This is a short spoken advisory piece by Dr. Tabatha Barber about how patients—especially women—should advocate for their own health when interacting with doctors. Key points: be cautious about quickly accepting surgery (evaluate surgeon experience), bring a health advocate to appointments, question and expect clear explanations from clinicians, consider functional/integrative/naturopathic practitioners, pursue self-education (podcasts, books—e.g., Eat Fat, Get Thin by Dr. Mark Hyman), order labs directly if needed (ultalabfest.com), and prioritize basic lifestyle measures (stop snacking, control blood sugar, move daily, manage mental processing and sleep) before seeking deeper interventions.
Chapters
Don't just be quick to sign up for surgery. I know a lot of surgeons who love to do surgery and that's going to be their solution every time. And then if you get a doctor who rarely does surgery, they're often not very good surgeons. They're timid, they're indecisive, they don't have good decision making skills in the OR or, good operating techniques. So it's really important if you do have surgery that you think about these things. Is my surgeon a good surgeon? Do they do this on a regular basis? But is this all they do? We put too much trust in our doctors. I hate to say that as a doctor, but it's the truth. I really want you to be your own health advocate because. Or get a friend, get a family member, get someone to be a health advocate for you. Go to the appointments with you, ask these questions and help discern, Go with your gut instincts if things don't feel right. There's a reason for that. We as women have been taught to ignore all of our instincts and we really need to get back to listening to them and going with our gut. So those are my major red flags. What are you going to do about it? Like I said, get yourself a health advocate if you're uncomfortable doing it for yourself or you're not sure what questions to ask. Some people aren't confrontational. They don't want to question the doctor because it seems disrespectful. That is an antiquated notion. I want you to get that crap out of your head. That is old school. Doctors need to be questioned. They need to be held to the fire. They need to be able to explain to you why they're doing something. If your doctor cannot give you a reasonable explanation of why you need to continue a medication or have a surgery or not have a lab draw or checked or something like that. They need to have a good explanation that sits well with you and that you're comfortable with. I just want you to find someone like that. You might have to go down the road of looking for a functional medicine practitioner or an integrative medicine practitioner or naturopath. Those are wonderful options and they're becoming more available. I'm licensed, I think in 30 states now, or 31. It's ridiculous. Those barriers really are coming down. Okay, I want you to listen and get yourself educated as much as possible. Listen to podcasts, watch summits and conferences, you know, read books. Everybody, every woman should read Eat Fat, get thin by Dr. Mark Hyman. We should not be afraid of fat. It's an essential part of our vitality as a woman. So I recommend everybody read that book, bare minimum. Start there. Mark Hyman is an amazing resource for all things functional. So while you're looking for a new practitioner, you can also do your own investigation. You can order your own labs. You can go to ultalabfest.com and order your lab work if you want. You find the site and get your blood drawn. You won't know how to interpret it necessarily, and I don't encourage you to do it and not have someone to work with to look at them. But it's a good starting point, especially if your doctor really refuses to do anything and you know you need those tests. Another thing, just stop snacking all day. Like that's a really easy thing that you can start to incorporate or stop incorporating is those snacks. Get your blood sugar under control, because blood sugar roller coasters cause us to have concentration issues and mood swings and sleep issues. We wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning. So many things from blood sugar imbalance cause us to make poor decisions then the rest of the day and have no energy. And you know, it's a slippery slope. So even if you can't get any help from your doctor, you have to do that basic stuff. You have to clean up your diet. You have to get rid of this snacking. You got to get the sugar out of your diet. You have to move your body with purpose every day. You have to stop and process your mental thoughts. All of this, you need to do the basics before you try and get any deeper.
