Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry

We end our series on self-help & motivation this week with our final episode of the month of July. This week we are blessed to have Dr. Donna Hamilton on the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry.

Dr. Donna is a 4-time best-selling author, speaker, workplace well-being strategist and CEO of Manifest Excellence, LLC, a health promotion company that helps CEOs create happy, healthy, productive workplaces where that make it easier for people to do the job they're hired to do.

Dr. Donna took the time out to teach us how to create a happier & healthier lifestyle. She starts by teaching us what it really means to be healthy, talked about some of her personal struggles with health and what were 5 key areas that seem to keep a lot of people down in the pursuit of optimal health. This is another episode where you are going to be learning a lot about yourself & hopefully will know what tools you have been missing.

If you haven't already check out episode 118 to learn how Dr. Brad helps us eliminate all excuses & face the fear of failure head-on.

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Links/Resources:

• Complimentary self-care guide
• www.WellnessYourWayBook.com
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Download Episode 113 Transcript

Episode 119 Transcript...

Introduction

Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of Drberrypierre.com as well as a CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting. Helping you Empower Yourself For Better HealthTM, with the number one podcast for patient advocacy, education and empowerment.

Today we bring you another amazing episode with Dr. Donna Hamilton, who is going to be getting us right in the mindset of health and how to stay healthy and really how to get healthy. And this is really purely, truly, especially from a mindset standpoint because if you've been following along, we've talked about, we've had a series of episodes this month where we really wanted to focus on how our mindset plays such a huge factor in keeping us healthy. I started them off with the self-reflection. Then we had Dr. Michelle Clay talked to us about stress and stress relief.

Then we had Dr. Brad pretty much kinda knock it out the park talking to us about how we don't have any more excuses and how we need to reach in actually attain our goals and get failure out the way. So that was definitely one of the highlights of this month. And we're going to end it with Dr. Donna Hamilton. And of course like always I would like to, you know, do a little quick little bio. So y'all know all these amazing people I have on here.

She's a four time bestselling author, speaker. She's a workplace wellbeing strategist and CEO of Manifest Excellence, which is a health promotion company to help CEOs create happy, healthy, productive workplaces that make easier for people to actually do the jobs that they're hired to do. Right? Which makes sense. She offers services to help driven professionals get unstuck and become unstoppable. Her consulting courses, coaching, trainings and books use holistic and trauma-informed strategy to help their clients decrease stress, improve mindset, strengthen resilience, and increase productivity.

So again, that makes sense. Right? It makes sense that I would kind of end this series with someone who kind of wraps everything we talked about for the month, in like a boat. Right? And for everyone who has been following along. Who's been given such amazing support, thank you for all you doing. You know, kind of keeping up with me. Like I said, this is National Minority Health Month, right? But again, when we talk about Minority Health Month, this is something that I want you to be talking about it in August and November, back in June. I want this to be a 24/7 or deal, making sure where our mindset is correct. Because again, your blood pressure isn't gonna go down if your mindset isn't there or a cholesterol isn't going to go down, your weight isn't going to go down.

All of these things: your stress, your anxiety, all these things aren't gonna work unless we include the mindset aspect of it. So definitely thankful for having Dr. Donna on to kind of help educate us on just really staying healthy in general. And then you guys are in for amazing treat like always. If you have not had a chance, go ahead, subscribe to the podcast,l leave a five star review and tell a friend to tell a friend. Like that's the most amazing thing about you guys is that you actually are doing that, right? So we're getting more and more of viewership. More and more listeners to the show as we move on from week to week. So definitely thankful for all you guys support. You guys have a great and blessed day.

Episode

Dr. Berry: Alright, Lunch and Learn community. You heard another amazing introduction to personal friend of mine. But a person who I've been following along for about three plus years now. Some give or take and all we've been talking about, self-care, self-reflection, getting in the right mental mindset to get healthy. I figured, there was no way to really end this month without having this special guests on, right? So Dr. Donna please, first of all, thank you for joining the Lunch and Learn community today.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Thank you so much for having me and thank you for having this topic. It's one of my favorite topics. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Dr. Berry: So Dr. Donna unfortunately I got a lot of folks in my Lunch and Learn community who loved to like skip my intro. I don't know why they like skipping the intro. I guess they don't like hearing the music and that's okay. Right? Because I always give my guests another opportunity to kind of say like who they are. Maybe something that you know is not necessarily in the bio but just so a person who's just listening maybe for the first time and say well, who is Dr. Donna and why does Dr. Pierre love her so much.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: I get it because truth be told, I'm one of those people who tends to skip. I'm like, let's get it and at the same time context is everything. So hi! Lunch and Learn community and listeners. I am Dr. Donna. I started my career as a board certified community pediatrician and I transitioned into a workplace well-being strategist. So now I do two things. With my company Manifest Excellence, we help CEOs create happy, healthy, productive work families and make it easier for people to do the job that they've been hired to do. We offer courses, coaching and consulting. We also have services direct to individuals. So some people say that's great, but I need to do something outside of work. I also help super achievers who usually are kind of able to push through everything. We help them when they hit the wall. And so we helped them create their own personal plans that they can give back in their group and start to function at their best in mind, body, spirit in life.

Dr. Berry: Perfect. And you know that again, I think that's definitely an amazing segue, right? Especially when we talk about the topic of health. And this is how I think I have to ask just a basic question. Right? And again, it almost sounds silly, but understanding, I'm a physician, right? So they may come second nature, but to someone else who is really trying to turn that corner and whatever that health goal is, right? Trying to obtain that. Why is being healthy really so important? Why is that such a big thing for us?

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Yeah, that's a great question. I agree. Some people may say it's simple or silly, but it's not, because we have to start at the beginning. And you and I were both our primary care doc. So we tend to think like, let's get the basics. And we know that we don't, not everyone focuses on health. The word health is a lot more than not to being sick. And sometimes when people say or hear the word health, what they really are thinking, at least for adults, remember my background is in pediatrics and so that is, I translate a lot of those sensibilities into adults now. A lot of people say healthy, what they really mean is not sick. The word health literally means whole. W. H. O. L. E. That's the root of the word. So I guess way back whenever we created the English language and someone chose the word, what they were describing was someone who was whole, W. H. O. L. E. They were functioning at their best in their entirety. That's what being healthy literally means. And that's why it's really important because you cannot be sick but still not be functioning well. Not feeling well physically, mentally or emotionally.

Dr. Berry: I think it's extremely important, especially when you touch on the different aspects of it. Because I love that you did that because I think a lot of times the common knowledge is for, especially from a physician to really maybe focus on one aspect, right? Maybe just from a physical standpoint you look healthy but maybe we're not going to address those other aspects of it. How important do you feel making sure that not only the physical, the emotional, the mental, the well like all of that plays a factor in making sure we are completely healthy, which is obviously the whole?

Dr. Donna Hamilton: That it's crucial. The way I described it to adults is, in pediatrics or if you were dealing with a child, whether it's your child or a family member or someone in the community. Intuitively we know this. So we wouldn't look at a child who is physically doing well and thriving, but they had behavior problems or they were depressed or they were acting up and acting out. We wouldn't say that child was well or healthy. We know that there was more to deal with it. If they were homeless, if they had social issues. We would know that something needed to be addressed. But for some reason, and I don't know what the age is so to speak. Somewhere expectations get lowered for adults.

People say, well, you know what, I'm not overweight and I don't have any scary diagnoses and they ignore everything else and that doesn't ignore it, doesn't hit their radar. I'm still somewhat amazed when I have these discussions with people and I walk them through. Being healthy is really functioning at your best in mind, body, spirit and enlightening and they're like, oh yeah, that makes sense. So that's the essence of wellbeing. That's another, that's one of the reasons that you will see that. I still talk about health, but for my understanding, the way I'd use, I use health, wellness and wellbeing interchangeable because they all are trying to describe the same theme. Unfortunately the way we tend to be in our society, people like to try to streamline it. So people first started using the word wellness because folks stop using health to mean like in its entirety.

So people start saying, I'm going to talk about wellness then. So people understand, I mean function at your best in every way. And then people started to use the word wellness to mean like nutrition and maybe fitness. But again, it's part of wellness, but they kind of just, again, they got away from the sense of it means functioning in your best in every aspect. So now you'll see that a lot of people are talking about wellbeing and I'm hoping we get to it at wellbeing. You know what I mean, like we get it that people stop trying to streamline away this concept of functioning at your best in its entirety. Because like I said, we'd know what we wanted for our children. I don't know why for some reason for adults, people stop wanting it for themselves or for each other.

Dr. Berry: Oh, that's a whole, okay. Alright. I love it. I love that point. Question. And of course I asked this as an internist who takes care of the 18 and up, how would you rate really our ability to even teach that message to others as far as just being overall healthy in the whole fear of it?

Dr. Donna Hamilton: You know that depends on a lot of different paths. I think it depends on your specialty. I think it depends on your, you know, so whether it's pediatrics, whether it's Med, Peds, whether it's family medicine, whether it's internal medicine and you train thinking, I'm going to be a sub specialist or you did internal medicine thinking you're going to go into geriatrics. So I think it really depends on how you were trained, what you were trained in and in general what you bring to your job, which is like any other specialties like any other profession, it's what you bring to it. I would say in general, and it might be a little bias but also can be correct. I think in general, pediatricians are the best range because and I laugh but it's true, but it is part of how we are training, especially for General Ped and community pediatric, which is how I was trained, so we are truly trained in the bio psycho social model, like to really take a good history to make sure that we're assessing developmental.

I mean if you think about it, part of the pediatric paradigm is medical home. That's become part of the adult medicine paradigm. But it literally was started in pediatrics in the 60s the idea that your doctor is your team leader and we're going to make sure that we're keeping touch. I'm keeping track of everything that you need in order to be healthy, but there's like you said, a lot of family medicine people, a lot of internists who do take care of adolescents and young adults, they tend to be focused in into more that what a wellness and preventive aspect. I'm hoping that as a society, understanding the importance of prevention. That more doctors will get better and have time connect the other piece you can be trained because we actually all are trained. Let's be honest, we all are trained in this. Then you get the specifics and the logistics of your job where depending on where you're employed and how, who's in charge of your schedule, you don't have time to practice good medicine.

I mean, we know we got plenty of phenomenal of what they do and people don't give get enough time to take care of their patients. And I used to, when I retired my clinical practice. And that was one of the reasons it was very challenging to practice what I knew was best for my patients. And I used to talk at the administrators and the scheduling people and say a little tongue in cheek, but seriously, you know, patients don't know they're only supposed to have a 10 minute problem. Yeah. Patients gonna come in. Whether you schedule me for five minutes, 10 minutes, or the 30 minutes that I need to adequately address this issue, that's how much time it takes to look, to take care of the patient.

Dr. Berry: I love it and it's very definitely interesting point that I didn't even know about as far as the medical centered home starting with children, which makes sense. But, and you're right, like in a primary care setting, that's definitely been this new model that's come around where they really are trying to encapture a patient's health care even when they leave the office, which sounds like why weren't you doing it before? But like that's definitely the movement that's happening.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Absolutely. And it's what we need. It's a win-win for everyone. Patients need that. Especially when we're not feeling well. When you're not feeling well or you have a family members not feeling well that you don't even have enough as much energy to coordinate and organize everything. You don't even know what you're supposed to do most of the time. I mean, you and I, we're fortunate we're physicians. We have friends who are physicians. Yeah, so we have a basic understanding of what's supposed to happen. But again, you know, you're not a pediatrician. I'm not an internist. So if I'm dealing with an adult medicine cardiac issue, I still maybe don't know all the things that are supposed to happen and what all the balls that need to be juggled so to speak. That's where your family home, your medical home comes in and most doctors who care about their patients, which is most of us, especially in primary care. (Shout out to primary care). By the way, to all the listeners out there, it's really important for you to have a primary care doctor, and I say this because you and I know a lot of people don't, especially people who tend to have more medical issues.

Let's say it's a cardiac issue or it's a renal issues, kidney issues. They don't see that specialist a lot and they'll keep going there. Even women who are healthy, they'll tend to go to their gynecologist. I have a doctor who is gynecologist. Shout out to all the gynecologists we love you. They'll be the first to tell you that they are not primary care doctors. Their focus is on women's reproductive health. And so you need, and I really use the word need, but in this case I'm going to, well it's highly, highly recommended.

Dr. Berry: Highly, highly recommend. Dr. Donna has stamped it here on the Lunch and Learn community. Go ahead.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Highly recommended, your medical and your self-care team. You have someone who is your primary care doctor who's not a specialist. So for adults that would be an internist or an internal medicine doctor or someone who is family medicine doctor. And for children that is a pediatrician. Yeah. They're also family medicine doctors who do take care of children. So it would be a pediatrician or family medicine doctor who takes care of infants, children and adolescence. I know you love track, but this is all important.

Dr. Berry: All important. No, no, that's okay. That's the Lunch and Learn community is here to learn and listen. So they going to take everything we give them. (There you go). Now question. And when we talk about being healthy, right? And at the time we're recording this, I'm in an issue where I'm struggling with quote unquote being healthy. I actually, for those who followed me on Instagram, you know that I suffered an injury chasing after my son. Right? And now I am in the rehab process of a surgery that I recently had got done. And I see the mental changes that have happened just based off that. When we talk about just some of the struggles that are associated with just being healthy. What are some issues that you kind of run across, you seen in some of your patients on the time of time basis? I said like, wow. It seems like everybody seems to be dealing with the same related issues.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Oh, that's a lot. You know, I would, I'm gonna go to a core, something you touched on. Mindset is a really big piece. That's kind of a trendy word right now. The way I teach, we talk about mental, the mental arena, which is your thoughts, your beliefs, your expectations. So that mindset piece is a really big one. And that can shift if you're having a physical health challenge. And the mind and body are in constant communication, right? So you might actually be feeling good and tend to be more positive and with your expectations about life and your health. And then you ended up with a physical health challenge and then your mind starts to awfulize, right? And you're like, oh my gosh, what can happen, to cover or you just don't feel as good. So that's one of the common, common themes where people who are dealing with any type of health issue, it's that mindset piece and the, it really the expectation that they're going to be healthy, especially as they get older.

And notice I didn't say old, it's older. So people in their twenties who start getting into this belief. You know that they're old, they're starting to fall apart and anything, anytime something goes wrong it's like, oh I'm getting older. And I look at was like on so many levels we have to stop that. First, because sometimes you're like half my age. But also there is a big connection between our expectations and our biology of belief. Which we can have a separate discussion about that. But a lot of times we start to focus on the negative and we still, we look for the negative instead of focusing on the expectation of being healthy or recovering or getting better. So those are some of the common pieces that I see. Again, it's a focus on illness instead of wellness and what we can do to feel better to get better. So whether instead of focusing on, okay, so how can I recover quickly so I can get back and do whatever. People are wondering, how long am I going sick? How long is this going to hurt? It's spoken on the negative instead of the positive expectancy. Does that make sense?

Dr. Berry: It makes total sense and I love it because we had a recent guest, Dr Brad on here who kind of talked about how a lot of times we focus on the failure aspect instead of focusing on the goal and the win. So that makes complete sense, right? If we get sick and all they're doing, we're focusing on the sickness aspect of it and not the aspect of getting better, then it's going to take a long time to get better. I had decided that makes total sense.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Our brain and for people who are listening, I don't want you to beat up on yourself that this is your tendency. We're wired this from a neurologic perspective. We have what's called a negativity bias and there's a lot of reasons for that. The very short version, it's helped us survive. So if you are walking out in the street and I'm making it up, you want into a bear, I live in the Poconos so this actually can happen. You want to remember every aspect of what you know puts you in danger so that you don't do that. So that's our mind is wired to focus on these things. And so it does take some energy and effort to shift to start to focus on the positive. But it's a payoff because you might be improving and not even notice it.

A good example is pain. When I was practicing and kids were a little bit different. Fortunately I didn't have any too many children who had chronic pain. But I did have some older adolescents who had some chronic illness. We would teach them to focus. If we gave them some pain medication. Instead of saying, well, how much does it hurt beforehand and how much that just hurt now? We would ask them to focus on the pain relief because it made them start to say focus. Although this is better because if not, people are still focusing on how much it hurts instead of is it feeling better. How much is it feeling better now? And you train yourself to focus on feeling better, getting better, you know? So in your case, for someone who's having a mobility issue, if you hurt on your leg or your foot, instead of focusing, I still can't fill in. I still can't walk without a limp. I still can't go up a flight of stairs. It's like, oh no, what? I walked across the room today before it started hurting. And the shifts start to help us focus on being better and being healthier and looking forward. Because our energy goes where our attention flows. So we see and we attract what it is we focus on. So let's focus on what we want instead of what we don't.

Dr. Berry: Oh I love that. I love it. Dr. Donna, you've talked about a key arenas really affecting our health. What would you say they are? Like some of the key arenas really affecting our everyday health. Whether you're an adult and I know you deal with children but working with adults now.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: So whether you're an adult or child, the key arenas are the same. There are five and I don't get caught up on the number because depending on who you listen to, they'll define them in different ways and they'll give them different needs. But the concept is that we are talking about every aspect of affecting your health and wellness. So for this conversation, I teach the people, I've worked with five arenas. The first is the physical. So that's what you would think. It's the body. It's what you put in your body, on your body, and anything that affects anything that's tangible. Those are all aspects of the physical arena in your life and your health. There's the mental arena, which we touched on earlier. Those are your thoughts and your beliefs, your inner voice. So you can see that for a lot of people, they may look good physically and their mental arena is off.

And we're not talking about mentally ill. We're talking about people who are chronically critical of themselves and others beating up on themselves. They awfulize, you know, if you say can be done, they're the first to tell you 500 reasons why there's no way, why they're definitely gonna die. So that would not be a healthy mental. The next is the emotional arena. Those are your feelings, which is different than the mental arena. That's a very important distinction. The mental arena. It's about thoughts. Your thoughts and beliefs are not the same as your feelings. And many, many people don't like to play in the realm of feelings. So that emotions - happy, sad, fear. So that's the emotional area and you can see why many people like to avoid that because some of those feelings are uncomfortable. But that's an important part of being healthy, addressing your emotional arena. The next is the social arena and this is a big one and many people overlook it. Your social arena is what gives life variety and spice. So those are your habits, your hobbies, your money, your relationship, your job. So in medicine, for any positions who are listening, we talk about the bio psycho social. When we take a social history. For other listeners who aren't in medicine, that's why when you go to your primary care doctor, especially for first visit, they'll ask you what do you do? What do you do for a living? Are you married? Are you single? It's not just being nice and establishing a relationship though that's important too. This gives us a picture of all the aspects affecting your life. Because your job, your money, your, your habits. Whether you smoke, whether you text and drive. All of these affect your overall health and wellbeing. Your sleeping habits, all of these come under the social aspect of the social media.

And the lesser arena is the spiritual arena. And that's not religion, but religion does fall under this. The spiritual arena is around on your purpose, your mission, what gives your life meaning and how you make sense of it. That's also very, very important. Not only from quality of life because you can have everything looking good in those other boxes. So you're physically healthy mentally, emotionally. You got a job that you love and healthy relationships, with money. And you're still feeling like your life has no meaning or purpose. And so remember we said being healthy, as functioning in your best in every aspect. If you're walking around feeling like your life has no meaning or purpose, you're not really living your best life. You're not functioning at your best. That's why that spiritual arena is really important. It also becomes very important if you end up getting physically ill.

Because if you're unconscious or unspoken belief is, nah, doesn't really matter and your doctor is saying come on, you've got to get your blood pressure under control. I don't know what's going on. If you don't get this under control, you're going to have a stroke. You could die. And if you're really trying to like, oh well and you're not depressed. I'm making a distinction to people are depressed. But people will really kind of have this existential. Oh well if I live, live and I don't, that's fine. You're not going to be motivated to take stuff better. So all the arenas are connected. And so with my coaching clients, many times I will tell people, if you're stuck trying to make progress in one area, you would benefit from starting with another arena. So for a health thing, if you have tried six ways from Sunday to lose weight and it's not working, many times we find success when we start in another arena and start addressing that arena first.

Dr. Berry: Oh I love it. And Lunch and Learn community, I tell you every time, I think I say it's a week now, every week. I selfishly learn just as much from the guests as you guys may be learning as you're listening to this right now. So I'm definitely intrigued and remember, we do show notes so you don't have to like write anything down. You will get a chance to kind of have everything kind of written in a nice little pdf format so you can get those five key arenas. And I think Dr. Donna touched on it very well that you could be doing great in three of them, right? But those other two could be the reason why you can't lose weight. The other two could be the reason why your blood pressure isn't going down. The reason why, you know, you're not having good communication in your relationship. But also so I definitely love the fact that, you know, they really are together and again, we're not trying to prioritize one or the other. We're just trying to say, yeah, you got five that really can affect it one way. Thank you Dr. Donna for that aspect.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Yeah, they're all related. And like I tell people because we do workplace wellbeing, I see that a lot. So here's another way that's common. When you ask what are some things that we see are common, very, very common. So people will be stressed at their job for fill in the blank reasons. Not enough money, too much demand. Bully boss. They're stressed out at work. They go home. They can't turn it off or they're still stressed out. So one, it might end up affecting their relationship, their arguing with their significant other, or they're kind of snippy with their kids or they're feeling guilty because they're not spending time with their kids. If that doesn't happen, then they're wondering why. Maybe they can't sleep well, they just, they're having sleep problems because the stress from work. And I'm not saying this is always the case, but here's a common scenario. So the stress from work is disturbing your sleep and then they're wondering why they're gaining weight. Because sleep disturbances can affect your weight or they're wondering why they're having trouble controlling your blood sugar. Because if you're not getting enough sleep, that can be a factor. So this is a scenario where sometimes the key to affecting change is dealing with work stress. It might be getting another job. It might mean having a fierce conversation with your manager. But the issue might not be getting more disciplined and not what you're eating. It may be, in this case we got to do something about that stress job because that's the one that is wreaking havoc on your physical wellbeing.

Dr. Berry: I love it. And I think, and I especially think this segues perfectly to kind of our next point. Because obviously someone's not going to be able to Google how to get healthier. Because it's different for everybody. What do you think about the importance of having really individualized plans and goals for each individual person in their pursuit to become healthier?

Dr. Donna Hamilton: I'm a huge fan. So much so that I've wrote a book entitled Wellness Your Way. It's literally about making it your way because one size doesn't fit all when it comes to health. Now that doesn't mean that there aren't common themes and patterns. I mean that is the case. But depending on what your underlying issue is, depending on your age, where you live. There's so many different variables that you may have to have a customized plan. You will get better benefits if you have a customized approach to that. And what works for your friend may not work for you. I mean, we tell patients that all the time. If nothing else with prescription meds, right? I mean, we have many times, well my aunt had so and so and she had this, so I'm gonna take that thing and we'd like, don't do that. That's an extreme example, but it happens, right? It's all things.

The other piece that's very important. What worked for you 10 years ago, five years ago, might not work for you now. So it's not just customized from person to person. It's customized for point of life for you. You know, you may have had a health issue that a new diagnosis. You may have had a baby. I mean there's so many different variables that's going on. You may have a different job now, so you know, you can't take certain medications because they'll make you sleepy and you can't do that yet. There are just so many different variables. That's why it's so important to have a customized approach for you now. And the best way to do that, again, going full circle, that's my I having their primary care doctor who you know and trust and who knows you. That's why it's so important because they can help customize what you need now.

Dr. Berry: Oh, I love it. And of course they can pick up your book. The book was called again, I'm sorry?

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Wellness Your Way.

Dr. Berry: Wellness Your Way. And remember Lunch and Learn listeners, the link will be in the show notes as well too so you can pick that up and we'll make sure we support Dr. Donna and especially helping enlighten this community. Again, I'm enlightened. Like I said I'm, I've got the five keys like ready to make sure like I'm maximizing my approaches in every single one of them. So again definitely appreciate that aspect of the education today. Before we let you go, because I know your time is busy but couple of things I want to talk about. Because we talk about mindset being a very a buzz wordy type terminology these days, right? But what do you think about health, being healthy in self-care? Is that one in the same way? What do you think the relationship is with those things?

Dr. Donna Hamilton: I'm a big fan of distinctions in words and so health and self-care are different though they are interconnected. Self-care is what it sounds like. It's the way you take care of yourself or it's part of how you become healthy or how you maintain your health or how you become healthy. And so self-care helps you achieve your health goals. Likewise if you're healthy or not, your degree of health and wellbeing. That can affect your ability to take care of yourself. A very basic level, if you are feeling so ill physically warned him that you can't get out of bed, it's more challenging. You take care of yourself. You're either not feeling well. Mentally, not up to it or physically you can't get up and go take a walk. So that's the one. So they are different but they are intimately related.

Dr. Berry: And do you find any common misconceptions or issues that kind of prevent people from making sure that their self-care is where it needs to be?

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Oh absolutely. The biggest misconception is that self-care is a luxury and it involves luxury items. Yeah, I love a mani, in spa day as much as the next person, I'd love it. But there's more to self-care than massages and mani and even meditation. Those are some of the common things people they gotta take care of myself and you're spotting. You take care of myself at the learn how to meditate. These are all examples of self but self-care is, it's broader than that. And we have to encourage people to look at self-care in different categories. Self-care. It doesn't have to be this separate thing that you make time for. You can have small spurts of self-care that are quick and easy. You can have longer spurts of self-care like a nice vacation but you can also have self-care but you do in the moment at work and also self-care isn't always the juicy fun stuff.

Self-care is going in for your annual exam. Self-care is making sure you get your cholesterol level under control. You know self-care is going to the dentist and having your eyes checked right. Those are acts of self-care too. Self-care cannot be having a plan to manage stress at work. It can be making sure once an hour you get up and you walk around if you have a desk job. So there's lots of different ways that we can create self-care that are not these luxury things that you have to add to your schedule.

Dr. Berry: I love it. And first of all Lunch and Learn community. You know I love that Dr. Donna. She has told you to get your regular annual visit like three times today and I'm loving every single time she says it because I am 100% here for it.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Yes, thank you. We have to start with the basic and Dr. Berry knows I'm a big fan of acknowledging and then be real. I'm not saying that it's easy or necessarily pleasant to do. That does not change that it's important to do. So it's important. That's why you listen to this podcast. Actually listening to this podcast can count as self-care depending on your intention and the spirit with which you listened to it. And I'm sure most of you are listening to it with the intention of learning information about your health. That's taking care of your mental arena. You're filling in your mind with healthy beliefs, accurate information from trusted, valued physicians in healthcare providers. Because Dr. Berry, he's not just going to bring you anyone. He's going to bring people know what they're talking about. So that self-care. Because it can be confusing these days to have good, reliable, trustworthy health information. You know doctor Google, we love it. But that isn't the best way to get reliable health information. And by not the best way I would say don't do it. Unless it is taking you to a trusted website, of a trusted physician you know. So this counts as self-care, especially if you put the information that you learned into action. Take one step, like one step. And that is counts self-care.

Dr. Berry: I love it. And before we let you go and the last question I always employ to my guests, how is what you're doing? How can what you do to help empower others to take better control of their health? Dr. Donna Hamilton: What we teach literally is around knowing what you need and then advocating and taking appropriate actions. That is a core of what we teach at my company. A core of my approach when I work with coaching clients, it's around giving people the information that they need and then inspiring them forward. That is, people say, don't tell your secret sauce, but I'm going to share that with them. That's part of my secret sauce. And Dr. Berry knows I'm big on inspiration and motivation and that's not a Pollyanna sort of way. You know, because doctors, we tell people what to do and we tell them how to do it right. So think about a prescription, take two pills. That's what to do. Take it, you know, at bedtime, a little bit of food. That's how to do it. The Art of medicine is inspiring people to do it and that's a big piece of what we have to do. And that's why you'll find, and people who talk to me and follow me, we'll find that I focus on what's to do, not instead of what not to do.

We talked a lot about that. I will share a lot of inspiration and uplifting information because people need that now more than ever. It's easier to take action, take care of yourself when you feel like there's a purpose. So that is a big piece of it. When you start to think about your five arenas, you start to think about, well how am I doing in each of these areas? What's working? What needs some work if feels so much more manageable for starting to feel more manageable than, oh my goodness, what's going wrong? What my doctor said, all these numbers of bad, blah, blah, blah, and I'm afraid I'm getting old. And all that negative self-talk that can actually put you into. It can shut you down. Part of a stress is a freeze response. So people talk about fight or flight, which a lot of your listeners may have heard of. There's a third part that people don't recognize, which is freeze response. It is a physiologic response.

So we get overwhelmed. We shut down because we think like our mind and our bodies are programmed so that it kind of, it feels like it's keeping us safe. It doesn't always, but so we keep people inspired and motivated with information and to know that they're doing what's best for them. To understand how to get advocates and how to get good healthcare to support them. Because you don't need to be a doc. That's the other thing I tell people. I mean, we want you to have a medical literacy. We want you to understand what you need. But we train a long time to learn all this information. You don't have to take on all that responsibility. And I say this, everyone who the recovering control freaks out. Raise if you're listening, tell the truth.

I'm raising my hand to, you like to have control because then they'll say. That's a lot of responsibility to put on yourself. Also not realistic. So get someone who can help you. Take care of yourself. And that's that empowered piece. So you know how to talk to about. You know questions asked. You know how to advocate for yourself. But then also you can trust them to help you achieve your goals and that's how this all comes together. So it makes it easy. You have to help your doctor help you and that's how we help you. You keep you up lifted and educated so you know what to do and what to ask for.

Dr. Berry: I love it. I love and Dr. Donna thank you for definitely knocking out, knock in that question out of the park. Absolutely an amazing, and again, Lunch and Learn community knock down is when someone that we've been friends for going on three plus years now and every time I see Dr. Donna is, and again this is not just fluff like she is really inspiring. She is really being positive. She's really making sure that you are in a right mindset to be able to move forward. So Dr. Donna, thank you for joining the Lunch and Learn podcast and really help educating us and getting us together. But before I let you go. And again, I keep saying that, but this is a timeframe that I like to show off my guest. I'm very fortunate enough to know some amazing people doing some absolutely amazing things.

Dr. Donna hinted at a little bit when she talked about her book on this your way. Dr. Donna I want you to kinda take the floor, let people know what you're doing, what you got for them, books, courses, whatever that is, please let them know now, because I don't know if Lunch and Learn community realizes there's like no, like this is actually like a big dog right here talking to you. That's why I always give the opportunities like, no, just let these folks know like who you are. And they said, ok. Yeah, yeah. That's Dr. Donna Hamilton.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Thank you Dr. Berry. Yes. So as we talked about in the beginning, for those of you who skipped, right, and I am a four time bestselling author. I'm an international speaker. I have been featured on ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So my information is out there and not that we need to have it validated by others, but I'm doing something that other people find valuable. So that's Dr. Berry mentioned you can get my book Wellness Your Way. He's going to have a link to the site where you can go to get an autographed copy for me and it's on Amazon. We are in the process of shifting over some logistics. So if you run there and its listing is not right there right now, don't worry, it's getting up there. What apart through our company manifest excellence, as we mentioned, we do work site wellbeing consulting.

One of the pieces of we're very, very excited about as we're rolling out new trainings and courses for managers and CEOs around trauma informed leadership. We're really excited about this. But people may not realize it, but about two thirds of every adult has survived at least one childhood trauma or what we call in pediatrics adverse childhood event. And then if you add, when they get to be adults, you add so-called regular traumas like car accidents and having surgery or so by having a fire. That's a lot of the workforce that is walking around having survived a trauma and so a certain subset of that has may have post-traumatic stress or they're just, they interface a little differently. And we are teaching employers how to have a trauma informed workplace. So we can talk about that a separate podcast. We're teaching people how to be trauma informed with each other so that we all have workplaces that help us get our job done instead of causing us to shut down and be more stressed and less healthy. So we're really very excited about that. I also have a gift. I want to make sure that your listeners have. If they go to manifestexcellence.com/chooseyou. We have a checklist. This is not about trauma informed. I should've mentioned this earlier. This is for what we're talking about today. It's a self-care checklist. There's so much out there around how to be healthy. Even after listening to all this information, you still say, but where do I start? So we've put together a nice short sweet document that goes over some of the key healthy habits. They'll give you the most bang for your buck. So whether there's certain habits that whether you're trying to be healthy, address diabetes or weight control or whatever, is there certain habits that will give you health benefits across all the different arenas. So we have that list and it's combined with a nice checklist and you can write your notes down and you know what to talk to your doctor about.

Dr. Berry I said I'm really big on that. And a lot of times we have all these wonderful ideas and then we go to the doctor's office and the patient doesn't remember anything they want to talk about, like not one thing. And so we have it all in one document. We've got prompting questionnaires. Some of my health goals are blank. I want to talk to my doctor about blank. Doctor can help me with, you know, so please do that for yourself. Again, we want you to be empowered, but we don't want you to be burdened. So we are giving you the tools so that you can help your doctor help you.

Dr. Berry: I love it. Absolutely. Oh, okay. Say it again. That's why I love to have amazing guests who bring us stuff. Right? So we're going to actually leave with stuff to be able to kind of get onto the next level because Dr. Donna said correctly. We can tell you all we need to tell you, but you still have to take that action, right? So I want to make sure you download this checklist that take action, get healthy, get to your doctor, get that wellness appointment done and over with, right? So you don't have to have Dr. Donna come after you because you have not done it yet.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: It would be to encourage and love you for. That sounds healthy and like fluffy and all of that. But I always do. I tell people, most people do a good enough job beating up on themselves. They don't need me or their doctor beating up on them. So we are going to come behind you and courage you forward and say what's going on? If I did imitations better, I imitate, a nice loving, caring grandmother voice or something like that to inspire people forward. Because most of us know, especially if you're listening to this podcast, you are learning what it is to do. So we just have to help you get out of overwhelm so that you can do it. And that's part of my expertise. Helping people move from the stuck to unstoppable.

Dr. Berry: I love it. And what's your website again so people know where they can find you?

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Go to manifestexcellence.com and that's where we'll have all the workplace wellbeing information. There's lots of blog posts you can go and we have, I want to say about seven years worth of blog articles about self-care. How to be healthy at work. There's safety. There's a lot of information there. If you are a CEO or manager and you want to bring us in to help with your, to do lunch and learns at your office or to do checkups for your employee wellbeing program, you can contact us there. Or if you are an employee who wants simply some information about how to be healthy, you can contact us through there and they'll get the information to us. And for the guests and for the gift, it's manifestexcellence.com/chooseyou. That C. H. O. O. S. E. Y. O. U.

Dr. Berry: I love it, Dr. Donna. Again, I can't thank you enough for not only such an amazing discussion today on health, but really accumulating an amazing month of podcasts that really focus on, we're not just talking about blood pressure. We go, trust me, I've got plenty of podcasts that talk about that, right? But like we want to make sure that we're hitting home the fact that you're like, no, your mindset, I got to get right. If you want to get healthy, we're halfway, we're already on the other side of halfway towards 2019 and depending on when you're listening to this. So you can start today if you didn't start the first six months. And Dr. Donna you had been such an amazing job and definitely thank you again for joining the Lunch and Learn community. Educating us. Getting us together. Like I said, even though I thought I was a little bit healthy, I'm going to make sure I take myself to the next level.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: That's right. We need to aim high, be healthy. Function at your best, in mind, body, spirit, and life. Aim high.

Dr. Berry: Thank you Dr. Donna.

Dr. Donna Hamilton: Thanks Dr. Berry.

Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Brad Bellard, a phenomenal peak performance coach, who is driven to help professionals maximize their potential, so they achieve more success and fulfillment. Today Dr. Brad is going to drive home the mantra NO MORE EXCUSES. Dr. Brad is a best-selling author and sought-after keynote speaker, delivering impactful messages on topics including performance, purpose, and his personal story of going from ordinary to extraordinary.

We are very fortunate enough to get Dr. Brad on this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn community because he is ready to help us all get out of the cycle of unfinished goals, help us battle the fear of failure on our health journey and gives us tips and tricks to make sure our goals become reality. If you haven't already check out episode 117(drberrypierre.com/llp117) to learn how Dr. Michelle get us out of these stressful situations in our lives. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member.

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Download Episode 118 Transcript

Episode 118 Transcript...

Introduction

Dr. Berry:

And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of Pierre Medical Consulting, helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy here with the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Bringing you another episode. This is Episode 118. We have Dr. Brad Bellard who is an amazing, phenomenal performance coach who is going to get us right this episode. A lot of times when we talk about just the aspect of goals and achieving goals and what that means, I think a lot of times we kind of set people up for failure, right? And especially in the health space where we set patients up to say like, hey, you gotta stop smoking in three months, or hey, you got to lose all this weight. Or you watch your cholesterol. You gotta do all of these things that we set expectations on our patients.

But a lot of times we don't actually train our patients to achieve those expectations. And Dr. Brad, who is an amazing speaker, he has a YouTube page where we're pushing him to hurry up and get a podcast because he needs to be on a podcast. Great blog as well too, who is going to really educate us and get us right on the correct mindset to make sure that not only do we have goals that we want to achieve, but we know how to succeed in getting those goals and we know have to deal with the missteps that are likely gonna be in the way on your route to those goals. So just a quick little bio. Dr. Brad is a double board certified sports medicine physician. He's a peak performance coach, as well as a non operative sports medicine specialist.

Dr. Brad helps injured active individuals, avoid surgery, decrease pain and improve function. He's also served as a team physician for multiple professional teams including the NBA Dallas Mavericks and as a regular guest on Dallas, ESPN radio show inside sports medicine. As a peak performance coach, which again, I'm telling you like even though I know he's a sports medicine physician, like this is really where I think he excels and this is where I've been at narrowed by his growth. As a peak performance coach, Dr. Brad helps driven professionals maximize their potential so they achieve more success and fulfillment. Dr. Brad is a bestselling author, sought after keynote speaker delivering impactful messages on topics including performance purpose and his personal story on going from ordinary to extraordinary. Again, if you're listening to this in the month of July, you know, we are all about self-reflection. We're all about our mental clarity, mental health.

I knew I'd be doing you guys a disservice if I did not tell you the aspect of achieving goals and setting goals and how to actually be successful at them. Dr. Brad actually drops a statistics bomb that actually kind of, you know, floors me throughout the episode when we talk about New Year's resolutions because you know, obviously if you're listening to this in July and you made this new year's resolution in January, if you look to the left, look to the right, one of your partners isn't talking about the new year's resolution, right? And he told me the amount of people who actually drop off by like February, March, which is absolutely crazy. So be on the lookout for that little tidbit. I mean, again, you're going to hear about his book, you're going to hear about a coaching program that he's got coming up and we're definitely excited for.

