Holistic Health part 1

Hey. Hey. Welcome to brain chat. I'm Dr. Mitzi Joy Williams, your board certified neurologist and fellowship trained multiple sclerosis specialist. My mission is to engage, educate and empower those impacted by chronic neurologic conditions to become an active part of their healthcare team here on brainchat. We'll be discussing all things brain, brain health, wellness, self advocacy, and how to care for your loved ones who are impacted by chronic neurologic conditions. Join me and my super friends and special guests as we get ready for the next episode. And most importantly, let's get nerdy.

Hello, everybody.

Hey, hey. Welcome to Brainchat. It's Dr. Mitzi, the nerdy neurologist, here for another exciting episode. Listen, y', all, this is gonna be good. I know I say this every time we have brainchat, but I'm for real. This is really gonna be a great episode. So, you know, I'm really excited that you all tun in. We're going to be talking about integrative medicine, functional medicine, holistic health, all the things. And I have got some amazing guests to help us in this discussion. Let's get right into it. We are very excited about our guests that are on tonight. So first I'm going to introduce Dr. Tanya Bobron. She is a family physician who specializes in functional and integrative medicine. And she is hanging out with us all the way from St. Lucia and we'll hear a little bit about her journey. And then also we have Victoria Rogers, who is an idea and leadership strategist and she'll explain what that means. But she's also a patient advocate who lives with a chronic neurologic disease. And I can't wait for her to tell you about her story. Ladies, welcome to brainchat. All right, so I am so excited about this topic, you know, for multiple reasons. You know, I say all the time on brainchat that the traditional medical community is often behind the eight ball when it comes to integrative medicine, functional medicine. Many of us kind of have this idea, well, if we didn't learn about it in medical school, it's no good or, you know what I mean? And so I'm open. You know, I'm old enough to know how things used to be, but young enough to know that I don't know everything. And so, you know, just really excited about this area of medicine that's really opening up and particularly how we're learning more about how things like diet, exercise, stress reduction, yoga, meditation, all of these things are not just good things to do, right? But are things that we should be doing to help our cardiovascular health, to help our brain health. Like, we're now getting data that is showing us that these things really make a difference, you know, and are not just suggestions, you know, like eat right and exercise like your grandma used to tell you. So anyway, I'm not going to steal the thunder, but first, before, before we get into it, I want each of you to kind of introduce yourself to our brainchat audience and tell us a little bit about your journey. We'll start with you, Victoria.

Victoria Rogers. I am here in beautiful Atlanta as well.

Yeah.

And Dr. Mitzi shared. I'm an idea leadership strategist and coach. So what that means is I focus on all things at the intersection of inclusivity, diversity, equity, and accessibility in. At the intersection of mindful leadership. So how might we help people with increasing their level of consciousness and making better decisions for themselves in a more diligent and mindful way? Right. And that's how we can impact business and the world and the community that we're in. So that's a little bit about me. My Ms. Journey, I'm going to say, kicked off in like 2022 and, you know, was so much that I learned along the way. It was, it went from me thinking that I was healthy and that there were little things that were happening along the way that I would just gap fill right, with, oh, insert here, more movement, insert here, do these things. And then when things started to come to a head, it was, okay, I have a lot of resources and I have a lot of knowledge, but I need to be more connected to my body. And so what does that mean for me now? And so my Ms. Journey was one of both needing to get the education resources while also honoring some of my perspectives that I had and what it meant to be healthy and care for self. And that's how I ended up landing at Dr. Mitzi's door. So, so I'm happy to be here and thanks for having me in the conversation.

Awesome sauce. Okay, Dr. Bobron, tell us, tell us about your journey and your foray into integrative and functional medicine.

So I've been a family physician, trained as conventional Western medicine practitioner for over 30 years. But somewhere along the way, I felt that I, I needed to offer more to my patients, but I didn't know where or where to start or where to look. And it would take me being on the other end of a stethoscope on a hospital bed, looking up at my colleagues and thinking they're not seeing Me, they're only seeing disease. They're only seeing the disease process, and nobody's looking beyond that and seeing that inside, I am exhausted. I burnt out. And at the time, I didn't even know I was burnt out. But when I saw that, I realized that the only person who could heal me was me.

Say that again for the people in the back.

