his vitamins that he my usual vitamin protocol for him which includes his methylated B vitamins because of course he has MTHFR gene variation like me. We gotta make sure he's got his methyl B12 and methylfolate, which are very healing to the nervous system. We got to get some omega 3 fats which are very anti inflammatory and healing to the brain. We need his vitamin C and zinc for immune support. We got to prevent him from getting infections. This is one of the most common things that happens is when patients go into the hospital or rehab clinic, they become more susceptible to infections. Not just Covid, but bladder infections or urinary tract infections and lung infections and you name it. We need his immune system to be fending off infections, especially because some of you know, my dad also has Crohn's disease, so he already tends toward inflammatory issues. So we start supporting the nervous system to heal, not just with nutrients and diet. I mean we definitely, I've definitely got that going on for him. And as soon as I wrap up here, I'm going to go check on him and make sure he's getting all of this. We got to make sure the bowel movements are happening because this is one of the things that happens often when you're in a hospital setting or when you're on pain medication. You end up with constipation. And constipation then just backs everything up in the digestion, gets the gut bacteria out of balance. Plus if the patient's on any antibiotics that's throwing off their gut as well. So a lot of it becomes how do we get. Keep him sleeping, keep his bowels moving, keep his water intake, keep his food intake. This is what we're doing. Isn't that something? These are the same things that I talk about in the book my master stress reset, your health book. And in my stress reset that we need to be doing all humans on a daily basis. Right? It's what I call care or self care. C for clean eating. We all not just when a person is doing a stroke recovery, but day in, day out. I also, it's so important right now that I'm focusing on my care, my clean eating, adequate sleep, recovery activities and exercise. Even when I'm here helping my dad recover from the stroke. And then I'm going to go help him do his care activities. I'm going to make sure he's getting his clean eating. We don't need the sugar or dairy. We can feed him without that and do much better. We're going to get adequate sleep. We've got to make sure he's sleeping through the night and I got to make sure I'm sleeping through the night. Recovery activities, these are going to be things like making sure I still get to do my meditation, which I did this morning. And I'm going to be going over to work with my dad to do mindfulness and focus on his breathing, deep breathing. We're also playing music when I'm. What this is. I mean, I think some of you know how much I love music and dancing anyway. And I've been doing singing lessons, which stimulates the vagus nerve. So what I'm doing with my father, because they show this first stroke recovery, it really helps to use music and singing to help the patient get their brain recovering. And so what we do is we sing songs that he knows already and we show him the lyrics so he can read the lyrics and he can sing the song. But I'm also singing him my medicine music, songs from shamanic healing. And it's so amazing to see how he responds. I can tell right away, even if he doesn't communicate everything with verbally, I can see it in his eyes. When I turn on this music and I start singing, it's like he just relaxes and his and his attention is completely on the music. That's how I know that his brain is soaking it in and using it for healing. It's so amazing, isn't it? It's like we can. It's one thing to read the research and read it in my book about how healing music is, but when we can see the brain healing based on exposure to music, it's a beautiful thing and it reminds, I hope it reminds each of you that do this every day. Put on your favorite music, learn a new song, Learn the lyrics to a song you've been wanting to learn. Try different music than you've ever listened to before. I even put on the music, the specific hertz of healing music when I'm sleeping because I know that my brain really is going to respond and heal, heal from my day to day. Stress based on the sound, exposure to certain sounds versus the sounds that are not so healing. Right? We a lot of times get exposed to loud noises and beeping. This is one thing in the rehab clinic, when the beeping noises go off, I'm like, how do we resolve that? How do we not have stressful noises going off? How do we instead focus on the healing sounds?