And again, following this episode, I want you guys to follow him and I want you to pester him and to make sure he gets this podcast out because it's needed. We need a voice like his in the podcast space and I'm definitely excited for that to come whenever that does come around. But we're going to push it to be sooner rather than later. Again, like always, if you're not done, so go ahead and subscribe to the podcast. Leave me a five star review. Go ahead, follow Dr. Brad and know how much you learned and gained from this week's episode because again, I was sitting here like writing mental notes myself, and this is definitely an episode. I'm going to be going back and forth and drawing inspiration and drawing knowledge to make sure I'm achieving all the goals that I set forth to achieve from this year and here all forth. So again, another episode here on Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Subscribe on all your favorite social media outlets, whether that be Instagram, Instagram stories, Facebook, Twitter. I'm on all of them. So wherever you are sharing it, I'm likely there. If you mention me, I'll definitely make sure I acknowledge on the support. You guys have a great and blessed day.

Episode

Dr. Berry:

Alright, Lunch and Learn community. You just got a chance to listen to another amazing bio. I think I say this every week, I'm blessed to be able to know a lot of people who are doing some amazing things out in the health world and community and those who are willing to kind of reach back and educate Lunch and Learn community on all the amazing stuff they're doing. So again Dr. Brad, thank you for joining today's podcast.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Dude my absolute pleasure. We talked about this before we got on offline, but you know, it's an honor and a privilege to be on here because I've been watching you. We got a lot of mutual friends together and we speak similar language in terms of being able to promote and improve other people's lives in very different ways, whether it's mental health or whether it's personal growth or whether it's their physical health. And so is my time we got together, man. So I appreciate the fact that you reached out and I'm excited man.

Dr. Berry:

And you know what I love about that is that, because I think a lot of times when people talk about growth in those different areas, they talk about it as if it's separate, like separate entities just kind of like run in parallel but not realizing to be really whole, right? Like you've got to have all of these things kinda in line. Right?

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Well, and you said it dude. We really separate our physical health from what's going on in our mind? And to me, you can't reach a certain level of physical health until the mind understands where it's trying to go and believe that it's possible to get there. So yes, it goes hand and hand. For somebody to maybe look like they're in great shape, but mentally they're not there, they're stressed. You may not see the toll that the stress has taken on internally, but you know, that's conflicting. So really ultimately like you said to be oh, and you've got to have the mind antibody right together. So now you, you hit the nail on the head.

Dr. Berry:

I have a lot in my Lunch and Learn community members who like to skip past the intro. So they've been, maybe they didn't catch your bio, right? For those who did it, tell a little something about yourself that maybe isn't in the bio but like, you know, really says like who Dr. Brad really is?

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Man, at the end of the day dude, I'm just a guy who was at the, you know, just really came from ordinary beginnings in the Houston area. Had no aspirations of becoming a doctor, had people who believed in me much more than I ever believed in myself. And I was crazy enough to believe it. And over time, you know, became a physician but always had this 'its' Dr. Berry, that there was something else that was a voice that was waiting to be heard about really the story of my life and how being able to maximize your potential and the way people tapped into my potential so that I can eventually become more than I ever thought I could. And even, you know, try to excel to become more, really try to convey that message to other people, man. And I've been blessed to have some success in a lot of different areas. You know, I served as the assistant team physician for the Dallas Mavericks for multiple years. Radio is something that's been a passion of mine as I've been on ESPN radio as a cohost for them on a show that we do here in the Dallas area. And you know, I'll do some speaking, bestselling author and all that stuff. Don't really talk like talking a whole lot about that. But I do bring it up only to let people know what's possible. That's really the only reason I do it.

Dr. Berry:

I mean, sometimes Dr. Brad you gotta let people know you're not playing out here too. You know, I mean, because sometimes people don't respect the amount of work you put in, right? Until you start you know, listing out the CV out, right? Sometimes we got to list to CV and I'm a 100% champion for listing the CV out when need be.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Oh listen, some time, you've got to check folks. Just so they know who they talking to and you know when I get that feeling, yeah. Every now and then I gotta put a couple of pointers out there and some reminders. But for the most part, man, me, dude, I'm just a chill dude trying to make people more successful in the field than they are now.

Dr. Berry:

So what do I want to talk about? Because I'm very interested in all that amazing stuff you do. When we talk about peak performance coaching, when was that time in your life when you knew that you know what I needed to make this direction shift. I'm not sure if it was a turn im not sure it was a change, but I just needed to go in this direction. And then how did you end up becoming the peak performance coach? Because I think Lunch and Learn community, I really want them to kind of get ahold of, right? Especially because we're in July. Right? And I know we're in July, but depending on when you listen to this, a lot of y'all talked about New Year's resolutions in January.

So I know a lot of time this is when those New Year's resolutions, you know, people stop talking about it. People stop bringing it up. Right? So I kind of want to know what was your transition, when you say, when you realize, oh I needed to do something more. Because I think you kind of alluded to it, like I was doing okay but I wasn't 100% fulfilled. And then when you say, you know what, I'm going to take this mantle and drive people to not only drive myself, but then now I'm going to turn around and drive others.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Yup. Yeah. So first of all, you talk about those New Year's resolutions, man. There was a study that came out recently that showed that about 80% of people before February hits already dropped the resolution. So you gave a lot of people a little more of a time. And I know they might be dropping off now, let me tell you something. If they stuck with it until now, they're probably gonna stick with it. But before, a lot of people that happen about five, six months ago. But no, man you know, so I believe everyone's present and future in some way connected to their past. So really it just comes down to my story. You know, when I was younger, my brother was a large motivating force in my life. He was at the time an entrepreneur and he was trying to get a business started.

And so he had people in his life that were pouring into him about how to see yourself, how to have a better self-image, how to succeed in these success based principles. And my brother was 12 years older than me, so he directly kind of fed that into me. And I was just kinda, you know, all ears. And at the time I was a young athlete trying to play basketball and I would apply these principles. And so I started seeing that these things work because unfortunately I just didn't get this from my home, nothing against my parents. They were just, they didn't speak life into us like that.

Dr. Berry:

Do you sometimes find it is that they don't know how or the foundation isn't there to be able to build and teach those methods just aren't there for them?

Dr. Brad Bellard:

I firmly believe, at least my parents. I think most parents, they want to try to do the best they can for their children, but they're ignorant to how it works. And when I say ignorant, not in a bad way, but they just literally lack the knowledge of what it takes. No one poured into them into that way. So how would they just wake up one day and be able to share with me principles of success or being able to believe in myself or be able to believe that things are possible. So, you know, they did their best and I'm grateful for that. But you know, my story from early on was a story of one in which people believed in me much more than I ever believed in myself. And you know, I'm a hard headed, I guess it never really started sticking until later in life that I would look back and look and be like, you know, I actually did pretty good in that area.

Maybe I can apply this to other areas of life. And so the same thing happened in college. I mean, I could've swore I was gonna fail College. I mean, I just knew I was gonna fail. My first semester in college I was so fearful. It really forced me to study because I was so fearful. I was gonna fail and I did well. And it was one of those things like wow, those realizations. Like, man, if I apply myself, I'll do well. And again, I just had people, dude, I mean, I'm so blessed because there was a professor I had who just saw more than me. And then she invited me to try to be a part of extracurricular activities. And I was like, why does she keep talking to me? Why does she keep trying to include me in all of this stuff?

And I'm so grateful now because she saw something in me. And so that led to speaking for the first time in college. And I remember I dressed about four to 500 people in it. And something happened right there, man. And I said, you know, I've got to do something with this. But I went along my career in medicine and successfully graduated from medical school. And then, you know, became a doctor. What happened was, despite the fact that I've successfully achieved, you know, what I wanted to do in my professional career, I found myself and what most people would consider successful in life, you know what I mean? I mean, I'm a doctor, I had started a little small home business. I wasn't fulfilled dude. And I couldn't figure it out. I was like, why? Why am I still, why do I feel like is this it? It's like, I actually got to where I wanted to go and I'm like, this is it.

Dr. Berry:

You know that's very interesting because when you talk about from an outward appearance, the degrees were there, the business was there, the business is doing well, but on the inside it was like, something's not 100% right. Like I'm not 100% but happy. And that's a very interesting perspective because I think a lot of people don't do enough reflection on themselves to realize like, that's probably it. You're missing something and that's why you're not happy like you want to be or in that regards.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Well dude, think about it. It's hard taking a look in the mirror and being honest, dude. You know? So when people feel a certain way like that, they feel unfulfilled and I know exactly the feeling because I ignored it for so long that for most people who ignore one or two things is going to happen. They become numb and then they'll just make excuses and then eventually they'll just kind of get stuck where they are and then we won't be able to see a way out. (And more excuses become regret). Yep, that's right. And then the regrets become other excuses to justify why you haven't gone after something else. I try to address why you're dealing with that. So it's hard looking in the mirror. Dude I get it. Like I was there. And you know, I mean at the time I'm thinking like, dude, I put all this work time, money in and you know, listen, med school, ain't cheap Dr. Berry, you know it. Starting business ain't cheap.

So you know, I'm sitting here like, why do I feel like this? And so, you know, I get that, not wanting to reflect because reflection hurts, but growth requires reflection. It has to, because if you can't recognize and be aware of where you are now, there's no way you can kind of say, well, where do I want to go? I don't want to fix this. (I love it). But to answer your question, so it got to a point to where I was struggling with two things. One, I was unfulfilled. Two, I knew I was actually under achieving, people say under achieving?

Dr. Berry:

Interesting, okay. Alright. Hey, Lunch and Learn community, you gonna see my eyebrow, hold on, alright.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

But here's the deal. We all have this personal gauge of how whether we know we're actually living up to our potential. When you look in the mirror, whether you're doing what you can or whether you're falling short. And so because I kinda got stuck in a rut, I really wasn't trying to advance my practice. I really wasn't advancing my business. It all looked good again on outside looking in. But I became so frustrated. It all came to a point where I was like, I've got to change. I've got to do something. And to be a hundred percent honest with you, man, I wasn't doing what I needed to do spiritually. I wasn't doing what I needed to do as a husband, as a father, as a doctor. I was trying to figure out what my purpose. I didn't know. I mean, I was like, because obviously what I did here in my career was not scratching it, so to speak, to try to figure out, man, is this it? What else am I going to do? I got fed up man.

And that frustration and pain led me to really, really invest in myself and figure out what I needed to do to take things to another level. For me, one, I had to discover my purpose and two, I really had to start applying a lot of those success principles, those faith based success principles in my life. And when I started doing that with the help of other people in my life, people, coaches, mentors, I started to see things changed in a drastic way because of that. You know, like I said, I've been blessed to have some success. I said I have to pay this forward. It is not a question I'm obligated for people who were where I was, you know, man, is this it? What am I doing? I'm a successful professional, but like I'm stuck. Now I gotta wear the mask in front of everybody else because I just got to do it, right?

But internally they're like, dude, how did I get to where I am now? And I'm still stuck. I don't know what's next. I know there's more to life. I know I want more. I just don't really know how to get it. And you know, I've been able to develop some systems and tools to be able to help people do that. So that's really how the whole peak performance started was I was like, dude, let me go back and look at what I did, really define it and turn it into a way that I can voice clearly to people with my help. How to start living a life of purpose and peak performance.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. This is what they need to hear. Like I said, the 80% of people fell off in February. (That's right). Maybe if they heard something like this in February, you know, they'd still be around in July. Right? (That's right). I think, and it sounds like that's a very big motivator for you, right? Like getting, you know, people to really turn their goals into reality, right? And really pushing it because if it worked for you and I think it was interesting because you talked about a mass and I think a lot of times when we talk about people wearing masks, sometimes they don't realize that successful people do it too. And I say successful in quotes because success is usually, you know, an outwardly appearance, the degrees, the money, that's all they usually can draw from because they don't really know what's going on the inside.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Well look, I'll say this, if you know you're wearing the mask and you know, internally something's hurting, that's actually a good thing. Here's what's scary is when you're wearing a mask and you don't even know it, and you'll know what I mean by this. We're both physicians. Somebody has got hypertension, they don't feel hypertension. You can't feel hypertension. I guess what? You can't be like, Oh man, my blood pressure's just hurting me right now. You'll do that. But guess what? It's killing you on the inside. And so if you're aware enough to know that something's not right, like dude, you know, I'm just not where I want to be being 100%. That's a good thing. It's just time to address it really. And I'm here to let you know, number one, it's possible to achieve what you want. And number two does a way to do it and three, there's someone here to help you do that.

You know what motivates me, man? (Talk to me, let's go). Here's the deal. So many times we want better for ourselves and I get it. Dude, that's big. That might be like an initial self-motivated. That was probably my initial motivator. Like, dude, I'm going to do something. I'll start. I'm going to do something. What motivates me now and what will create lasting motivation and service? Dude, there are people out there who are currently right now where I was years ago where I'm like literally gripping my head, trying to figure out I am not where I need to be. So it's more trying to find those people and it's my personal obligation to serve. And find those people because if I can get in front of those people and help them, well then I've done my part, but see it's not about me anymore.

And when you get to that point in anything that you're doing, which I encourage people to find whatever that is for you. Find something that's big enough in your life that if you don't do it because somebody else will suffer or someone else will suffer because you don't do what you're supposed to do. That is a motivator. We'll let ourselves down almost a hundred percent of the time. We know somebody is, oh dude, but we know somebody else is relying on us and you're not doing what you're supposed to do. That hurts. So yeah, that gives me up, man.

Dr. Berry:

Definitely a good point here. What do you think stops people? What do you think, in your history of your career, the people you work with, what do you think stops most people from really achieving what they really want? Because we talk a lot, right? In January we're hype. (Yup). But what happens in February? What happens in March? Now people fall off so much. Right. What's been your thing that you've run into like often over and over and over again?

Dr. Brad Bellard:

One word, man. Belief. I'll keep it real simple. And you could just, you and all the listeners, man, I can just let this marinate. If you believe you could do it, you'd be doing it or you would have done it already. (I love it). Let me think about it. If you really, really, really thought you could start that business, you would have already pulled the trigger. That would not have been an excuse. We were talking before this about me podcast and for some reason as a belief issue of why I haven't taken action to actually start my own podcast. I do all the other stuff and it really, I mean there's no excuse for me because I've got so much content and stuff out there.

Dr. Berry:

And Lunch and Learn community, I'm telling you, he got so much. Like don't have to do a new thing for nothing. He can just, I'm just going to take this idea from here. I'm going to take this out from here and he probably has a couple months' worth of stuff right now.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Oh dude, almost a year's worth of stuff. And so you know, here's what you'll find is pure honesty from me. I'm not perfect. So when I'm telling you about something that you know, so you asked me like what stops people? Saying stuff that stops other people, the same stuff that stops me. The thing is I become so aware of what it is now that I can talk about it and I've been able to say, okay, well it belief is the issue really with intention. Use that to my advantage and believe something to turn the goals and the wants and the desires into reality. But what stops people man, is that there's a belief issue. Most people don't want to believe that, but it's the reality man. I mean, you know, if you believed a hundred percent you can do, you'd already be doing it all.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. And you've talked before especially about achieving goals, right? And you've given tips like this. Again, like I said, I followed Dr. Brad on IG, on Facebook, on YouTube, and on the blog. And he's talked about three tips for achieving goals, which I love. And I really want him to kind of, you know, it really hit home, especially for you guys who are in the middle or in the beginning or are starting or towards the end of your health journey, whatever that is, right? And he talks about these three tips as far as achievement and goals, right? Number one is eliminating excuses. And I love that. I love the elimination of excuses because I find that a lot of us, you know, we, they come out of nowhere. And when sometimes we make up our own excuses. We don't even give people time to like, well, that's the reason why you ain't doing it because of this. Like we have our own excuses kind of get away. The elimination of excuses like it sounds easy, right? (Oh dude, sounds too simple). How have you helped people eliminate excuses? Honestly, what are some of the funniest excuses of you've heard in the past that like, come on man?

Dr. Brad Bellard:

I could have you rolling on my own excuses, man. You know what I'm saying? I mean we thought about this podcast, let's start there. I've got all the tools and everything in the world. Just start a podcast and I have it. Ultimately, people want change. But there are three things that, or pretty much mandatory that I've seen to really kind of take big picture to achieve change, to have transformation, achieve your goal, however you want to label that. One is mindset. In that mindset, and that's a big word. But like, you know, positive mindset. (Especially because a lot of us have negative ones). We have negative mindset. So mindset, under that mindset is belief. So really your internal thoughts. So let's just say mindset – one. Second is clarity. I think people, most people don't know what they want.

They know they want something different, but I don't know if they know what they want and you can't really start moving. You can start moving away from something, but to really be purpose driven and get to what you want, you have to then start moving towards something but people don't know what that is. So clarity or vision. And then the third thing is you got to have people, man. I thought for the longest time I could do things on my own and that was one of my roadblocks. I'm just going to wake up and be able to just do this stuff. But you need people and there's various types of people you need. You need someone who's, you need people around you. You need your tribe of people who are going to encourage you. You need a mentor or coach or somebody who's been there already to now guide you along the way.

Dude, there's a Harvard study that showed that 95% of where you'll be in there, your results in life is as a result of the people who around. 95%, this is a Harvard study. So you telling me you don't need people, you want to continue to be like, I wasn't a pastor, I don't need people. I don't need a coach. I don't need a mentor. You know what ads put my prior to the side dude, because I wanted more out of life. And so that's really what it is, requires mindset, clarity and people. And that in a big picture will really help people to get what they want. That'll help them eliminate excuses and to do anything else. If you'd look big picture, that's what it is. Now I'm here to let people know I'm a person that can help you to do the other two things, which is the mindset and the clarity. So yeah.

Dr. Berry:

Your second tip was having a strong why? Why is that so important? Why is it so important for a person who wants to achieve their goals to like really have a strong why?

Dr. Brad Bellard:

You'll quit. You'll quit, dude. You know, you gotta eliminate excuses. You've got to have a strong one. I mean, and I know what you're talking about, you know, to achieve any goal, do you got to be able to eliminate excuses. You got to have a strong one. Look man, if being excited about something is only going to last so long, dude. Because at some point you're going to get punched in the mouth. You're going to get punched in the gut. And the question is, is what I'm going after worth getting up and feeling that again. Because you may. (Okay). That why has to be, dude, it's gotta be deep enough to get up again man. You modify, bless your listeners right now. (Please do). Dude, there's a book that is called Start with Why by a guy named Simon Sinek. It was one of the books that changed my life.

I've got about 10 books or so that have just been, you know, those game changers in life, right? It's called Start with Why. And he talks in that book about companies that have not just like extra ordinary companies, companies like where do you like this company or not? You can't deny they've done well and created a following and community, but it was Apple. They talk about big time companies and how they did that and how you can relate that start starting with why to your life to be able to achieve more, be more, do more. And when I saw how powerful the power of why is man, I said I need to know the reason why I'm doing almost everything in my life. If I can't give a reason of why I'm doing something with intention, maybe I don't need to be doing it or maybe I need to figure out why, why I'm doing it instead of just living haphazard, man.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. Okay. Alright. And I see, listen I told you. I told you we learn it today and obviously for those who may be driving, you know, listen to wherever you're listening to, I will make sure all of the links that Dr. Brad talks about will be in the show notes as well too. So you don't have to like scary down there. Right? Because I'll make sure we have a link to that as well. The last time we talked about a solution based mentality. What's that?

Dr. Brad Bellard:

It's the difference between when, so solution. In order to have a solution there's got to be a problem. I think we can all agree like in order to have a solution that means that you're solving a problem. So by means problems are inevitable in our lives, but there's a difference between when a problem comes and immediately saying there's no answer to it or having the solution based mentality where you say, okay how can we fix this? It's the question of how, how can, when you start to ask yourself questions like that, the mind opens up to a possibility of how it can happen.

I mean just as recent as the other day I was talking to my wife and she's out of town and she has some car trouble and so she went, got it checked out and it was a certain amount of money and she was like, you know, what are we going to do? I said, well hold on, hold on. How can we figure this out? As soon as you start to think that you start to think of possibilities. But if something happens and you immediately like, dude we're done. We can't do anything. Possibility has been ended. When you're on your way toward any goal, if you're trying to achieve anything in life, there's going to be problems. I can assure there's going to be obstacles and when it happens you have to say, how can I move around this? How can I, because it will empower you to think about things that you didn't ordinarily think about before. Once you are presented with it. But don't just write off any other possibilities because at that point you'll stop.

Dr. Berry:

That makes so much sense. Once you've come with that initial thought like, oh my God, this can't be done. Your brain is not going to even think about other ways that it possibly could be done because you've already quit before the race even started.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Dude questions just in general or is this big? I mean you start asking yourself questions. That's, you know, you talked about self-reflection, like being able to reflect. A lot of that is just asking yourself questions. I mean one of the biggest questions I ask people is, what do you want? Like, I mean that's a big question Dr. Berry. But most of us, I don't think we think that we can get it. So you talk about beliefs, that's why we don't even address what we want because it's like, well I kinda gotta go to work. I kinda got to do this. Like okay, I get that. But what do you want when you really site people what they want, that's when you can start moving towards something because you can define what you want. That's that clarity piece I was talking about earlier.

Dr. Berry:

I don't think it will be complete. Right? Especially in the space of, you know, helping people achieve their goals and talking about the goals, you know, that they have. Right? Without talking about the aspect of failure and you do talk a lot about failure and really the fear of it. But most importantly you're talking about like how do you get over that, right? If you guys, like you said, I think that failure is kind of rooted in their belief, right? Some people believe the failure before they believe their goal.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Dude, failure is so powerful. Think about it. If you have a goal that's something that you want to do, oftentimes the fear of failure will stop you from taking an action toward it. I mean, think about it. Our Egos are so fragile, to get hurt. No, this is real. Our egos, (Talk to them). No, no, no. I'm talking to me too, man. Our egos are so fragile and we don't want to feel the pain of not achieving something that we don't even have yet. That we don't even, we don't even like, it's not like we're losing something, but we're trying to go after something. You ain't even have it. I'm not even going to go after what is this, that and the other half. But you ain't have it yet. Like we're so concerned of how we will feel when we fail that we won't even move.

Dr. Berry:

As you can see my face because I'm like, yo, yo, he hit me right there. Yeah. It's a lot of us who are walking around. Like you say, we won't even start the race because we're already thinking about, oh, happens if I fail going towards the end of the track.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

You know, what are people gonna think? What's going to happen? People will think, let me tell you, they'll probably think things that you even have in mind of what they're gonna think, you know? So that's where we go back to that why question is whatever you're going after. Is it worth it? Is it really worth it? Sometimes fear, like I was talking about before, you know, I was so fearful that I was going to fail. It really pushed me to go. Sometimes it can be a push, but if you're so fearful that you're not taking action, that's when it becomes a problem. We're all gonna face fear. The question is this, what are you going to do when it happens? Are you gonna have a healthy response to fear? Fear is part of life. But oftentimes we are factored in as opinion. So there's fact, okay, there is a fact that maybe you failed a test or a fact that maybe you didn't make money in this first business.

That's fact. Your opinion of the fact that you'll never be able to do it again is not real. So then it becomes that fear is now a choice. You choose fear. Danger is real. Danger is real. Dude, look, if a lion comes up in this room right now, like I'm feel like I'm in danger, like yes, I will. It's time to run. I'm fearful because I'm in danger. But starting that business ain't nothing going on. I mean, what's gonna happen to you? It's not like you're going to have a heart attack, you know? It's not like you're gonna, so now it's a choice. So you've gotta be able to, to address it and know that it's there and then deal with it in a healthy fashion.

Dr. Berry:

Amazing. And again, like I said, touched on, and I love the fact that a lot of us that you talked on are, a lot of us are choosing, right? Where we're choosing fear, we're choosing this fear of failure and we're not even starting, right? Because again, that that fear is going to be there. We expected to be there and for yourself, it actually helped push you forward and motivate you towards your goal. But for some, unfortunately, maybe again, you say 80%, wow that 80%, I've been thinking about that number this whole time like wow 80% really drops off by February. Wow. A lot of us like have chosen I, this is the route I'm going. You know what? I know I was hype in January, but I'm good on that now. I'll see y'all next January.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Let me talk about resolutions for a minute. Again, I just want to bless the people who are here because I get it man. Like people, I think most of us have goals now. I think most of us have things that we want to do. We may not say the word goals because it might scare some people because they know if they failed, then they know they fail. They're going out and go. But we have things that we want to do. Let's just put it that way. If you don't, people will go to the gym. Let's just take weight loss for a second. Say, man, you know I'm going to lose. I want to lose 20 pounds. And so they'll start putting in action. Like I'm going to go to the gym, I'm gonna put all these actions. But the one thing they miss is mentally being there before they ever get there.

So you have to have a self-image of having lost 20 pounds already to be able to continue moving. You know, we are where we are right now because we had an image of ourselves at some point in our life to be here now or else we wouldn't be the people that we are. I mean that's just how it works. So if you want to lose that weight, believe you've already lost it before you even start. But you know that takes work. That takes the, it takes exercise, it takes mental exercise just like it does physical exercise to get there. But it's the mental exercise that people don't implement, which is why after two weeks is too hard and is just, you know what, I'm not going to go to the gym anymore.

Dr. Berry:

Oh I love it. Dr. Brad you have really put a charge, not only Lunch and Learn community, but also myself. Like I was, I said, you know what? Maybe I can go and do this thing too. Like maybe, because now I'm like, wow, this is something I was holding myself back. Even though, I know especially Lunch and Learn community they talk all the time like " Dr. Berry what else can you do?" I don't want to limit myself. I love this process of going through the steps, right? Going through the steps of recognizing I want to do something different. Recognize it. Alright. These are some of the steps that may hinder me, but because I know my why, I'm going to keep moving forward. And yes, that monster of failure in the shadow, but I'm not gonna let that monster stop me from getting to work. Right? So first of all, thank you for such an amazing educational lesson. Like I said, we are definitely hype. and you were definitely person Like, yeah, I gotta make sure I get him on a show because I don't know if people realize how amazing this guy is. So I said, let's get him on one way or the other.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Well, I'll tell you Dr. Berry. One of the things that I love that you say is empower yourself for better health. I think so oftentimes some of our patient base, they look to us for all the answers. And we can have answers, but we can't result for you. You know what I'm saying? I can't result for you. I can't get your blood pressure down. I'm an educator and I and I will educate you and guide you, but I can't do the work. Now what I like about most of our patients that come in to see us. When I say us, doctors like you and myself, is that, yes they're taking an active role by seeing a doctor. But if you're saying, hey listen, you know, we've got to get your blood pressure down, that's a goal. And so they need to be empowered.

And I love the fact that you are creating content to empower people to ultimately hit their health goals. Your health is important. And so thank you for this podcast, dude. Thank you for having me. I hope that what I'm talking about here will help the community of listeners who listen to you and be empowered and take the information and knowledge that you're giving them, including what I'm giving them. To be better patients so that they can be better people so they can have better health. You know what I mean? But you're doing exactly that, man. You're empowering people. But I challenge everybody who's listening to this to take the information. (Let's go). Yeah. So take the information that Dr. Berry's talking about and let's use it. See, he doesn't provide this content just because he likes hearing himself talk. Okay. I mean we want to create change.

So we challenge you to take this information so that you can hit your health goals. So then you can take back control of your health, which is another thing that he says is take back control. We can only do so much, but in our passion and in our purpose, we deliver this information. But there's going to be up to you to take action so that you can have a better life. And listen, at the end of the day, it's worth it. I mean, what is it going to feel like to be able to, to not have to be on the medication anymore? What's it gonna feel like to lose the weight? The knees feel better? What is going to feel like to be able to wake up knowing that heck, you just achieved your goal of losing 10 pounds?

What's it going to feel like to be able to know that you're serving as a phenomenal example for your family and others around you of what to do? We talked about 95% of who we become is a matter of who's around us. Seeing what we don't oftentimes understand is the decisions we make for our own health is having a profound, maybe more drastic effect on those people around us. Your family, your friends. (Oh, yes). Whether you're a grandparent, parent or just a friend of someone you serve in some kind of way. Whenever you make decisions on your health on a daily basis because there are around you. So realize it's not about you. It's not always about you but the decisions you make more have effect on other people around you. So I challenge you guys to listen to what Dr. Berry says. Apply it. And I mean, dude, you're a blessing dude. So I appreciate you.

Dr. Berry:

Must appreciate them. Amazing words and we'll definitely make sure we get that written down somewhere so we can post that on IG. So cool. Before you go, and because I have such amazing guests and it's amazing. I'm in a circle that, especially a circle of physicians who are not only killing it in health, but we're just killing it in general, right? Like I always, I always leave this time say, alright, Dr. Brad, please tell the people what are you doing? Please tell them, you know, books, courses, whatever you have so they can be connected to who Dr. Brad is and they can see why Dr. Berry feels like Dr. Brad's so amazing. What's going on right now? Talk about the book, talk about the… let's go.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Yeah, man. Listen. I'm extremely excited. Like I said, my passion is all driven towards service man and trying to get people to a place to where they really can maximize their professional and a personal potential via faith-based principles so that they can achieve more success and fulfillment. That fulfillment word is really big. So everything I do is really centered upon that in terms of things that I do as a peak performance coach outside of my practice. So I've got a book, I've got a bestselling book called Elite: A Modern Success Guide to Purpose and Peak Performance. And it literally serves as a guide for people who are looking to achieve more, be more and live more. So we've got the book. We talked about three things earlier that everybody needs to some sort of transformation, mindset, vision and people, that's MVP.

So I've got something I'm extremely excited about. You know, a lot of people are kind of pulling from me here, there to work with them or coach to help them hit their goals. What's really cool is I'm creating a membership so that people can literally have access to me month to month to learn and implement a habit that will help them become the person that they always want it to be and sustain it over time. So I'm literally going to be your accountability partner. I'll be the person who coach you. I'll be the person who encourages you on a month to month basis as being a member of the MVP nation. So that's going to be rolling out really, really soon. And then, you know, I do some speaking man, people can always check us out. You can follow me at Dr. Brad MD. That's D, R, B, R, A, D, M, D. Even in my sports medicine practice we're doing some big things on the radio or in there. So I had that earlier this morning. So today's kind of been a media day.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. Media day. I'm proud of media.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

There was media day, man. So check out what we got on there. Should I talk to him about the free video? (Talk to them. Let's go). Yeah. So listen man, I got a heart to give. So for anybody who's looking to turn their goal, talk about goals here, people who might have some health goals, any goal that you have. If you're trying to create that goal into reality, I've created a free video. It is literally free. Like it's not like this dude is like talking crazy like no, it's free, it's free. And so it's a video training. It's about a little less than 10 minutes long and it's called the Results Formula. And so I talk about that results formula and how you can apply it to your life. And that's at www.resultswithdrbradmd.com. I'm sure you'll put it on the notes (Definitely. Go ahead). And if you go there…

Dr. Berry:

In fact, Lunch and Learn community, If you text Dr. Brad MD at 44222 I will make sure that links directly to you.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Man. Dude, Dr. Barry, man. Look man, it's been a pleasure man. We have to chop it up some more just offline.

Dr. Berry:

Yes, yes. I'll tell them about the bread aisle before we started. I was like, hey man, I've been waiting to talk to you. There's certain people that you just see their energy and you're like, okay, yeah, this one. Yeah, he's gonna be a problem, right? A good problem, of course. This one right here. Let me keep an eye on this one right here. Tell you Lunch and Learn community, I follow him on YouTube. We're going to get him to do his podcast. We already got on him.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Yeah. The accountability has come. I feel it now. I gotta I gotta get up out there man. And you're going to be on that podcast. We'll just go here and get ready.

Dr. Berry:

Love it. And again, I follow on YouTube and make sure when you follow him on YouTube, make sure you hit the little notification bell. So you know, every time a new video pops up, you knew it. When is your, Tuesdays and I'm an eastern standard time so I don't want to say the wrong time.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Yeah. On my Facebook fan page and even on my personal page, I do something called Tuesday topics with Dr. Brad is where I deliver a lot of content to help people maximize their potential. And so that's at 7:00 AM central standard time. So that is 8:00 AM your time.

Dr. Berry:

Okay, perfect. So if you think about the amazing stuff that he gives you for free, just imagine you know what's in that membership site. I just want you to like, like again, he didn't even cut me a check. Right? I'm just telling you the amazing stuff that he gives away for free. When you talk about achievement, when you talk about goals and fears and just personal growth. And if he's given it for free, I can only imagine what's in his membership site.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Dude, I'm so excited about this. Like I said, because it's hard for me to do what I do on a one on one. It's only so much time in the day. But being able to really bless the masses but still serve as that as that coach from. Oh man, I do, I literally cannot wait until I launch this. My guess, it's probably going to be toward the end of this month, beginning of next month.

Dr. Berry:

Can't wait. And honestly one of the reasons why I even did the podcast, because I was like, yeah, I could talk to a person one on one in the clinic, but I want to talk to people, right? I know more people need to hear what I'm saying. So that's why I'm definitely a fan of the membership site because unfortunately, you know, we're not making more time. Right? We only got 24 hours on a day. We're getting pulled in so many different directions that you sometimes will, I don't want to say do a disservice, right? Well, if you're only focusing on one person. You're not able to help the 20 people who maybe in New York and in Florida, in Montana, and all these other different places because you're just situated in one spot. So definitely excited. Please let us know when this membership site goes up so we can let the Lunch and Learn community get on that ASAP.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Will do, man, I will do. Dr. Berry, man. I'm telling you, it was a blessing. It's an honor. Anytime somebody to say, look to do that, I'd love to talk to you more and more importantly, dude, I mean to be invited to address your audience of listeners. That's literally an honor, man. So I love what you're doing. You blessing folks, dude. Your impact is probably more than you realize. I told you that already before we got on. Your impact even on me just seeing what you're doing has been significant, man. So I hope the people who are listening to this know just how significant you are and your information as far so keep doing it, man.

Dr. Berry:

Appreciate that. You have a great one.

Dr. Brad Bellard:

Alright, brother.

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On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Michelle Clay, an empowering speaker, two-time best-selling author and holistic physician who specializes in the release and management of stress and its associated symptoms simply and naturally. Her life mission is to empower people experiencing challenging life circumstances that do not change with tools to transform their lives from stressful, unbalanced, and unhealthy to happy, harmonious, and purposeful.

As we continue the theme of personal growth, self-reflection and mental clarity the Lunch and Learn community is blessed to have Dr. Michelle educate us on the subject of stress. Most importantly we tackle the problem head-on and learn some amazing tangible ways to make sure that we turn our stressors into success.

On the show, we will learn just what got Dr. Michelle started in the field and how she has been able to help others break the cycle of misery that their personal stressors have caused. Also, listen out as we talk about a future even Dr. Michelle is hosting and how you can be apart of the festivities.

If you haven't already check out episode 116 so you are aware of all of the slate of episodes coming this month.

Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member.

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Soundcloud, iHeartRadio, Spotify

Sponsors:

• Lunch and Learn Community Online Store (code Empower10)
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• Dr. Pierre's Resources – These are some of the tools I use to become successful using social media
• My Amazon Store – Check out all of the book recommendations you heard in the episode

Links/Resources:

• Instagram - Instagram.com/drmichelleclay
• LinkedIn - Dr. Michelle Clay
• Website - www.freelife7le.com
• The R and R experience - www.releaserechargeexperience.com

Book Recommendation: Conquering the Chaos by Dr. Michelle Clay

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Download Episode 117 Transcript

Introduction

Dr. Berry:

And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com. CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy here with the Lunch and Learn. This week we bring you an amazing guest. We have Dr. Michelle Clay who's an empowering speaker, two time bestselling author and holistic physician who specializes in the release and management of stress and associated symptoms simply and naturally. Her life mission is to empower people experiencing challenging life. With tools to transform their lives from stressful, unbalanced and unhealthy to happy, harmonious and purposeful. Dr. Michelle is frequently called upon to give her a refreshing perspective on ways to really stress and recharge health, enabling clients to live a free life of purpose with passion.

Through her company, FreeLife7, her work and enhances people's lives by harmonizing all dimensions of wellness through coaching programs, retreats and seminars to help burnt out and busy professionals and high stress and high strong, high performers. You guys know who you are. Create their sense of calm, clarity and confidence, a mindset for success. And guys, I'll be honest with you, I listened to Episode 116 where we talked about the self-reflection and the importance of self-reflection. I thought it was extremely important to really talk about why a lot of people need that self-reflection, right? Because the everyday stresses of life is kicking a lot of you guys' butt, truly and honestly. And when we talk with Dr. Michelle today, you'll hear instances where the mental stress is causing physical manifestations and we talked about how the physical stress can cause mental ramifications, right? So it's definitely a relationship that if it's not in tune, if you are not ready to not only accept stress, because stress is coming, there's no way you can avoid it. But when it does come, be able to manage it.

And I think as a keyword, we don't deal with stress, we manage stress, right? So it'd be able to manage that stress and then use it for your betterment. We're going to be in trouble, right? And unfortunately I take care of a lot of patients who the stressors of life - job, work, family relationships has beat them down to the point that they're physically sick and we don't want that. So again Episode 117, we have Dr. Michelle Clay. We're going to be talking about stress all throughout this episode. I want you guys to really pay attention and really get some tips to learn how to de-stress and declutter your life for the better. So like always, if you had not had a chance, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. If you're on apple podcasts, leave with five star review and let me know what'd you think about Dr. Michelle's episode. You guys have a great and blessed day.

Main Episode

Dr. Berry:

Alright, Lunch and Learn community. So you just heard another amazing introduction from a guest that I've been waiting in the background to get onto the show for quite a while and I just felt this was a time this was right. And when you listen to this, you know, National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. When did we talk about the mental health and talk about what makes it so that you can actually have good mental health, right? Like this is one of the key factors that will determine whether you have good mental health or not, right? Which is stress. But lo and behold, Dr. Michelle again, thank you for coming onto the show for the Lunch and Learn community and educating us and gracing us with your presence.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Thank you Dr. Berry for having me. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so excited. This is such an honor.

Dr. Berry:

Dr. Michelle, I gave introduction and other intro. I do, I already know I got some people who like to skip to introduction and come right to the main story. So for the people who do that, because we know we got those people who like to skip the line, tell them something about you who they may not be able to read this off, getting off your bio, right? Who is Dr. Michelle?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

So, I think since people really want to know about stress and what they can do about it, because stress is such a problem. I'll tell you something about me that people might not know what led me to talk about stress and focus on that, in mindset so much. So many people have had struggles just like I have in this new day and time. There are a lot of blended families. There are very few traditional, what we call traditional families whereas the mother, the father, and they have their kids and they live happily ever after in one house. Until death do us part with the husband and wife. But that wasn't my story. That isn't my story. So you meet someone, you fall in love, but when you fall in love with them, everything else follows that. Past relationships, unforgiveness, past hurt, past wrongs. And this is if I inherited that, which was not even mine.

So the next thing I know there's a tug-of-war of back and forth with my honeybun's child and co-parenting was nonexistent. It's still non-existent. I'm in the middle of trying to support my mate and also act as if I'm kind of like a surrogate mother for lack of better terminology. And the moms, I do not want you to fuss at me. It was a lot of struggle. There was jealousy. There was anger. There was rage. There was constant court dates. There were constant motions filed. There was the police called. It was all of that. And though I consider myself a super wonder woman, and I know some of my sister's super wonder women are listening, you just can't juggle it all. You cannot carry all that, is your responsibility as well as be supportive for somebody else. And I began to buckle - my health deteriorated.