The only person who could heal myself was me. And I had to listen to my body and take charge and take ownership of my health. It didn't mean that I had walked away from conventional medicine. It meant that I wanted to look at the practice of medicine in a new way. I wanted to put the patient at the forefront of it as opposed to disease management. That's what we had all been taught. And I realized that I too, had looked at patients that way. That's how we've been taught. You look at disease and there is a set of symptoms. It follows something. And Big Pharma gives you the newest drug protocol, you prescribe that, and voila, the patient is cured. What I realized was that the patient. We were not healing our patients. And although I had been given medication, the root cause of my issues had never been addressed, and I had burnt out. And that was the greatest blessing for me because it took me on a journey that landed me in functional medicine, ended up doing a fellowship in that. Then I did a degree in alternative medicine because I really wanted to learn more about the ancient practices that had predated conventional medicine and had been used successfully for thousands of years. But I also realized that conventional Western medicine saves lives every minute of every day. So we. It's not either or. So I created this unique blend. I used it on myself. I was the great guinea pig for myself. I biohacked my body, and I came up with my method called the More Joy method, because I believe that the ultimate goal of healing, not curing of healing, is to look towards joy physically, joy emotionally, and joy spiritually. That's how I come to this new, new world that is not new. It's new world that has actually gone back to the traditions of our forefathers. And I'm ready for this journey.

Yeah. That is amazing. You know, and I love what you said, right, because it's a lot of times when people are approaching certain medicines, you know, or approaching medicine in general or their conditions, many times people feel like they do have to choose, right? Either conventional Western medicine or, you know, natural, whatever that is. And I often encourage people to recognize that we can walk and chew gum at the same Time. Right. We can do multiple things, and those multiple things can help us to, you know, to. To reach our goal of wellness. Right. And in that vein, what does wellness mean to you? Because sometimes, particularly with chronic diseases like, let's say, multiple sclerosis or neurodegenerative disease, people have lost function, right? And so we have to kind of deal with that. You know, there are some people where, fortunately, we catch them early enough where there are no symptoms, but sometimes there is damage that's there, that's lasting. And so people have this thought that wellness means I was the way I was. But what does wellness mean when you have, you know, some type of damage, whether it's from ms, whether maybe it's from a stroke or something like that, or even, you know, other conditions? What. What does wellness mean? I'll start with you, Victoria. What does wellness mean to you?

I had to redefine what wellness meant to me in 2022, even before the diagnosis came. A few months later, I was in what we now call a relapse. And during that relapse, I lost balance completely and I had vertigo 24 7. And so somebody actually integrated medicine practitioner asked me the question of, you need to spend time considering why now this is happening, and what is it that you're maybe not connected to at this time, like, in your body? Because I hear you say, I eat well, I do this, I do that, but yet you're here. And ironically, it was a month after I resigned from a big leadership role when I thought, oh, now I have all this space and I can create and do the things I want to do is a new chapter. But my body, when she. When she asked me that question, I thought, my body is saying, oh, you've put down the heavy things, but we have time. Like, okay, let's show you how off balance you are. And so my re imagining of wellness was I have to have the mind and body connection. I can't be independent of nature. I can't be independent from my body. I can't be independent from my mind. And so it is all things that what I believe to be true needs to be taken care of and cared for. What the energy that I know exists in my body and how it flows, is it free flowing? Does my body not just feel good, but, like, do I really feel the aliveness that I need to feel in my body? And some of that came from doing the subtle things of waking up in the morning and asking myself, like, on a scale of 1 to 10, how alive do I feel? And If I felt more alive than the day before, being my own little detective and asking myself, okay, so what was it that I did the day before that really helped? What was it that helped me sleep better? Was it the supplement? Was it what I did? Was it the amount of sunshine that I got? And I had to go through that process of what wellness meant for me? And now it means all of those things. It also means that it is the center focus of my life, my rituals, my practices on a daily basis, versus it being the add on to what I do and who I am, if that makes sense. And so, like, that's wellness is showing up for me now. Even the intuitive decision making that I am making is not a, is that a good decision to make? But it's a, how does that feel in my body? And is my body going to have the capacity to hold that if I make that decision?

I love that there's so many things that you said that resonate. I think that being in tune with your body is so important, and it is so common that I have people who come into clinic and until something very dramatic happens, they're really not in tune with their bodies. Because when we look back, it's like, well, you know what? I was doing this, and I was running into walls and I was doing this, but I had to keep moving. So I just kept stuffing it. I kept making excuses for it, you know, but there were signs that were there for many, many months, sometimes years before an actual diagnosis. And then once that diagnosis came and people had kind of a breath, it was like the body was like, all right, you ready? You ready to see what's really going on? Let me show you what's really going on now that you paying attention. And so I think that that is so important and so common in many people's journey, whether they have a chronic neurologic disease or not. Right. I think just in people's life journey, you know, just not being in tune because we're so busy doing other things that we're just not paying attention. So that being in tune with the body is extremely important. And then I also love what you said about checking in on a regular basis. For many people who live, particularly with multiple sclerosis or NMOSD or MOGAD psychiatric, some of these neurodegenerative diseases, it's a process of relearning your body. Right. This works for me. This doesn't. All right, I did this, and this was too much. Five miles was too much. Let's back it up to three and then maybe work our way back up to five. So it's really this process of relearning your body, relearning kind of what works and what doesn't work. And these may have been things you probably need to do the whole time, but now that we are more focused and more attentive, we're able to kind of, you know, check in with these things and to be able to adjust our lifestyle, et cetera. What are your thoughts, Dr. Bo Brown, about wellness? What does wellness mean to you?