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And there's so much more we can do with him. We, we walk him around, we get him into physical therapy. So he's used, he's exercising his muscles while he's in his stroke recovery. He's with occupational therapy, I think it's at least three times a day and plus any kind of occupational therapy that he gets from my mom and I included because it's all about reorienting him to his life and his experience. What's his name, what, what's his, who, you know, what car does he drive, where does he live, what year is it, what did he do for his career? Which is. He's a pharmacist. My father's a pharmacist. So I communicate that to his caregivers so they know they can communicate with him and as they would a pharmacist. And he responds to it immediately. He knows. And he's each day improving and coming back to his real self. And I can see himself when I communicate with him. I could tell right away yesterday we were riding around in the wheelchair through the rehab clinic and we were, we have to navigate the hallways, right? So you have to steer around. If someone's sitting in the, in your, in the, in the hallway and he's wheeling the wheelchair himself and, and I said it's like he needs to change lanes to drive around the person who is sitting there. And he was able to do it. He was able to navigate his wheelchair and navigate around the person. And I was, I said to the, the nurse who was there in the hallway, I said usually my dad is driving his Porsche, but now he's driving his wheelchair. And he thought that was so funny. He's, I'm sure he can't wait to get back into his Porsche. My father is a, not just a person who drives a Porsche. My father has, is the kind of person who, his life is a Porsche. He has, he collects Porsches. He Goes to Porsche shows. In fact, this next weekend, that's what he's supposed to be. He has his antique Porsche all ready to show at a collector's car show this next weekend. And he's not going to be able to go. And so it's very sad. But he. The thing that's helping him, I can see, with his healing, is we show him pictures of Porsches. He is a judge. He judges Porsches at Porsche shows. He knows everything there is to know about a Porsche, and he fixes his cars himself. So this is his. This is his love, this is his passion. And it's also what's helping him heal, is to talk with him about it. Talk with him about can he imagine himself driving his Porsche through the hallways, right? And. And I go. We go to the window, and I show him his Porsche out the window because I want his mind to connect with who he is, who, what he loves, what he's passionate about. And that also tells me, like, I want to encourage each of you to connect with who you are. What are you passionate about? We're not all going to be Porsche connoisseurs, but you do have something, I'm sure, that just brings your heart alive, makes you feel excited, stimulates your brain, makes you feel like you want to create something, show something, do something. What is that for you? Because I want you to integrate that into your everyday and use it to relate to the things you're experiencing in life. I was just doing an interview on a podcast, and at the end, she said to me, what is it that you really want people to know that they might not know already? And she even said to me, it might not even be in the book. Maybe it's something that didn't make it into the book. And I said to her, actually, it's something that wasn't in the original version of the book. The first draft of the book did not have this in there. This came with the second and final draft of the book, which is that an important, important piece, which is for stress recovery to happen, of stress recovery of any type, whether recovering from a health issue, recovering from a stroke, going through stress, experience in the moment, however that stress is showing up for you. One of the most important things is to connect with yourself, your real essence of who you are as a human, as a spirit, as a soul. Who are you? And I know sometimes we lose track of that. I know I lost track of that for many years. We sometimes have a sense of it, but we have so much going on and so much stress. And so much attention to what do I need to do in the next hour that we kind of lose track of who we really are. And so I do have this in the book. It is about what do we need to do in this moment to really help ourselves connect with ourself. And I so inspired. I share this in the book. I was so inspired by my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, who at the age of 50.

Left home. Of course, my mom was teenager then and she left her with her father. But my grandmother got in the car with her sister and they drove from Oregon in the United States to Mexico City. Why did they do that? Because they had just come out of the war time and they had been stuck at home. Just like we've been stuck at home during the pandemic, right? We've been stuck at home during the pandemic. It's become normal. I was talking to a patient today, a patient of mine in Hong Kong, and she talked about how she's been working from home and then for the past couple years, then she was homeschooling her kids or she was having to teach them from home. Now her company wants her to still work from home. And I'm sure this is true for many of you. So we're home. We're trying to figure out how to feed ourselves from home. We can order food. How are we going to exercise from home? Maybe we can go to the gym or. I've been. I of course, love my dance classes. I've been showing my dad videos of dancing too, which he loves, by the way. And so we're starting to be able to get out more. And at the same time, I want you to connect with yourself. What is it that you really have been wanting to do? What have you found passionate about? Maybe you want to do a music class. Maybe you want to learn to play the guitar. Maybe you want to learn a song, maybe you want to learn to dance. Maybe you want to be getting out and just doing whatever is you love. Sewing or surfing or whatever it is. Do what you love. What is it that you connect with? Driving a certain type of car or whatever it is, traveling. Because when we're doing what we love, that's when we're really living our lives, right? That's when we're really being ourselves. We're listening to ourselves and saying, hey, what do I enjoy? Let me go do that. Because then we're doing something we love and sharing it with others who also enjoy it. That's so rewarding. And it's a huge, huge stress Recovery for sure. So I just want to, if you're not already doing that, I want to encourage you to do that