And I'm very, very health conscious. I'm a vegetarian. I eat a lot of raw foods. I juice a lot. But even in that, I was still experiencing the symptoms of stress such as gallstones, chronic tension in my neck and in my shoulders where I could not even turn my neck all the way over, all the way to the left, rather. Lower back pain, hair thinning and falling out. And it didn't make any sense to me at all. So I really encouraged people to follow my story and really get in tune to what is going on with them. This chronic stress can lead to or worsen present medical conditions. Maybe everybody knows that and maybe they don't. I don't know. But I hadn't been diagnosed with anything and even I had uterine fibroids and they grew, (wow). Yes, I have been keeping my uterine fibroids at bay for like 14 years, doing a lot of natural therapies. But when that stress came down on me, then I could feel them growing where my acupuncturist said, "oh no, you need surgery". Yes. And I had surgery and guess how many I had?

Dr. Berry:

I heard stories of women with multiple fibroids. How much?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

I had 20 fibroids.

Dr. Berry:

Wow. Wow. Okay. Okay.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

20 fibroids. Yes.

Dr. Berry:

I don't know if people realize, especially when it comes to fibroids, it is a hormonal component associated with the growth of fibroids and obviously stress being in a situation you're in, definitely didn't help those hormones, I'm assuming.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Absolutely. Chronic stress will affect your estrogen, your testosterone. It will affect the entire endocrine system to include insulin, which is a hormone. So absolutely.

Dr. Berry:

Now when you were going through this time period, where kind of distress was just kind of being put on top of you and day after day, week after week, did you feel a lot of these other medical conditions that kind of rolls up, kinda ashes or were they always there and stress just kind of made it worse? What would you say one way or the other?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

The fibroids had been there, but my fibroids, they would shrink and come back, shrink and come back. But never that large. But the gallstones I never had before, I never had that. And the muscle tension where I couldn't turn my neck all the way to the left that had never been there before. My hair thinning and falling out - I had that before, but only when I had a perm. But I have been the natural system now for, let me see for 17 years (Alright.) So wasn't it either. But especially at the time when I developed the gallstones, I was only eating raw at that time. I wasn't even eating any cooked foods.

Dr. Berry:

That might precipitated those gallstones. Wow. Okay.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Exactly. So you know, they say that there's an increase incidents and gallstones with the F's. If you're fat forty and female. I have the 40 and the female together. But the fat, no.

Dr. Berry:

And I can tell you Lunch and Learn community, definitely, Dr. Michelle is a tall lanky, tall lanky individuals. So yeah.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

That's funny.

Dr. Berry:

You know and what's interesting, especially in when we talk about stress and obviously we're going to get into it, seeing that the stress that unfortunately you weren't even directly responsible for. Unfortunately, was being thrust upon you, was causing a lot of undue aspects of you're just a medical and health and well-being. Is that something that you seem to be pretty common? Like a lot of times it's not even something that we're directly doing that's kind of resulting in all of the issues that stress is causing upon us?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Absolutely. Because according to the American Institute of Stress, the number one cause of stress in America is job-related. And so that's definitely a place where you don't have any control, especially if you aren't the boss. But even if you are the boss and you have employees, you don't have control over what your employees do or what they don't do or how they respond to situations. So what's really important about to me about stress management, is that you manage it. You tell your mind what to think and don't allow whatever situations are going on around you to dictate how you feel and how you respond. We always have a choice. Now, trust me, I did not come to this overnight because still in my mind I would kind of position myself like the victim, like, "oh my goodness, if this weren't happening then I wouldn't feel like this.If this situation weren't present, I wouldn't feel like this." You know, all these, what if's.

But when I eliminated the language and the perspective of the what if and looked at my hand and my head and my heart of what I did have, then that gave me the power to take control back of my emotions and my response. And so I'm going to tell you, I'm going to give you a brace report. I just went to my massage therapist on Sunday and she said, oh, Dr. Michelle, what have you been doing? Your muscles are so pliable, I can get my fingers in deep, doing my work.

Dr. Berry:

Yes. I love it. I love it. Dr. Michelle for the Lunch and Learn community members who, you know, obviously heard your story and I'm pretty sure a lot of them would probably like, like myself, kind of shaking my head like, yeah, she's so right. Yep. I know exactly what she's feeling. When we talk about just stress in general, right? What do you tell the person when they say, Dr. Michelle, what is stress? What does that even mean in the grand scheme of things?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

So let's be clear about something. Number one, a lot of us have grown up with the idea that stress is a bad thing and that is a sign of weakness. You're not strong, you can't handle things, you can't handle life. First of all, stress is a positive thing when it comes in spurts. Is not an emotional response. It is actually a physiological response that is built in for our survival. So for instance, if you have a presentation that's due, if you are driving on the road and someone suddenly slams their foot on the brakes and you have to react very quickly for your survival, then your stress response is going to be activated. And that starts in the brain. And in the brain there are many parts of the brain, but one part in particular, the hypothalamus is activated, which then activates the pituitary gland, which then sends out hormone to activate the adrenal glands to produce more of the hormone which people know as our stress hormone - Cortisol.

So Cortisol will then in turn activate things where digestion won't be taking place. Because if you're trying to survive, you're trying to run away from someone robbing you. You're trying to avoid life accident, you don't have time to digest foods. And then it'll also cause more blood to flow in the larger muscles of your body, like our size and that type of thing. Getting ready to run. So when they say fight or flight, it's for our survival. But the problem becomes when that response is activated constantly on a chronic basis. So those body processes that we don't really need in the moment for our survival, guess what? Those things have decreased activity on a chronic basis and that's what causes the problems that we have.

Dr. Berry:

So in the short run, you know, you need to stop those breaks, you need to run away. You need to do something. It's a good thing. (Absolutely.) But unfortunately you said in the long run is where we get in trouble. Consistent aspect of like, okay, this has happened. Like, like you said, when we talk about the jobs, like every day I go to a job, every day I want to deal with the same stress over and over and over again. And that's when we kind of run into trouble.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Correct. That's correct.

Dr. Berry:

So I guess the question is why, and I hear this all the time, I hear it was a lot of my patients, they always say, well, I could just deal with stress better. Right? Like what does that even mean? Are some people more affected by the quote unquote everyday stressors of life and can some people handle it better than the others? Or is that just been like innate within them? How does one be able to deal with stress?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

So studies have shown that people who went when they were in utero, their mothers experience a lot of stress, then they have a different type of stress response. However, with that being said, that is something that you can manage and overcome. For instance, with therapy, with counseling, learning how to read, just different types of coping techniques and strategies. Now, I'm not a therapist, but I have some stress-releasing strategies on my own. But I always believe that what is necessary to do is get to the root of a problem. So while you may need some strategies for the day to day, if you know that you have come from an abusive household or that your mother experienced some kind of trauma when she was pregnant with you, then I definitely recommend therapy.

Dr. Berry:

Interesting. And I'm definitely that strategy kind of touched on that because I think a lot of times when we hear these people talk about, well I can deal with stress, you know better. And you know, this stress is worse than others that we do have to kind of look within. Right? It's usually some intrinsic reason why you yourself is able to deal with stress, but maybe your brother can't. Maybe your sister, like even people within the same kind of household can sometimes deal with stress on a better level than others, right? And it's weird to say deal with stress, because I'm not even sure if that's the correct way we should be saying it, but I guess you'd be better off to tell it. Is it a good thing that you can deal with stress, especially on a chronic basis? That's something that you've seen that helps people in the long run better?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

I wouldn't say deal. I would say manage because every day you can be triggered by something and you made a good point there, Dr. Berry, as far as people can live in the same household and maybe a sibling reacts to the same situation in a different manner. Now, that can go back to what was happening in utero. It can also lend to what is happening in the brain because chronic stress affects your brain, different areas of your brain. For instance, especially the prefrontal cortex. I really love to talk about that one right there, because that particular…

Dr. Berry:

Educators, that's why you're here because we need the education. So please, please go ahead.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Yes. The prefrontal cortex, which is the front part of your brain, like where your forehead is. So that deals with higher cognitive functioning. So that's going to be long-term planning, perception, executive functioning, things like that. So chronic stress really affects that area of the brain, decreasing the activities. So let's say that you're in the same household, the same situations are happening, but the brother activity isn't responding in the prefrontal cortex the same way that yours. So that's something that you have to consider. But I always feel like this, that anything can be managed. I don't like to use the terminology deal because it says if you kind of just live in and they ignore it. (Right, right.) And accept what is happening to you even though it's not optimal for your wellness and well-being. So I really, words mean a lot words mean a lot because we can give life to whatever it is that we speak. So that's why I say manage and then you come up with a plan and a strategy, then you will be able to manage better and better until the next thing you know you're like, "that thing that used to set me off, I'm good. I feel calm. It doesn't affect me like that. It doesn't shift me. It doesn't shift me from my position." When you know who you are, you know your position. Then whatever anyone else is doing, it doesn't shake you or shifts you.

Dr. Berry:

I love it and I know we talked about especially like with whatever that thing is, right? We talked about the job being a big contributor to a lot of people's stress, right, but the people that you've worked with and taking care of, what had been some of the common reasons that they say stress them, right? Like, you know, I got some off the top. I always, I'm thinking money, right? But what are some of the things that you run into that say, "Oh yeah, a lot of my clients usually have this issue and that issue "as far as what's the initial cause of such stress?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Number one is going to be the job. They either feel like they don't make enough money. They may experience micro aggression on their job. I've known a few people where it was so severe they had to file a complaint with EEOC. (Ok.) Yes, yes, yes. It can get very serious and very deep. The other things: feeling unfulfilled. Especially most of my clients are 40+, like between the 40 and 55-year-old range. And you get to a point in your life then when you look around and you're like, "okay, am I doing what it is that I plan to do? And if I'm not, is it fulfilling me? Do I feel like I'm on the right track? Do I feel that I'm working in my purpose? Do I even know what my purpose is?" Then in that 40 to 55 range, a lot of times we're talking about divorce. So job, then money and then relationships. (Wow, ok.) Yeah.

Dr. Berry:

Now that age, especially very interesting that you kind of mentioned that age. Is that where the typical quote-unquote midlife crisis, if that's, and again, I don't know if, is that an actual thing? Is that where that kind of comes about when we talk about the quote-unquote midlife crisis where people are starting to evaluate their life?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Yes. But in my experience, in my personal experience, I feel that men and women respond to that differently. Now I had a little moment, I'm going to own it because I think it's important. Yes. I feel it's important to be very transparent with people because often when people are going through things, they feel alone and they isolate themselves and therefore they cannot get the help and support that they need. But I did have a moment where I felt like, I feel a little bit down. I wasn't clinically depressed, but I did have somewhat of a depressed mood where I felt like I should be further along than where I am now. This is not how I envisioned my life to look when I was 25. Actually, there's nothing in my life that looks like what I envisioned.

Dr. Berry:

So you were batting like zero at this point and you're looking around your life. Like, "hold on, I thought this was going to be completely different. Okay. Alright."

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Exactly. And especially when you come to a point when you're struggling financially or you're struggling in your relationship and you feel like it's not supposed to be like this. But what I decided to do to pull myself out of that was I created, people do vision boards all the time, but I can't carry a board around. So I got a notebook, I've got a notebook, and I put in their affirmations. I put in exactly what I wanted. I put in pictures and when I would go to my job, which was stressful, I carried my little notebook with me and I would just look inside my notebook. And then it helped me remember who I am and what my goals were.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. So how has and how does the stressors that we've faced with, whichever realm we face it in, how does it, and have you seen it affect people's bodies and their health or their wellness, just like as a whole? Especially when it's, again, it's not the every now and then, but now it's every week, every day. Like how have you seen that over the years affect people's health and wellness kind of associated along with it?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Probably one of the number one things that I constantly see is high blood pressure because yes, chronic stress definitely affects your cardiovascular system. So that stress hormone, Cortisol I was speaking of, it causes vasoconstriction and vasoconstriction. Of course, I know, you know before the audience, nasal constriction is when the vessels tighten up. So the analogy I like to use is when you think about a garden hose, so if you're watering your lawn and there aren't any kinks in the hose, that water's going to flow out right. But if something gets in there or somebody bins, then the water is not going to flow so nicely. It might trickle a little bit. So that's the same kind of concept that's occurring and people's blood vessels as well as increased heart rates. So I'd say blood pressure's the number one. Muscle tension, muscle tightness. That's the number two thing that I see most commonly. Sleep disturbances will probably be the third thing that I see most commonly. Either they cannot sleep or they sleep too much or when they fall asleep they cannot stay asleep.

Dr. Berry:

And what I love about what you're doing is that, because I think a lot of times when people think of stress and a lot of times we do this backward, right? Where we talk about how the physical ailments that we're dealing with affects our mental. But here you are kind of really, you know, really educating Lunch and Learn community anyway. Hey, like you see these mental transgressions that you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis. This is how it shows up on the physical side, right? So it is like a two-way street. Like yeah, some physical stuff could definitely mess your mental up. But if you're mental, especially when we talk about stress, because that's the thing, this is how stress can affect you in the doctor's office, right? This is what we, I may not be able to see the macroaggressions' that your job is doing to you, but I do see it when you come and get your checkup and your blood pressure still can be controlled.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Absolutely. And mind and body go hand in hand. It's just like which came first, the chicken or the egg? So it's not like a first, is the cycle. It's a circle. So even with chronic stress you may have decreased pleasure and that can affect your relationship if you don't feel like being intimate with your partner. Okay. Even though intimacy is a great stress reliever but you don't feel like doing it.

Dr. Berry:

So the stress is beating you up on a day to day basis. That even though you know that, like, that's a good thing that's happening over there. I can't even get the mental fortitude to get on that area because I'm just not ready for it.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Correct. And it can affect men, especially because with chronic stress it can decrease testosterone level.

Dr. Berry:

Okay. Alright men of Lunch and Learn community and I hope you listening. We've talked about this before on a previous podcast with a guests or we were talking about this masculinity and you know how we as men allow masculinity to really got a lot of problems in our relationships, social relationships. And again, this is where we're getting, we're this tying in to say like, hey, yes it can cause some problems if you're not ready, if you're not managing it the way you need to manage it. So this is the end results that can occur. So I'm definitely loving that. (Correct.)

So we talked about some of the kind of the physical ailments to health and wellness, but what about the, and you talked a little bit when you alluded to just the thought process and the mindset that chronicity of stress plays on people and has even played on you. What were some of the ways that you see that, you said like, wow, you know, this is, and I know one was it taking me out physically, but like I'm not even thinking straight. My mindset even there. What have been some of the ways that you've seen that come into play?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

People come to me and they feel stuck. That's what they feel stuck. Sometimes when they come, they don't say I'm stressed. They'll say things like, I need a change, but I don't know how to get there. Okay. They just feel stuck. They cannot move forward past unforgiveness. They cannot move to make a plan. They know they want something better and sometimes they don't even have clarity as to what. So exactly your thought process is you're not thinking clearly. It's difficult to focus. You may even have problems with your memory with chronic stress. Not to the extent of like Alzheimer's or anything like that, but you understand what I'm saying? For instance, I don't remember where I put my wallet. Okay. I even had an incident the other day in my personal home where my housemate was so stressed out, he walked out the door and didn't realize he didn't close it. So I come home in the door is wide open.

Dr. Berry:

Oh, I bet that conversation must, nah. I'm just mad at that conversation. If I leave the door and I come home, I'm like, oh, what the hell are you doing buddy?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

But see, the thing is when you use your stress release and strategies, then I'm able to manage that. First of all, I need to know is everything safe, safe to walk in the house? Do I need to call the police? Is anything missing? The only thing that was missing was the cats. And then once I find the cat, then I just have a very calm conversation. Just like this tone of voice. Just don't forget to put on the deadbolt. That's it. If I get my, if I get all hyper and I'm stressed out, well that's going to affect the rest of my day. And I have things to do. I need to focus. I need to be clear. I need to manage my time well. So there's ways to manage and see that's an example of you taking control and not allowing anything or anyone to shift you from your position.

Dr. Berry:

And it was interesting, especially because when you talk about just even the memory, because I'm a program director, so I got residents around me and you know, we work in a hospital setting. So you know, when we hear like rapid response or cold blue and all of a sudden, you know, those same residents who are calm and collective and they get into that emergent mode, they forget the stethoscope, they forget that white coat. They forget where they need to. Like your memory just isn't as sharp as it needs to be. And that's those only in a short instance. So I can only imagine if chronically you're dealing with something over and over and over again, what that would do over a longer span.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Absolutely. I feel for the residents because I remember that time and actually there are moments in my life that I will never remember, not just because I was stressed, but also sleep deprivation.

Dr. Berry:

Oh yes. Oh, okay. Yeah. You bring back the, hey, so bad we don't, we forget about some of the things we went through as a resident because you're like, oh yeah.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

I don't mean to trigger anything, Dr. Berry. I don't want to trigger something.

Dr. Berry:

I'm just thinking about it now. Oh yeah. Really? Yeah, the tough times as a resident. Tough time as a resident for sure. Talk to us about some of the ways that you've helped guide people to help manage and even release their stress. Which is a very interesting concept when we talk about the releasing of the stress, right? Like what are some of the ways that you've been able to educate and coach some of your clients to, to kind of get them over the hump, I guess, if there is a hump to get over?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Well, first of all, I helped them, number one to turn off the autopilot in the racing thoughts and get some of that stuff out of your head out. And sometimes that can be as simple as journaling. Now I meet people where they are. Some people like, "Dr. Michelle, I am not going to journal." Okay.

Dr. Berry:

They're honest with you.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

They are honest with me and I appreciate that because then I can meet you where you are and we can work together. From my perspective, my responsibility as a physician is not to heal you but to guide you and give you tools that you can activate your own healing power and heal yourself. So first of all, depending on what they are dealing with, I just write it out on paper. I'm like, okay, what's the first thing that you feel you need to conquer or you need to manage to get to your next step? And they'll tell me whatever that is. And they said, oh, but that seems so big. I said, well wait a minute, let's break it down. Let's break it down. So then, once I help them break it down piece by piece, just as if you're building a house, if you're going to build a house, well I'm not going to say a house, let's just say a shed because that can be a weekend project. People can relate to that.

You're going to go to home depot or Lowe's and you're going to get the supplies that you need. You're going to map out how you're going to do this as an architect - you're going to have a blueprint and then you're going to follow that blueprint. But sometimes let's say that piece of wood that you need to have a splints are in it and the nail goes through where you're not going to wig out. What are you going to do? You go and pick up another piece of wood and put it in place. So I break it down with them like that, step by step, piece by piece. And then I also get them to commit, not a "someday" or "I'm going to try", what is it that you're going to do? And okay, Dr. Michelle, I'm going to do this. Okay, so you're going to do this by what day? Now I'm going to call you, I'm going to check in. So if you know, especially if you have somewhat of a competitive spirit, if you know someone is looking over you, but more importantly looking out for you, think you're more apt to do that. And then I'm like you know what, I'm so glad that you told me to do that because it wasn't as hard as I thought.

Dr. Berry:

I love it and that's so correctly, and I'm laughing because I, you're not going to tell we known each other for about three years now. A little bit, give or take. She really does this, like this is it, just like she really would be like, no, no, no, no, no. I need like the date and time that you said this project is going to be completed so I can reach out to you on that time just to make sure we're all on the same page. So she really does this. It's not just for the show.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

It's not just for the show. This is real. This is definitely real. So that's one thing. And then another powerful thing that I have them do that I do every day are affirmation. So affirmations are really about saying I am, and then whatever is after that, you're creating that in your life. So some people, I have them simply say every day I am calm, I love myself, or whatever it is. A lot of people deal with self-image issues where they feel that they're not worthy. They devalue themselves by the words they say to themselves and that creates their reality. And then they act that out in real life. And even if someone says, oh no honey, I love myself, but I'm watching what you're doing. I'm watching how you treat yourself. I'm watching what you're eating, I'm watching how you're sleeping and watching who you allow around you. If there are people who will bring you down or discourage you, or if there are people who will lift you up. So it doesn't matter what you say in that instance, it matters what you do. What I get people to do is say and then also act what they say.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. Do you find a lot of people will do the form of the ladder? They'll say all the stuff that I'm going to do this, I want to do that. But when it comes to actually putting, you know, the pen to the paper, taking that next step, you find l that's where a lot of people kind of falter when it comes to managing and releasing of set stress?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

They do, but it's a process because just like riding a bike, when we first got on the bike, well some of us had training wheels. I had training wheels. Some people just immediately got on the bike and there were times when you fell down, but even though you fell down, you've got that up and got back on the bike and they may have put a helmet on you and some knee pads and some elbow pads just to protect you a little bit. But at the end of the day, you still got back up on the bike. Now you may have paused because you got a little nervous and said, oh well I'm afraid to try right now. I'm gonna wait until next week and try again. But the point is that you tried again and so it's a process that's the same way with my clients. Some people when I tell them things and we come up with a plan together, then they take action and full, they're good. Some people they kind of wax and wane and oh well I don't know, blah blah, blah. Oh Dr. Michelle I didn't do what I wanna, still don't leave me though. Don't leave me Dr. Michelle. I'm like, I'm not going to leave. (I'm not going nowhere).

Dr. Berry:

Do you find that, and especially because I'm thinking about the whole manage releasing stress, when clients come to you, do you find that they're holding in a lot of stuff that has to be like let out first before they can actually start like no prioritizing and you know, doing the steps and actions I need to actually be able to manage it? Do find a lot of people are holding onto stuff that they shouldn't?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Hecky yeah they are. But I'm releasing that is part of releasing the stress. A lot of times if I'm having a session with a client and they start crying, that's already started the process. So for a little science there are different types of tears. So we have some tears, for instance, where you get something in your eye and tears form because it's trying to cleanse that particle, that foreign agent out of your eyes. When you cry because you are emotional, you're experienced sadness or something like that. Then there's actually some of the stress hormones in those tears. So even with the crying to release, so like I said, it's a process. It's a process. You have to crawl before you walk and many things go hand in hand. It's not an either or. Then than this. When this, then this. Is hand in hand. (Okay). One thing that I find people are holding onto a lot is unforgiveness and anger.

Dr. Berry:

Is that okay when you run into these people who have this level of forgiveness for whatever reason, how do you kind of go about saying like, okay, educated and say like I know it's tough, I know it's hard but you're going to have to, you know, release this if you want to move on. Right? Like is that an easy conversation? And then part B is, and I always ask this cause I was asked, cause I feel like from a male standpoint where we always fall behind, do you find that most of your clients, women or men, do you find that men are receptive to this level of education we're in, because I feel like men have a lot of stress because they are masculine and we don't call it stress?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

That's correct. Okay. So let me go to a Part A of the question first. Let me go in order. So usually when I have a client and I'm talking to people, there's a wisdom that comes with age. So I have gray hair, but I cover it up there. Am I being transparent? But with that gray hair comes wisdom and wisdom is knowledge with experience and I couple that together to help people. Right? So there's just some things that you get like a sense about and you sense the type of personality that the person has and how they will receive things that you say. With some people I can just cut straight to the chase and say it, but other people have to be soft and Shinto and puts some onions and then they feel better about disclosing information. Now I'll give you an example. I had a particular client that was holding on to unforgiveness. And the person that they unforgiveness toward had already died, like years ago. This happens all the time, like years ago. So what I had her do was write a letter to this person and they expressing everything to them that they never had the courage or opportunity to say let out all the anger with that. And then if you really wanted that person to forgive you then just envisioned that once they read it they said, I'm sorry or I forgive you or please forgive me. And that really helped her release. It really, really did. So I have all kinds of tips and tricks and strategies up my sleeve.

Dr. Berry:

I love that. So they know they're like, oh yeah, we we're going to be ready for whatever ever problem you bring Dr. Michelle, she is ready for set problems.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

And if I don't have, if I'm not the right person or that's not my area of expertise, because there's some people they really need to go to a therapist. So I will refer them to a psychiatrist or therapist or somebody because anytime you're trying to heal is not a one man show or one woman show. You need a team. Now who was that that just won the championship? The Raptors. Did you see one person on the court? No, it was a whole team. And then sometimes what happens is you have to rotate. Some might has to sit on the bench and take a rest and put another player in. So that's the same concept for people who are really trying to take it to the next level with their health or wellness or reclaim the person that they used to be long ago but has been burdened down with stress and burnout and just life and health issues and this, that and the third. Now Part B of your question, most of my clients are women. That's just who I attract. I do have some man. I'm open to all because one thing that my godmother told me, she was like a natural healer was that you should have the ability from a natural standpoint. You should have the ability to help anybody but you're not supposed to help everybody. Translation, some people you are meant to connect with and some people you were not, but you still have the expertise and the skills to help anybody.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. Now for the men that you do have, do you find it to be harder? Do you find that your work's cut out for you? Or by the time they come to see you, whatever barriers that would have been there that made it difficult for him to open up have kind of been disintegrated, quote unquote?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

So it depends on the man. So for the men who already knew me, then by the time they come to me, they're ready and they're committed. For the men who didn't know me, let's say they did a Google search or something and they called and made an appointment and we started working together. Sometimes they have ulterior motives or they may be attracted to me. They don't call… bullying page. Like I have someone right now who is not my client, but I feel like he has an ulterior motive. So I just keep it professional. And if you're not serious, I'm not going to take you as a client because you a disservice. And I'm just honoring myself.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. I always find, it's funny because what you're saying definitely kinda hits home because there are a lot of my male patients who say that part of the reason why they can't go to, you know, women who are physicians, right? Or who are healers right, is because they feel like they can't open up, right? They're like, oh my God, I can't open up this person here. Right? The person gonna look at me different. All of a sudden, you know that meant. You know we're terrible, right? We get there. We just started questioning ourselves and saying like, Oh man, if I open up with her and this person, like the whole world's going to know, and I don't want to be quote unquote less of a man. And you know, it's definitely a struggle that even though I as a male physician, I see that. I can only imagine, what you guys go through.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Well, let me speak to the men's directly. Gentlemen, please hear me. Please hear me. First of all, I want you to know that I'm gonna speak for the women regardless of what they say or do. We love you and we need you. And when you tap into your power and your strength to show your vulnerability, we actually view that as a power and a strength, not a weakness. So yes, I want to tell you that directly.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. I love it. Alright. We hype now. We're ready. Go for it. We like it. Dr. Michelle, before, I didn't talk to your head off, right? But before I let you go, I always call this kind of like the period of promotion. Because I'm very fortunate enough to have, you know, guests who such amazing things that yes, they're physicians. Yes, they're in the health field, but like they do so much more. So obviously, you know, we've been talking and like, I want you to kind of tell people, what are some of the things that you do kind of outside, right? And most importantly, I want to talk about this RNR Experience, right? I want you to kind of, let's start there. And then we can talk about all of the books that you have because Lunch and Learn community, she's got plenty of products and we're going to get all of that. And trust me, depending on wherever you listen to that, I would make sure you have direct links to all of that as well. But let's talk about the RNR Experience. Let's talk about the why, what is it, how did it come to fruition? And you know, like who's it for?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

So the RNR Experience is a freelife because that's the name of my company. Freelife seven is a free life retreat and it occurs in the big easy New Orleans. So many people who are experiencing stress come to the big easy and be easy. And it occurs November 1st and second. So as a VIP registrants, then you will get two days as general registrant, you will only get the one day. But that one day is power packs. I'm gonna go into that in a minute. Your question, how did it come to fruition? Because people asked me for it. I'm gonna be honest with you. Putting on an event that you know will make a great impact on people and help transform their lives, not just for them, but for whoever else that they touch. So you want it to be quality, it has to be quality. You have to put forth and have the vision of being an excellence. You have to move in excellence. That's a huge undertaking. The only reason I'm doing this is because people would come up to me randomly and say, oh, Dr. Michelle, I'm going to come to your retreat.

Dr. Berry:

Right like hey, I'm coming to your tree. I don't even know when it's scheduled, but I'm there.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Yes. I hadn't said anything about a retreat, but they come telling me they're going to come to my retreat. And so if that's the case, then there must be a need. And so I'm giving you what you need. I'm giving you what you want. I'm giving you what you asked for. So what the RNR Experience, and it's not just a retreat, it's an experience. (Not just a retreat, it's an experience. I'll listen). Release and recharge. We've been talking about release this entire podcast about releasing stress, but once you release that, you need to recharge some things. And we are so caught up and focus on recharging our laptop, recharging our cell phone. But we do not recharge our bodies, our minds, our spirits. So we know what our purpose is and we can go forth and be brilliant.

Dr. Berry:

Oh, talk to them. Some of us won't leave the house if our phone wouldn't charge. Talk to them, talk to them please.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Exactly. So for my VIP, our first day, I have a wonderful fun experience for you. And then later that evening will have culinary cures and coaching with Dr. Michelle, a private dining experience. Now the reason I call it culinary cures in coaching is because you are able to use certain food items, certain nutritional elements to help with your stress. And because I know that I have created certain herbal teas to help with that, so that's one of the products, but as a VIP we're going to have a specialty tea, T-teeny, incorporates all of that.

Then on the main day, a lot of my super friends are coming in to share with you. And we have Dr. Carol. She's going to be doing movement and meditation. She has a book Meditation in the Time of Madness. We have Dr. Sam, one of my super friends who's going to be coming in and talking to you about sleep. Remember I told you chronic stress can affect your sleep and she also, she knows some great trigger points to help with your stress and your sleep. Then we have Dr. Mia coming up who is the B3 specialist. She's going to be talking about your beauty, how you see yourself beautiful. How to maintain, achieve balance and your belief about yourself in the world around you. Then I also have a super friend who is an artist. She has her own gallery here and one of her pieces is actually in the national African American museum and she's going to be guiding us through an exercise that you can incorporate once you get home on how to use art and creativity to release the stress and recharge your creativity. Creativity is not just about art pieces, painting, drawings, sculptor, but about what you are creating in your life, the footprint that you leave on the world.

Dr. Berry:

Oh, that's an amazing day. Yes. Okay. You know what, this will, we're going to do. Let's do this. Let's do this for Dr. Michelle. Obviously with Lunch and Learn community and you know, amazing information as you gave today. Let's list this podcast. This podcast will sponsor a general membership or General Day, right? Whatever that general ticket is, right? I don't know how you, I'll let you decide how you want to give it away, but you give a ticket away on behalf of the Lunch and Learn community, on behalf of the Lunch and Learn podcast with Dr. Berry because I think people need to experience that, right? (Yhey!)

Because as I'm thinking, I'm trying to think the last time I left this house and didn't have my phone charged or last time I like I would skip sleep even if it was for a few seconds to make sure my phone was charged. But we're walking around on a daily basis, not recharging our mind, not recharging mental or spiritual and all of these things that really keep us going and we're not doing it. And I'd so I want to sponsor someone to, to get themselves recharged and getting themselves ready to take on, especially this last quarter of the year.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Yhey! Thank you Dr. Berry. Thank you Lunch and Learn community. There is, I don't know who was going to go to, but I'm going to donate that ticket to a woman who, or man, we're going to see, because I love the men. They struggling. They really feel stuck and they do not have the means to get there on their own. That's who was going to go to.

Dr. Berry:

Let's do it. Let's do it. Now, so that's the RNR Experience, which is big. But honestly you've been in so much big things, even up until that, right when it comes to books and the teas and everything else, and just give them a laundry list of the stuff that you got right? Just so they know that Dr. Michelle ain't playing out here.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

I am not playing in these streets. First of all. Well let me tell you this, RNR Experience. You can get your ticket at releaserechargeexperience.com and its Christmas in July. So you can get the early bird pricing in the month of July. But if you wait too long, they said you think long, you think wrong. So the price is going up.

Dr. Berry:

So the price is going up. Y'all know y'all going to New Orleans anyways, right? Y'all gonna be there. It makes them get recharged. You just self-ready right and of course link we'll definitely be in the show notes to make sure you have a direct link to that.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

So the other things that are going on, I have my best selling book, Conquering the Chaos, The Super Wonder Woman's 12 Step Strategy for a Stress Free Life. I also have the companion journal with that, the Stress Release Journal. So in the book, in the 12 steps it goes through, we talked a little bit about it today. It goes through the 12th systems of the body, how they function, because I think that you need to empower people with information to activate their transformation. And then how stress affects that system in the body of culinary cure for that and mindset. Something for your mindset with that system, the stress Release Journal, the Companion Journal for that is a deeper dive into that. So you're reading and educating yourself in the conquering the chaos book, the now you need to get to work. Then I also have my stress free life, self-care kids.

Oh my goodness. This thing right here just keeps exploding. So people, they want stuff. So in there there's a tea and this gonna be four different one per quarter. So one is going to be the release recharge box with the signature release, recharge herbal tea, which is specially formulated to give you a sense of calm and ease is how this is base. And then you also have the semi-precious stone bracelets, agate bracelets with lava beads on them and I'm mixed up a special essential oil aroma therapy oil to go on the braces. So anytime you know, you feeling some just instantly calm you down, just smell your wrist, just smell your wrist, and aroma therapy at the same time. And then I've also created the relaxation remedy, herbal bath. And you can put that, either do a full bath or just do a foot bath. I'm going to do a foot bath this evening. We also have the Free Life Candle because people love to smell things. (People love candles). Yes, the Free Life Candle.

And we also have shower steamers. These things are amazing. So have you ever heard of shower steamers? (Oh No. Wow.) Let me tell you about it. So the shower steamers, they're a little square made out of like baking soda and some other things infuse with certain essential oils so you can put it on the bottom of the tub while you're taking the shower and having aroma therapy experience. Because some people they like, girl, I haven't had time to take a bath, but you still need to have a moment for yourself. Self-care to stress less. You can have your me time create a me time moments in the shower.

Dr. Berry:

Oh, that's nice. Okay. I'll tell you Lunch and Learn community see doing it, that line. See, that's a problem. I love it. That's a good problem though. That's a good problem because again, we're trying to stress less, right? We're trying to find my free life like that. That's really the name of the game and that's again, that's why I love and respect everything that Dr. Michelle does because the amazing work that she puts in and the effort that she puts in shows you how much she cares. Right? And you know, we're running to, unfortunately there's, there's a lot of physicians who have infiltrated our system who don't really care as much. Right? And you know, so when you find someone who does, you try to make sure you amplify everything that they do so others can know like how amazing this person is.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Thank you. Yes, this is definitely my purpose and I'm so very passionate about it because everything that I'm telling you, I've done all of that. My affirmations, every day I wear my bracelets, I'm sniffing all day, I use my shower, steamers, light my candle, meditate, pray. I do all of that.

Dr. Berry:

Practice what we preach, practicing what we preach. (Yes). Before I let you go, like I always ask this question like how can what you do empower others to take better control of their health? Because it's obvious, but you know, in case for some reason someone that skipped and miss all of this greatness and wanting to go towards the end, right? And this is all they listen to too, right? Like how is what you do empowering others to take medic control of their health?

Dr. Michelle Clay:

First about you have to know that you know that you know that you are worthy and you are deserving. It's not about being here for somebody else is about being here and showing up for you. And the goal is not to survive, but it is to thrive. Know that you are never stuck. As long as there is breath in your body, you can always decides to choose you and to do better so you'll have better and be better. So I want you to know that you're never stuck and also that you're never alone. Whether it's me, whether it's Dr. Berry, whether someone else that can help you get to the next level. If you don't have people around you that support you, honey, you can create another circle. (Yes). You can another create circle which you're never stuck. You are never stuck and you always deserve them.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. I can show before we let you go, but where can others find you? Again, all of these links, remember Lunch and Learn community, you know the drill. We'll have all these links in the show notes but I want to make sure that they can follow you. We lead and you know, be able to kind of just absorb this greatness that I'm able to absorb at a daily basis what I love to see.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

You can find me on all social media at Dr. Michelle Clay. My website is drmichelleclay.com and for the Lunch and Learn community, then I would love to offer you my special recipe for the stress free life smoothie and you can get that as stressfreesmoothie.com

Dr. Berry:

I love it. I love it and I appreciate it. Based on behalf of the Lunch and Learn community, we want to thank you, Dr. Michelle for just an amazing experience. Like I said, I say this like on a week to week basis, but like I'd be learning just as much as the Lunch and Learn community from my guests. Like I'm either like, if y'all can see my face, I'm glued in. Like, okay, got it. Got To lose this,, got to manage it. Cant be dealing with it, got to manage that. That's the goal. Changed the words. Words are powerful. That's the way to go. They don't wanna show you have a great, and again, like I said, remember we want to sponsor who, I don't know who you choose, who we're sponsoring. But we've got, we need to get someone to get that experience at the RNR Experience, Release and Recharge. When is it happening again? Let us know.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

It's November 2nd.

Dr. Berry:

Okay. November 2nd for the general, you want that VIP, you come in on the first, right? So if yall big ballers want to VIP, go in on the first, right? Then you get a T-teeny, is that what we called it? Yup.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Yeah. Make that up. Good. T-teeny is by experience.

Dr. Berry:

I love it. Thank you, Dr. Michelle.

Dr. Michelle Clay:

Thank you for having me. Everyone have a positive and stress-free day.

Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry I get a chance to do some self-reflection on myself for my podcast listeners to here. July is minority mental health awareness month and it also happens to be the time when new doctors across the country begin their training. I remember being an intern myself and being put in the position that I was suddenly responsible for someone else's life. It was a crazy experience being a medicine intern but one that I cherish till this day.

I remember that what helped me get through the tough days was the self confidence I had that I was going to be the best doctor for my patient even if I didn't know everything I knew that I could find the answer.

Self reflection is defined as meditation or serious thought about one's character, actions, and motives so I thought it would be important for you guys to see that in action with myself. I think it's important that we all take a look at ourselves to see what we are doing right and most importantly what we are doing wrong to get better.

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Download Episode 116 Transcript

Episode 116 Transcript...

INTRODUCTION:

Dr. Berry:

And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com. CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, who helps you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy here with the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry bringing you Episode 116. And this is going to be a solo episode and I like to take this episode as the launch episode because over the next two to three weeks we are going to be having some amazing guests talk to us about self-awareness, stress relief, what's causing stress in our life. And of course the Lunch and Learn community, you know I've talked about this ad nauseum. If the mind is not in check, it does not matter what you do with the physical, right? So I want to like really bring this next couple of weeks in where we start reflecting on ourselves and start looking at ourselves and seeing, you know, what's causing us a problem, what's causing us concerns.

And of course this is actually, depending on when you're listening to this, July is actually Minority Mental Health Awareness Month. So of course, why not be self-reflective within mental health awareness month. If you got any time to be self-reflective, to kind of look at yourself and look at all the stressors that are in front of you, might as well do in July. So if your minority, I know I have a lot of non-minorities who listen to the show. But if you're a minority, this is the month to do so. So if you have not had a chance, remember to subscribe to the show, tell a friend and tell a friend and like, hey, you got this amazing podcasts I want you to listen to with Dr. Berry. Please do that asap.

