ICP 47: Dr. Beth Frates, MD- The profound effect of 'Patient Zero' -Stress prevention, heart health and behavior change

Dr. Beth Frates is a physician and Director of Wellness Programming at the Spaulding Stroke Research and Recovery Institute at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. Dr. Frates is also a Clinical Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. As I was listening to our conversation in post-production, Dr. Frates reminded me of past guest and plant-based rock star Jane Esselstyn with some of her language and mannerisms and inflection and occasional bursts of vocal volume and passion. Dr. Frates was influenced to practice lifestyle medicine from a very important person in her life, the person or patient she calls “Patient Zero”. This person, a major life-changing event and the effect he had on her caused a life-altering shift in her mindset, her thinking and ultimately her career path. In our conversation, we speak about Dr. Frates’ interests in stress, the nervous system and its effect on heart health and vascular health. Dr. Frates has also devoted a considerable amount of time educating herself on behavior change and a “Coach Approach”. The emphasis on talking to your patients, not talking at them, being a coach instead of their finger-wagging doctor and enabling them to find the answers to their own concerns, to own their problems themselves by leading a discussion, asking questions, being a good listener and not judging. I sense that this content is very applicable to doctors and medical professionals who listen to this podcast. In other news, I have a big announcement of the completion of a project that I’ve been working on for many, many months. Not a book or a study, but a course, a webinar, to further your knowledge about plant-=based nutrition and the many reasons why this is the future. It is, to my knowledge, the first ever comprehensive webinar on the implementation of the plant-based diet for endurance athletes. If you’re relatively new to the podcast or to me and my story, I am an endurance and competitive cyclist who just happens to have a radio style announcer voice, who just happens to have a podcast about plant-based nutrition. So, I’ve created this course that details from introduction to implementation, how athletes can implement a plant-based diet into their life. Why would you want to do this? Because it WILL make you a better athlete, no doubt about it. The line baloney that we’ve been fed that you must eat meat and dairy to be healthy humans and strong athletes is simply not true, and I have compiled the evidence and explanations to take you on a step-by-step journey to the end goal of immediately implementing this so that you can start to reap the rewards of this lifestyle for both your short-term athletic success and long-term health. This is somewhat time sensitive as I begin teaching this live and interactive webinar, on August 18, 2018. I have much more information on this course, what’s included and specifics of dates and times of presentation by visiting plant-basedcyclist.com/plantbasedathletics. I’ll also include several links in the show notes to make it easier. Plant-Based Nutrition for Endurance Athletes Details on the Webinar itself I hope you enjoy and learn something from this conversation, on Episode #47 with Dr. Beth Frates.