and share with you. Through my father who one of the things that I'm always inspired from him about is that he does choose to do the things he loves with people who he loves. He loves cars so he's going to spend his time polishing his car and getting it ready for the next car show. He loves to also to travel so he's going to be thinking where's the next trip I'm going to go on. He loves music so he's going to find ways to go be with other humans and enjoy music. So this is what we're going to bring to him in the rehab clinic as he's recovering from this stroke. We want his nervous system to be exposed to the things that light it up, that help it heal. And ultimately it's not just when we heal from a major event like a stroke, it's how we heal every day of our lives. It's not about getting sick and healing. To me it's about how do we heal along the journey of life, how do we do our life and heal at the same time along the way each day as we go along with it. And so that becomes my goal. How do I continue to be healing myself, supporting my cortisol levels because I tend to have low cortisol levels. How do I whereas another person who has high cortisol should take a totally different herb and nutrient. That's why the stress type is so important. You got to know your stress type, what your cortisol and adrenaline are up to, how to keep them balanced. Right. I'm going to be definitely when I'm under more stress, I'm going to make sure and get more meditation, get more exposure to music. I'm going to be contacting more friends because when we are in contact with our friends that help us us heal. So I want to encourage you to do these things each day, in and out. This is your self care. This is what I teach you in the stress reset. And this is what this by the way, this Thursday, if some of you are listening to this right away, please join me for a live version of my burnout recovery masterclass. It's happening on Thursday. Let's see today's Monday so that I'm recording this. So it's going to be on Thursday the 19th at 7pm Eastern. And you can sign up, it's for free. I'll put the link and if you are listening to this later, there will still be a link because I will make sure the recording is available for all of you. So even if you don't get to listen to the Burnout Recovery Mastercap class live, you can listen to it recorded because I will be sure to post it for you. Because I really believe that burnout recovery and stress recovery is essential for all humans. We all have stress exposure, some days more than others. And what I've learned is that it especially on the days when you have more stress, that's when you need more stress recovery. And I want you to know not just how to do stress recovery in general, I want you to know how to do stress recovery specific to your stress type, which is why it's so important to know your stress type. And that's why I have the stress type quiz. And it's also in the book. I'll put a link to the stress type quiz down below. You could just get it at my website, drdani.com do the stress type. Read the book so you know how to address your stress based on your stress type. Reach out to me so I can help you if you need more help. This is what I love to help people with all day long. So you are not a bother. You are a pleasure. It's such a joy to me to help you recover from stress. Whether it's an acute stress, a chronic stress, or both. We can recover. Our body and our brain can heal and recover from stress. And that's what I'm in there going to be in there telling my dad again today. In fact, one of the cool things he said yesterday I want to share with you before we wrap up is I'm willing him through the hallway pretending like we're driving a Porsche. And we drive by the physical therapy room and I say to him, there's a physical therapy room. We're going to get you another physical therapy class tomorrow. And you know what he said to me? He said, because you know, this is a person who's not speaking very much right now. He says to me, what I need is an inflammation class. And that just made me so happy because that's my dad. He is seeing that it's his nervous system has inflammation because of this stroke. He recognizes it as inflammation and he knows what he needs is help to decrease the inflammation. And I just was like, yep. I said to him, we do. We need more help decreasing inflammation in your brain so it can heal faster. And so that's what we're doing. We're helping decrease inflammation, helping his nervous system heal. And I'd love to hear from any of you who also have loved ones or maybe you yourself had a stroke and recovered because I'd love to share with everyone how what works for you and how inspiring it is that our bodies can heal, our brain can heal and you can get sometimes it's once we go through something like that or we see a loved one go through something traumatic like that that we get so much more inspired about our lives and connecting, doing the things we love. So thank you again so much. Please don't be surprised if you're going to see more videos and if you're calling me for a patient visit, you might be contacting me when I'm in the rehab clinic because that's where I'm going to be spending quite a bit of time for the next next couple weeks. So I can't wait. Please know that I'm available. I'm still helping you. I'm still doing master classes and and the Stress Warrior Program is starting next week. The Stress Warrior program is where I'm going to be guiding you to completely recover from stress based on your stress type. And we're going to be you're going to be able to do your cortisol levels, test them, test your adrenaline levels and have me guide you every step of the way to recover from stress. So that's starting next week. If any of you want to make sure you join in, be sure to I'll put that link as well. Sign up. Don't miss out. Don't miss because I'm going to be leading this Stress Warrior program live. I want any of you who are like, yes, I need stress recovery. I have burnout. I need to get into that Stress Warrior program because there's limited spots available. So if you know it's you, please get yourself signed up and ready to go because we're going to be starting, we're doing stress recovery in the Stress Warrior program for you and me and my dad starting next week. So please join in. And if you're catching this episode later, this Stress Warrior program is still going to be available. So you can always join me at a subsequent session. So anyway, I'm here for you all and thanks so much for joining me today. I look forward to connecting with you very soon.

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