And before I let you go, I want to read off a couple of five-star reviews that I recently got. Like I said, I always encourage you guys not only just subscribe to the show, but also leave me five-star reviews so I know that I'm actually doing a good job. So this review says everyone should listen to this podcast, relevant information so that you can live a better, healthier, and longer life. Shout out to Nate Henry, number one. The next one says, very informative, engaging podcast to help everyday people maintain healthy and happy lives. Thank you, Candace. So again, if you have not had a chance to go ahead and subscribe to the show and then leave me an amazing five-star review like that so I can give you a shout out here on the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. So without further ado, Episode 116 let's get ready. We're talking about self and self-awareness and getting ourselves together for the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry.

EPISODE

Dr. Berry:

So when we talk about self, right? Because I think this is a theme that I really wanted to hit home when I get the chance to kind of think about podcast topics and I get to ask you guys, you know what stuff you'd like to hear. And mental health is always a big one. Self-reflection is always a big one. So I wanted to kind of to self-reflect on my own here on the podcast this week. Just so we can kind of get an idea of what that means and what's so important about it.

As a podcast or as a physician, as a program director and father and husband and all these different hats that I choose to wear, I volunteered to wear, I love to wear. It's one of those things where sometimes your life can get so busy. That a lot of times you don't even get to really reflect on everything that you do. Especially whether it be good or most importantly whether the bad, right? Because I think it's one thing to self-reflect and only think about all the good stuff you do.

But when you're self-reflecting and you start thinking like, wow, I could probably do blank better,

whatever that blank is for you. I think it really kind of hits home the onus of being okay with yourself and okay with what you're doing and how you're doing it. So as a physician here, when I think about what we're doing on a day to day basis as a hospital physician, taking care of patients inside the hospital, the most acute patients, the most sick patients, and doing everything we can to get them better and what that does to a person's psyche, right? I see it all the time. You know, again, as a program director, I take care of 18 residents who I'm responsible for from the day they set foot to the day they leave, right?

And sometimes even a little bit after they leave. But most importantly, it's seeing that transition of what it does to a person, some mental clarity, right? When they're just the fresh side medical student and they become the fresh shot intern and then they become the hardened senior resident who is often getting ready to attack the world. Right? So I get to see kind of all three of these different levels at come to play within my job. And it's one of those things whereas we talk about minority Mental Health Awareness Month. I always questioned and a lot of times some of the questions I ask them really isn't about the clinical aspect of what they're doing, but the more, the mental aspect of what they're doing.

A lot of my, one of my favorite attendings, Dr. Kanner would always ask us why? Why are you doing what you want to do? Why do you want to send a patient on this medication home? Why do you want to consult this person? Why are you using this medication versus that medication? He was always big on the why. Because one, he's an older physician, so he already had, you know, a little bit beef with us younger physicians who he felt did more quote-unquote cookbook medicine and didn't really understand why they were doing things. Just kinda did it because they read it in a piece of paper and didn't think things through, right?

So his big thing was understanding the why process of it all. And honestly he's probably one of the best physicians and attendings I've ever had in my life because it's completely changed the trajectory only of how I do things, but why I do the things I do. And then why I do and train my residents, even my medical students the way I do.

Because there's always an onus of understanding that when it comes to book-smarts, you'll eventually get the book smarts, right? So I can give you plenty of articles to read to get what the information and answer I'm looking for. But if you don't know why you're getting the answer information I'm looking for. If you don't know why I'm asking a question. That is where the learning problems tend to fall to, right? So that's not something that he was big on.

So he was always big on making sure we understood the why of things and why things tick the way they did. So when we think about self-reflection and self-care and you know, those are big, obviously big keywords that you hear a lot now, especially in the mental health space. I always questioned my physician colleagues how often they're doing this because I think now one of the biggest pushes at that you see, especially in the physician space when it comes to mental health, is you know, the onus of burnout and burning out and essentially being tired of doing what they're doing.

And when you think about burnout, you think about like, oh, this is a person who may have been practicing for five years, 10 years, 20 years, and now they're finally tired of doing something. But we see that this burnout process is happening much sooner. I got people who aren't even finishing residency and they're already talking to like they're tired.

When I think about them being tired, right? I always questioned is it that you're tired of doing whatever job you're in at this moment or your expectations of the job that you had when you first started are much different than what they are when you're actually in a job, right? Like how many of you may have started a job or started a project or started a relationship, right? And which when they started it was looking all good when it started, everything was clicking and then something happened in the middle where that clicking didn't happen anymore.

That dissociation of what I thought was gonna happen and what's actually happened suddenly got realized. And I think what's happening with physicians is that for us, a lot of us are going into fields and practices with different intentions. And a lot of us are going into these organizations are going into these situations thinking that like, oh, it's going to be this way. And then unfortunately at the end, realizing it's a totally different ball game. And that's why I stressed to my residents to understand like, hey, you know what? This is what's your future, right? So I just want to let you know so you can understand to have some outlets because as a premedical student, especially, I'm talking to my premedical students right now because they already know my attendings and my physicians already know. As a premedical student, you really don't have too many outlets because you really don't have too much time. Because most of the time you are just spent studying and learning.

Again, I remember as my, like this is how I remember my birthdays, right? Which is crazy. And my birthday's in December (so trying to search terrorists). So my birthday's in December. So usually when it was my birthday, there was usually a finals. I was having a study around. So when I think about my birthday's like, key birthdays, right? Like 21st birthday, 25th birthday. I always remember studying for a certain final. Like that's how I remember studying for my birthdays. It wasn't like, oh I can't wait till my birthday come so I can, you know, party and drink or cheaper car insurance. It wasn't nothing like that. It was like, oh my 21st birthday, here comes organic chemistry. On 25th birthday, okay here it comes, I think it was like anatomy, physics or biochemical some course, right? Like it was some class that I remember having to study with for a final four and I couldn't even like I said, I couldn't even really enjoy the birthday.

My birthday is always got celebrated after finals was over, because I couldn't do it during the meantime or probably wouldn't have made finals. So it was one of those things that, and I knew that as a premedical student, right? So as a premedical student, I realized very early that medicine was taking a lot of my time and I didn't like it. And I wish I could say it got better as a medical student. It didn't. As a medical student, you know, you're spending countless hours, you can ask my wife, you have spent your spending countless hours having to learn and learn and you know, you got people telling you that, hey, if you don't do well on this one test, your whole career is going to change. Like have kind of referencing the boards and we could probably talk about boards forever. But here is me, a medical student.

Again, I'm happy, right? Because I did all of that I was supposed to do to get to being a medical student realized that I still got a lot of work to do because I wanted to become a resident somewhere. I didn't know what profession but I knew I wanted to become a resident somewhere. So there's another opportunity to just taking my time. And of course, I've always been adept that social media. I always saw my friends is like life in, right? Like this, I like to call it life and my friends were life in a way. On Facebook and Twitter and all like I could just see them just life was just happening and having families and you know, they're taking trips and they're working. Again, as a medical student, I didn't work at all. Right? So I see all of these like lavish things that happened and I'm like, ah, I'm just on outside. More frequently, I was on the inside of a library looking out wishing I was there.

So as I became a resident, I always made it a key point to really kind of take back my time. Like I've said, I've talked about this before. One of the biggest transitions that I've made as I became what I think is, this is my trademark by now, shout out to Dr. Dre, medical mogul, right? One of the transitions I may do becoming a quote-unquote medical mogul like I said, was the fact that I wanted to take back my time. Right? Like I want it, the time that I have been giving away as a premedical student, giving away as a medical student, giving away as a resident, right? I wanted to take that back and I wanted to take it back and do something I wanted to do.

Not something that I was forced to do and not something that was scheduled to do. I wanted to do something that I wanted to do. And being a physician, you know, sometimes you get kind of pigeonholed into dealing, you know, physician things, right? Going to a clinic or going to the hospital or you just keep kinda pigeonholed to do in those things. But I knew like I liked other stuff, right? Like I've always been a big tech person. If anyone who follows me on Instagram knows I recently had to switch out my Wi-Fi card and a couple other than my battery and a couple of other things. Right?

Like I always liked doing those types of things. So tech and you know, messing with computers was always something that was very interesting to me. It was always something that like, you know if this medicine thing no work, I may fall back on tech. And here I was as a resident, as an attending soon to be.

And you know, I'm coming into my own and I'm becoming a medical mogul and I'm taking back my time and I'll be like, what can I do? Like expand myself and like get back some of the time I want. Well I did that, right? Like I went to the tech and I, you know, even now I do a lot of tech-related things. If you go to my website, drberrypierre.com, if you check out my resource page, I do a lot of emails related marketing and funnel creations. Again, these are terms that you are probably unless you're in the know, mean absolutely nothing to you and that's okay. Right? But like it was something that I enjoy. I actually loved doing it and I quote-unquote do that on a side, on top of all of this stuff, right?

And you're listening to a physician on a podcast, right? That's not actually common, unfortunately. Because I feel like a lot of physicians should be podcasting. And just a quick side note, I think a lot of physicians, I think if they journaled their experiences probably wouldn't be as burnt out as they are because I think a lot of times, them being burnt out is because they are internalizing a lot of things. And I'm big on, you know, letting people know what's happening. And I've been blogging since I was a medical student. I've been letting you know how quote-unquote shitty this system it was for a while because it's not a surprise, right? Some of my gripes with medicine, love it to death though, can see myself doing anything else, but there is some issues that need to be corrected.

But I feel that if all physicians journaled, I feel like if all physicians wrote a book, did a podcast, did a blog, something that allowed them to express what they were thinking at more than anything else, I think that would be absolutely phenomenal. So when I think about this self-reflection where I'm at now. Again, now I'm an attending, now I'm starting to take back my life and I'm starting to see a different world, right? Like I'm seeing medicine for what I thought medicine was. This engine of education and this vehicle that I could be the quote-unquote captain of. And that's why I started doing all of this stuff I do in terms of the blogging and video blogging and obviously this podcast in which you listen to right now. All of it was because now I was happy and now when I was doing medical stuff, I didn't feel like it was a chore anymore.

And right when I had that realization when I was able to self-reflect to say like, wow, like this is what I should've always been doing.

My life has been on cloud nine ever since. Right? Like again, I joke, but I always laughed at, I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe they still pay me like to come to do this thing. Because I would probably do it for free. Don't tell him. Right? Don't tell my job that I probably would do that thing for free because like I can't believe like they let me in charge of those residents. I got some residents who listen to my podcast so they're going to have a good laugh at this. But I can't believe that I'm the reason why someone's going to go from a medical student to be a medical resident, right?

I don't want to say the sole decision-maker, right? But I got some sway in who becomes a resident at Wellington regional and it's such an interesting concept to me because it was something that I never pictured myself. I guess I never really pictured myself doing it, at least right now. I figured this was something that I'd probably do when I was old and, you know, kinda tired and I'll just kind of fall back and then, you know, this position will kind of open up for me. But, you know, God said, Nah, you need to do this right now. I need you in this position right now. And you know, we're going on year three right now. We're actually going on year three of being a program director and it's been a beautiful sight and I've met amazing people.

I met amazing premeds. I've met amazing medical students. I've met amazing residents, amazing administrators long way. Right? Like all of these things that are able to come to fruition because I was able to look into myself and say like, hey, what you doing right now isn't enough. Right? What you're doing right now isn't benefiting enough people. I need you to do more. I need you to step out and do more and expand. And that's where I think the clarity of my mental health has come in because I realize that those times, you know what, this is stressing me right now.

And the things that are stressing me, I need to do something about it. Again, I was an attending physician who was stressed about the way medicine was going. I was stressed about the way the job was treating me. I was stressed about the way it was affecting my family and I realized I need to do something to make this change. This was a goal that I've always dreamed of when I was an elementary student. I was in elementary, I was saying I was going to be Dr. Pierre. And here I was. I was Dr. Pierre and Dr. Pierre was not happy.

And I need to change that asap. So that got changed and once I changed that, once I recognize these other stressors in my life and I got them out of there, right? The black cloud that was around me as a physician went away. When it went away, it's been nothing but blue skies and summer rain every now and then. But it's been an absolutely an amazing experience and this is what I hope to be able to bring to you guys. Just a little reflection over this next few weeks of the podcast.

I want you to be able to think of these next three, I guess next four if you include this one. I want you to think about these next four podcasts it's like a one running show where we're going to be talking about just stress in general, right? Because stress sucks. Let's be honest. It sucks when you're your stress, right? Everything is not a peachy keen when you're stressed, right? Everything is not all good when you're stressed. And sometimes some people have one thing that's causing them stress but it's causing them stress repeatedly. Some people have multiple things that are hitting them all at the same time and that's causing stress, that's causing problems. And then you have others who are like, I don't know what's going on but I know something it's over me. So that's one thing that I really want to hit home. We're going to really talk about stress over the next three weeks.

And then when we talk about stress, we're going to be talking about what we can do to heal ourselves. And really I'm talking to the physicians. Of course, Lunch and Learn community, you know, I got a wide range of people who listen to me. I got some physicians, I got a lot of helper, practitioners. I got a lot, you know, quote-unquote common people, when I say common, I don't mean just not in the health care field, but who are interested in wanting to learn more about their health. I got a lot of people in different worlds who liked to talk about health, like to listen to health or maybe just like listen to me. I don't know. Right? You tell me, right? Somebody fits in some category, right?

Clearly, health is on your mind because there are a million different podcasts you can listen to and you still listening to me, right? So whatever that is, I want you to grab and hold to that and I want you to think about what are some of your stressors over these next month. And think about what are you doing to try to break these stressors down. What are you doing to try to say I need to get these stresses out of here? And again, physicians, stressors, burnout. We know what happened, we know the end result. The end result means fewer physicians. The end result means more physician suicides, right? And this isn't just a physician thing, right? It's a lot of different careers that fit into the same pattern. Someone goes into a career thinking about one thing, they go into a relationship thinking about one thing, and it's a totally different thing once they get there and then problems arise, right?

So we're at the stage, especially for a lot of physicians where there's a lot of problems arising because we're realizing this isn't what we signed up for or what we thought we signed up for. Because honestly, it's probably already, it's probably been like that. We just didn't know because physicians before us, they weren't doing any journaling. They weren't doing any blogging, they weren't doing any podcasting. So they never actually told us, who knows? That's my theory, right? My theory is this medicine thing probably been sucking for a while, but because the folks ahead of us didn't document anything, we had no clue. And now we just kind of walk in here looking crazy. But that's a whole another discussion. So we're going to talk about the stress this month. We're gonna talk about stress relief this month. We're gonna talk about how to be a better you this month.

And then most importantly, this is something I love. And I can't wait for you to listen to this guest, Dr. Brad, when he comes on. First of all, he's phenomenal, and if you get a chance, Dr. Brad Volara, he's performance coach and he's going to get us really high. Like I said, I'm excited about the interview and that interview hasn't even happened yet. Right? But I already know it's going to help energize Lunch and Learn community and help them look at themselves and say like, okay, no, no, no. I'm worth more than I'm thinking I'm supposed to be aware of. Because me personally, I think I'm worth a lot, right? And mentally I think I'm worth a lot. But that's because I got the clarity, right? I want everyone in Lunch and Learn community to get that same clarity that I got.

So they're walking around like they don't stink, right? That's what I want at the end of this month. So if you don't get anything from the end of this month, by the time August rolled around, I want you to say like, well, you know what? I know some of my stressors in my life. You know what? I know some ways to relieve some of that stress in my life and you best believe I know what my value is. You best believe I know my worth is. So if you don't get anything, I want you to get those three to four pieces of things from me and then, you know, leave the show and do whatever you want. But don't leave a show until that happens, right? So like I said, I can't wait for you guys listen to next month as it's going to be a great set of episodes, a great lineup of guests coming up. And you guys have a great and blessed day. I'm gonna see you guys next week. I better see you guys next week.

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On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Jason Hammond, who is a practicing orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine and knee replacement surgery. This week the lunch and learn community is in for a treat as Dr. Hammond take some time away from giving us an inside look at all of the amazing surgeries he performs to discuss the importance of maintaining bone and joint health.

I talked about osteoarthritis in the past but am very fortunate to have someone who ends up dealing with the end result of the matter. We are going to get a chance to hear some of the common issues he deals with as an orthopedic surgeon. The Lunch and Learn community is also in for a treat as we learn some of Dr. Hammond's favorite surgical and non-surgical interventions.

What makes Dr. Hammond unique is that he has taken a keen entrepreneurial approach to healthcare and not only has a patented invention he uses in the operating room but a line of products to support nonsurgical health. You are in for a treat with this episode.

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Download Episode 115 Transcript

Episode 115 Transcript...

Introduction

Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com, as well as the CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, which helps you empower yourself for better health this week with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. We bring you Dr. Jason Hammond, who is an orthopedic surgeon. Who actually very excited for you guys to get a chance to listen to because he is not just a surgeon, which I like to think about it. He has his own patented product, which we will talk about on the episode today. He has a line of products that's also sold on Amazon through his own personal company - AireSupport. And he has an illustrated book, the GUUD Book on Stem Cells for Joint Pain, which was written to really simply explain alternatives with joint replacement surgery in a fun and very creative way. He's married and he does have three beautiful children, which are actually triplets, right? Which is which I thought I was having sleepless nights because that a twins, but he has triplets, right? So Bang for your buck on that. With Dr. Hammond this week, we were going to be talking about the importance of bone health. I'm going to be, you know, kind of getting into his business, trying to find out like why he went into orthopedic surgery and really with most important especially for Lunch and Learn community members. What are some of the best surgical as well as non-surgical ways to deal with chronic pain, especially in your knees, especially in the shoulder? Contrary to popular belief, he actually favors the non-surgical approach to a lot of different things and I think that sometimes gets taken aback and it gets lost when we talk about surgeons because we always feel like all we want to do is do surgery. And but he's a big champion of making sure we could try and do everything as conservative as possible to avoid surgery and make surgery the last possible option if needed. So definitely you're in for a treat this week and if you have not had a chance remember to subscribe to the podcast. Tell a friend to tell a friend to subscribe to the podcast. Share the podcast, screenshot the podcast in IG. However you like to listen to podcasts. You can tweet me always. If you mentioned me, I would definitely make sure I like and retweet. I'm always looking out for that aspect of it, whether you're using the hashtag, whether you're just, you know, you throw the mention on me, especially if you're on Twitter. I'm at Lunch and Learn pod.com for the podcast fret. So you guys have a great blessed day and get ready for another amazing episode here on Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry.

Episode

Dr. Berry: And alright Lunch and Learn community. You heard this amazing introduction from someone who have actually been kind of goes following for a little bit. Who's been given us an inside look on what it takes to, you know, be orthopedic surgeon. And he was someone who I wanted to kind of have come on the show and just kind of educate us and really get a little bit background story on all this amazing stuff that he's does. Because you know, obviously Lunch and Learn community, you know we have people who are physicians but people who are more than just physician, right. As I think that's always the big thing for us. Yes, you could be a doctor but you could do a lot more things just within that field. First of all, thank you for coming on Lunch and Learn to discuss your greatness.

Dr. Jason Hammond: It is a pleasure. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on.

Dr. Berry: So that can have it. If we went through your bio and you know, if someone didn't happen to read your bio or happen for some reason skip right to this main story, right? What could you tell them about yourself that they probably wouldn't be able to pick up?

Dr. Jason Hammond: So a little bit of background. I was born in Baltimore and actually born at Johns Hopkins. And you know, it's funny, I made my way back there for medical school and residency some, you know, 18, 20 years. Actually 22 years later. I grew up in Virginia and went to high school down in Hampton area, Hampton, Virginia. I learned how to play the trombone. So that's the one little thing about me. I still play the trombone and I have a lot of fun doing that. Went down to Morehouse in Atlanta for four years, which was an awesome time. I was down there to 93 and 97, just a lot of fun. And then came up to Baltimore when I went to med school. And that's where I met my wife. She actually went to University of Maryland's med school and so we met and so I've been in the Baltimore area since 2007. I have three kids. Triplets, actually. Three 14 year olds who just graduated eighth grade. So they're going to be starting high school soon. So it's going to be a whirlwind for the next four years.

Dr. Berry: I have twins. I have that athletic girl. (How old are your twins?) They're six. No, my wife will kill me. They're three going on four. My oldest is six.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Probably seem like there's six by now. I'm sure.

Dr. Berry: Yes. It's so fun. This is a side note. I remember when my wife first sent me the ultrasound. Right? She sent me an ultrasound, it was like A and B and I'm like, what is this? You're having twins daddy, that's what that.

Dr. Jason Hammond: I always kind of, I always little in denial myself when I found out we were having triplets. So I used to call them the baby for a long time until my wife was like, look, you're having three kids, so just get used to that. (Did you say...) So you know, then I went to, finish my residency and then I started practice with MedStar in the Baltimore area and I've been in practice since 2007.

Dr. Berry: So tell us, because this is a question I always get from Lunch and Learn community members. What made you go into orthopedics in this way? What made you go on to this specific field?

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. So I knew I wanted to be a physician ever since I was nine years old. I used to collect stickers, that's what we did back in the day. And one of the stickers that I collected was described my name and I never really knew or paid attention to what it meant. And Jason actually means one who heals. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. I said that. (Oh nice, ok.) And then after that I really, I've always had a leaning towards the sciences and math and more so than the arts and history and English. It turns out, you know, I became a musician, so I did like that aspect, but I knew I kind of want to go into a science field. And when I was in high school, I was in a track meet, indoor track meet and I was, doing high jump. And I went into jump over the bar and I was a little too far towards the end and my back and head laying on the mat and my foot went over and hit the ground and I broke a bone in my foot. And so that was, and then I was introduced to an orthopedic surgeon at that time and I was placed into a cast for three weeks. And initially it was great because I got a lot of love from the ladies, you know. They're always wanting to take care of me and open the door for me. But after about three weeks or so that love went away because cast started to stink and they do with it. But I was out of the cast and my leg had shrunk to half the size of my other leg. But it was a very interesting experience. I didn't realize how much I took my limbs for granted and not being able to walk and just be able to get up and grab a sandwich or get up and turn on the TV. It's an ordeal and when you don't have a leg. So I really pricked me and I thought, okay, this is something I would like to go listen, I'm interested in. And the fact that I was able to heal so quickly and get back to what I wanted to do, even though I had to rebuild strength and everything, that was intriguing to me as well. So, you know, when I went into medical school and actually had a chance to start seeing surgeries and then getting an idea of what I liked, I then decide, okay, I like to be able to work with my hands, I want to do surgery, I like to be able to build things and use hammers and saws and screwdrivers and all that stuff. And you know, it was between ophthalmology and orthopedics and you don't really use screws and nails in the eyes. So it was, let me go into Ortho and have a chance to be able to do something like that. And I liked the engineering aspect of orthopedics. I like the optics and the physics of ophthalmology as well, but I think that orthopedics is more kind of my speed.

Dr. Berry: Okay. That's very interesting. Especially as an internist and we hear a lot of, especially the surgical residency or orthopedics obviously is, as you know we hear it's usually all about the surgery, surgery, surgery. But it's very interesting to hear you speak at it from, especially from the scientific aspect of function and functionality and you know, getting people to move and you know, and even at the point where you kind of take for granted the ability that we sometimes we do all the time, right? They've just being able to walk up and go somewhere.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah, exactly. The use of your hands and shoulders, being able to reach in and grab things. It is really something that you really don't think about. And it's a good thing you don't have to think about it because it means you're not in pain or you're not injured. But once you are starting to think about those things or just being able to turning your head to look in a certain direction, if you have neck pain, those things can be quite a nuisance and affect your quality of life and significant ways and you know, want to help be able to help people better their lives in that respect.

Dr. Berry: I love it and even especially kind of piggy backing on that when we talk about some of the people that you encounter, patient wise. What are some of the typical reasons someone may come to see you?

Dr. Jason Hammond: I am a sports medicine doctor. I specifically treated a lot of athletes. I specifically treat shoulder and knee problems. A lot of athletes have injuries to the shoulder and knee, and that's what we focus on in our fellowship after residency in a year, focusing on that type of thing. So when I have athlete with a knee injury, we want to make sure that they don't have any damage to the cartilage tissues to ligament such as the ACL which you may have heard about or the ligament injuries. And for the shoulder, we know you can have problems with the rotator cuff muscles or some of the other ligaments in the shoulder, that help keep the shoulder in place because we see athletes who sort of dislocations or people who may not have a full dislocation with the shoulder. Kind of slips a little too far and that can cause chronic problems. And so those are the kinds of issues that we see in a lot of athletes. And you know, we get a fractures and you know, the broken bones and the other ankle sprains and the common things as well. And my other subset of patients I see in older subset of patients who have arthritis and I do a lot of knee replacements and treating knee arthritis from that standpoint. And I saw a lot of stuff in between, you know, a lot of conservative treatments as well.

Dr. Berry: And I definitely want to touch on, especially later on because I think a lot of times, and sometimes, you know, I'd have to educate my patients like, Hey, just because I'm sending you to the surgeon doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have surgery, but you know, they're x-ray pain is needed. I think that's something that kind of gets glossed over when we talk about the surgical specialties. I think a lot of times people only think you guys, you know, no, just to do surgery and that's it. And I think sometimes they're taking a back when they're like, oh no, no, no surgery, but let's try some other things first.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. And it's very interesting. And I had a patient actually just yesterday who is a semi professional football player and he has an injury to his PCO, which is one of the ligaments in the knee. And it is a ligament that is not really talked about much because it is not necessary, if you injured is not that you don't necessarily have to fix it to be able to play your sport such as the ACL. And apparently he was told or thought that he needed to have it fixed. And so when he came to my office, he would expect me to talk about, you know, how are we going? He wanted to be able to play professionally and want to talk about getting it fixed and so he can get on with his career. And he was actually pleasantly surprised when I was like, oh no, you've been able to play for many years and you haven't any issues. There's no reason for me to fix that. I can make you worse. You know, I can't. You already playing very well. So I can't, you know, if I'd go in there and do surgery, you can have complications, you can have stiffness, you can have other issues. And then when weakness from having to, you know, be off for so long and then have to gradually build up your strength. So we don't have to fix anything. If it's not broke really, don't fix it. So I'm not treating this specific injury. I'm treating the OR, the X-ray or the MRI scan. I'm actually treating the patient and the patient is functional.

Dr. Berry: I love it. That's just unfortunate especially in medicine where sometimes we kind of get away from that. I'm a program director so I take care, I'm in charge of some residents and a lot of times, you know, they fall into that same issue where they're treating lab results, they're treating illnesses and ask, well, how's the patient feeling? And it's like a blank blank stare on their face because for some reason like that's like the last thing that's like looked upon like, oh well the patient really isn't complaining of anything. Like, Oh then what are we doing?

Dr. Jason Hammond: Exactly. Right, exactly right. I mean, a lot of what we hear from patients that are they want to prevent problems in the future or is there anything that we need to do now so that I don't have an issue and you know, it's hard to treat the future as well. There are things that we can do to prevent disease, you know, weight loss, exercise, strengthening, things like that. There are some surgical procedures that may be helpful to prevent disease, but if you're completely fine, you don't having any issues and there's better be a very good reason for us to prophylactically do something, then we did that more in pediatrics. But you know, for the most part that's the exception and not the rule.

Dr. Berry: Now, is your span of a treatment, because I'm an internist, I take care. If you're 18 up. I got you. But you talk about, you're 17 and I started getting nervous and I started getting weary. In your field, are you treating from adults? Is there a range when we talk about orthopedic surgeon and you have like the whole gamut?

Dr. Jason Hammond: So orthopedics, we do have specialties and within the subspecialties, and the specialty of orthopedics. And so they're the so specialty for pediatric orthopedics, pediatric orthopedics, there's lots of orthopedic problems that kids have such scoliosis or different things that you, you know, you may not think about for kids. None of the specific, especially for that. Now a lot of kids play sports and we are trained to treat sports injuries that kids have as well. So you know, usually kids start, if they injure themselves, if they're under 10 it's pretty minor things. Or if they have a broken bone or know something we can set and that's pretty something similar. They'll heal from and do very well. So most kids, lessons are really displaced broken bone and it's a sports injury that really don't need surgery. We can kind of treat it without surgery. And so, you know, we're usually thinking about surgery is something that very easily in their teens or early adolescence. So we do treat a younger adults in athletes and athletes that are young. But for the most part, they go to pediatrics orthopedics specifically for children with bone problems.

Dr. Berry: And I know you said, your focus, especially from a sports standpoint is the shoulder and knees. Is there any, do you have any common surgeries that you like to perform? Any ones that you do like day in, day out? Is there something that you're like, oh yeah, that's the thing I do?

Dr. Jason Hammond: For the most part, most procedures with knee I do. The most common procedure is gonna trimming out a piece of the meniscus or a piece of cartilage that's torn the knee, what's called a knee scope. And that's a knee arthroscopy where we go in there for camera through little, two little small poke holes and look around the knee. And so, orthopedics has advanced significantly over the course of the last 20 years where we are doing more minimally invasive surgery where we can just go through and look at in an item in a joint through small little poke holes. And so I do a lot of that. And so ACL reconstructions, the main ligament in the knee that's injured. I see a lot of the surgery I love to do because you can get high level athletes who aren't able to perform. You can get them back to perform at an extremely high level and just about, you know, within a year or so they really can get back into doing a lot of what they want to do. Same with shoulder problems. I do minimally invasive shoulder arthroscopy or shoulder scopes with rotator cuff tears and other problems of ligaments that are torn such as the labor room, which was torn when your shoulder dislocates or your shoulders slips out of socket. And then we're doing that with knee replacements as well for older individuals. And that's another very good procedures because within six to 12 weeks, patient who was really not able to get around for a significant amount of pain are able to be very functional and keep up everybody else by three months and they're really doing really well. So I like knee replacements for that reason as well.

Dr. Berry: Alright, and let's talk because of course, you know that I have that contingent of Lunch and Learn members who don't want to do no surgery, right? So they always want to know, the nonsurgical things that you can help me with to try to get that function in that quality life back as much as possible.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. So the tend to treating most orthopedic problems non-operatively is by decreasing inflammation and strengthening. And we decrease inflammation with first modifying your activities. If there's something that is causing you to have a pain or have a problem, you gotta cut back on that or stop that activity or alter or do it with a different way. And that's something that most people don't really think about. Like for instance, I am taking a boxing class and with my son and he did, we went to the for the first time yesterday, but I've been doing it for about six weeks now and hitting the bag over over the course of, you know, even one class over an hour you can develop some wrist pain and just have some, just kind of really hurts. And he was trying to, after I saw him kind of wrapping it straps tighter in the class and afterwards, yeah, he say, he told me, "dad my hands and my wrists were hurting after the class". And I was like, well you were just punching the bag too hard and just kind of back off on that and then it'll start to feel better and soon you'll be able to start getting better and be able to hit the back harder and do more. But you've got to start slow and then gradually build up. And so most people, when they first started to do something, they're overzealous and doing it too quickly or too much weight. They're moving or pressing or doing it just doing too much. And so, you know, gradually begin your activities. But if you're already in pain, then you want to cut back. The other things that we can do are decreasing the inflammation with anti-inflammatory medicines. The most common medicines that we use or Ibuprofen and Naproxen, which is also a leaves. And so those anti-inflammatory medicines are really helpful because they worked at the source of decreasing the inflammation where the problem is. Tylenol is also helpful but that's more of a pain pill that kind of works in the brain, blood pain in the brain. But it still can be very helpful, especially for those who may have stomach problems and go get stomach upset from anti-inflammatory medicine. So those are the most common things. And then we can start thinking about strengthening. Physical therapy is very helpful. A lot of people who put there because they feel like I go to work, I do a lot of walking around. I got therapy on my own. But they don't do specific things to strengthened specific muscle group that would help them. You know, I was a victim of this as well. I was having some back issues at the joint, my back, my pelvis bone, my SI joint. The therapist were telling me, look, you just got to do some core strengthening, strengthening your abdominal muscles and your back muscles and you'll get better. And I was like, hey, I'm running a lot and doing it all this stuff and that it really, it wasn't helping. As soon as I started doing my core exercises, it started and that was, this was years and since I started doing my core exercises, it went away. So I'm a victim of that, but there's a specific treatment for in therapists are really helpful for many, many, many problems, you know. Then after that we got with different types of injections, the most common injection that we use for a knee arthritis or any type of arthritis or inflammation is cortisone to steroid medicine and decrease the inflammation. And that can be extremely helpful for patients with many different problems. In certain places that we can do injections of cortisone and there are certain places that were not able to do injections as well.

Dr. Berry: You know what's interesting, I remember as a medical student when I went to my first mission trip and we had multiple disciplines there, so it was medical, dental, pharmacy, OT, PT and all these. And it was like the first time that I was able to kind of realize like, oh wow, like the therapy folks. Like actually we were planning this on work because I just never, obviously I never interacted with them, so I never knew how much work it actually did. And of course now as a hospital physician, I know they're extremely important, one getting my patients out the hospital. (That's for sure.) And especially if I take care of a lot of the post-operative patients from orthopedic standpoint. One of the first things they're doing is they're consulting internal medicine, but they're not consulting physical therapy, occupational therapy, right? Like it's like we got to get the ball rolling as early as possible, which is always an interesting thing too. Like, especially from a hospital standpoint. Like, oh, you guys can like replace the knee, replace the hip and folks are like up and walk him in like that day. Like it's not even like literally that day people are already I got to walk. I had to go to the bathroom.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Things are changed from that standpoint significantly. When I was first in my training back in the early two thousands patients would routinely stay in the hospital for three days for knee replacements at the minimum, sometimes five days. And now we're doing outpatient knee replacements where you go home the same day and so not the majority of them, but a lot of patients basically going home the same day. But at that they're just staying overnight. So in therapy is really important for that.

Dr. Berry: So especially when we talk about things to change, I kind of alluded in the beginning. One of the things I like about you is the fact that you document, like I ain't talking about the hysteroscopy and the ligament tear. I've seen you do videos on that. Right? I want to start there. Right? What made you like say, you know what, I want to start documenting the amazing stuff I do because I think most people are like usually taking them back. Like, oh my God, that's what I need. And that's what it looks like inside of me. Like it's again, I'm in the field and I still get interested in seeing that type of stuff.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. So it's very interesting. It's something that, there's a lot of things that kind of came together for me to really start doing that. One is, you know, guess we'll talk later. I have an entrepreneurial side and there's some things that I really wanted to be able to do, but I also need you to be comfortable with social media. Be comfortable with either talking on the platform or educating or just in general it'd be comfortable having people, you know, followed me. Facebook and Instagram and you know, and opening myself up. All the stuff that comes with it. Right? So I had to kind of get over that and cause for many years I didn't even have a Facebook account. But I knew that if you're going to do you think from an entrepreneurial standpoint you should probably learn social media because that's the way things are going now. I had to do that. So then I had to figure out, okay, what am I going to do that good at? That might be an easy transition into this field. And so I decided that I think I'm going to give people a peek into my world and what I like to do. And so as I started to, I started off with just kind of talking about some of the things that I like. Started talking about things that we've been talking about as well. What we kind of treat things to operatively, non-operatively. But I felt in some of the people, some of the comments I got were, is there something that we can be able to see? Is that, I thought that would be really interesting. And I thought about it. I would have loved when I was going in learning and wanting to be orthopedic surgeon. I would love to be able to see, okay, what is it that you actually do? Because I didn't get any of that until my third year of medical school. Right? So, and now I have students from medical, from middle school to high school in College. Everybody, people were interested in medicine, medicine orthopedics, but at least they get a chance to see kind of what this is and you know on the side, oh that's nothing that I don't want to do at all or it's pretty cool. I might be interested. So from that standpoint, that's the reason why I really started doing that. And my patients have been very supportive. They like to be able to, first of all, when I asked the patient if they would mind, you know, me videoing them, it seemed that we consent for that in our surgical procedures. And also, you know, it's all plan. I don't. It's all confidential and everything else.

Dr. Berry: Yeah. I talked about the HIPPA monster before. You definitely don't want to step hip hop monster toes. (That's for sure.) Anytime you see, I always have timelines as well. Like hey, if y'all seen me post, I talk about a patient and do this, easily leave. I've asked that patient multiple times and I have it written down. I might have it videotaped that yes I have permission to talk about it.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yes indeed. And so it is definitely important and I found that most patients actually love it. They love to be able to help others. They don't mind being able to share. I haven't really interviewed any patients about their problem. What I've done is when I'm in the office, you know, I'll be the one that's talking, you now have them move their leg or do something. But they really liked the fact that okay I'm educating others because you know, this is something that they had to learn about the hard way actually get injured to learn about this and they probably would be fine not knowing about it cause they don't want to be entered in the first place. But you know, I've had a lot of patients who have actually gone on my page because they've had the same problem. And I was like, look, I've posted about this. If you want to see it now, most patients don't want to see a surgery before they had the surgery. They'll wait until after the surgery. They just don't when that anxiety. But I really have gotten a lot of good feedback from patients.

Dr. Berry: I love it. Yeah. And it's so funny cause even on this podcast I have patients all the time who want to come and talk about their story and I have had one of my patients actually that was a former teacher of mine and she talked about her breast cancer diagnosis and kind of go into that process. But it is very interesting that patients really do like being a part of this process. Like it's not something that most patients shy from, which was always a scary thing because I thought like, oh my God, the patients don't want to do it. But you get more and more. And I guess while I'm over social media, I'm not sure what it is, but more and more people who actually kind of want to do it and want to be a part of it. They want to be able to say like, hey, that's my knee right there.

Dr. Jason Hammond: I haven't really had to make a big leap though and get out of my comfort zone because I didn't know how it was going to go. I didn't know where, you know, how patients were going to react, how my colleagues were going to react, how just the whole social media universe, people will say all kinds of stuff. So I was really nervous and then, it took a couple of months for me to kind of get my groove and say, okay, people are digging this or something. I'm actually providing a service for folks and this kind of, it's gonna grown from there.