It's a dynamic process. And I go back to medical school in the 80s, where we had health for all 2,000, and it was always about the absence of disease. And I think it's a dynamic thing. And I tell patients it's about balance. And everybody talks about balance this way, about work, life, balance, and everything like that. But I think about it like these stones, where you have the large stones and you build the smaller ones, and you keep that in the balance. And the base stone is the foundation, your wellness foundation. And every day changes. It could be that today it's a physical issue you need to deal with. Tomorrow might be an emotional or mental. Another day it might be a spiritual. But once you have this balance and that you have committed to that, then you can pile everything on. Work, family, friendships, you know, anything that's going on with the world. But it also means that we have to be willing to be dynamic and fluid and accept that there are days when the base will be really strong and that stone, nothing will move it. And there are days when it will be a little shaky, and we can, you know, balance and go with the flow. But it means that we are always tuning into our bodies, listening to and asking our bodies, what do you need today? What do you need in this minute? To feel well, to feel yourself again, to feel strong and energized and fit and to thrive. And to me, that is how I look at wellness from so many different wrongs. Today, for me, treating a patient meant doing a tuning fork, chakra balancing for them. And I sat there and my tuning forks were laid out on my. My mayo table. And I'm like, this is a surgical table that's normally in. In a theater. Surgical theater. But here I am, all my tuning forks are laid out a lot, and I'm wheeling that into seeing the patient, because at that moment, tuning in meant that this is what that particular patient needed today. Last week, she needed a prescription, right? She needed a prescription for conventional medicine. This week, once we had the conversation, and I Tuned in. And it was an intuitive thing. And that's another aspect of wellness that I think we neglect. The fact that we know we have an innate wisdom in our bodies, and our bodies have an innate ability to heal if we would only give it a chance by listening and saying, you know, I think this is what I need. And by extension, as healthcare practitioners, tuning into the patient, if we sort of have a communication and see, what does this patient need from me to heal themselves in this moment, Absolutely so important.

And I am learning a lot about the body's wisdom. You know, as I said kind of earlier in the program, these are not things that you kind of learn about in medical school. There are many people who are now focusing on functional medicine, integrative medicine, etc. But they're not things that were really taught. You kind of have to seek that knowledge yourself. But just in my own personal journey, just listening to your body, your body does have a lot of. It tells you if you thirsty and you need some water, if you listening, it's gonna tell you if you need to move, it's gonna be like, I need to walk. I need to, you know, I need to get up. I need to move around. Or even, you know, if I've been on a junk food binge, you know, I'm not perfect. I got. I like sweets. I. I make examples about cake in clinic, and I tell them because I like cake, right? But there are times when I'm like, I really need some lettuce. Like, literally, if I stop and listen, my body is like, ma', am, we need a Brussels sprout today. Okay, Nothing. We need something fresh. Let's get some broccoli. And so I think it's really about taking that time and getting in tune with that. And that's the difficult part, I think for most people, we're so busy, we're eating and moving. We're fast food in the car, we're eating and watching tv. Like, we do so many things mindlessly. And that's one of the reasons I encourage so many of my patients to get into meditation practices and mindfulness, because you really can become more attuned to what your body is telling you, and it's telling you what you need to do. The question is, are you ignoring it or not? You know, and so when we think about integrative medicine, I want to come Back to you, Dr. Tanya. Tell us a little bit about how it changes your practice. So you just told us a little bit about how one week, you know, you might see somebody and they may need a prescription, right? There's nothing wrong with that. There are medicines that are life saving that can help keep people from having, you know, many conditions. So I am a believer in medicines when they're needed, but sometimes they're not needed. I remember when I first started practicing and I may have, I probably told this story on Brainchat before, when I first started practicing and I would see patients, I remember I was, you know, a fellow and I would go in and see the patient and they'd be like, oh, my leg hurts. And so in my mind, as they were listing symptoms, I was listing in my mind all the medications I was going to give them for that symptom, right? They were like, my leg is tight. I'm like, okay, I got you back. I'm saying this in my mind, mind, you know, and they're like, oh, my bladders are like, okay, I got that. You know, they're like this. And I'm like, I got that. And then I would come up with my plan and they were like, no, I just want you to listen, I don't want any of that medication. And I'll be like, wait a minute, what happened to my excellent plan? Like, I had the perfect plan for you. You know, they'd be like, nah, I don't want that. You know, as. So how do we incorporate this integrative approach into how we're treating patients to really just kind of look at people and say, what is it? You know, how do we, you know, focus on what, what is it that we need to do and kind of help navigate that balance between the part they play and the part traditional medicine plays if it does in what they're dealing with.