Dr. Berry: So the thing, this is my most important, this is the part I love about this podcast, right? Then I'm able to bring guests and I have kind of two hats, right? Like I have the, obviously the physician hat. I do this medical thing. I do it well. Right? And then I have the entrepreneur hat that loves to see physicians really step outside themselves and like, and really kind of say like, hey, like I'm more than just a physician right? Shout out to Dr. Nii Darko, Docs Outside The Box. Right? Like so and actually I said podcasts, probably should be out. Let's talk about Dr. Hammond the entrepreneur, right? Because I'm very interested, right? Like, especially when I see a physician who able to kind of stand within our laurels, within their profession, but say, you know what, I want to do more. A lot of times I get a lot of physicians who want to do more outside of medicine, but you actually are doing more still within it. And I think that's even more like, oh wow. Nice. So let's talk about like air support first, right? Let's talk about AireSupport. Then we're going to talk about your patented invention, which is crazy to me that you actually have an intervention that you were able to patent. It's just crazy because again, as a physician going to medical school, this isn't something we're taught. Unfortunately. I wish it was like, I wish that someone would say like, hey, take this business side of courses so you can, you know, do, do, do, do. We're like you gotta have mentioned his patent, so we're going to talk about that. Let's talk about AireSupport and kind of lean in to the invention you got. Yeah, so AireSupport is a company that I started to kind of help within orthopedics. It is a company that will produce orthopedic braces and I've started off with the posture corrector. I launched a lumbar support brace with a hot cold pack. Then I've got a shoulder brace in, a hip brace coming up. It was really created it because I had developed another product that I'm still in the development process for Bunion pain. Back maybe two or three years ago, I was learning how to ski and I was getting really into skiing. And with skiing you've got to wear the ski boots that are very, I would say tight because have your foot kind of sloshing around with the skis at move with your body and your leg and as one. And my boots were a little too tight and I'd developed a Bunion and I'm on the inner part of my foot right at the base of my big toe. And it was, it was extremely painful. I've never had anything like that. And it was painful to have to wear shoes because any pressure against my foot would hurt. I was training for a half marathon at that time and I couldn't even run. So I'll go with the product that would push the shoe away from the Tinder area on my foot. So I would be able to walk. And it works really well and then decided, okay, I want to be able to figure out how can I develop this and distributed myself. I didn't know anything about marketing or I didn't have any distribution channels or anything like that. And you know as this was during the same time I was trying to invent my other products and but I decided that I didn't want to license this one out. I wanted to kind of do it myself. So that's what AireSupport was born because I needed to develop a model for me to launch products and have a distribution channel. And I decided to go with Amazon and so learning how to find the products that I would like to sell, finding a manufacturer and another country halfway around and around the world and China and going through developing it to my specifications and then having them, the, you know, manufacturers and then getting it shipped to the US and that's a whole another story now for the terrorist that…

Dr. Berry: I'll guess I'll say I was like tarrifs doing thing.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. That's going to be another factor. And then we have getting into the States and then getting into Amazon and then getting into all the different customers and been advertising and all that stuff. But to back up a little bit, I really wanted to start something where I wasn't dependent on working to make money. I wouldn't, depending on actually having to physically be somewhere to make a dime, because you're limited. You have a ceiling. You can only work so many hours a day. I have two hands and two feet and one mouth. Depending on what your industry is, there's only so much you can do during the day and that is your cap. You can hire employees and other things, but then you're limited based on your number of employees. But you know too, there's a difference between being an employee yourself, being self-employed, which is you've got the luxury of just owning your own job and you can do what you want, but you still are limited in the amount of hours that you can work. And there's a great book by Robert Kiyosaki called Cashflow Quadrant that I love.

Dr. Berry: Oh, I love that book. (Yeah. Awesome.) That when you go on from E, to S, to the B.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yes. So going to that side, when you become a business owner or an investor, then that opens your door and there's no limit on the amount of income that you can create. But it's not that simple because we're not taught this anywhere. I mean, we're not taught that in schools and that's Robert Kiyosaki's mission to teach people how to do this kind of thing. So I was trying to create ways to be able to invest in and start businesses that would work for me that I wouldn't have to work in. And going through a lot of trial and error for a lot of different types of things. I said, I decided, look, I'm wanting to do what I know best. What do I know? Okay. I know orthopedics. So let me go within that niche because we know that other thing, we started a restaurant, we've done some real estate. I wrote a book recently. I've done a lot of different things but so I wanted to work in my orthopedic field and that's kind of really how that was born in my inventing started to come about and how AireSupport was born.

Dr. Berry: And so let's talk about the invention, right? Because again, Lunch and Lean community, all of the links to AireSupport, invention, will all be in the show notes, so you'll definitely get a chance to look. And of course, especially his Instagram, right? If you've got to choose one thing to follow, right, you follow his Instagram so you can see the videos. I'm not sure are the videos on Facebook too? I know I just followed you on Instagram, so I don't know if the…

Dr. Jason Hammond: I'm post the same thing in Facebook. (Okay.) It is harder to scroll on Facebook than Instagram.

Dr. Berry: That's interesting. So you know, if you gotta choose one, follow the Instagram. His Instagram is great sight to see. So let's talk about this invention. Right? Because again, I'm always, I'm like wow, the invention, that's crazy. That's just crazy to me to take it to that level. But I could see you if you're already in that mindset where you're trying to get to the point where you don't, and this probably hits home harder for a surgeon where your bread and butter is with your hands doing a procedure, doing the work. But again, you can only do a procedure on one person at a time. Right? So that's that. So regardless of how much you get paid to do that, you can only do it at four o'clock. You can only do it on one person like that. You can't do it on 10 people at the same time. Right? But when you expand yourself and you get these businesses and you get this, then you're able to kind of serve so many people all at the same time and not take your time away. Which I think is the biggest commodity as a physician that we don't realize we have that we give away, unfortunately.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So you know, being an inventor, I felt like I was on an island because I never knew anybody who invented anything. Or people say they invented stuff, but you know that really all I thought about that, oh yeah, I should have done that. Somebody stole that idea from me. But nobody's really doing anything that I knew of so I had to kind of walk through the weeds myself and just kind of swimming through mud, trying to figure out where do I even start. And I always have an eye, you know, whenever I look at something, I was like, how can I make this better? Or this gotta be a better way to do something to do this. And then something a little bit more seriously in then I say okay. If I see something and I wanted to see how I make it better than I would Google it and say, okay, is this thing already out there? And then the vast majority of times somebody has already done it, somebody is already figured it out or how to make this better or kind of come up with the idea or something like that. And so I started doing it in a surgery as well. What is it that I can do to make this procedure better? Or just getting some technical pearls. And I started working on the actual procedure and making the procedure easier for me to do. That's where anything that I was inventing. I was just inventing slick ways to do a knee replacement, how, you know, like a little trickier, a little trick there. And then, for shoulder arthroscopy in particular, there we are working through these little small poke holes in the skin. And what happens is we got to get these little thin instruments through the skin and the muscle into the joint. And in order to do that we've got to make a little conduit to be able to get the instrument in and out easily so it doesn't get snagged the tissue. And so there's kind of, which are called cannolis and the vast majority of these cannula are hard plastic and a lot of them are clear plastic. So it's kind of like taking a paper towel to the role and side of the paper towel or toilet paper. It's like similar to that or like a straw even on a smaller scale. And you and so it pushes the tissue away and you can go in and out of the cylinder and easily, if I getting snagged on tissue. There is a company that made a soft of this, made out of silicone and there's some benefits to the soft one because when you have your instrument in the tissue, through cannula and in the joint. You can move the instrument around a lot easier because it's not restricted by the hard cannula. The problem with trying to put this soft cannula into this portal is that you got to jam it in there. You got to clamp it on and then you jam it into the joint and that was very frustrating because the clamp, it would dislodge from the clamp because it slip off. It would just not go where you want it to go.

Dr. Berry: The technical aspects of that is as loose as it should.

Dr. Jason Hammond: No, it was matte. A lot of surgeons that are not even use cannula, because cannula is hard to get in and I'll stick with the original one. The original one are fairly easy. You just kind of shove it in and then it's in there. But the flimsy ones are not. So that was very frustrating for me and I was talking to some other surgeons and like, yeah, that they also had the same issue with it. And so I decided I was going to talk to company and see if we can come up with an idea to be able to get this cannula in there a little bit better. So I went and talked with the company and they were, they were, you know, kind of lukewarm because they get hundreds of doctors talking to them about inventions all the time. It's just there like, okay, what do you got? Majority of people don't have anything real that they can work with. And so they said, okay, we can, I like the concept and this. So they decided to start doing a little prototype. And the prototype that they came up with didn't work. Kind of tore, the silicone was pretty soft and then whenever you're inserting it would tear the silicone. So they abandoned, they're like, no, we're not going to climb up at this. You're going to do it on your own. And so I had to come up with a design and then figured out how to get it to work. And you know, what I came up with was, you know, a weight. So if you take a string, it's hard to push a string, but you can and get it to go anywhere because it fold up. But if we pushed it back into the string and folds up, but if you take the front end of the string and you pull it, then it can go wherever you want it to go. So what I did was if you take like a paper clip and you kind of put a little bit of the string in the paper clip, then you can pull the string where you want to go. And if you have it. And so if you can imagine that paperclip with the string and then going into tissue, the string, this folds and then you can pull it into the joint. Well, something similar to what I developed. I had a little stick device with the oval cutout similar to a paper clip and you just put the cannular inside of that oval cutout and then you just kinda pull it into the joint and it works. And it really was, you know, it was something that I wasn't expecting this to work so well actually. (Any doubts at first?) So at first I had like a sliding device that would pinch it in place. And whenever a pinched them in place and I put it into the joint, they would tear every time. So I just got rid of the sliding device that we're pinching the place and just like the whole open and just kind of have us sit in the hole. And then it just went in and it will pop three and a slide the tick out. And every time it would work. And so I took it back to Arthrex and they worked for us is the company that I decided to work with and they said, this is really nice. Let me just, let's take it to some of our surgeons have having come in evaluated. And the overwhelming majority of the surgeons really liked it. It was a big difference compared to the previous. And then they decided, okay, so then they decided to, before I really worked with them though, I put in the provisional patents, so I got some protection and then the patent office actually granted me the pen because it was a unique and novel and then the aspects at the licensed the product from, and so with licensing, you know, every time a product is sold, get a royalty from that. And so, and they, you know, Arthrex is a worldwide company and so. (I love it.) It's starting to grow. I just, we just got the first products out in September and every quarter. I see that it's growing and growing.

Dr. Berry: Do you have any promotion with it or is the company essentially kind of like man in that?

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah, so the beauty of licensing is the company takes care of everything. You just sit back and you know, you don't have to really do much at all. You know, I can talk about the invention at the level of people know about it, but they're doing most of the marketing and promoting. That now there's pluses and minuses to that because they have full control. You get paid less because they've got full control. Right. But that's with any royalty agreement, they pretty much, you give them the rights to pretty much own the crowd, even though you, I do own the patent and everything, you give them the rights to promote and do everything else, you know? So that's, that's the pluses and minuses of doing something on your own versus licensing it. But this isn't a product that I would be able to promote on my own anyway because it's directly…

Dr. Berry: It's the niche that is in that you would need someone like within that circle to be able to kind of do whatever, yes, I love it. Absolutely love it. Like that's the level ingenuity. I love to see out of our physicians and I hope someone listens to this, especially, you know, our physician colleagues and they say, wow, you know what, let me get off my butt. Right? Because I've been talking about that same like I shouldn't have did this. I should've did that. And how long was this process? Right? Just to give people an idea. Was this like a year? 10 years?

Dr. Jason Hammond: I first started talking to Arthrex in 2000. I first started the idea in 2015 and I went to them and so that was like around January, February, 2015. And I went to them in April of 2015. And they decided to do a product and then the status and it didn't work for them. So they abandoned it and then I figured it out. And then in like early 2016 I went back to them with the, with the product and then they said, okay, we're going to license it. So we signed a contract in September of 2016 and the product didn't get launched until September of 2018. So it was a three year process. But you know the time was going to go regardless. (Exactly. Oh thank you.) Yeah, whether I was going to work on it and not, it was still going to be 2018 and that would have been looking back like man, I should have did that.

Dr. Berry: I should have did that in 2016 I should have started and now 2018 and I'm still talking about starting. I like it.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Exactly. But it's not an easy process. It takes time and you know, out of hundreds of thoughts and ideas, maybe five will be worth pursuing and then out of those five, maybe 0.5 will actually pan out. But it is worth it and it's something that you get some level of satisfaction as well when we accomplish something that people haven't done.

Dr. Berry: Wow. So again, first of all, thank you for serving as that lead because again, I really do feel that you're probably going to motivate some physicians, some medical students, some premed, not only to go into orthopedics or just to go on medicine in general just because they're seeing amazing things you're doing. But then say like, oh, I can do a step further. So, and I appreciate you serving as the pioneer and you know, putting your foot out there and say like, I'm ready to go and put some work yet. So definitely thank you for that. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah, sure. Thank you.

Dr. Berry: So of course, before you know, obviously I catch you long here, so before I let you go, is there anything like, because this is like, I call this the promo hour for my guests, right? Is there anything like, are you kind of alluded to the book, I know you have an illustration, but like you kind of alluded to the book, you kind of alluded to some, what are the things you have out there that people may be able to consume? And you know, obviously most important thing is where can we get this stuff? Cause that's obviously going to be in the show notes, but let the folks know where can they find some of this stuff to be able to kind of look up and see how you're doing?

Dr. Jason Hammond: Sure. I have written a book on stem cell used for joint pain. So for people who want to know what that is all about and trying to do conservative treatments instead of going after a knee replacement and they want to know what stem cells are and what they're not. Or you can find that in the book and sign. So you can go to my author page, just amazon.com backslash author backslash Dr. Jason Hammond or even just go to amazon.com and search for Dr. Jason Hammond. And the book is called the GUUD book. And that's G U U D. The GUUD Book on Stem Cells for Joint Pain. And if you're interested in some lumbar support, braces, hot and cold gel packs or pasta correctors, you can go airesupport.com and A. I. R. E. S. U. P. P. O. R. T. There's a 20% discount Promo code on that as well. Just, you know, like I said, follow me on Instagram or Facebook. You just go to Dr. Jason Hammond, to search with that and you'll find me there.

Dr. Berry: Love it. So I always ask my guests this question, how can what you do help empower really others to really take better care of their physical joint, bone health, all of that?

Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. So you know, I think that decreasing your stress in your life is huge. For mental health and for physical health. And I think a major stressor is your financial health. If you can get your financial health together in that being significant debt, try to start a business. You have an alternative forms of income that will, if you can be debt free, that will take so much stress out of your life as a person out of your marriage, out of your… or with your kids, all kinds of stuff. So just try to find a niche that you're interested in and then get rid of that stress in your life from money. Money should not be a stressor. It should be an avenue for you to be able to help others. You know? I think also just stay active and you know, that's what I try to help other people to do. Stay physically active. But go we, when you start running or you start getting in the gym, whatever it goes slow start with at, it'd been gradually built up. And so, you know, you want to have emotional health, you want to have financial health. You want to be physically healthy and you're gonna really be able to impact your family, your community your future. If you can do all those things.

Dr. Berry: Perfect. And of course my family would kill me right if I didn't get you to talk about this. Of course, we're actually recording this the day after game five of the NBA finals. It's so funny because I was like, oh, you know what, I was actually talking to a sports medicine specialists like tomorrow. The conspiracy theory that's running around my house now, right? Is that Kevin Durant always had an Achilles injury and he just like reinjured it, right? Like they pushed him that. I feel like he had a calf injury at first and then he got to kill his injury, right? Like you're obviously, this is you, right? This is your field. This is your Ballpark, right? Like and again, I'm not sure if you watch basketball, but like what?

Dr. Jason Hammond: So I didn't see the, you know, I saw the injury, the replay. I wasn't watching it when it first happened. It's hard to tell from a replay where, what and stuff like that. The most common calf strain as you get is a caching and the actual muscle belly just below the muscle belly where you know where the lump on your calf muscle is right in the mid-calf. That's the most common place where you can get a calf strain and that usually will heal on its own with just rest. But usually can take up to four weeks or so, a while for that to heal up. And you know, I don't know exactly where he reinjured it, but they said Achilles that is further mess further down, you know, near the heel bone at that core right behind your ankle. And so that is significantly more severe injury than a calf sprain that is higher up. They could have been trying to say that it was not as bad as it was. I think that he probably had more of a strain right at the tendon muscle junction before. It's hard to know if this is something that if he needs surgery for this, this isn't that good. And I think he probably, I wouldn't think, I would think he reinjured the same thing. This is probably worse. It's probably, it would be really unfortunate to have a completely separate injury right on in the same leg. That it's probably something that's made the initial injury worse. But this is significantly an unfortunate. Obviously I don't have the MRI records of what happened to him but if he had a separate Achilles injury that would be, you know, that would be devastating for him.

Dr. Berry: And I think that's where conspiracy theorists are going because they're like, well, he always had the ice closer to his, the bottom of the foot and not really near the meat, you know the calf. So they always assumed it was the Achilles and then they pushed them out too far. This is what's going on the social media sphere as we speak.

Dr. Jason Hammond: This is significant. I think he may have been pushed too soon cause they can take a while for this calf to get better for sure.

Dr. Berry: I know I have to ask that question because I knew they were going to like what are you, why you didn't ask him yet?

Dr. Jason Hammond: Oh I understand. This is big. Somebody thinks he's the best in the world. So this is this a big hit for him especially during is a new contract year.

Dr. Berry: Alright. So again, thank you Dr. Hammond for coming on and really just enlightened and encouraging and empowering Lunch and Learn community with giving self together physical health to bone health, joint health and then really kicking up the entrepreneurial spirit here as well and letting us know that it definitely more you can do within all of the great stuff that you're doing.

Dr. Jason Hammond: Well appreciated Dr. Berry, thanks for having me. Thing you need, you know, I'm here for you. Anything Lunch and Learn community needs from me, they can reach out to me, they can direct message me or reach out to me through you. I'm here for them.

Dr. Berry: Perfect. Perfect. Again, ladies and gentlemen, we will see you guys next week. Again, remember, subscribe. Tell a friend and tell a friend and please fall out a hammer. Like I said, like especially if you're not gross at home. If you're gross, obviously don't blame me for it, right? But if you not, most of the people I follow at, definitely worth the follow for sure.

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On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Jameson Mercier, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Doctor of Marriage and Family Therapy. His areas of specialization include Marriage/Family Therapy and fatherhood and this week the Lunch and Learn Community is in for a treat as he comes on to discuss the importance of social relationships for men and what happens when the correct ones are not in place.

As we wrap up the end of men's health month I thought it would be extremely important to touch on mental health in men. When we talk about men's health month quite often we focus on the big diseases such as prostate cancer, colon cancer, and addiction but I know that I have come across many men who have these poor social habits and how it affects all their relationships.

I talked about this before but as a outpatient clinical specialist one of the top 2 reasons why men would come to see me for an appointment was either someone was dragging them to the office or erectile dysfunction complaints.

A recent journal article noted:

"Social connections can act as a buffer against the impact of stressful or negative life experiences on mental health, the onset of mental ill health, including depression and suicidal behavior and can increase the likelihood of those with mental health problems seeking professional help."

Social relation is defined as the relationship between two individuals and I know that after listening to this episode you are going to come away with a much better understanding of why your male family member acts the way they act.

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Download Episode 114 Transcript

Episode 114 Transcript...

Introduction

Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com, as well as the CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. And this week we end Men's Health Month. Again, we've had some amazing guests this month. And I want to touch on a topic that I think gets brush over when we talk about men's health, right? And that's the mental aspect of it. And most importantly, we're gonna be talking about the importance of social relationships in men, right? And when they lack it, what's the problem and what happens when they have a good social relationship, right? And when I was thinking about the topic of hand and I was trying to figure out who should we bring on this episode only had a couple people in mind and I was very fortunate enough to get Dr. Jameson Mercier on podcast to really drive home the fact that if our mind isn't there, if we don't connect. And again this is a very tough topic for men to talk about because when it comes to our emotions when it comes to the mental health when it comes to getting ourselves together for other people, is that something we do willingly. And Dr. Mercier, as a clinical social worker who has a Doctorate in Marriage and Family Therapy and he deals with it on the mental health aspect.

I've talked about it all the time wherein medicine, I sometimes have trouble getting my men to open up to me to tell me like, hey, I'm having these medical related problems. So you can only imagine the difficulty he may be experiencing and not maybe he actually does and experience when dealing with getting men to open up about their mental health wellness and wellbeing. So again, I wanted to kind of give a little quick little bio just so you can understand just how important this guy, Dr. Mercier is for not only discussion but just the topic of mental health in general. So Dr. Jameson Mercier is a licensed clinical social worker. Like I said, a doctor in Marriage and Family Therapy where he got his Ph.D. and family therapy from Nova southeastern university. He also earned a bachelor's and master's degree in social work from the University of South Florida and Barry University, is areas of specialization include marriage and family therapy as well as fatherhood.

He is a qualified supervisor for the state of Florida for clinical social work, family therapy, and mental health counseling interns. Dr. Mercier provides counseling for families, couples as well as individuals. He consults with businesses, nonprofits, churches, and government organizations. He has been featured in various media outlets including Hot 105, The Miami Herald, The Discovery Channel, Bustle, and Huffington Post. He and his wife own a private practice called Mercier Wellness and Consulting. And ladies and gentlemen, most importantly, especially if you have a kind of been up to speed on everything, he and his wife actually have a podcast as well, which is called The Couple's Counsel. And me and my wife had actually had the opportunity to join onto the show and really talk about our relationships and how we deal with growing up with a child with autism. Right. So if you had not had a chance, I will link that episode, link in the show notes as well.

Just like you can get a chance to obviously get in touch with their podcast. You listen to their podcast, subscribe to their podcast here. Me and my wife kind of discuss our journey parenting a child with autism. Of course the theme today is Men's Health Month and we're talking about mental health. We're talking about social connections and relationships and I really wanted to hit this home because again, I've talked about the cancer's a lot, right? You know, earlier this month I talked about just making sure they go do their wellness exam. We had doctor Jen who actually hit home erectile dysfunction, sexual health. So again, we've talked about a lot of huge topics when we talk about men's health and I figured there was no way I could end this month, a discussion on men's health without speaking on the mental health aspect of it. Right? So like always, if you have not had a chance, go ahead subscribe to the podcast and leave a five-star review. Again, I want you to follow Mercier. All of his information will be in the show notes as well. Get on their podcasts, subscribe to their podcast, five-star review their podcasts as well because it's actually amazing. And get ready for another amazing episode here on the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry.

Episode

Dr. Berry: Alright Lunch and Learn community, you just heard another amazing introduction to Dr. Jameson. I've actually had the opportunity to not only meet in internet spirit out, you know, a lot of us get a chance to talk to, also met personally and been able to collaborate on different events here and there and definitely fortunate enough to get this gentleman. A personal actually well-respected on the podcast. Dr. Jameson Mercier, first of all, thank you for coming to the podcast and educating the Lunch and Learn community today.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: It's my honor. Thank you for the invite.

Dr. Berry: So you know, I gave your introduction, which again amazing. Again, it's been this running theme that a lot of our guests have our resume that I'm sometimes in awe of as myself. But for someone who, you know, they read it, they read your bio, what is something that they may not be able to know about you that isn't necessarily in our typical bio?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Funny, you should ask I guess a little known trivia or the little known fact I suppose because of the line of work that I'm in. So mental health counseling, I realize maybe a long time ago, but really a few years ago just how much I needed to be able to do something for myself to be able to disconnect and separate and recharge. And so I am, I want to call myself an avid outdoorsman, but living here in South Florida and the city, there's only so much outdoors. (You're right.) But I enjoyed being outside. I enjoy camping. As a matter of fact, tomorrow we leave for a camping trip and then we leave for a road trip that involves another week of camping. It's going to be a four-week road trip. (Wow.)

So I do that because if you do 8, 10, 12 hours sometime working with people, counseling, mental health medicine, as you well know, you need to be able to separate that and give your mind something to focus on other than people's problems and patients who may not be compliant. And so for me, the way I kind of maintain some of my own sanity and my own mental health, getting outside, whether that's fishing, whether that's just going out by the water or anything, really that's something I enjoy and I've started taking the kids, my wife, her dean will join me sometimes. We're documenting some of that. Just side notice, a little passion project. We have a new Instagram and YouTube channel that's called Creel Adventures.

Dr. Berry: Okay. Alright. And the links will be in the show notes because I definitely wanna hear about this.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yeah. And so all that is, is simply, you know, me disconnecting, being out in nature, doing some camping, fishing and just something just to recharge my mental, my emotional so I can come back and be just as good.

Dr. Berry: I love it. And when you're doing these things right, you're like there are no cell phones, as disconnected as can be. Right? So it's not like you're going, but you're bringing all the technology with you?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: No, no. As a matter of fact, when I go out and I go camping, I tried to get as primitive as possible. Right. You know, so I don't need no hookup for electricity. I don't need anything. (Oh, wow. Okay.) But when you bring your kids, and especially when you bring your wife who maybe lacks the creature comforts, (yes) there's some compromise that needs to happen there. But I could go without it. I don't need it. And you know, that stemmed from a couple of years, three or four years now did I did a show with the discovery channel where I was in the woods for two weeks. It was a survival show. So no, it was not naked and afraid. It was not naked and afraid. There was another show.

But when you spend two weeks in the wilderness with a knife, some matchsticks and a canteen of water, you really begin to realize how little you need to survive. How little you need and how much, how good that does just to be disconnected and totally in nature. And so that really was a boost for me and I tried to get out there as often as I can.

Dr. Berry: That's amazing. Again, we'll definitely make sure where he got the links to that because I'm very interested as well. I'm not outdoorsman but you could probably convince me to go for a day or two, where you're going on for a week. So I'm definitely alright. (Do it man. Do it.) A question I ask, obviously when we talk about the disconnection, right? Your primary field is therapy. My wife's mental health therapy field as well. And it's definitely something that I know has made me a better physician because of it and because of the acknowledgment that I can only do so much. Without addressing the mental health aspect of a person. What drove you to that direction in the first place? What was it that made you say, you know what, this is something I could see myself doing?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: So there's a couple of stories that come together to answer that for the sake of time, I'll give you the condensed version. When I was young, I was about eight or nine, my dad died and my mother was left to raise my brother and me and my sister. And at the time we did, you know, you have the church that supports you and they come and they kind of sit and pray with you. But we did not get any kind of counseling, traditional counseling, professional counseling. And in hindsight, we could have definitely benefited from even just a few sessions as a family, of grief counseling or of just some regular run of the mill counseling, whatever that might be. You know, just to kind of process what's going on. Because as I got older, I was angry. I was rebellious. Looking back, I was not as destructive as some would say, but I could see how some of my actions stemmed from the loss of my father. And so when I got into college and I was struggling. I was like, you know, let me just kind of figure this out. And when I realized that if I had gotten some counseling, things we've gotten did go different from me as it there's got to be more people who could benefit from what I didn't get.

And so originally I wanted to do psychology, but I'll leave that to the guys who like to do the testing and assessments. I wanted to be in the homes with the families dealing with some of these issues. And social work is what I discovered with social work. And once I found social work, I hit the ground running and then I decided to specialize in marriage and family therapy because the issues that we are seeing in society, a lot of times really do stem from dysfunction within the home and within the family. (Let's talk about it. I love it.) What happens, they go unresolved. They go unaddressed and then they cycle and we talk about this, you know, there's that generational cycles. Some people will call it a generation occurs. It's simply a matter of not resolving what you know exists within your family and these patterns we just hand them down. One generation after another. And so I resolved myself to break that cycle within my family and to help other people who are willing to break these dysfunctional cycles and patterns within their relationships.

Dr. Berry: What's very interesting and especially the focus of marriage and family and understanding like where it starts and within. We talked this month, this is Men's Health Month. And when I was thinking about the topics that I wanted to kinda touch on, which is very typical, right? You know, the prostate cancer, colon, all of these things that happen to men and know men do not get in themselves together. I think a lot of times the mental health aspect is when that kind of gets brushed over, unfortunately. And more importantly, especially when we're talking about men and, and I know you, obviously you have kind of established a niche, right? Where you like talking to men. Like that's your thing, right? Which is always interesting. Because like I always figured we'd probably be the most difficult, the niche to deal with. We were terrible.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: We are terrible. And I recognize that. I recognize just how bad men are when it comes to talking and communicating. Even with our wives sometimes, you know, the women in our lives, our kids, and it isn't that we don't want to. In my own experience has shown me that everything we want to say or should say is right there behind our teeth. It's on the back of the, on the inside of our lips. A lot of us, yes, we're not taught how to communicate like that. A lot of us didn't see it modeled for us.

And so it isn't that we don't get the urge, we just can't bring our lips together to say those things we know are there, you know? So in my practice, when I get dad or a man or husband, whatever he is in life when I get them while they're in my office or on a virtual call, I hold on to that guy. I do not take it for granted because I understand all the things that had to happen (before you could get to it.) Oh man! (Wow. Okay.) You know, and it's interesting when it's almost like a friend, you know, it's almost like bro, I've been for you. And he's like yo, that unspoken conversation that happens and if there's a wife or girlfriend there, they don't understand. But I am just so glad to see men who show up to have those conversations.

Dr. Berry: And what I love about, especially the motivation behind episode like this is when, and of course I'm doing my research. I'm looking up mental health and you know, all of the issues that men need to deal with. And I came across this a very interesting article. It was actually in the Journal of American Men's Health. And it hit me. Because it talks about social connections and really the lack thereof. It talks about men's health, it talks about the lack of proper support which led to a lot of the different issues I deal with on the medical side. Whether it's noncompliance, whether it be alcohol and substance abuse, where it on all of these things that I do from a medical side that this article really said like, hey, you know what, if they actually like established some good stuff, in the beginning, it wouldn't be a problem.

But unfortunately, we don't. And then we ended up dealing with me, unfortunately. And so I want to talk about like, this was one of this first sentence kind of hit me right off the head. It said social connections can act as a buffer against the impact of stressful or negative life experiences on mental health. The onset of mental ill health, including depression and suicidal behavior and, can increase the likelihood of those mental health problems from being sought. And I didn't realize. Again, I may be naive because of course that's not my field. How important these social relationships and social connections are when it comes to men, that was something that kind of like took me abreast. Is that something that you find not just to be a common thing, but sometimes like it's in that issue where like wow, like yeah, they really have problems from the beginning just talking to people?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yes, men, we do. But let me give you an example that in my mind and in my opinion crystallizes that phrase that you just read. When you look at the military and you take these 20 men, 50 men, hundred men, whatever the case is, and you put them in a group, you put them through some very difficult stuff. This is even before they go to battle, but you put them through boot camp, you put them through whatever school they're going to together. They eat and sleep together. They do everything together. When they actually do, then go and see theater, they go to war. They have much better cohesion. They operate so much better.

When you compare one guy who did not move with them and was dropped in after the fact. So the one guy, for example, was not part of this community. Okay, so there's something about being in a group that does buffer you, that does keep you safe. The guys who are suffering depression, the guys who are battling thoughts of suicide, they're not part of a group. They're not. It's very hard to remain sad and depressed when you are amongst a group. It's hard, one, the group on lets you, but even if you just kind of stay on the periphery on the fringes, there's something that happens there, you know, and they've studied this all along, especially in guys who are in the military. When you move together with a group, when you have that accountability and we don't need 50 guys, one or two good guys, good friends, it is a protective factor. Totally. This is why an AA, they do the group thing and they have the sponsor thing. This is why they are designed like that because that accountability from the groups, it's hard to recreate that.

Dr. Berry: Does that kind of like lessen the burden? Does that kind of lesson, oh it totally causes they're gonna face the stressors? But like because you do it within a group setting it's not as much? Is that the thought process?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yeah. It's not that you don't face it. It is that when you do face it, you have other people on which to share the load. It's funny, we go to school and we study all these things and I realize if I just watch women when it comes to this whole social contract thing. (Okay.) So much because women have this thing down the pack. If you're with five or six women at work or at a conference one we'll get up and they'll say, I'm going to the bathroom and then two or three will get up. I'm coming with you. As men, we don't do that. (No.) We don't do that. We don't even announce it. We just get up. I'll be back. If if we say that much, you know what I mean? And I had this conversation with a colleague of mine. I said, why do you guys announce that you're going to the restroom? And she looked at me, she says, I do? It's something they didn't even notice that. (So kind of like ingrained in them to say, like hey.) Something they do, anybody wants to come. And so go into the bathroom is not about going to the bathroom for them it's about, it's a social activity.

Dr. Berry: Especially because the theory that adds there, right? Like that's either ingrained in them. Right? Versus from a like either genetic standpoint or just a social construct. They've grown up since they were little with these similar patterns. Do you find that's the case for men? Right. We're just ingrained to be individual. We're just ingrained to be alone and we almost have to be placed in army barracks type situation before we'll go out and join forces and hold hands. I wonder about that?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Well you know, when I think back and I observed kids, boys play like that. Boys and girls move and little cliques and groups and herds, but there comes a point where we make boys feel like that's not cool. You know, in elementary school boys will go to the bathroom together and boys will actually do like girls do and play in the bathroom. But somewhere along the line, they get this message that boys don't do that.

And what we don't realize is, we begin to eat away at something that is very much beneficial. And so when they're young, we tell them they can't hang like that. When they're teenagers, you definitely don't do that for whatever homophobic reasons for whatever negative stereotypes. Men just don't do that until you find yourself in your mid-twenties and 30s and forties and now for you to say to a guy, hey, how are you doing? It's very awkward. (Let's talk about it.) It's awkward.

It's unfortunate, and I'll even take it further. I think there's something about black men in particular where this kind of seeing another man and just kind of approach, hey brother, how are you doing? Are you good? How are you feeling? Approaching another brother, another black man and saying, hey, how's your day going? Are you good? You know, the man, being a man, if we're to be a man, we can't be like that.

Dr. Berry: And you know, I'm glad we kind of touched on this because of this kind of segues into my next concern. What is like the role of masculinity? Because I think we've kind of danced around what that it is, right? When they go from elementary school to middle school to high school too, you know, I think we danced around it, at least in my thought. Right? I've talked about it and sometimes I don't want to say sometimes I do blame masculinity in a lot of the different concerns, at least I see on the medical side. Versus them coming to see me for physicals for them even allow me to do certain physical exams that I need to do properly, like a dresser. What has been your experience on the relationship of masculinity and mental health and these social constructs when we talk about their social relationships in general?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yeah. You know, if you're gonna be a man, if you're going to be masculine, you gotta be tough. You got to keep whatever issues you have inside. And so on your end, it's the medical stuff where at your legs been hurting, your back's been hurting, you walk in all crooked, hunched over, but you gotta be a man. You can't complain about that. On my side, yeah, you might be feeling sad. You might be depressed. You might be crying in your car. You might be sitting in your truck for an hour, just unable to pull it together. But you can't tell nobody that because men don't cry. Nobody wants to hear men complain. All kinds of just jacked up ideas. You know if you're going to be tough, if you're going to be a man, there are just some things that you don't do. Right? All the emotional stuff or the soft stuff, whatever the hell that is or those are, it's unfortunate.

Dr. Berry: First of all, I think that's 100% head on. Right? And for those who, Lunch and Learn community, usually when I talk about, when men come to my office to do the yearly physicals and I see their significant other or family member there, a lot of times they usually won't say nothing unless I ask the question like, oh is there anything else going on? And they'd be like, no. And I'm like, hey you better tell them about this. This is like, they're ready because they just assume like, like this person I'm sitting in there isn't going to tell you the full story.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: They know. And so in my case, especially if I'm working with couples, I'll see them together a couple of sessions and then I separate them still. I see them on individual sessions and it's not until I get the guy by himself in my office, I get this whole narrative and I'm like, bro, we've been together for a couple of weeks. Why didn't you say this? And the reason why is because his wife or his girlfriend was there. And I'm like, whoa, how much are you not saying? Because you live with this person.

Dr. Berry: Exactly. Interesting. Okay. Alright. Let's see. Let's see. Alright. I don't want to say I'm glad it happens on the mental health side, but I'm glad it's not just a medical.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: No, no. We as men have a lot of problems, man. And I say that as lovingly and understandingly as possible. (Sure.) Because we just, I'll tell you a quick story. When I was in college, I was at 24, 25. I went to see my primary and I was working like crazy. I was studying, I had two and a half jobs still broke. So the stress was this way and heavy. And I came down with what I thought was a fever or a cold, and I went to see my doctor and they were like, ah, after a couple of tests they thought I had lymphoma. And so I'm like, I don't even know how to spell that. Like much less what that is. (Wow.) You know? And at the time my wife and I were dating, I go to the doctor and I come back, she goes, how was the doctor's appointment? How did it go? I'm like, eh, it was ok.

Dr. Berry: Oh wow. Lunch and Learn community, I'm really laughing because you'd be surprised how often, like that conversation occurs and they'll be like, I just told my husband, he said, nothing went and his appointment was fine. I'm like, no. It wasn't like I told them this, this.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Man, listen. And so the week I went, my wife was supposed to travel for a little bit. My wife, my girlfriend at the time. And so I let her leave without telling her anything. And so I think the following day, however it played out, I had a biopsy scheduled and I'm living with a bunch of guys at this time and I said to the guys, hey, I'm might need a ride to the doctor. I didn't say hospital. (You didn't even tell them why?) And I'm living in a room in a house with four or five guys, including my brother. And so they dropped me off. I walk in, I have my biopsy. In a biopsy, they put you under and it down there like all day. And my wife was looking for me later that night. She was out of town, she couldn't find me.

So finally she calls my brother and she's like, hey, I can't find Jameson, what's up? He's like, Oh yeah, I took him to a doctor's appointment. She's like, what doctor's appointment? And then he says doctor's appointment at the hospital and my wife, she like, (hold on.) sharp tool, man. She goes, who the hell has a doctor's appointment at the hospital? And it's like nine o'clock at night and they're still there? Bro, and so I had to come clean and so, and again, I look back and I'm just like, that is so dumb. That is like so dumb. I'm not too hard on myself because I was in my twenties, but still, that is dumb. And I can excuse the young, my youth, the ignorance of my youth to some extent, but at 40 and 50 and 60, my God, there is absolutely no reason at all.

Dr. Berry: And it still happens, for sure still happens. Which is wow, it's very interesting because you aren't telling a unique story bro. (I wish I was. I wish I was.) Okay. Alright, see. Like I said, I like this kindred spirit that we got going on here, right? Because like now I'm seeing how much on the mental health side, you guys clearly have the deal. We have just as much, if not more than we deal with on the medical side because you know, we were so personal. We think like, all right, maybe it's just us, right? Maybe they just don't want to take care. Clearly, even when they're on your end…

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Always, universal man, it's universal. And the thing is I think, and maybe this is my bias, it's a little worse on my end because you can see a bad leg, you can see the physical manifestations. Me, I don't know anything. If you don't tell me. (Nope.) If you're not having an episode in my office, if no one saw you having an episode, if you don't come to my office smelling like alcohol, I don't know that you have a drinking problem. (Cool. Let's go.) I don't know that you're not sleeping because even if you're not sleeping, you get a quick nap in you look fine for an hour session.

So, and we as men are like, we're just, forgive me, full of shit sometimes. We are manipulators and we've learned the art of covering up the pain. We mask it well. We hide it from strangers and unfortunately, I loved ones in our family. So whenever I get the chance, I sent texts and my friends or I see the campaigns that just say, hey, ask a friend, is he okay? Because there's guaranteed he's going through something and if he tells you he's okay. Call him a liar. (Yes.) Check your boy.

Dr. Berry: Talk it. I love it and the reason why I love that because the article, right? I kind of started it all right? It broke down very typical relationships that men tend to have. Right? And then we've touched on, we've already actually touched on quite a few of them and they, they broken out to kind of four categories, right? They talked about the type of man who likes to like compartmentalize their relationship, right? So this is a person who treats his boys like boys, but treats his girl like this girls, right? So he is open. To be emotional to his girl, but not his boys. Right?

Like, so in your situation, where you're in the house with not only your friends but a family and you're like, alright, this is the position I'm putting you in this box, but I'm going to tell my girl all this other stuff here. Hopefully, I'm going to tell her all of these, my emotional support. And I think what was interesting is that they found that even a person who has that type of relationship does it really consider themselves emotional. Right? So even when they're talking in the sense of like, I'm just talking to my girl, I'm living my girl, know how she feels. Oh, she just kinda tells me her stuff. They don't even consider themselves the emotional type, even on the, for the women's side, which I thought was extremely interesting.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yeah. We can't even allow ourselves to consider that.

Dr. Berry: Wow. And then there's another type where we talk about a person who just has some difficulty and confining. Right? So this is a person who, they understand like, you know, I need to tell the person something that, let me just see where he's at. But because they have poor judgment, they don't realize like, oh, Berry not the type you tell that to in a way he's going to laugh at you and make fun of you and then they regress, right? (Yup, Yup, Yup.) And then they're like a closed shell and then it's even harder to get them to open up again.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Listen, I'll tell you another story, does that tell you another quick story. And some of my boys and I, we try to catch a football game every year, right? So whether we drive somewhere or fly somewhere, some years we get it in other years because of work, we can't. One year I was just, I was having some difficulties. My wife and I, we were like disagreeing on some stuff. We were disagreeing on some stuff and for whatever reason, I didn't feel like I could talk to her. I knew I could, but I don't know. We were just bumping heads. And this trip was coming up and I was so grateful for this trip (it's almost like an escape.) Oh, it gave me a way out for a few days and so I go to pick up my boy and then I think we were two or three in the car and we're driving and I'm sitting in the car and I said, man, they say, yo Jay, how are you doing?

I'm like man, you know what man, is kind of messed up lately. That's what I said. And I can't tell you how much energy it took me to just kind of slide that just to say that. Right? But then I said that and then the guys in the car, they didn't say anything. (Silence. Just like as if you never even said anything.) They didn't say anything and in my mind I was like, look at these mofos right here, here I am screaming for help and blah blah blah. In hindsight, I was talking to one of them, this was maybe last year or two years ago, and I said, yo, you remember that trip? You remember that time? And he was like, kind of. I was like yo man, I was going through it and he goes, what? What do you mean? I said, yeah, and I said this. And he goes, what? That's all you said? We had a good laugh about it, man. But I'm just like, oh my goodness, it is insane the things that we go through. All I had to say was, guys, I'm struggling. If I had said, guys, I'm struggling, they would have rallied around me. (Right.) But I hid that or I pretended.

Dr. Berry: I guess the better question is, would you have been able to get that type of insight where you would have realized that that was the code word you would have needed, right? Because it sounds like you said it, but not in the way they were willing to like, oh I can't, I'm not sure how to interpret this so I'm not going to go in that direction.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Well, here's the thing though. One, I mean these guys are not counselors. So, I've got to give them that much. And so I didn't necessarily communicate it in a way that they would've gotten it. I communicated it in a way that was as painless and easy for me to get it out. And sometimes the two just don't connect. Right? What's easy for me to say doesn't translate into someone understanding that I have some challenges going on. But we spent the whole weekend together, tailgating, drinking, eating and the whole time I'm worried about my relationship and my marriage and they didn't tell crap about that.

Dr. Berry: Wow. It's funny. (It's insane.) It's insane, it really is because that really is how a lot of our relationships are formed. And whether we, the ones are actually forming that way. Right? Because again, like you know like your boy said, he's like, well why didn't you just say this? Like I would've been ready to help but you didn't say.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: If nothing does, he would have been like yo dog, we got you. And you know what? That would have been all I needed at the time because again, I know they can't treat me. Yeah, I understand that. But I could have used a shoulder to lean on but I had to make the first move. Right? I had to be vulnerable in that sense. And that is something that we do not do well.

Dr. Berry: Do you think we are capable of doing it well? Because I know we've talked about women because they've been ingrained in society. Has provided and allowed them that space. Do you think we're actually even capable of being that type of person who knows to reach out when they see that social media posts like, hey, reach out to my strong friend. Is that something that we can even do?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Without a doubt, man. We are capable. Because again, as men, as people, we have the capacity to do so much. We have the emotional capacity, we have the mental capacity, we are capable beings. The challenges, we are often not in a community, in a setting that creates a space for that. If you don't grow up observing that, if you don't grow up seeing your father, your cousin, your brother surrounded by men who put a hand on him, who hug him, who embrace each other, men who will cry together. Then you don't do that. You don't do that. You know, if you don't witness it, because it's a skill, right?

We're talking about communication. We're talking about personal and interpersonal skills. It is a skill. The same way we can learn to communicate better with the women in our lives. We can definitely communicate better with the men and our friends and our buddies, guys who come to rely on in other capacities. This would just simply be just another form of support for us. We are totally, we are more than capable.

Dr. Berry: Okay. Alright. So for the men who are able to grow their skill and practice this skill and be actually proficient in doing it, what has been your experience as far as how has it affected the other parts of the relationship, just in general? What has been your experience for that type of guy who's able to reach out and say, hey, I need help or reach out to them and honestly be the person who someone reaches out to? What has been your experience in those types of men especially from a positive standpoint in regards to their other experiences and health and wealth and everything else?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: You know, it opens doors and windows you didn't know was there. Two things I said, you know, the two things that change your life - the books you read and the people you meet. And I've met some brothers who have totally changed my life. Whether it's business connections, whether it's learning about this new place I need to visit or whether it's about just have to find someone with a similar interest, you know? But guys who are able to say that, you know, listen, it sounds cheesy, you feel just a little bit freer. You feel free to move because you're less concerned about all that baggage and all that crap. You got to hide and you got to make sure nobody sees and at the same time you're hiding it, but you're trying to look like you just gliding on the water all the damn time. It allows for so much more to happen once you are able to just express that.

Once you are able to say, hey guys, hey, I'm not doing so hot right now. Or if you don't hear from me over the weekend, just a quick phone call. You know, just those little things. It totally changes people's, I know for me being able to do that, and again, it's not always easy. But with the guys in my life who I am able to do that with, the quality of my relationship with these guys, my quality of life and that's not an exaggeration, has dramatically improved.

Dr. Berry: I love it. So first of all, I really want to thank you for being able to really come up and kind of open up some of the eyes. And even if it's a right, just some of the mental locks that are there, especially for men. Obviously, it's Men's Health Month. They're going to get talked about prostate cancer and all those stuff to deal, right?

But the fact that we're not allowing that to do blow over that mental health is important too. Right? A relationship is important. The fact that we're not allowing that to happen. I definitely want to thank you for coming onto the show and really driving home that fact. That I'm not, I don't think anyone else could have, especially because again, and I'm dating myself like as we speak, you're currently doing a Dadfident series, right? On Your podcast which I've been listening to, especially the one with Mr. Tracy Martin. (Yeah.) Another discussion.

I mean the fact that you're able to kind of reach out and recognize and you're taking that mantle that it's difficult, right? I know it's difficult because it's difficult on the medical side, I love when, because I know the women are just easier, unfortunately. So I know when I got to do deal with men man, I got to put some work in it. But you're like headfirst. No, this is the group I want to go after.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: That's my people's man. That's my people. You know when you recognize somebody going through something that you went through and you learned a few things, so you learn one thing, you got one thing in your pocket and you say, yo bro, just do this. Like, don't even think about it. Do just do this thing. And I'm sure you in in your field as well, you said, yo, just do this one thing and you'll be fine. You know, like I feel like that's what I'm here for. I say, bro, just try this and you'll be fine. All this stuff that you got going on that you're struggling with. Trust me, trust me. (Yes.) Do these two things and you'll be good.

Dr. Berry: I love it. Before we let you go, I always want to really highlight the amazing guests that we have here and just really the amazing stuff that they do. So this I like to call is more of my promo type hour. I want you to tell Lunch and Learn community, obviously, you know, what do you get to offer, books, obviously you're everywhere, right? Like, again, if you listen to his bio, this guy's been everywhere. But you have anything you've got going on right now, whether it be courses, books, seminars, speaking engagement, what's going on in your world, obviously outside of this camping trip and that you've got to get off?

Dr. Jameson Mercier: The easiest way to find out about us, I'll put this in upfront is mercierwellness.com and so that's the website, everything Mercier. And so by Mercier, I'm talking myself and my wife, Herdyne. We have a podcast where we talk couple stuff, whether that's communication, finances, parenting, we're wrapping up season one and prepping for season two. And so that's a lot of fun. It's a lot more fun than we thought it would be.

Dr. Berry: Oh yes. And I can tell you Lunch and Learn community, me and my wife were on there. It was an amazing time. (Yes.) And I will make sure that link is in the show notes as well too. Amazing time. My wife and his wife know each other very well.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Of course, they do right? They're women. They just know. And even if they didn't know each other, they would know each other because that's what women do.

Dr. Berry: You know, so funny story especially that, I hate to cut you off. When your wife was actually reaching out to my wife, she even realizes like I was the husband. So she's like, oh can you get your husband, was like, oh, Mercier. She was like, who's the husband? Berry Pierre. Oh, Berry Pierre! Like it was totally oblivious. Right? Everything was all about my wife at that time.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: That's it. As I tell my wife, you're the connector here, you do it all. That's just how women are and we need women in our lives. So, Mercier Wellness. mercierwellness.com (That's right.) The name of the podcast is The Couple's Council. That's what it's called. And that's everywhere on iTunes, that's everywhere. Once you're on iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcast, we're there. We're getting ready to do, Herdyne and I were getting ready to do like a couple series, a couple's couple series. One about intimacy because this is also another area when it comes to sex and intimacy. Couples are not communicating about that.

Dr. Berry: Wow. And if you think you were going to communicate with anybody, it'd be your significant other.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Who you laying in bed with. Who you just living your life with day in and day out. And so recognizing this need where we were putting together a workshop about couples and intimacy. On the flip side, we're also gonna be releasing some new, starting up some new webinars, online webinars. People can log on and watch about different topics. So in addition to the podcast, we have those things that are dripping out and on the dad fit in front dead. You know, once I say this and I have to follow through with it and I almost don't want to go.

Dr. Berry: Let's go. He's on record right now. Let's go.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: I know, right? There's a book that semi-done right? It's called Dadfident: Black Fathers as Primary Caregivers. (Oh! I like that.) The idea that the black fathers don't do that. And that's a bald-faced lie, not all black and brown fathers are locked up or absent. So that's going to drop soon. And there's a couple of things that follow that. So we're busy around here and just trying to do some good work, man.

Dr. Berry: I love it. And before you go, I always ask this question, how is what you're doing really helping to empower the men, especially obviously the dads and whatever they're at in life, really improve their mental health and wellbeing and social relationships and everything above.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: We are empowered. Once you begin to see that it's possible, you know, seeing is believing. And as men, you know, listen, you could tell me what you want, but show me, show me if you can show me that it works, you might have a chance. And so not only do I preach this and I teach this, but I strive to be even a role model. I don't like that. But I understand why that word exists. You know, I started to be an example to say, hey, it's okay. You know, do this because I do it too. So I understand I'm not selling you something I don't know. And I recognize that seeing someone who looks like you, talks like you, eat with you, who lives your life, do these things that you've been told historically you cannot do. That's where the empowerment comes from.

Dr. Berry: I love it. Again, Lunch and Learn community members, definitely an amazing way to end Men's Health Month. But understanding that Men's Health Month is just a mouth. Like we gotta be about our health 24/7, 12 months out the year, right? So again Dr. Mercier, thank you for really blessing Lunch and Learn community, in a podcast with just such amazing introspection to what you have to deal with and really what men have to deal with and how to get better.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Listen, this has been awesome for me as well. Listen, I could talk this all day. I appreciate the invitation and anytime you want to get out there, man, get out in the woods. You let me know. We'd been saying we gotta Hook Up, man. (Yes.) We're in the same area.

Dr. Berry: We were probably like less than half an hour away. We were really in the same county. (There's no reason why we can't make it happen Dr. B.) All right. You know what? This is what we plan it right on the wax here, right? So I will be camping out. I'm putting it out. I'm going to camp. I'm going to go out and camp.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: There's gonna be footage of it too. (Yes.) That's fact once it's documented.

Dr. Berry: Yeah. Alright. You have a great day. Thank you again.

Dr. Jameson Mercier: Thank you.

Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Jennifer Miles-Thomas, she is a Diplomate of the American Board of Urology and is also board certified in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery. As we continue the push the message and focus on men's health I wouldn't be truthful to the audience if I didn't stress the importance of sexual health.

I talked about this before but as an outpatient clinical specialist, one of the top 2 reasons why men would come to see me for an appointment was either someone was dragging them to the office or erectile dysfunction complaints.

Sexual health refers to a state of well-being that lets a man fully participate in and enjoy sexual activity and there is a range of physical, psychological, interpersonal, and social factors that influence a man's sexual health. I talked about this before but as an outpatient clinical specialist, one of the top 2 reasons why men would come to see me for an appointment was either someone was dragging them to the office or erectile dysfunction complaints.

Dr. Jenn walks us through her decision to become a urologist, one of few African American women to hold the title, and we get into the importance of sexual health, opening up about erectile dysfunction and all of the different treatment options associated with the disease.

Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member.

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• Dr. Jennifer Website
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• Mayo Clinic Foundation
• American Urological Association

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Download Episode 113 Transcript

Episode 113 Transcript...

Introduction

Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com, as well as the CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, which helps you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. And this week we have a doozy, of course, this is men's health month. And I thought, no other topic, right? If I had to choose one topic that really hit home and hammer home when we talk about men and ways that we can work on getting them to see the doctor more, know the topic shot to the top of my mind as well as my read my mind than sexual health. And today we're going to be talking about those big two letters, ED - erectile dysfunction. And I thought it get, you know what, I do have some experience taking care of patients with ED, but who better to really educate the community and really expand the knowledge base of the Lunch and Learn community than urologists.

And I was very fortunate for this urologist coming on the show, this is Dr. Jennifer Miles-Thomas. She earned her medical degree from Northwestern University school of medicine. She cleared her undergrad degree in biology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She did a general surgery internship at John Hopkins and completed a urology residency as well as a separate fellowship and female urology and neurology at the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute. Dr. Jenn Miles-Thomas is a diplomat of the American Board of Urology and she is also a board certified and female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery. So again, I know that may seem like a mouthful, but you know, short and sweet Dr. Jenn is absolutely amazing and she is crazy smart, right? If you had to think about what does all that mean? That's probably just me as those who send in this podcast. She is absolutely brilliant and we're in for a treat.

And I could tell you during this interview if I wish you could see some of my facial expressions that I was making during the time when she was really explaining and educating me through Lunch and Learn community members. The different ways and treatment modalities associated with erectile dysfunction. So you guys are in for a treat. Remember like always, if you have not had a chance, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast, leave a five-star review and comment for the podcast as well as make sure you tell a friend, tell a friend, tell a friend to just share podcasts. Especially because I know someone has someone in a family member, especially male, right? Who has not seen a doctor in years. And I hate to say that you're partly to blame, but if someone's not seeing the doctor in years and years, seeing the doctor regularly, that's something that we, we need to address ASAP.

If someone is not going to a doctor, especially in male, right? And you're also not going to the doctor, is going to be very difficult for you to try to convince that man that he needs to go see a physician as well. So please take the time to listen, again, we're talking about sexual health, we talk about few things as well, especially associated with Dr. Jenn as far as what she does on the size, especially from a business standpoint. You guys are gonna want to stick around for that. So again, leave her five-star review. Let me know how you feel. And again, thank you for all that you do. You guys have a great and blessed day and let's get ready for another amazing episode here on the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry.

Episode

Dr. Berry: Alright, Lunch and Learn community again you just heard this amazing introduction from an expert that I definitely think is needed, right? Especially in this month of men's health month. And I have always joked in the past, but I really, I kind of say half-jokingly, a lot of times when I get men to come in my office to see me on an outpatient visit, right? This was this field, right? It was one of the main reasons why they would come, right? Like there are usually two reasons. One, family member drags him. Two, got some sexual issues, right? And of course, obviously I could talk from an internist standpoint, but I figured, you know, let's get an expert to come in and help educate us and you know, kind of get us mindset ready for the month and really show us, you know, why this is such an important topic, right? Even though we kind of say jokingly, right? This is actually an extremely important topic for men, right? Because again, like I said, it is one of the main reasons why I would get him to come see me in my office, right? So again, first of all, thank you for joining the Lunch and Learn community.

Dr. Jenn: Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Berry: So, Dr. Jenn, I told them about your amazing bio and just give the audience just, you know, let's say for some reason they skipped the introduction and they want to know, like, who's the person on the podcast this week? Right? Like, tell us something that may not be in your bio. And it says like, hey, you know, this is why I'm who I am.

Dr. Jenn: I live in a very interesting life. I am a urologist who is a female, who is African American. So there's only really a few of us across the country. (Yeah. That is so true.) Yeah. What else is interesting? I'm married with three children, so that's a little bit different. Sometimes it's hard to balance a high powered, stressful career and a family. And I've recently gotten into extreme sports, so I've been snowboarding and I just finished a triathlon this past weekend, so I'm kind of all out there. Dr. Berry: Oh Wow. That's okay, alright. I love it. Okay. That's how you started the show, right? This type of show about to go on. Right? (Exactly.) So Lunch and Learn community, we talked, you know, if you caught the most recent episode, if you caught the live streams, you know that June is men's health month and you know that I have made it a point to try to call out my male listeners and my male friends and family members to really stress the importance of health awareness and why we're dedicating a whole month for that? Cause that's always the big issue, right? Like why am I getting home on this specific topic? And why is men's health month so important? Because really it's killing us. Right? And I've talked about it before.

The top 10 leading causes in the world, men dominate those categories, right? Why? Because, you know, we're just not taking care of ourselves. So I wanted to get on Jenn to, again, in urology. And like I say, I don't know if you realize it like, especially when you think about urology is usually not one way you think about. But female urologist, right? So just the how like that subcategory namely African-American is, you know, this is a gem that was actually, you know, we're finding here to be able to kind of talk to her, which I'm definitely excited for. So Dr. Jenn, if you would just kind of give the Lunch and Learn little bit introduction on, you know what actually is the urology? Just so you can kind of get in the same mental ballpark of where we're at.

Dr. Jenn: Yeah. So it's interesting. So a urologist is a specialist who also a surgeon who works with the organs of the genital-urinary tract. So in English, what does that mean? That means it's a doctor. I know. So that means I'm a doctor who deals with problems of the kidney, the bladder, the testicles, the prostate, the penis, in men and women. So sometimes it's medical therapy and sometimes it's surgery. We do both. But those are the organs we take care of.

Dr. Berry: It is really kind of interesting. I'm an internist. For those for some reason is the first time catching a show, I'm an internist so I practice in the hospital. But what made you say, you know, urology is the field for me?

Dr. Jenn: So the real story is I thought I was going to be like the female version of Ben Carson. So I was going into med school, but I do neurosurgery, right? But sometimes that's very hard and I'm a big quality of life person and sometimes there are things you just can't fix. And after a couple of cases that were out of everyone's control emotionally, I didn't know if I could do that every day. Sometimes you'll see a 30-year-old who has a bleed and they'll never be the same and some things you can fix them some things you can't. And I said, well, I know I really want to focus on the quality of life. So one of my friends, of course, who's male was said, hey, you should do urology. And I was like, Oh yeah, that's a bunch of old men. Like, why would I wanna do urology?

This is real talk. Okay, why would I want to do that? Right. So I did a rotation like we do in medical school, and every time I went into the room, the wives would be, are you going into urology? Let me tell you about my problem. And I was like, well, what's going on here? Like why are these people asking me? And I didn't know at the time that there weren't very many female urologists. So probably when I started they were probably less than 5% in the country. Now it's like seven and a half percent. But I mean, I've been out for more than a decade. Yeah. There are not that many female urologists. There are quite a few residents who are coming through.

The classes are more 50-50 which is great. But still, I mean there was definitely a need. So I decided to go into it and I love it. I would never do anything different. This is who I am and what I needed to go into. Because urology, it's one of those fields where it's very technical, it's very surgical. But what you're talking about on a daily basis is what people don't want to talk about. It's what they're afraid to mention. They don't tell other people, they don't even tell their wives or their husbands really what's going on and you're able to give them back that quality of life. So for me, every day it's a gift.

Dr. Berry: I'm glad that you touched on that way because I can tell you I've had plenty appointments where the guy comes in for a very vague reason and you know right when I'm about to try to get out there and say "doc, doc before you leave". Once I know I get one of those, hey doc before you leave, I already know exactly the direction go. It's so taboo that even when they come to see, you know, their regular outpatient clinical doctor for your checkup, it's very tough for them to even come out and say it, which is mind-boggling. Right? Because you would think like, hey no, that issue. If I'm having problems with that area, right? Like I want to make sure like that's the first thing I'm putting down on paper. (Yes.) Nope. They'll say, no, I had a cold and that's why I'm here. I definitely, and I love that you get that even on both friends. Right? Because I would figure it with women, it'd be a little bit more open. So I interested to hear that. Even on both sides, some people are very secretive on, you know, letting them know like these are some of the problems I'm dealing with.

Dr. Jenn: Exactly. And I think it's a little bit different because in my world I just directly ask. So it's not that you have to wait and say, okay, as I'm walking in the door and kind of build up the courage, I'm just going to ask you how your erections are, how many times you get up at night, how are your erections? It's just regular, you know, it's a Tuesday. Why not?

Dr. Berry: I love it. That's okay. That's fine. Okay, we like that way. Direct, no sugarcoating. This is why I'm here for it. Clearly, this is why you see me now. Now especially for urologic standpoint is that a lot of the different reasons why someone may come to see you just, I obviously we're talking about sexual health. I like this is what are somebody like the common issues and complaints and that you may see it as like, oh, I'm coming to see you for this.

Dr. Jenn: Sure. So it's not just erectile dysfunction. A lot of times we'll see people for kidney stones, we'll see people for kidney tumors or bladder cancer, a lot of prostate cancer. Sometimes people will just have blood in their urine or bladder infections or they'll have like testicular pain or especially for women incontinence or leaking during the day and having to wear pads. So we see people for a variety of reasons.

Dr. Berry: And obviously, has definitely, something that from your logical standpoint, I think it's a very interesting, right? Because a lot of times I think when we think of surgical specialties, we tend to think that they all they do with surgery. Right? And very interesting to understand like, no, there's a lot of clinical and you know, even psychosocial if I would like to stretch it issues kind of centered around some of the stuff that people are coming to see you for.

Dr. Jenn: Exactly. Urology has one of those fields where you can operate and do very large major cases. You can do a lot of bread and butter, common cases. And then as you get older and closer to retirement, there are many things you can just do in the office. So it's one of those professions where you can do it throughout your career.

Dr. Berry: Obviously, we wanna, you know, we'll hit home because this is definitely, you know, the reason why someone's listening to at least this week's episode. Right. So let's talk about sexual health, right? And I know we alluded to it, but like how important is it, right? Especially from the men and women with obviously is men's health month, we'll give them a shy, we'll definitely bring you on. We need to talk about the women because I definitely don't want to make sure you eat them out. (Okay.) In that regards. But especially for men, like I like how important is sexual health for them, right? Like what is some of the like, oh, before I came to see you this house for a little bit after you take care of me. Like this is how I'm building now.

Dr. Jenn: So regardless of what's on the news where people say sexual health is very, very important. Why? Because it's part of you. I mean, we're all animals. We all have the same instincts and when something doesn't work or it's change, how do you feel about yourself, you don't feel the same. So it's not that people fall into depression, but they just, they've lost a part of their life, a part of their relationship that was very, very important to them. This is psychological. This is physical. A lot of times with sexual dysfunction, there may be other things medically going on at the same time. So sometimes it's like the red flag of, Hey, where else do we need to look? What else could be going on at the same time? So I'd say this is very important and I think people realize it's important, but there's such a taboo about talking about it. I mean, of course, our popular media has changed and sex is a lot more out there. But when people are talking about their own personal sexuality and health, it's still taboo.

Dr. Berry: Do you find the conversation a little bit more difficult because you are a female urologist when you're in your office or is it by the time they come they see you like they've already kind of cleared that hurdle?

Dr. Jenn: So it's funny. So I would say that it's generational. So the Millennials, they don't care. They just want their stuff fixed regardless. Any boundaries whatsoever, everything will tell me what they did, how they did it and what they want to do in the future. They don't really have an issue. The kind of middle age, I would say like 30 to 60 takes a few minutes just for going to comfortable. But then they realized my personality is like, Hey, this is, this is just what we do and we're going to just say it and I'm going to ask you questions and we're going to help fix the problem. They get very comfortable. Over 65 or 70 sometimes it takes them a little while because first of all, they're from a generation where they didn't really talk about sex the same way that current generations do, and sometimes they never were really educated about their body or what was normal, what's not normal, what things should look like, what they should feel like, what are other signs? So after probably one or two sessions, then, oh, they open up about everything and sometimes they'll bring their wives. So we all can have the same discussion and figure out what's going on and how we could help.

Dr. Berry: Okay, alright. Let's make it a group appointment.

Dr. Jenn: Yep. I have quite a few group appointments. It's okay.

Dr. Berry: So speaking of a normal, what's not normal, right? Let talk about, you know, EB - erectile dysfunction, right? For Lunch and Learn community who may have been living under a rock and you know, we haven't seen one of those thousand commercials. Right? What is it exactly?

Dr. Jenn: Okay. So the technical definition of ED or erectile dysfunction is, it's the ability to attain or maintain a penile erection sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance. So what does that mean? That means if you have difficulty either getting or keeping an erection that's good enough for you is what ED is. (Very subjective.) It is. So some people have don't have erections but don't care well, you know, that's perfectly fine. Other people, it takes them a little bit longer to ejaculate or they ejaculate too early and that's fine for them and that's fine. But anywhere in the middle, it's all based upon your own personal satisfaction.

Dr. Berry: It was interesting. Do you tend to find common reasons for why that may occur? Is there a couple of things I get they, everyone who follows in this category always seems to have ED or what does someone have some of the causes that you've seen kind of work that are associated with ED?

Dr. Jenn: Well, the biggest cause, especially in America is diabetes. (Okay. Alright.) Yeah. So diabetes, like I kind of explained it to people. Well you know what as it affects the small blood vessels and the small nerves and it's kind of interesting because if you relate it back and you say, you know how sometimes your fingertips will tangle or your toes will tangle or they're a go numb and you don't feel them.

That's because those little small blood vessels of the small nerves aren't getting what they need because the sugar control is out of control and it's damaging. The same thing with your penis. It basically has really small nerves and sometimes if things aren't going to work it's because your blood sugars have been too high. So you really have to work on getting your blood sugars under control in order to get back some of this function. And when you kind of make it like that analogy, it makes sense. It's something tiny and small and diabetes affects the tiny small blood vessels.

Dr. Berry: I love that, especially cause I know for Lunch and Learn community members like we've talked about diabetes and we've talked about all of the effects of diabetes. I even wrote a blog where I said I don't even wish diabetes on my worst enemy just because of all of the different things it's associated with. So now we know, you know, especially for as again, if you're diabetic and you're just blowing it off as just a sugar disease, now you can see, especially from a man, right? Cause we're talking to them in this men month, right? This is another reason why you should take care of yourself. Right? Because you don't want to have ED, you don't want ED to take care of your diabetes. So that's, okay. I love it.

Dr. Jenn: Exactly. Now, other things we have to think about too, we're learning and associating a lot more with heart disease. Because again, it's the small blood vessels that are feeding the penis. So if someone has early onset erectile dysfunction, like their thirties and forties we're also working with cardiologists to screen them and to make sure that they don't have plaques or cardiovascular disease because the small blood vessels are usually affected first.

Dr. Berry: Now is that something that comes up just while you're asking a lot of your questions, like, hey, do you have this, do you have that? Do you have this? And then it you just kind of seeing this correlation kind of growing?

Dr. Jenn: Yes, definitely. So of course when you're seeing a patient and you have their medical lists, do you know what medications they're on? You know their past medical history, but if someone who's never been in the system, and it's just coming to you for this, this is what we screen for. If you look at the major academic centers, most of them have men health clinics and it's usually an internist or urologist as well as a cardiologist because we're finding that these overall health syndromes, metabolic syndromes are being diagnosed with people first seeking care for erectile dysfunction.

Dr. Berry: Wow. Okay. Alright. So again, if you're listening, if you're paying attention, especially for, let's say you have a family member or friend who you know, is suffering from some of these other diseases and it's very difficult to get them to come to the doctor, right? This now you have another weight in, right? You don't want to, hey, you know, you'll take your blood pressure. This can also happen, right? Cause again, usually two reasons. Usually, a family member is forcing them to come to the doctor's office or they got some sexual issues, right? So again, this is another way that we can kind of like start pushing them in back into the doctor's office and getting them right. Again, they're aware of just everything that's kind of going on. Thank you. Thank you for that. (No problem.) So when they come to you and you know what you do your screening and they're checking all the boxes off for ED. Of course, I'm pretty sure by the time they've seen those thousands of commercials. Right? But what are some of the treatment options that are out there? One, what we'll talk about the common ones, the one that they may not even know about?

Dr. Jenn: Yes. First of all, of course, I have to say this disclaimer and this warning, everything that you see on TV or can order on the Internet isn't safe for you. (Yes. And then the gas station.) The gas station attendant does not know more than your doctor about your erectile dysfunction. That's all I got to say. But honestly, the FDA did a recent crackdown and urologist across the country got a notification. Some of these medications, I wouldn't say medications in quotes that are available over the internet that thought excellent results in work actually have controlled medications and them like generics and Viagra and Cialis and things like that. And so we get updates and kind of the names of over the counter medications that we need to look out and screen our patients for because yes, everyone knows the names of these brand new medications, but honestly, they're expensive. So people try to find other things that will work instead. But unfortunately, things that aren't controlled by the FDA or go through a rigorous screening process, things that are like natural types of products sometimes aren't always in your best interest to use because they do have active ingredients from drugs that are controlled and there are always potential side effects. You don't really know what you're taking. So I just want to put that warning out there. But the first day and for treatment option is to kind of divide and see what's your actual issue is. So I get the question all the time. Is it my testosterone? Do I need testosterone? (Yes. Let's talk about that.) Allow me to tell you about testosterone. Testosterone is important for men. So it's actually made by your testicles. So a signal from your brain goes down to your testicles and says, hey, we need more testosterone floating in your bloodstream.

When you have normal levels of testosterone, you have a libido. And what's libido? Libido is the desire to have sex or to engage in like sexual activity. Now if you give someone testosterone, you will increase their libido. But that does not mean that they'll get an erection. So you have, when you come in and say, I have erectile dysfunction, can I have testosterone? If your testosterone is low, just know that you may have a libido, but that doesn't always mean that your erection will change. Okay. So what do we do for actual erections? Well, the way I practice, we always go from least invasive to most invasive. I first want to make sure there's nothing medically wrong like there is not a tumor or something else that we can see what's going on that may be causing a problem. But if there's not in the first thing we can try as oral medication, and it's the ones that we know in medical lingo, we call them PDE five inhibitors.

And basically what happens is when you get an erection, your brain puts out a signal and the nerves basically send and this transmitter that says, hey, I need blood flow in. And as the cylinders fill in the penis, it cuts off the vein. So you don't draw that blood back out. So your penis just fills and then it stays that way until your brain says, oh, I'm done. And then it stops feeling and it slowly gets smaller as the blood drains back out. So that's actually how an erection work. Now the other thing that's important is an erection is different than orgasm or ejaculation. They are controlled by different nerves. So one set of nerves gives you the erection. The other set of nerves allows you to ejaculate during an orgasm. (So actually problems in different sections.) Exactly. (Okay.) And also you can have an orgasm without having an erection. So that's why we have like a real conversation when we have these things. Because I mean, how would you know that unless you actually asked? It's not like you can just Google it, right? Probably can, but I haven't tried to. It's best if you actually just talked to someone.

Dr. Berry: Lunch and Learn community, please talk personal. No Google.

Dr. Jenn: So after the medications, there are other things you can do too. So a lot of people know about the medications, some of them are more expensive. But the good news is a lot of generics are now in the market. So yes, there are much more affordable. But let's say you try to medications and they don't work or you don't feel good or right when you're taking them or they don't work well enough. The next one, there's actually a little insert, it looks like a little tablet that you can put at the tip of your penis and it has medication that causes the blood to flow into your penis. That's an option. (Oh Wow. Okay.) There is also an injection. So you know how there are when people have diabetes, there are these little pens that you can inject the insulin. Well, there's a little kind of a little injection that you can inject on the side of your penis and also we'll put medication directly into your penis and cause you to have an erection.

Dr. Berry: So let me stop you there. Right? (Okay, good.) When I had my diabetic patients, they're not get drilled and I gotta have that discussion where I'm saying, hey, you know what, the pills not working no more. You have to start injecting yourself and I know the face and the fight against once I have to go that right, like how does that conversation when you're telling the person like, hey those bills aren't the thing for you. We got to start injecting yourself and only if you had to start injecting directly in your penis. Right? Like what is that conversation like in the office?

Dr. Jenn: So I get the same response kind of wide eyes like oh that's not going to happen. And then the next question is does it work? And when I say yes it works and people are very happy that can do it, they set out at least try it. Now we don't just send somebody home with the needle to stick in their penis. Like that's not what we do. We actually have nurses. So you come in for an appointment and we have to dose the medication because we want you to be able to get an erection. But we don't want you to have it all day, right? So we have to make sure you get the right dose of medication. So we actually have, it's called ICI, we actually have nurses who would just come see you as an appointment, we'd give you a test dose, we'd make sure you get an adequate erection, and then we also make sure it goes down and usually we have your partner there with you because sometimes people mentally can't do it and sometimes their partners are able to do it for them. Or once they see it they say, oh, it's not as big of a deal as I thought it was going to be. It doesn't hurt as much. I had never even heard that I could do that. So it was a little bit weird. But then once you do it and then you get a great erection and it works, people are happy.

Dr. Berry: Okay. Now is there, especially, I'm tripping on this injection thing. Is there something like an office right that reverses it or is it just kind of like supposed to go down on its own over time?

Dr. Jenn: So it's supposed to go down on its own over time because the medications aren't long acting. They're shorter acting. (Okay.) That's why we do the first trials in the office because if it doesn't go down then we give you medication to make it go down. Now there's also another option that you can have and it's called a vacuum erection device and what it looks like kind of, look at him.

Dr. Berry: Lunch and Learn community you could see my face right now. I am learning just as long as relating, I'm like, okay. Alright. Again, I'm an internist, by this time, I'm referring them to the urologist. I don't. Okay, so now I'm processing right with you.

Dr. Jenn: Okay. So if vacuum erection device looks like a little cylinder, and what it does is at one end of the cylinder near the base of the penis, it has like a little, I don't know, think of it as like a little rubber band and you can basically like squeezed a little cylinder. And what happens is it's a vacuum, so it draws blood into your penis and then you roll down the little kind of rubber band on it and that rubber band prevents the blood from flowing back into your body. (Okay.) So this is something that's, it's a little bit less spontaneous, but still, there are no needles, there's no medication.

That's something natural and you can do it on your own and it does work. All the vacuum erection device. And then if none of that works, there are penile prostheses. So a prosthetic is a device that we surgically put inside of your penis. And usually what we do is we have a little pump that looks like a little squeeze pump that we put next to your testicles and all you have to do is squeeze that pump and then your penis would pump up because we actually have a reservoir with like saline or water in it that fills those little tubes. So if nothing else works, that's a guaranteed way to get an erection.

Dr. Berry: Now is the stepwise approach for this patient, right? Is that the end? I'm like, this didn't work, this didn't work, this didn't work. Alright, let's go to the prostheses. Or is it kind of patient dependent when you're kind of deciding like, all right, which route we're gonna go end up mean?

Dr. Jenn: So typically it step-by-step, but it's patient driven. So if I see a 30-year-old who's never tried a drug, we're gonna, I'm gonna let them know that there is the option for prosthesis, but that's not what's recommended. So you try to do minimal to get the benefit. And then if you fail or you're not willing to do it, you can move on. But a penile prosthesis, that's the end. That's what we have to offer. It does work, but you can't go back. So once you have the surgery that means that the medications won't work. Injections won't work. You have the surgery. So that's why it's the last thing that we do.

Dr. Berry: You mentioned 30-year-old because that gives pressure someone to my own community. It was like 30 because I know they're probably thinking this is a quote-unquote old man's disease. What some of the age ranges that you're seeing with patients with erectile dysfunction that even someone in Lunch and Learn community might be surprised by like, oh my God, they're that old dealing with this problem?

Dr. Jenn: Yeah. So from young in the thirties, twenties and thirties sometimes I've seen college kids who everything was fine and now situationally with the new girlfriend or whoever, I'm just not able to get an erection and we kind of work through what's going on because remember, this is all controlled by the brain. There's something going on in the brain that's prohibiting it from making that message to get an erection and there are actual sexual therapists. These aren't like woo on TV people. These are real people who say, okay, let's break it down.

What's actually going on in your life that is causing you to feel this way, is causing your brain not to secrete the right neurotransmitters for you to actually have an erection. And it does help. I've seen people who couldn't ejaculate, couldn't have orgasms. They meet with these therapists and they're like, my eyes were opened and things are all good now and it's real. And you just never thought you'd be talking about your sex life with someone, but you know what? It's quality of life. Either you can stay the way that you are or you can get it fixed and since there are people available to fix it, that's what you do and you move on. And you keep doing live in life.

Dr. Berry: Exactly. Oh, I love it and tell you I'm loving this conversation guys. I wish you get to see my face during some of the parts so you can understand. It's a learning process for it all. And it's real because these are real-life conversations that we're having on a day to day basis. Again, if you have to scare, some of your friends or family members to get it into the doctor's office, to get this taken care of, please do so. Right? Cause it, it, it needs to be done because this isn't something that, again, I know you see that thousands of commercials and I know we're going to ask Dr. Jenn where should someone go look, right? Cause I know where it, we're saying don't go to doctor Google. Right? We already know, Lunch and Learn community members you all googling when I tell you don't Google, you're going to Google anyway. Even when I tell you don't go to YouTube and watch that surgery beforehand, you're going to do it. They were like, we just know how you all do now. Is there any viable sources that you will say like, hey, if you got to like read up on this subject, like read this website, like is there anywhere that you would point on to?

Dr. Jenn: Yeah. So for urologists across the US we have, it's called the urology care foundation. So it's ways to educate patients on urologic conditions. So it's the legitimate source of information. It's not a company trying to sell you anything, it's just the real deal of this is what you need to do and it's written in plain, straight forward English and that would be urologyhealth.org. So Urology is U R O L O G Y health dot org. The other sites that are good and give straightforward information would be mayoclinic.org or webmd.com. Those are actually good, straightforward information and someone who wants a little bit more detail and are like, okay, I've read all that. It's kind of generic but I want more detail. Our Actual Association for Urologist has a great website too for under education and it'll show you what all the guidelines are.

So like if you're hearing this from one person, you're not sure, you can actually see what the published guidelines are and every few years, every like four or five years, we all get together and we revise them and say, this is what the data shows us, this is what standard of care is, this is what you should be offering, this is what you need to think about. And that is auanet.org and that's for the urology association and that's the standard of care. So those are ones that are just straightforward. You can get the real deal information with no bias and understand why this has happened.