And I think you've just answered one of the key thing is listen to the patient, sit back and allow them to tell you the story. But don't just listen, look at their body language and look at how they saying certain things. That alone tells me so much about what's going on. And sometimes I just let them talk and they come up with their own diagnoses or they tell me what they need. Or then they start to say, well, you know, I actually tried that and it helped. Or I removed this food and it helped. So they're actually starting to manage their symptoms and manage their disease process and their imbalances themselves. I've just given them a space to listen. And the other thing is by empowering them, because I think patients are used to doctor telling them what to do, they come in and they're expecting A prescription, and they're expecting you to tell them what to do. And I say, I'm simply your partner in your healing journey. Together, we will come up with a treatment plan. I will hold your hand. I will hold you as you heal. But the work that has to be done will be taken by you. You are doing the work. You've come into me. You made that commitment to your healing by coming into me. I will honor that commitment by walking alongside you, by holding you up, by encouraging you, by empowering you, and by educating you. You. But you will be the one doing the work. Once you remain committed to doing the work, I will go 150% to ensure that you get to your desired goals. You need to do the work, because I can't. I can write you a prescription, and the prescription can stay in your bag and never get filled. Or worse yet, you buy the medication and stays on the counter and never and never gets taken. Same thing with supplements. You know, you could get patients who go on tick tock and all of these. You know, I bought these supplements because the tick tock doctor said that, and I said, okay, as it helps. Well, I took one or two and I didn't see a difference. So I left. I said, well, you haven't given it a chance, but do you know what you were really treating? Because everybody's individual and not everybody has the same treatment protocol. So again, we talk about things like that, but it is so important that patients are allowed the space to heal and the given permission to heal. But sometimes I find patients are attached to the disease process. They become their disease. And I have to tell them, you are not your disease. You just happen to be somebody who's manifesting symptoms and signs that make up a particular disease process. But that's not who you are, not your disease. And you are your medicine. You are your medicine. You are not your disease. You are your medicine. So let's figure out what that medicine is going to be.

Girl, you preached a whole sermon. We could pass the offering bucket so much that you said first that space. That space is essential to taking a holistic approach to health. Because I always tell people there's a part you play, and there's a part of medicine may play, but no medicine is gonna do everything that you need to do to take care of yourself. Right? So even if I give you the medicine, you go home and take it. It's not gonna make everything completely go away. If you have spasticity or tightness, I can give you medicine, but you still gotta stretch you still gotta move, you know, it's not going to do everything for you. It's gonna help, but it's not gonna do everything. And so I think that space is essential. And I think also the space to just be honest is also important. So I see, you know, a variety of people. I do some general neurology. I also treat. I specialize in multiple sclerosis and neurodegenerative conditions. But I do see general neurology, and I cannot tell you how many times I have people come in with symptoms. And really, when we get down to it, it's stress, right? And we start talking, and it's like, I got three little babies, and I got triplets, and I'm trying to take care of them, and I work full time, and I got five jobs. And so what I do is I give people space to see their situation through another lens. And I always say, if your girlfriend came to you and described your situation, girl, I'm doing this and this. And, you know, so and so just passed. And I. You would say, oh, my God, how are you managing it?

How can.

How can you make it? But when it's us, when we're that person in the situation, we expect ourselves to just be able to dust it off and keep going. And your body is like, no, ma', am. No, sir. We are going to stop you right in these tracks. You are going to stop and pay attention until you take care of this other thing. And there have been some people where I've seen them, and I said, you know what? We're going to do the appropriate workup. We always do the workup first because we never assume it's stress from the beginning. But if we get to the workup and the end of the workup and everything's normal. And I say, all right, listen, let's try this meditation practice. Let's try this. And they come back in three months, and they're good. Just giving people that space to be human and not to be superhuman. Because we are so often trained to think that we're supposed to be able to do everything and be okay, and that's just not reality. And I think that social media has done much of a disservice because we see all these people doing a million things, but we don't see them when they laid out on the floor and they can't function because they've been doing the most dial.