Dr. Berry: And Lunch and Learn community members, just like always, all of these links, especially if you're driving, you're at work, wherever you're at listening to this, all these things will be in the show notes. So you know, I definitely want to make sure we're pointing you in the right direction. Because it's important to hear it because I know you guys, you guys are gonna want to follow up to make sure we not talking crazy. So we've got to point you to the right direction to make sure that doesn't occur as well. So again, I've done thank you for that, right. Because this is again, this has been very eye-opening, mind-blowing experience. I'm learning, I'm out to go to the website right when we're done, just don't make sure I can educate my patients, and of itself with such an important topic at hand, this is a portion of the podcast that I love, right?

Because you know, I bring a guest on to really educate our community. But I'm just kinda selfish, right? Cause I also bring them on, right? Cause I really want to promote them right. And you know, say what, how to cause most of the people I kind of see and follow them. I'm shadow following them one way or the other. So I like to see people who are sending out doing some stuff, right? Like, and whether it's medicine, not medicine, doing some stuff is always something that I love to see out of our physicians. So this I like to call it, it's like our promo, our promo appeared. Right? Dr. Jenn, obviously we know you're amazing urologists. Is there anything that you do that someone in Lunch and Learn community may be able to benefit from or any books or whatever? This is your time, right? You tell us what you got going on and anything going on and let us know how we can continue to support you.

Dr. Jenn: Well, I told you I'm a big quality of life person, right? So a lot of times what I see, especially with patients in medicine, is that a lot of times people don't search for answers because of money. Medicine is getting more and more expensive and the way that the insurance companies are moving, they're pushing more and more of that onto the patients. I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. Those insurance companies are really the wealthiest ones in the game. So they're going to determine what we do, (keep that money to themselves.) Exactly. Exactly. So what I do is I actually talk about money. I talk about money on Instagram and online too, and kind of help people figure out how to get a debt, how to build wealth, and how did it get their stuff together. Because if that's one less thing you have to worry about, think about your overall mental health.

If you're no longer stressed about having to pay bills if you're no longer stressed about, how am I going to rob Peter to pay Paul, things like that. I think I'm just a person who has a lot of tough conversations and sex and money are the two things that people don't want to talk about in public. (I love it.) So that's what I talk about for sure. So on Instagram now, it was kind of embarrassing because I do put some of my personal life out there on Instagram. So on Instagram, I'm doctor, which is Dr. Jenn, J. E. N. N. M. D. That's probably the easiest place to kind of follow me and kind of see what I do. I put some of the pictures of me out and about doing some of my extreme sports on there too. Dr. Berry: Then that's what I want to go see doing extreme sports. I want to see that.

Dr. Jenn: Yeah, well the snowboarding was interesting. I only did the before picture. Right. So it's all good. But yeah, that'd be the best way to follow me and my links to my website. It's drjennmd.com. All that stuff is on Instagram too, so you can kind of get a little picture of my life and how I really role.

Dr. Berry: I love it. So we need to talk to Dr. Jenn. Get our messages together and get our sexual health together. Get our money together. Let's get all that. Right? And it's 2019. We're halfway through the year. Definitely no time like the present especially for a men's health month and making sure we are getting all of our ducks in line, especially when it comes to sexual health and the importance of sexual health and the massive education lesson that we got today. Definitely thankful for Dr. Jenn. Thank you.

Dr. Jenn: Oh, you're so welcome. You're so very welcome.

Dr. Berry: Yes. So before I leave, how I was like answer this question. How is what you're doing helping to empower men especially when we talk about sexual health? What are you doing to really empower this and get them to make sure that they've taken better care to sexual health?

Dr. Jenn: I'm asking the questions and I'm educating them because as we know, knowledge is power. If you don't know, you'll get left behind. There are a lot of people out there that have resources that are getting things fixed and done. There's a lot of small little things you can do to change your overall quality of life, but if you don't know what to ask or don't know something is available, you're going to miss out. So I think my role is really to ask those hard questions and educate my patients. People I see, people I come in contact with, that's what my role is to educate.

Dr. Berry: I love it. And for those who may know, again Dr. Jenn obviously being a urologist, being African American and female, obviously there's you know, proponent of women's health that really goes into a lot of care to and of course, and I kind of pick and hold there on this episode, really talk about the men, but she will be, I'm going to beg her, we'll be coming back, right? Because I definitely wanted to hear about a lot of the women's health-related amongst sexual health and all the urological problems that I know they got. Right. Why? Because trust me, if you think I'm referring fast when it comes to men talking about sexual health and all the things you best believe once my women patients say like, hey Dr. Pierre, like this is happening. I'm having problems urinating. Anything that goes on in that area, is okay, alright. There you go. So we'll definitely make sure she comes on to really educate us on woman side as well too. So again Dr. Jenn, thank you for really taking the time out to educate Lunch and Learn community. I know this extremely informal cause I'm still like, okay, I'm still thinking about the pump. I was still thinking about it. And you have a great day. Thank you.

Dr. Jenn: Alright. Thank you so much.

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On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry I am here to start off men's health month with an episode on just what to expect during your annual wellness exams. Last week on the empower yourself for better health series, I talked about the biggest reasons why men are dying earlier is that we are just unaware of our health statuses.

Our lack of going to the doctor, being educated on what are our biggest killers has attributed to the majority (8/10) top 10 leading causes of death worldwide to all disproportinately affect men greater. In fact it would likely be 9/10 if not for the fact that Alzheimers usually increases with age but we are dying to soon to experience it.

The annual physical exam is the most appointment you can make when you see a doctor because it allows the doctors to essentially check you from head to toe on what is going on. It is also where we can discover the most problems so it is extremely important to make sure your friends and family members are listening to this episode so they know what to expect.

Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member.

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Soundcloud, iHeartRadio, Spotify

Sponsors:

• Lunch and Learn Community Online Store (code Empower10)
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• Dr. Pierre's Resources - These are some of the tools I use to become successful using social media

Links/Resources:

• Empower Yourself Series - Episode 65

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Download Episode 112 Transcript

Episode 112 Transcript...

Introduction

Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com, who start the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry as well as the CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. This week we bring you episode 112, the focuses on men and their wellness exams. And of course if you listen to this on the month of June, it is men's health month. And if you happen to catch my recent live series on Empower Yourself for Better Health where I essentially kind of lay out the fact that men are dying out here because they're not aware of their health and you know, I hope to put a charge in someone's battery or you know, someone's relative, spouse, somebody to like really push the mill, friends and family members that we have to go get their routine checkups.

And a few I want to check out drberrypierre.com/youtube where you can check out that most recent episode where I go through the top 10 causes for death in men and I really kind of lay out the law that says like, Hey, we really don't have any excuses to deal with the issues that we're dealing with now. So check if you have the chance. So again, today we're going to be talking about the wellness exam. The annual physical exam. Most people call it and a lot of times is probably the only way you can actually get your significant other, your brother, your father, your cousin. It's usually the only time you can get them to come into the doctor's office, right? Because again, a lot of times I don't see them very often but if I can almost see him one time, it's usually for their wellness exam.

So I want you to just take a little step back and take some tips on what to expect for the physical exam and you know, understand why we might like crunch a lot of things in there because sometimes, especially with our male patients, we understand that that the likelihood that they're going to come back at sometimes kind of low. So we want to take advantage of it when we got a chance. Before I want to go I do want to give a shout out to Dr. Coreos who is a friend in the social media space. She actually runs the hashtag somedocs. And reason why I love her is the fact that she is champion physicians to want to get on social media and really take advantage of all of this stuff that it offers.

You guys know for a long time I've really been championed that bill that says like, no, we have to get on social media. Our patients are on social media. And if you want to be respected, if you want to be accredited in your patient's eye. Again, not talking about accredited in the physician's eye where you know, you have a couple of journal articles and do some poster presentations and you may speak at a medical conference and two. Because for the most part, most of your patients don't care about that, right? One because they don't go to those conferences. They don't read those magazines so they don't even know.

But would they do knows that they check their Twitter, they checked their Instagram and they check their Facebook, they checked their YouTube and you're not there. So she's a big part of this promotion and you know, making it okay for your physicians to one get on social media. And another thing I love about her is that with her hashtags somedocs. If you have a blog posts and video posts, whatever, and you feed tag or she will actually retweet it and kind of share it out. So again, thank you Dr. Coreos for that. I'm definitely much appreciated it. Just wanted to make sure I gave her a nice one shout out because she's definitely helped the show grow for the Lunch and Learn community. So it definitely appreciative all our efforts. So getting back, we're talking about episode 112. We're gonna talk about men. We're talking about the annual wellness exam. And sit back for great episode and I'll see you guys later.

Episode

Dr. Berry: Alright guys. So this is episode 112. This is gonna be a solo episode. And it's funny because obviously if you've been rocking with the show for quite some time, you know and that we started out as a solo episode. This is something that we do and I think we do well. And when we made the change over this past season, season three, we really wanted to make a concerted effort to get the best of the best when it comes to topics of discussion, especially for Lunch and Learn community. And I was very fortunate enough to do that. We've got like two months, almost two months in a row of just amazing guests and like I said, definitely happy for all of their expertise and their support and you know, does the knowledge that they kicked over these past couple months. But I am back with a solo episode and it's funny because actually this episode was going to be a group episode as well, but I was unable to connect with this week's guest.

His schedule was busy. My schedules is busy so we were unable to connect. But we'll definitely make sure, you know, we get them onto the shows at some time. Right. We'll, it'll happen for sure. But of course this is June. We're talking about men's health and this episode we're talking about the wellness exam, the quote unquote the physical exam that a lot of times it's the only time I can see some of my male patients and it's something that a lot of times as a physician we kind of cherish and we really take advantage of. Because we understand that if I don't order these tests and I don't ask these questions, there's a chance I may not see this patient in front of me for another year. And for most of my patient specialized outpatient medicine, most of my patients, that's exactly was the case.

They were like, doc, I love you but I'm not coming to see you more than once a year. So get whatever you need to get, do whatever tests you to do, ask whatever question you need to ask while I'm here cause it ain't happen. And once I leave and I respected it and I love that. And that definitely took advantage. So what I want to do is first, you know, do you listened to the episode 65, right? Empower Yourself for Better Health Series where I talked about how the lack of awareness and our health has been killing us. And like us, I mean men, right? It's been absolutely killing us. And I talked about top 10 causes of death in that episode. So go ahead, check that out on the YouTube page. But when we stress all of these different factors here, a lot of these things can sometimes, and I hate to say it, but a lot of them could be avoided if they would just comfort a checkup and they would just come and see regularly.

And that's why we take so much advantage when we do have you in our office. Right? Because we don't know what's the next time you get to come see us. So if you listen, right? If you're able to get that at your male, father, your cousin, your relative, your friend, spouse, whatever. If you were able to get them to the office, right? Like what should they expect when they get there? Right? I think that's always a question at hand, right? It's like this unknown cloud of secrecy, right? Again, they don't go to the doctor often and a lot of times it's out of fear. Right? And a lot of times it's out of this superhuman attitude that men tend to have. Like, I'm not sick, I don't get sick. I'm okay. Like nothing's bothering me. I think one of the most important questions that we'd like to ask, especially in a hospital setting is do you have any medical history? Right? As usually our questions, right? And for my men, I'm usually keen on asking, okay, if you say you have no medical history, what is the last time he saw a doctor? Because it's very easy to have no medical history if you've been avoiding us for five to 10 years. Right? Like if you haven't seen a doctor, and again that five to 10 years, may sound crazy to some of my Lunch and Learn community members. But I know some people who have not seen a doctor in five to 10 years, like that's just the way they're rocking and you know, God bless them, right? God bless them that something's not clicking up on the inside that we don't know about. But let's say you know, it's been five, it's been 10 years, right? And they haven't seen the doctor.

And of course when you ask them to have any medical history, they say no cause they really don't because no one's ever told them. Right? But you are able to get this person into your office and you're able to get the quote unquote physical exam, right. Because first of all, let me tell you something. The physical exam, the actual physical part is, you know, the easiest part that probably takes like three to five minutes at most. But what's most important is all of the ancillary questions you're gonna ask your patient in front of you why you got in there, right? So why you got them there, right? And I always like to start head to toe, right? So first and foremost, for people who may not be familiar with the annual exams, right? The annual exam is the doctor's appointment that you go to, it's usually your longest doctor's appointment and not only is it a long the doctor's appointment, It usually has a whole bunch of labs are kind of associated with it, right?

So that's usually when your doctor orders lasts for just about everything. And we're going to talk about those labs later. But it's one of those ones where your doctors has to take advantage and get you, you know, while you're there. And they really liked it, you know, strike while it's hot. So they order every test as every question because they aren't sure if they're not going to see you again. Right? And for some people was honest, right? I used to take care of patients who are in their 19, 20, 21-year-old. Like I don't want to see you in my office more than once a year. Right? Cause there's really no reason, especially if you have no medical history, that you should be seeing me that often.

Not say that you can come to me if you, you know, you have a cold or you know, get sick or I'm not saying that. But they were just coming just for like a regular checkup and you have no medical history. You're not taking medications. Right. I don't expect you to be seen more often then, you know, once or twice a year. Right. Maybe you might see him every six months just to kind of keep them in the loop, but you're not seeing them any more than that. So you have your male, right? Let's just, we'll call the male Berry. Right? So Berry, you know, finally mustered up the courage and he makes the doctor's appointment, right? And I talked about this before. A lot of times what pushes Berry to making a doctor's appointment is they have a person like Maria screaming in their ear saying, hey, you need to go see the doctor and they finally do it.

Or there's something, some sexual dysfunction issues going on. And Berry's frustrated and he's like, no, I gotta go see a doctor. I got to take care of this. Right? I've seen a commercial, I can take a blue pill and I'm good. I need someone to prescribe a blue pill. So those are usually the top two reasons why, you know, men tend to go to the doctor's office, at least in my experience. So you know, you're able to get buried to come to the doctor's office and you know, he's in a waiting room and you know, he finally get stay room and now he's ready. So usually what tends to occur, especially in your annual wellness exam is. Your doctor usually does a head to toe approach, right? In terms of how am I going to assess this person, how am I going to see what's going on?

So usually, obviously from head, we start. I always like to check for vision issues, right? As men, because we're so machismo with it, right? Like wearing glasses is like this taboo thing that a lot of us don't like to do unless we absolutely have to do it. And for the most part there's a lot of diseases that are kind of manifesting with vision issues. So a lot of times when you're thinking, we're just asking about your vision and vision history is because we want to make sure that it may not be contributing and contributed to from another disease like high blood pressure or diabetes, which is very common. So we tend to ask for a vision issues. We want to make sure your eyes are checked. If you wear glasses, you want to make sure he got that done.

And we want to make sure you're eating well. And again, the eating well is goes along with the bowel habits because we know the older you get, the more likely you are to have these issues with bowel and bowel dysfunction. And if you're one of my 50 year old gentlemen, right, or 45, depending on your race, right? Uh, and really just kind of varies but just kinda in general, you know, its colonoscopy time, right? And again, it's one of those times where we want to make sure the plumbing is working all the way through and through. Because one of the top 10 leading causes of death for men is cancer, right? So colon cancer is something in screen, when you hit that age because it is something that we should be preventing as long as you get a regular checkup. So a colon cancer is a big one, right?

So again, I know I skipped down, but like, so we're checked the vision, now we're checking the heart, right? And the heart exam. Not only goals or just you know, just for listening, but you know, we're checking the blood pressure, we're checking your heart rate. Usually when you came in, right? We want to make sure that you don't have this underlying problem that could lead to disastrous effects that rock. Like I tell people all the time, blood pressure is one of those things that your body can deal with and deal with it a lot until it can't. And once it can't, now we're talking about stroke. Now we're talking about heart attack. Now we're talking about disease in the feet, right? Like you can't feel and you're foot, right? That's what happens when your blood pressure becomes such a problem that your body says all right, yeah I'm done. And so making sure that your blood pressure's fine, right? Because again, blood pressure is one of those things that you don't really feel symptoms from low blood pressure, especially when it's high, until it's a problem, right? If you're at the point when you're starting to feel symptoms because of blood pressures on the high side, you need to go see your doctor immediately, right? If you're listening to this and you know when your blood pressure is high, like you can feel it. That means I need to go to the doctor because you should not be feeling it. And if you're at the point where you're feeling when your blood pressure's high, that is a problem. So for heart, we're talking about blood pressure, we're talking about a heart rate.

I kind of move actually for men, right? And not important for women. Is that the prostate exam? And this is something that I think personally scares men a lot, not only from doing regular checkups, but because of the prostate exam and the digital administration of the endoscopic scope. I think a lot of men dish, you know, shy away from that whatsoever. And it's funny because I've had men who meet the criteria who meet the age. And I said, okay, all right, let me, uh, let me check your prostate, see how that's doing. And they get stage fright, right? Hey, it's so, it's such a terrifying thing for them, right? It's very weird. I in that instance, right. Especially when you know cancer's a leading cause of death, right? All we have to do is this, there's physical exam tests that we do in our office.

And of course it was sometimes was hanging out with blood work, right? But in our office, and you still refuse, you know? Yeah. I'm kind of weary of your decision making. So that's definitely something to think about, especially when we're doing about the abdominal pelvic exam is in the men at certain ages need to be checked for prostate, right. In large prostates. Now I've always said this a lot, that a patient will always tell you what's going on before you have to do any tests, right? So most of your patients, if they're going to talk about, you know, in large prostate, they're going to tell you urinary symptoms, complaints, they're gonna punch in that direction. That still doesn't mean you're not supposed to check but they will kind of point you in that direction to make sure you're going in the right way.

So talked about the eyes, we talked about the mouth, we talked about the heart, talk about the abdomen, the lungs as well. Lungs is a big one. I know a lot of you may have seen these COPD commercials. Again, COPD top 10 leading causes of death for men. And you may have seen COPD commercials where this random person is sitting by a lake and because of the COPD medication, now they can breathe again and they can go outside again. And that's all great and dandy, but they don't tell you that usually the patient has COPD because they were a smoker and they were smoking for five years, 10 years, 20 years or they always kind of skip that part, right? That's always tell my patients like you can't skip the fact that this person was smoking for 20 years. Right? So it's not surprising that they're going to have some lung issues. So making sure that your lungs are working well, make sure you're not getting shorter breath easy. That is something you want to be very forthcoming with your physician.

And for men, I could tell you what tends to happen with men is that we're so secretive, right, that we're so secretive to our family members, to our friends. So that's why we don't go to the doctor in the first place. But you would think once they get to the doctor's office, this, the veil of secrecy would leave? Nope. A lot of them are secret to the end. Like this to the point where you almost have to call them out like, hey, you know what? Maria sent me over here and said you were having issues with your bowels, but yours ain't they're not. Which is true, right? More often than not. If a person, if a male is sent over to the doctor's office by a female relative, a spouse, someone who says like you need to go to the doctor's office, a lot of times they'll, they'll be in the room with you and not because you know, they don't trust you. It's because they don't trust that their partner is actually going to tell them all of the problems. And that happens with men a lot.

We tried to internalize everything and you know, try not to seek help and you know, that's where problems definitely will arise because of it. So I think, so we've talked about heart, we talked about lung, I talked about abdominal pelvis. We talked about the eyes making sure eyes are check as well too. And we had Dr. Candrice who talked about skin cancer, a couple of shows back. So again, the importance of, making sure there's no weird moles or rash or anything that your, your family members kind of played off. We don't want that. So making sure, and again, your skin exams, your regular physician can definitely take care of that while they got you here and kind of move. And if you need something else then see to the dermatologist. So skin exams, definitely an important one as well.

And I think last but not the least, is it comes some of the blood testing. So what actually gets tested when we go to get our physical exam? So I could tell you this from a slew of tests, right? We don't have to mention the names because the names that are really important is what they're looking for. Some of our testing, right? We'll look for signs of inflammation, we'll look signs for infection. Some of our tests within that will check to see how stable is the person's blood count is? And blood count is a very important a number to think about because if you have this patient who's coming in and they're giving you symptoms concerning that, they may be bleeding somewhere. You want to make sure that blood count is good. And stable. So blood count is definitely something that thinks about. And then we check for your electrolytes. We check for potassium and we check for sodium, we check calcium, chloride. We check for all of these different things here because we want to make sure your electrolyte nutritional status is adequate because if not we have to take care of it.

And we'd take a look at the kidneys. Kidneys are important. You'll notice when I stop and mentioned the disease is because it probably hits the top 10 diseases that killed men every year. And kidney disease is definitely in that ball park, right? So kidney disease, and again, this is a routine test. Again, I know my patient Berry's not going to come for another year, so I got to make sure I get all of these tests done while I got him here. So again, we're checking for kidney function, we're checking for electrolytes, we're checking to make sure your blood counts stable, we're checking to make sure you know the signs of inflammation or infection. And then, moving all, we check for the big gun right? We talk about cholesterol. Cholesterol is a big one for us, right? So we want to check your cholesterol, make sure your cholesterol was doing well. And we had previous episodes where we talked about the thoughts of cholesterol and good and bad, and what medications to take. We're not going to do this here.

Moving forward, we checking for your diabetes? Diabetes is one of those things. It's one of those, and I wrote a blog post about this. It's a disease I probably not wish would not wish on my enemy, right? Because there's not a system that's not affected by diabetes. And I think what's happening, it's probably our fault, is that when we talk about diabetes, especially in the General Public Forum, a lot of people focus on the sugar aspect. Like, oh yes, my sugar is high, but they don't realize for us, right? When we hear your sugar's high, I hear, wow, you have concerns that you're going to have some vascular damage, right? Because diabetes is an extremely fast schuller disease, right? It affects the heart. It affects the legs, it affects obviously our kidneys, brain too. So every system that can be fed through the blood system, right, which is everything diabetes can effect, especially when it's uncontrolled. So we're checking for that. So again remember and the test that we run lets me know how well you did in the past three months. So not one of these things where I have to be concerned that this like oh maybe a little bit false or you just had some cheeseburger the next day. Like that's not going to necessarily change this testing here and may adjust your cholesterol testing but it's not going to change that you're testing for your diabetes or how severe your diabetes is.

I will sometimes check for thyroid as well cause I want to make sure, and again I'm, I'm kind of foreshadowing get right cause I want to make sure all of your hormones are regulated correctly cause we've already seen that when your hormones are not regulated correctly. Because thyroid is out of whack, it doesn't matter if your hormones get back into that normal rhythm. Your thyroid has to be a normal rhythm as well. So thyroid hormones, a big one as well that we checked quite often. We've checked the urinalysis. Your urinalysis is a big one. And it's big one because it's cheap, but it tells us so much information, right? Urinalysis can tell me if you had blood in your urine, right? You're now tell me if you have an infection. Urinalysis can tell me if you have a stone in your kidney. So all of these different things that your urinalysis does a great job and educating us on, and it's a cheap test as a quick test. Definitely, something that I always like to glean information from.

Last but not least, and this is the big one, right? Testosterone levels. Because I know, especially for my men, someone's gonna want to know about testosterone, right? They're gonna want to know about, you know, artificial mutation of testosterone when needed. So a testosterone levels. And usually, it's not, it doesn't come with the annual wellness exam. But if you're giving me complaints and concerns that sexual health may be affected. I'm going to do something about it, right? So I will check a testosterone level just to make sure all your hormones are kind of in line.

So that's really the big crux of the annual exam for my men and I really try to kinda hit home all of the big take-home parts to really to let you know that it's not a difficult thing to do. It's not a test you need to be scared of. And I think knowing the answer, right? Because I think a lot of times when we talk about disease processes, some people just don't want to know the answer. But when it comes to, you know, taking care of your health and taking care of your wellness, you have to know what the answer is, right? Because we have no choice because it's killing us, right? And I hate to be doom and gloom, but I really want to stress the point, especially when you have this month of June and you know, everyone's hype about men's health month, but I know what's next month comes around, people ain't going to be at hype anymore. So I want to like make sure I'm shouting it from the rooftops, the importance of getting our stuff together men.

So again, I want to thank everyone for listening with me - Dr. Berry. We're back with a solo episode like I missed you guys. But again, I want to thank you guys for all your support, has been absolutely phenomenal in this past season, this season, right? Season three that we're in as far as the support and effort and people downloading and people leaving five-star reviews. You now had a chance leave that five-star review for me and you guys have a great and blessed day. I'm going to see you guys next week and next week we do have a special guest, right? So you don't have to worry about hearing my voice again solo. Next week we do have a special guest. Because like I said, we like special guests. You guys have a great and blessed day.

Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have a return guest from episode 93, Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie. She is America's Favorite Obesity Doctor and she comes back for a second time to help our busy women especially moms in the Lunch and Learn Community just how to fit health and fitness into their busy schedule.

This episode should serve as the busy mom's guide to get over the hump of losing weight and staying on their fitness journey. The conversation follows the trend of our initial one where we focus on many of the obstacles that these busy women face when dealing with trying to juggle working, taking care of families and having little time to actually take care of themselves.

Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member.

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Soundcloud, iHeartRadio, Spotify

Sponsors:

• Lunch and Learn Community Online Store (code Empower10)
• Pierre Medical Consulting (If you are looking to expand your social reach and make your process automated then Pierre Medical Consulting is for you)
• Dr. Pierre's Resources - These are some of the tools I use to become successful using social media

Links/Resources:

• Official website – www.drsylviagbollie.com
• Twitter – www.twitter.com/fittmd
• Facebook – www.facebook.com/fittmd
• Instagram – www.instagram.com/fittmd

Social Links:

• Join the lunch and learn community – https://www.drberrypierre.com/joinlunchlearnpod
• Follow the podcast on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/lunchlearnpod
• Follow the podcast on twitter – http://www.twitter.com/lunchlearnpod – use the hashtag #LunchLearnPod if you have any questions, comments or requests for the podcast
• For More Episodes of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry Podcasts https://www.drberrypierre.com/lunchlearnpodcast/

If you are looking to help the show out

• Leave a Five Star Review on Apple Podcast because your ratings and reviews are what is going to make this show so much better
• Share a screenshot of the podcast episode on all of your favorite social media outlets & tag me or add the hashtag.#lunchlearnpod

Download Episode 111 Transcript

Episode 111 Transcript..

Introduction

Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com, as well as the host of Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Bring you another amazing episode with Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie who is, if you remember that name is actually a repeat guest of ours. I was very fortunate enough to get her back on a second time because I know she's crazy busy, but I was able to get it back because I had a lot of feedback from her previous episode, which was episode 93. If you're unfamiliar or if you just a new subscriber since the last time she was on. And she talked about obesity, obesity-related medicine, and gave us a lot of tips on how to kind of get us and keep us on our new year's resolutions, especially because a lot of them tend to fall under the wanting to lose weight category.

So we got her back and again, I got a question from Lunch and Learn community. Well, Dr. Berry, I'm a busy mom. I work, I take care of the kids, I take care of my family. I really don't have the time to be healthy. Like what can I do? And that's where, you know what I said, I could've given her some tips, right? I could have given her some tips. They probably wouldn't have been the best. But I say good. If I'm going to talk about weight loss tips and especially for my busy moms out there, why not bring America's obesity specialist to talk to us, to educate us, to really get us on the right path. So this episode is going to be for the busy moms out there who have way too many responsibilities, way too many things to do and unfortunately that happens, right?

And we all know is that the health tends to fall by the wayside, right? Like usually you have to take care of everyone's personal wellbeing and housing and work and everything else tend to happen. And unfortunately our health usually suffers, right? Usually is the case in this standpoint here. So we have Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie to really educate our busy moms and gives tips on how to stay on our weight journey. Right? And we're going to talk about weight journey a lot because I think, and I loved it because a lot of times we think about weight loss at this point A to point B type of thing. But really what she talks about, she says, no, this is a lifestyle change that you have to like go for the rest of your life, right? So even when you get to that goal weight, you have to understand like you have to keep on going.

That's just the second part, right? We broke it down in parts. Just a second part, just getting to the weight. So quick little bio again, if you had not checked out episode 93 please go back and check out episode 93, so drberrypierre.com/llp093 because it was an amazing guest, especially it was an amazing topic. And again, we're hitting home today with the busy moms. So Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie to just to kind of give a little quick bio from her. She's a board-certified internal medicine physician. She's an obesity medicine specialist who helps inspire optimal health through honesty and hope. She lost 40 pounds, overcoming emotional eating and physical inactivity. Now she has both personal as well as professional expertise in weight loss as well as weight maintenance. As a working mom herself, a wife and self-professed foodie.

She keenly understands the limitations that prevent busy people from achieving their health goals. Dr. Bollie is passionate about helping busy people, especially working women, obtain and maintain a happy and healthy weight. At the end we're going to give you her links to follow her cause she's pretty much on all social media is just like I am. Even in the show notes, you'll have a chance to find where she's at because again, this is a person that you need to follow. She does actually weekly teachings on health and weight loss and again absolutely amazing person. Like I said, I was very fortunate enough to get here a second time around. So again, if you have not had a chance, remember, subscribe to the podcast, leave a five-star review and let her know how great she did on the podcast. Because I tell you, she blew it out of the water. You guys have a great day.

Episode

Dr. Berry: Alright, Lunch and Learn community, we have a repeat guest on today's episode and definitely one that was, you know, really requested that you guys love for an episode. You know, Dr. Bollie and you know, she's come back, right. You know, I was able to get her to come back for at least one more time. We haven't annoyed it too much and she really going to be talking about the busy mom. Right? And I know I have a lot of Lunch and Learn community listeners who ran into that issue of having to balance their health, their kids' well-being, they spouse well-being and everything, job, everything else. And unfortunately, that health tends to fall at the wayside. So ladies and gentlemen, please again a quick little introduction again and thank you for Dr. Bollie for coming back to the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Berry. You know, I love being here. You're so wonderful. So thank you for having the back and forth. And I love the lunch and learn community and just the fact that you're spreading this information because it's so important and the diversity and the topics that you're sharing also. So thank you for having me back.

Dr. Berry: So for those who, maybe, someone, you know, got a lot of listeners since the last time we talked, right? So just give them a little bit of introduction of who you are. You know, why you're so important and you know why, you know, I was again, fortunate enough to kind of get you for a second time around?

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Oh, awesome. Okay. Well, so I am Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie. I'm board certified in internal medicine and obesity medicine, but I probably should back because you know, we all have this program spill that we do. But I am a wife. I'm a mom, I'm a doctor, I'm a runner, I'm a foodie. So I have many hats and, and, but I'm passionate about helping busy people, especially work for women, obtain and maintain our happy, healthy weight through practical lifestyle interventions. And this for me all kind of started with my own weight loss journey, which began in 2014 late 2014 but I count 2015 as my actual start. That was when I did my first 10 K at trained up to and did it. So I've just sold it five years on my fitness and weight loss journey and I don't even like calling it a weight loss journey and we'll talk about that my weight journey.

So I have personal and professional experience with it. I am. When I started this journey, it was about a year and a half after having my first child, my son. For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook or on social media, I have a second child now. I'm five months postpartum. But with my first child, that was when this, what I'm going to talk about today, really hit home for me. You know, I was getting used to being a new mom. I was just finishing up my residency. I was a chief resident of transitioning. So chief resident, which for us is an extra fourth year. And also I'm an attending, so becoming like stepping into my new, into my career. And then I was also just getting used to everything. And so I put everything ahead of me and my health and my weight, even though I was preaching health to other people. Right?

So I was 40 pounds overweight at the time my son was one and I kind of held onto that for about a year and a half. So finally it started to impact the way I was counseling patients. I would be like what did you eat for lunch? And then I would hear in my own head, what did you eat for lunch? So exercise, like I would ask the patient, did you exercise it here? I hear the voice, did you exercise? And so I started to feel very convicted about what I was doing. So this, for that reason I started to focus on my own health and prioritize in it. And I started by training for that race of which is the monument, 10k, a popular race here in Richmond, Virginia where I live. And then from then just kept building and building and growing. But it's not easy, you know. So because of that, I know, as I said, it's hard to fit in fitness. It's challenging to make those healthy food choices, especially when you're stress, especially when you're busy. So I know that the journey has to be individualized in some ways. Like we can share in a community in terms of encouraging each other. And there are some general things that theme to it that we can do, but you really have to address your own individual journey to try to be able to fit this in.

Dr. Berry: Interesting. We should definitely touch on a few parts. One, I want to highlight that she said this, this is one of her first 10 k's which means she's run multiple, which is absolutely amazing. And you talk about the weight journey. I take care of a lot of patients and now I do inpatient medicine. So I tend to see a lot of the end state stuff when I did inpatient medicine, outpatient medicine, you know. It was always that start right where I used to see a lot of at the beginning. And I think they were mentally at the point where they're saying doc like I'm ready to lose some weight, but I didn't necessarily know how. And I think a lot of times it was that population of those moms, those women who were busy lifting. Like again, it is not like they weren't doing anything.

Life was just happening all around them and whether it be work, whether it be school or whether taking care of kids, whether be taken care of their family. Unfortunately, the health guy left on the back burner. So when you talk about your personal weight journey, was it like, were those patients the big like kind of step that's a, you know what I gotta do something because I like how can I keep looking at my patients over and over and over again and tell them exactly what they need to do to lose weight, but I'm not personally following it myself.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Definitely. I mean, because, you know, as I've mentioned, I think in the last podcast. There's a study out there that shows that physicians who are overweight or have obesity are less likely to counsel their patients on it. And I think for me personally, I started to feel that I understand that because I almost felt like a hypocrite, you know, talking to people about what they were doing and I was not doing it and live in it. So once I noticed that it was starting to, it had gotten to the point that I felt it was starting to impact the way I was able to deliver care, especially to a set population of patients that really needed the care. Then I said, okay, it's time for me to reevaluate it. And I think for me personally, how and why it was helpful, it really improved by empathy, right? Because there's something different. And we all know this, we were both parents. So you know, there's different from book learning. Like there's these we would say by the book, but as a parent, but once you have your own child, you're like, and you see the nuances, oh, maybe I can't do that. Maybe an extra 30 minutes of screen time is okay today.

Yeah, that's it. That's just what it boils down to. So that's what I think happened. And so what I realized that I had to do was to number one, stop just telling people what to do and think about why and so, and think about what I was doing in that let me be able to help to empathize and to better help people. So the first step really was as stop beating myself up and being very negative because you know, I was sending these lots of the goals that weren't really attainable for a person who had eight then a 16-month-old child and also had a busy professional husband and had a lot and was working full time. So maybe really saying that I need to work out 30 minutes every day, wasn't going to happen initially in the beginning or saying that I should eat, you know, go from drinking soda to drink and water every day. That was going to be challenging because you've got to get acclimated to that decrease in and that's on many levels, not just psychologically, but also physiologically. Your body just used to a certain level of sweetness and you got to tone it down so you're able to tolerate the regular water - clean water. I get used to drinking water.

Dr. Berry: I get used to, sometimes I look at juice now and it looks so good. Get Back. (Yeah.) Now the goals were, were there goals that you know we're kind of placed upon you? Like people thought like, well, you should be able to do 30 minutes every day. You should just cold turkey drink juice. Was those like just kind of like outside goals, kind of waited upon you? Where those kinds of like internalized in yourself and then you kind of realize this is not a successful route if I continue to try to go this way?

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Yeah, well I think, you know, we have guidelines right? As, as physicians and a dietician's health community, so their guidelines set, right? So the American Heart Association recommends that we get 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. So that's two and a half hours of exercise per week and moderate being that you can move without sinking. So like while you're jogging, while you're walking, you're moving fast enough that you're not sinking or an hour and a half of vigorous exercise, which is moving fast and if we can't talk while you exercise. So that's the American heart association guidelines. So that, of course, is what I would strive for because that's when I'm counseling my patients on it. Now the dietary guidelines are controversial for people. There are people you know who don't believe in me, don't believe in dairy, things like that. Personally, I feel like the literature really supports more of a Mediterranean diet and as close to the plant-based as you can be, which is hard because I do love my chicken.

I love chicken. So unapologetically I'll try it. So, but you know, so my goal was to really minimize, I don't eat red meat or pork since I was since age 15 so that wasn't hard for me. But kind of back on like chicken, fried foods, things like that, and trying to eat as clean as possible, which is minimizing process foods. So those were my goals based on all the data and all the things that I've seen about eating a healthy diet. So that, and for me, the big one was sugar like and is still cutting down on sugar because when I'm stressed I tend to eat a lot of sugar. And that's again very physiological thing because those high levels of cortisol make you want to eat more sugar.

Dr. Berry: No stress like a mom. No, no, no. No stress.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So that's where I feel a lot of pressure came from because I knew the guidelines, I know what I'm supposed to do, but you know, there's a gap between what I'm doing and what I need to do.

Dr. Berry: So when you were making the mental transition even before you made the leap, like physically as far as stopping doing things and you know, working out more, what was the support system like? Because I feel when I talked to the moms out there, a lot of times they feel like it's on their own. And they feel because it's on their own, that's what makes it more difficult than not to even start and if they do start to continue.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. Well, I'm glad you talked about it. So let me characterize this. What would I call the person then? Then we'll get the "not answer that question because I do want to talk about what I called this busy woman syndrome". That's what I call it syndrome. Or for those people who are in the church also known as Martha Syndrome. So people who are familiar with the Bible and things like that. So if you are not familiar with the Bible, I'll tell you real quick. So it's a story about two sisters, Mary and Martha and Jesus comes to visit and this is paraphrased of course. Jesus comes to visit their house and you know, Martha is all busy. She's in the kitchen, she's cooking, she's cleaning up their house, she's just all over the place busy.

Really what I would be doing. Mary meanwhile is the chill sister. She's chilling, seat by the Jesus at his feet, just like enjoying the moment. And Martha comes out. It just like I could see myself doing it. It's like, Hey Jesus, like tell Mary to get some business about herself. Tell her to come and help me. Let's get ready. Do something. And instead of reprimanding Mary as you would expect, Jesus actually says, Martha, you are concerned about many things. Meaning you got way too much going on. Mary has chosen the most important thing, which is to just be present at the moment, to enjoy the moment and to spend time meaningfully with people she loves. So I think this is a perfect picture of kind of how we are. We put a lot on ourselves and some of it, yes it's true, we must do it. I mean we have to work, have to cook, like all these things. But there's a time and a place where we can actually, where we feel like we need to be doing something where we can take a break and sit down and be present in the moment. And I think when it comes to health, we have to carve out those moments where we can sit and be present and say, I'm going to prioritize my health. Whether that moment is eating something healthy or making a healthier choice or is actually going out and exercising and doing something for a few minutes for ourselves.

Dr. Berry: More than Mary, less than Martha. I love it.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So now, you asked the question on what was the support system like? So that's why I kind of bring out too. For me, I'm a person of faith. So I think a lot of times when we think about like our health journey or weight journey in general, and again getting back to this concept of weight be, and we can talk about Dr. Berry at the end, may be about, it'll be in a weight journey and not just a weight loss journey because too often we focus on that weight loss. And once we get to that weight loss is like, Oh, I lost the weight and let me go back to eat and what I eat and you know, and you regain all the weight and you're back on another weight loss journey. So I really want to shift our mindset to it being a weight journey where that includes the weight loss, the weight maintenance and everything where we're doing it.

So for the weight journey, it's so important not to do it in a vacuum. For me, I followed the philosophy of faith, family, friends, fitness, and food. So I like alliteration. So all those F's. So, but faith is the basis of thinking about it. You know, really for me Biblically, what does the Bible say about health and taking care of our bodies and being able to stay healthy and using that as a support in that some people who are a part of a faith community, maybe your church or synagogue or your mosque, it has some resources that you can use to build into that. So if faith is important to you, don't exclude that from the journey of your fitness journey. So that's one of the things. So it's creating support with what we already have versus looking at it.

Now, and that's, you know, probably more of the touchy-feely time. For me on my fitness journey, I would say friends were important. I have a very good friend and she to me was the key to unlocking my weight loss journey. And to be perfectly honest, because I am such a perfectionist, I can be very hard on myself. So you know, I'm like, oh, I didn't make that 30 minutes. I didn't get two and a half hours, this and this and that. And so one day I was talking to her about how frustrated I was about losing weight and my fitness journey and she just stopped me and she was like, be nice to Sylvia. I like her about her saying that just like it hit me. I'm like, yeah be nice. Because when you're kind to yourself, you're not holding or nice to yourself or to anyone.

Be nice. Because most women were very caring and will help people. We're not going to be, you know, a kid comes to you and like, you know, mom, I didn't, I wasn't able to get a hundred on my test this week. You're going to be like, that's okay. You got an 89 and it's all right. You'll try harder next time. Let's figure out what we can do to get those grades up or to see why you miss those points. So that same kind of kindness that we would extend to other people, we have to extend to ourselves. So, okay, this week I wasn't able to make it in two and a half hours, but let me look back and realistically think why that was, oh my goodness. You know, it was close to the month. I had to get all those charts and I had to submit on my work at work.

There was a lot going on, that was an obstacle. It's not an excuse. It's an obstacle to me getting this work done. So it took me getting that workout in, all right, but now that identified the obstacles, what could I have possibly done to do and instead to get that workout in instead, or what? How could I have set myself up to make better food choices? Okay. I know that it was a week that was filled with PTA meetings, soccer practices, football practices, dance practice, whatever. And so realistically me thinking that I was going to cook dinner every night, didn't it make sense? But maybe instead of us rolling up to a fast food place, I could've just like meal prep and make like chicken. It used some big chicken or some enough food for a day or it could have gone to a healthy place and gotten a family meal pack that we could have actually had two days of leftovers from.

So those are the kinds of choices when you're being kind to yourself. So I talked about faith, I talked about family, talked about friends first and then family. So the family is a tricky one, right? (Let's talk about, yes.) Because sometimes family can actually, it can help or hinder on the weight loss, on the weight journey. Because let's say, and especially for moms, they're like, I hear this all the time, my kids don't like eating that or my husband does not like eating that. And then, and that's true, there's data to support that, right? Actually, for married couples, that data was an in married couples and I'm probably could work for common law couples too, but for married couples that you're more likely to adhere to your diet plan or your healthy eating plan if your spouse is involved with you. And also in the first year, an interesting fact in the first year of marriage, you more likely to gain 50 pounds.

So there's a newlywed 50 too for women. Because we start heated up to that. So you know, so having that your partner, your spouse involved with you is so key because it will help. But what do you do if they're not involved? Like for me, I love my husband. He supports me as much as he can, but he has been blessed with a great metabolism. He got a six pack from drinking a six pack of coke. Like he just gets, it just comes naturally. He doesn't have to work out. So he can't really be on this journey with me because he can't get it. So he just eats what he wants to be. Right. I'll ask him, I'm like, can you go get me some fruit bars and then wanting, the one time I asked him for that and then he came back with like a box of Gelato and I'm like, ah, the nutritional content of this is very different like you're not helping me at all. He was like, oh, it's just ice cream. Yeah.

Dr. Berry: That's usually what I get. I usually get like, well, my kids don't eat that way. My family members don't eat that way. Maybe I don't have time to cook two different meals for two different groups of people.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. Well, what I'll say is don't make it hard for yourself. And that's what I did. So number one, I shifted my mindset rather than say, you know, oh, I don't have them and he's not helping me, or my kids don't want this. I said, okay, well this is another form of mommy me time. I get to eat, mommy gets to eat what she wants to eat, they can eat whatever they want, but this is my me time. This is something I'm doing just for me. I'm going to eat this salad for me. I'm going to eat this kale for me. And that's how it's for me. You know, I'm buying my own personal grocery. Actually, now that are kind of territorial. They're like actually had guests recently and they were eating me, I'm special low carb bread and I was. (The guest bread is over there.) Why are you eating my bread? So yes it does.

But that's how I changed my mindset about it. To make it easy on myself, I keep the protein the same, but I kept the carb so we can eat the same protein. So be it chicken, be it turkey, be it fish, I eating it. That's me. You know what I mean? They're not even that. But I keep the protein the same for the most part. And then I keep the vegetables the same. I'm lucky to do, especially my son loves all vegetables, so I keep the vegetables same, but I cut the carb or switch to the carb about. So I'm in a family of big rice eaters, they like a lot of rice. Try to get them to eat brown rice is hard. They like white rice.

Dr. Berry: The brown rice talk over here. It doesn't even, I know exactly what that white rice. Family is life. I know that life is life.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So they're not trying to have that. Sometimes if I get the right brand, like Uncle Ben's friend of brown rice. I can interchange it out, but it has to be the first day, you know, its very thing. So anyway, that being said, I've changed the carb about, so I just do a half a plate of vegetables for myself or I might do cauliflower rice for myself and then they can eat that. And that makes it very easy because then I, or I've put a salad, you know, then that way I'm not fixing to different meals. We're sharing the same protein. We're sharing the same vegetable is only a quick, simple thing that I have to do for myself.

Dr. Berry: I love how you talked about having to make them the mindset shift first before the action occurred. Whatever that action is. Cause I think that you know, really slows a lot of moms down. They may know, they may read all that they needed to read and they see all the videos needed to do. And they have that first step really doesn't happen and nothing subsequently is successful.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Well, I have been, you know, practicing now in the past five years. I've seen, I've had what, 15,000 plus patient encounters and I started obesity. Yeah, I know, right? They check this data and I'm a nerd, y'all know, I know this data. So, and then I, you know, and then I started weight loss doing, you know, 40% weight loss exclusively in 2017 and late 2016. So I've seen lots of patients, right. And one of them, and so I can, but I will say when it comes to weight loss, weight management, 90% of it is the mind. It's the mind. Because when you, you know, the old song says free your mind and the rest will follow. Once you make that mind shift, then these things that seemed hard, that seems like it's that were quote-unquote excuses your obstacles, you find a way around them.

You find a solution for them but it, so I really, I'm a big proponent, a big advocate of the mind. I recently was working with someone and they wanted me to just like, give them formula. Just give me some exercises, just give me some things and it realistically you don't need me to do that. There are billions of exercises you just go on YouTube. I love to search for it and find new people to do that. There are billions of diets and the data supports the best diet for you is the one that works right? The one that you can stick to. So it really comes down to me helping you change your mindset. And I don't do it alone. So when we talk about the team, the other part of your team is figuring out what those mindsets are. For a lot of my patients that they will end up going to see a therapist or a psychologist because there is deeper than the weight. I always say weight is not just a number, it's a story. There's a story behind what got that person to that weight. And once you unlock that story and figure it out, then both as the physician, both as the clinician but also as them for themselves, then we can figure it out. So sometimes we, they end up needing a psychologist on the team and not just the provider, a physician on their team to help because there's a lot of comorbidities like depression, anxiety, trauma, PTSD. A lot of that is tied into weight as well.

Dr. Berry: I know you said you were taking out they were comorbidities that are there. (I know.) Obesity-related. Because I remember the bill. Nope, that was it. So now that you have a team, right? You have your mindset has shifted, right? I'm a busy mom. Right? Like I have mentally made that leap. Right. Then I'm ready. Right. What do I do next? How do I start? And I guess is that, would you say that's the start of their weight journey? Like when does that actually begin?

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Yeah, I would say your weight journey starts, once you decide and you make that change that you're ready to do it. No one can force you. No one can talk to you about it. You know, it's almost, I think last time we talked about I make it analogous for those who are in medicine or in healthcare to smoking cessation. Like when you stop smoking, quitting smoking, right? If you've ever been with this smoke grip, to get them to actually quit smoking as a matter what you put on the cigarette pet, where you put on the team, it doesn't matter. So we rate it. We say you're either pre contemplated, meaning you're not even thinking about it. So don't even talk to you, contemplating, you're thinking about it. Got some idea, but you're not ready for action yet. Grant action based and then you're in maintenance and then relapse.

And so I treat obesity just like that, which is model for change. That's the formal name of it. So, so when you now are conscious that you've really wanted to change and you're ready to, so you're in the contemplation stage, that's step two. So now you're ready for action and to make the change. So I think yes, the mind shift changes number one, and then ready for action. So I think number one, I tell people to identify, and I can send this to you, the link, I put it on my website, I made a little graph or sheet that kind of follows my weight loss journey. So you'll be able to go directly to her site. Download that. Yes.

Dr. Berry: This will be on the show note for Lunch and Learn community so you'll be able to go directly to her site. Download that, mentally.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So now that you're ready for it and you can write down, you need to write down like acknowledge what are your barriers, what are the obstacles that you face, be it time, be it an unsupportive family. So yeah. So getting started, what I tell you to do is, so address your obstacles and create opportunities. So what I recommend that you do is write down everything that you identify as the obstacle. The common term for it is excuses. People say it's just an excuse. But again, that mindset shift, right? Excuses is a very defeating term. It makes, it puts blame on you. Like I'm not doing something, I'm supposed to do it, but I could be doing it. So I shift it from saying it's not an excuse, it's your life. It's a barrier to what you're trying to do and what you're trying to accomplish it.

So instead it's an obstacle. And once you recognize as the obstacle, but that obstacles as opportunities. So now you have an opportunity to change what you're doing. So what I'll do, so like lack of time, for instance, what opportunities can you create for a time in your schedule and give yourself some options. Give yourself A, B, C, even D, E, F. So like for me, when I started back in late 2014, my obstacle time was a huge obstacle because at that time my husband was commuting about two hours a day back and forth. So that when I got home I had to take care of the baby, my little toddler. And that made it hard for me to go to the gym and exercise. Right. So what opportunities can I do? All right, well let me exercise in the morning instead.

And how much time, I'm more of a morning person anyway. Let me try to get up earlier and exercise in the morning. Maybe I can get a baby stroller, like a jogging stroller. So I actually got one of those offline. Maybe I can find a gym that has childcare in with it. So I would join the gym with childcare in it. Okay, well sometimes I can't get to the gym. What can I do? Let me do some. I started actually with a rockin' body, so I started with that because actually one of my first obstacles was I didn't like exercising. At least I thought I did exercising.

Dr. Berry: Very telling because I think a lot of people don't realize like that's actually alike.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: You have to like it. And that's why when you don't like doing something, you'll find any reason not to do it. So, of course, I don't have time because I don't like it. And what I realized in that, so that's actually a huge, not just a mindset shift, but also a barrier or obstacle. So what I realized is I was trying to force myself to do things I didn't like to do. So when I started with rocky and body, which was just like dancing and I am not a good dancer, but it made me feel like I was so things like do it that way.

So I like doing that. It made me feel good, you know, and it has short workouts so it has some as short as 10 minutes and some as long as 45 minutes. Then I started the running, which one of my colleagues that I work with, he's like, oh he actually just turned 60 yeah, we celebrate the 60 but he's 60 years old, but he's been running for years. And he said, yeah, so 30 plus years he's done a Boston marathon, lots of things. So seeing him and just his consistency with it really inspired me. And so that's how it started. A trend for the first 10K that then I did. And because he was doing it and you know, he really motivated me to do it. And then I found I liked running, you know? And so I kept going, kept adding it, have added distance at a distance, did a marathon in 2016 and it kept doing the 10K and did my fifth monuments 10K.

This year was my fifth one, four months postpartum. (Congratulation.) Thank you. So, but you don't know what you like to do until you try, you know? Whereas then I have other friends, I have colleagues, they like doing CrossFit, they like doing Hit, they liked doing weightlifting. I don't like doing that stuff. I recognize the value of it. But I know for myself I don't like it. I have to do it because it's good for the strength and aspect of it. So I say figure out what you like cause you may say I hate exercise, I don't like exercise. But really you just haven't found what you like to do. So challenge yourself to find the activity and think about activities you don't consider exercise that you do enjoy doing. Like do you enjoy dancing? Do you enjoy being outdoors? Do you enjoy, because then maybe you can find, uh, some form of exercise, quote-unquote that you enjoy doing too.

Dr. Berry: What I love about what you just said, especially cause it's kind of eye-opening, is that a lot of us when we'd say, well, I don't have the time to exercise. Where we're really saying is I don't like that exercise that y'all want me to find time for us. So I'm not going to find time to do it. But once you find something you like, whatever that something is from an exercise standpoint, all of a sudden you'll wake up early in the morning and you'll stay up late at night, you'll squeeze it in during lunch. You'll do things for stuff you like which makes sense. Right? Again, when we got to the food we like, we'll do whatever we got to do for that food. We like, right, when you have an activity we like, we'll do it. We ever have to do. And I think once we hold up that same appraise with an exercise, whatever that exercise is for you, you'll find the time, right? Yeah. Some kids got to go to sleep, right. You know, family guy, you're taking it, you do that time to kind of be by yourself. And I liked that you said maybe you don't have time to go somewhere. Right. Maybe there's some stuff you can do even in your own house to kind of maximize the free time that you do have.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. And that was another, you brought up a good one. Another barrier, right? Healthy food doesn't taste good to me. Like that was probably, you know, is it, like I said, it's been five years. I forget where I started. Right. We want to front and act as we've been there. I've always been healthy. I've always been on this witness. No, I did not like healthy food when I first started. So that was my first month to set shift for me. It was just like, okay, well how I actually worked around this because I'm a foodie? Both of my parents owned a restaurant when I was a kid. I grew up like just immersed in food. Culture food is a big part of my life, but what I challenged myself with was how can it, rather than saying I don't like, maybe again, I'm not liking the healthy food I'm choosing. Or I'm choosing tasteless food.

I'm not applying the same principles of Buddhism to my food, my healthy food. So what I will do is challenged myself to make my healthy food as delicious as possible, but still healthy and to find healthy options when I go out to eat. Because you know, again, being busy, I do have to eat out a lot. I do sometimes some weeks of his very busy. I may not have the time to cook the way I want to, but let me challenge myself to find those restaurants that have healthy options and let me challenge myself when I cooked to make it delicious, healthy, and delicious. Not just something dry or blend because I say I'd want to eat healthy. Don't punish yourself, enjoy what you're eating, but just try to stay within the parameters of making it healthy. Because to me, if you're a good cook, if you're a true foodie, then you can find deliciousness and make deliciousness with anything. Anyone can make it delicious. If you get to put a whole stick of butter in it and half a cup of sugar, but it takes real skill to make, you know, some quinoa delicious or it seemed to make this tofu delicious. So that's what I've been, what I challenged myself to do. And that's kind of how I worked around the barrier of not really finding healthy food at that time appealing.

Dr. Berry: When we talk about healthy food, right? Because this is personally, I always run into the issue right? I'm a very visual person with the food and some of the foods that they called healthy I got to ask that question, it's not even a secondary question. Some of the food that they called healthy really don't look good. Like Hey, I haven't even like tasted it yet. But sometimes that mental barrier, they even taste food that's healthier for me it's difficult because I'm, "oh that food doesn't even my...what is that?" And I that's, that's sometimes I get, what am I looking at right here at the hospital and they do this, they always have like a vegetarian section. This thing that it looks like meatballs, but I know for a fact is not a meatball. And then it's almost like hard like a rock. Like it's just like, okay. And that's what always gets me like, and I know that's probably going to get a lot of moms out there, right? Like the food don't look good to us. It's difficult for us to even put it in our mouth to eat.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. So what I would challenge you to, what I would say to that is you're right then don't eat what does it look good to you? Like personally for me and, and that's again about knowing yourself and that mindset shift. I don't like big food and I shouldn't call it big, but I don't like to look for light foods. Big chicken. I told you I like chicken. Finally, I found one brand that actually does taste like chicken and it's made from, but when I read the ingredients like you when I know what do I really want to eat this, like wheat, soy and some kind of fungus, but it really tastes like chicken. But before that, I don't like those like big meatballs. I don't like big things like that because you're right, psychologically I'm expecting the taste, the texture of a meatball that I'm used to.

And then when I get this and my brain is like automatically going to think it tastes gross because you know, it's not the meatball that I'm used to. So I would say focus on what you do like. So if you like vegetables, so initially within, you know, I know that I like vegetables so a lot of my things is stir fry. If he even looks on my Instagram page and stuff like that. There are a lot of stir fries because I can eat vegetables. There's a lot of eggplants. I like, eggplant is hardy. There is a Portobello mushroom, it's hardy. So more of the more vegetables which you know the plant-based community or argued that it's healthier for you anyway and cleaner for you than eating something that's processed to look like me in the first place. And so I would say if you identify that, then don't eat it because already if you don't think it looks good and you're right, most of the food is person visual and not only visual but also smelled too.

So if you have that perception before you even put it in your mouth, it is not going to taste it. Once it hits the cognitive part of your brain, you know, it's missing all those functions. It's missing the texture, it's missing the taste that you're expecting and no one would like that. So don't eat it, don't eat it. Find something else that is appealing to you. Like maybe make the list of it. Now it is more challenging for those people who say, I don't like vegetables, which I do run into people like that or I only buy fruit. That again adds into your team, which is the second part. So you asked how do you get started? So address your obstacles and create opportunities to is assemble your team. Like we talked about your support system and your structure.

I use the principle of fitness inspire through teamwork. That's my handle or whatever, FITT. So we need a team, right? So who's on your team? So maybe you need a Dietitian on your team professionally because you don't like a lot of foods. Or you have health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, prediabetes, insulin resistance. You have conditions that do require special attention to come up with a specialized or individualized food plan. And I'd tell people all the time, why haven't a physician? So if you can find an obesity medicine physician in your area, you can go on the OMA website, which would come put in the show notes also. They can help you get started. But when it comes to nutrition counseling, I'm the type of person, I like to acknowledge my limitations and my training and it helped my patients get to where they need to go.

So I said doctors, we do drive-thru nutrition counseling. That's for many reasons like you know what I mean? Like you go drive-thru, we tell you a couple of days. Don't eat carbs, don't eat sugar. But when you go to a nutritionist, they give you like a full four course meal and nutrition counseling because they can go through in detail, they have the time, go through detail and to see what it works for you, what doesn't work, and look at everything like that and come up with a very detailed plan. So I always recommend if you have a lot of barriers to things you like, dislike health condition. He should see, it starts with your physician. But definitely seeing nutritionists to help you on your team. And the team that I use, you know, as I said, I use my F so you know, faith, family, friends, if a physician or primary care provider, psychologist, dietician, you know, so a comprehensive team is important to help you with your weight journey.

Dr. Berry: That's beautiful. Okay, I'm a busy mom. Right? I made the mental switch, I got my team together. I'm starting to identify what things, I will make time for it, right? Because we know the time is there, right? We've already, the mentorship has already said, but you know, time is there. So we already know what the time is there and now we're starting to identify this is, I like this exercise. I don't like this exercise. I'm going to lean towards this way over here and now we're even starting to like even say, you know what? Maybe I can eat healthy right now and I'm asking it as a little bit later as far as, especially when we talk about eating out because I always get that excuse, I am eating healthy and I'm doing everything like well how come I haven't lost my 20 pounds yet? I think that's the part of the journey that I feel like people would hit the stop sign and breaks and that's when they kind of get off. Right? Because, they, for some and again, and maybe kind of going back to having more realistic goals. Right? But they don't, right? But they don't, right? They say I haven't lost my 20 pounds and now they're back to see you because they say, Hey I did all these things and the weight's not coming off. Right? Like what do I do?

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Alright. So going back to the steps, let me just reiterate one more time. So getting started. So I address obstacles and create opportunities, assemble your support team. And then the third thing is to act daily. Do something daily towards those goals that you have set. So even if you can't get your 30 minutes in one day, okay, do one minute. Because I find when it comes to mindset comes to momentum. You just got to keep going. I don't allow myself to go more than 48 hours without exercise. And because I find that that third day that's when the inertia or the laziness, that's it. And it gets harder for me to get back on my routine. I mean, unless of course, I'm sick or something like that. There've been times when I've been sick and I had to go for a week.

But since it started, so that third day come hill come high water, I'm going to do some. And where there's just one minute of a plank. I view my time bank of fitness as a bank account, right. Rather than viewing it like I have to do 30 minutes each day. No, I have to get in two and a half hours this weekend. However, I get that two and a half hours is fine. So if I just do 10 minutes today, but over the weekend I can do an hour, then it's all working towards the same goal rather than see a very rigid that you have to do 30 minutes every day or something like that.

So break it up how it works for you. So just something every day, maybe today I'm going to, instead of having that chocolate chip cookie at 3:00 PM, I'm going to have, make a choice and choose to just have an apple at 3:00 PM instead. So that's what it means to do it by acting daily. Now when you talk about it, and I wanted to make sure we clarify that before we shift into the weight because the weight loss part of it, because you're right, the struggle is real. So this is the way that I talked about this, which I mentioned in the first podcast, was just that, number one, we've got to think about a couple of things from evolution or hysterical, whatever you believe in and point of view. We were not made to lose weight, right? Weight has an advantage, excess weight. The reason why we have this adipose or this fat tissue is to protect this and to serve as storage for energy, to serve as the storage for food, for times of scarcity. Right? And so I always tell my patients who have obesity and they left. I hope you will too, that if we were in like caveman times or they would be queen and the king of the jungle and I would be eating like this is real, right? You have a protective advantage of where you are. But unfortunately, as we have now moved into food positive times where we don't need this extra adipose or this extra tissue to hang out as we did before, now the body is not used to getting rid of it and certainly not used to getting rid of it as quickly as possible. So we know from a lot of studies that have been done like this showed the biggest loser study came out and it showed that most of those people who lost all that weight so quickly to a very intensive process with a lot of team of people. For those people, they gain most of the weight back.

And part of that, when they looked at the biology of it, their body set into motion a whole process for them to regain their weight. Like their metabolic rate slowed down. There was a release of hormones that made them hungrier, that made them not process the fat in sugar as well. So there was a lot going on for it because of the fact that they lost the weight so rapidly and how much of the weight was lost. So we know that you know, we have physiology fighting against this in many ways. And then also psychologically as you're alluding to, is just the fact that, oh, I'm not losing weight, how I feel or would the as quickly as I feel. And so then we do other things and we'd go back into old habits as well that too. So when we talk about weight loss is they're complicated, but then from a more practical perspective, so that was how the nerdy science kind of stuff and the psychological stuff.

But let's be real. It took you 50 years to gain that weight. Why do you think you should lose it all on 50 days? Common guys, give us some time. (I love it.) That rapid weight loss is very traumatic for the body. It is. It is. So the body's going to say, pola, pola, pola, pola. We starving. Why are we losing so much weight? Let me slow down this process a little bit. Let me give myself time to get used to all these changes. And so you may experience what is called a weight loss plateau. Now there's controversy. Some people don't believe in it, this and that. I believe in it. I've seen it and I think the science does support it and it makes sense like your body needs time to get used to the changes that are being made. So I think during those times when you feel like the weight is not coming off as quickly as it should, that is definitely the time if you don't already have a good support system to seek it out.

And again, I mean no shade to any of their specialty or profession, but I know the training that I got as I transitioned from internal medicine, so obesity medicine, I learned a lot about what to do during those times and to really about treating obesity as a disease. So that would be a great time if you are, do have access to an obesity specialist or clinician in your area to try to seek one out, to see if they can help you lose weight. Now in terms of what you should look for in one, I think that probably should be a whole another set very, because I could go on for a long time. But you do need to seek help to help you through the weight loss plateau.

So that help, just in short may include dietary changes. It may include behavioral changes and it actually should include a lot of those. And then sometimes if you already optimized on all those things, especially, I'm sorry, a key one for working moms, I should say sleep. You need seven to nine hours of sleep at night to lose weight. That is because all of our natural weight burnings, that burning hormones are weight loss hormones. They are reset when we sleep and when we get into the right circadian rhythm, and that takes about seven to nine hours at night. And then also stress, you need your stress level to below. So stress management is a key part of it because people who rate their stress levels as moderate to high, on average, we weigh about 11% more than people who rate their stress levels as low. So you need to really make sure that those are in place. And then if all those things are in place, then this is when a physician or clinician may say, maybe we should do weight loss medication and there are several on the market that had been approved to help treat the disease of obesity and to help with weight loss. So that's when, and that's what we may need to almost quote unquote trick the body out of this kind of Plateau state or non-weight burning state.

Dr. Berry: I love it. So after an action, what's our next of a plan or action? So we've got action, we're doing it at least a minute. I love that at least a minute because I think sometimes the moms do feel guilty. They do feel guilty, (We do.) Just couldn't get it, I wanted to and so and so happened. I know I'd be working out like I tried to work out in the mornings, but usually, my twins usually toward that, right? They wake up early, someone's got to be with the other along the way. And it's usually me. Right? So I know there are always obstacles that are in a way. So I do love that we give them an opportunity to say no, you know, it's okay. Just put it in the bank. It's not a race. We just need you to get there. We just need you to get there. Had to be the first. We just got to get you to that point every single week. And I love when I stay up.

When they get to point in there the action and they're losing weight and now they're feeling good about themselves. Right? Like what? Like what do you do? How do you counsel them to stay on it, right? Because again, I love the fact that we really call it a journey, right? Because this is something that as a lifelong thing that they need to like handle it. What are some of the things that you've seen that's caused people to maybe backslide a little bit? And what are some of the tips that you have to say like to keep on going?

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So the next stage in the stages of changes is maintenance, right? So you guys what, we're in action, now we just need to maintain it. You've already addressed some things. So lack of results is a key thing like you mentioned. So people who may lose that initial five to 10 pounds and get it off very quickly because it's more water weight and people in the body was ready to give that. But then you get to a place where maybe raw now five to 10% of your body weight and then your body kinda plateau or as not losing as quickly. So people get discouraged and the negativity sets in. I think it's very important then to again, tap into your team and figure out what's going on. That's the time to make their appointment with someone that's to talk to your friends who are on the journey with you. Those people who are going to support you, your family, your faith, those things to keep you on the journey.

And that's the glue that's kind of keeping you going during those times when you may feel discouraged on your own. Because everybody will feel that way. I think number one, again, a mindset shift is just knowing that this plateau or this lack of results as part of the journey. Number two, knowing that it's a constant journey. So you mentioned something very common, like yeah, I have the five months old now. She often wakes up, but if you follow my Instagram stories, you'll see her in that video with me. Right? So that means maybe I have plans to go out for a run that morning, but she woke up. So now we may be doing a carry fit or like a baby carrier exercise instead. And I'm just lifting weights with her or, you know if she won't let me put her down or I'll put her in a thing and exercise in the swinger or something.

So you know, knowing that it's going to be constantly something. Something will always be there. That's the other mindset struggles. Not just because, okay, I've declared this thing and I'm going to do it. That is going to be quote-unquote easy. It's not going to be easy. There were always been some barrier there, but you get better at figuring out how can I navigate around that? So that's why I say mindset is so important because that's what's going to help you to maintain and continue the weight journey. So now that you've lost the weight or a year in the process of losing the weight continuance to go, and so that's how I know in the office and in the clinical setting how I support my patients.

So number one, showing up, right? Sometimes you have a tendency to hide when you haven't reached the goal or the goal is not going the way you want. Don't hide, still, show up. Come to your appointment. Call your friend, call your trainer and I'm so sorry my fitness trainer friends are going to be so mad at me. Yes, fitness trainers, they're been important. You know, I'm more like individual because my exercise is more of my me time. But definitely if you struggle with being alone or working out alone, get a trainer, get someone to help you. And I'm actually going to get a trainer later on this year too because they can help you get to that next level of fitness that you want to get to or you need to get to. So yes tapping into the resources you need, show up using your team and still continually reevaluating what is working, what isn't working and knowing that you needed, you're going to need to change.

Like I can't tell you how many times I would come to feel like I was finally in a group with especially fitness and I focused on fitness. But the food, of course, is the number one thing for weight loss. But fitness helps them so much. So I would get my fitness schedule down and then my husband's work schedule would change and I'd be like dad, waking up baby. And so, you know, it's always going to be something. I think that's what I've learned and that's life, right? There's always going to be something. But your ability to adapt, which probably it could still see as we talk. It helps out so much. Right. I just added a fourth A so I had a sense and assemble. I had act now I have, did I just already forget it? This is the sleep deprivation can get but no, but yeah, I just added a fourth A to it though. So you have assessed, you have, so you acknowledging those barriers. You had to assemble your team, you have acting daily and then assess. So constantly reassessing what needs to change, what you need help with that so important.

Dr. Berry: I love it. Before we get you out of here, again amazing teaching education and I know obviously we talked about the moms, of course, busy dads. I know y'all out there clearly, but we got to talk about the moms because you know, we know how hard they work. Before we let you get out of here. Right? Like what I need you to tell everyone, like again, we've talked about before, how can they get in touch with you, teach you, learn from you. What is out there that they can kind of consume cause I think, uh, you know, they're going to listen to this and then go back and listen to episode 93 and then be like, wow, this is the person that I need to follow. How can they follow and learn and continue to kind of even follow your journey that you're still on as we speak.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Yeah. Well definitely through social media. I have a website that is drsylviagbollie.com. I also am very active on Facebook. I do weekly live postings where I teach on different topics and I'm committed to trying to do those weekly now. I also post regularly on Twitter, on Instagram, just to keep us all motivated on our fitness journey. And that's my main goal, just showing real-life examples of trying to fit into in fitness and fit in healthy eating and so busy lifestyles, especially as a working mom. So there's social media is the best way.

Dr. Berry: Okay. So I ask all my guests on the podcast, how is what you do helping to empower busy moms across the world empowered themselves for better health?

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: I think what I'm doing is helping busy moms across the world because I'm empowering us to just be ourselves and work within those confines would be in ourselves. Work within that rather than trying to fit any mold, fit any model and putting yourself on there. Like you mentioned a lot of guilt, a lot of pressure. Like I, my goal and how I hope to help all of us is to just help us realize that number one, it's possible to fit in fitness. It's possible to fit in healthy eating. And it doesn't have to be the way that anyone else does it, but in a way that works best for you.

Dr. Berry: Love it, love it. Again, Lunch and Learn community, I want to thank that Dr. Bollie for coming on the second time and dropping even more gems. And she did the first time and you know, blessing us, educating us, and really getting this right and together, especially for the busy moms out there. I know a lot of them are. I know a lot of them in the Lunch and Learn community who are starving freedom. So I like this. So again, thank you for joining the show today.

Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Thanks. Bye.

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On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have a special treat in store with Dr. Candice Jones, who is a board certified pediatrician and host of the wildly popular podcast KIDing Around with Dr. Candice. Being an Internist gives me the opportunity to speak on a wide range of topics affecting adult medicine but one of the questions I always got from the Lunch and Learn community was about children and before this week I didn't have any answers.

Fortunately this week Dr. Jones lends her expertise to bring to light a much-needed discussion on childhood obesity. I talk a lot about adulthood obesity and its many ramifications but obesity doesn't just start to affect us when we turn 18.

Thankfully I got an expert to teach the Lunch and Learn Community about the topic at hand including some of the common risk factors associated with childhood obesity, complications and treatment options.

We also get to talk about how much obesity has changed her practice over time because if you think only the adults are affected you have another thing coming.

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Download Episode 110 Transcript

Episode 110 Transcript...

Dr. Berry: Alright, Lunch and Learn community. Like the intro says, we have an amazing guest. You guys know like, I love patient care. I love to talk about my adults, but I got purposely stressed talking about my adults because you know kids aren't really my thing. But this person here and you've heard a little bit about her in the intro, but of course I want her to introduce herself to Lunch and Learn community. We have Dr. Candice Jones here. First of all thank you for coming to the show.

Dr. Candice Jones Thank you for having me and I'm excited about it.

Dr. Berry: Well so, Dr. Candice, please tell the Lunch and Learn community a little bit about you. You know, who you are? You know, how you got to where you're at? And before we really get this deep dive into obesity, especially in children. Dr. Candice Jones

Yes, so I'm Dr. Candace Jones. I called by Dr. Candice. Some people call me Dr. Jones. But anyway, I'm a General Pediatrician. Board certified pediatrician and I love, love, love kids. I love the fact that I can take this new born baby and help the parents with other wonderful baby questions, especially moms and literally follow them throughout their life. That's the best case scenario for pediatrician to grow and be a part and nurturing part of a family's life and see a child grow from a child to an adult is just absolutely amazing. I think you get that anywhere in medicine. So I love that, and I even love the crazy teenage years, although struggles as well. It's a welcome challenge on my part. So I see patients, I see kids from birth up to 21 and I also, the past few years got interested in spreading evidence-based correct medical information because as we all know everybody googling, right? And also social media. There's so much information out there. But unfortunately, a lot of people just read what they see and they don't know what's true and what's not true. What's fake news and I hate used this word but yeah. Anyway, and so I saw as you do Dr. Berry, they call to, you know counteract some of that misinformation. Well these guys gonna giving bad information and we have to, not only let step up outside of our exam room. Lot consultant there, the one patient and family and reach the masses and give them correct information so I'm a part of that just like Dr. Berry so that people can get reputable, credible kid health information and probably, families to make sure kids are happy and healthy. So I have a podcast kidding with Dr. Candice. I have social media platform on all social media. If you have say platforms, website, and you gonna mention that you have that information so I'm just gonna do my part.

Dr. Berry: Definitely, I think, I love how you stress affect that is, you know, evidence face like factual information. It's interesting, you know, We sit back and you know you see all of the stuff kinda, stream across TV, because our social media and kinda shaking our head because we know is not t Definitely, I think rue, but we also know that's a lot of people who don't and take that leap of faith that you know what, I'm okay right because we would be okay if we just talk to our patients in the clinic. But calling that, we have that we have this as you know I like I gotta make sure that like I can reach that person in California, in Boston, in New York or wherever your listen to how where you listen to the show. I want to be able to reach out to you and say like no, no, no. This is like the actual truthful information that you should be following along.

Dr. Candice Jones: That's right, was just not enough anymore like you said I was pleasantly surprised when I look at some of my analytics recently like, oh my God! People watching from London, people watching from, you know? So it just gives you the world stage when you go media and so not there were looking for that. Though our goal is to reach people everywhere with truthful health information.

Dr. Berry: I love it. So today, again we will talking about obesity, which is has been a hot topic. Actually, is also a hot topic especially in healthcare. But most importantly, especially in the beginning of the year when people are trying to lose weight. You know, the new year resolution are hopefully still going strong and you know, they trying thick, they trying to get thin. Whatever their health goal is and from an adult and guys you know, Lunch and Learn community. You know, I don't have, I get tell you, you already know some the facts right? 40% of people are obese. Almost 94 million here in the US. All these related conditions, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, some cancer. There is, actually an article that said that if you're obese have a high risk for cancer, which is crazy. You know how much obesity cost this country and in fact the rate of obesity is triple since 1975 right? So this problem that we really need to get a hold of and as an internist, I take care of the old those who are, who are trying to lose weight right but precious article able tell us right like they didn't just get obese right when they hit 18 right? It's been something that kinda starting the beginning. I thought it was only right to get on the chemist on the shoulder. Really does, again, guys I said it before and I'm terrify that kids, like I love minds right? But when they get sick, I get scared too. I know my limits so I want to get someone who like this is their field, this is the expert. So why not give it to the kid experts, talk to us about her experience on child obesity and what she kinda sees on a day-to-day basis.

Dr. Candice Jones: Right, so we know that epidemic that you talked about, those dark stats are similar in children. So one in five children are obese in the United States. That's about 13.7 million children. So that epidemic stat is and what so concerning is that the incident or the health disparity there of being higher in African-American and Spanish communities. And so we definitely, we know all the fallout and I'm sure we gonna talk about that from obesity is not just about looks or body image. It's about real health problems, mental and physical and so that's why we have to do something about it.

Dr. Berry: It's so strange especially, we just talk about obesity because I think a lot of times people really do look at it as an adult related illness, but it tells, it's like something that you guys have to think about as early as newborns in stand point.

Dr. Candice Jones: Yes, we definitely have obese babies and I talked about that a lot. And what we know now. See, parents are relaxed and they don't think about how obesity in their newborn or their toddler because there's the old adage of, as she gets taller or as they start running around and outgrow it and we do see plateau like that and development. But what we're seeing now because this epidemic is really bad. We are saying obese babies turning to obese children, turning to obese adolescents and turning to obese adults, it never goes away. You are not outgrowing it, you are not running it. You know, want it all and we know the reason there. All the screen time and sedentary lifestyle and terrible eating habit. Kids are not outgrowing, their thickness, their baby fat. Like what you said, that happened 30 years ago, that tripling obesity rate we seen over the past 30 years. So that's why we have to do something about this. Obesity, childhood obesity, obesity and all of it, is preventable and manageable. And so that's what I try to stress appearance that let's start thinking about this now because I don't want you coming to me with 10 or 15 and they were complaining we had all the fallout and you are upset about his weight when we can talk about and present this from an early age.

Dr. Berry: I guess, a question I have, what do you tell the parents? Like, what the parents said, my baby is overweight, they big, like what did I do wrong? Every time I figure out, is this something that they could have done to prevent?

Dr. Candice Jones: Right, you know most of the time, in my clinical experience, parent have not cope a child overweight or obese and told her that pre-teen and teenage years where is causing problems with bullying or the child that liken their size or people starting to tease them or the parents right in their face, oh this is the problem. There is the point where we get like, you weight too much. We gonna do something about it. But they missed it for years. So I'm telling, you know, for those parents we know, most parents gonna bring their children to the pediatrician, whether they sick, or they well, to get shot for their physical. So years before, I have been telling you that your child is here on the growth chart. Your child's body mass index is here. This is overweight range. So I telling parents and young people that your child's fall in the overweight category or they getting close. They sterling defense. Often times I tell my teenage girl because they really care. You know, your own defense of overweight. Couple more potato chips. And they started laughing. I'm like, literally that's what it translates into a big girl on some potato chips. You're over defense. Right. And so, we took, that's why you need to be seeing, taking your child into their pediatrician to have regular well visit at least yearly and having that discussion. How having that growth? How's their weight? How's their blood pressure? How would you know that doctor should be doing that and telling you what these numbers are showing you the growth chart. It shouldn't be a surprise. Now, the second issue is, parents not accepting that. A lot of parents do and they receive the information. Can you hear me? Talking?

Dr. Berry: Oh yes. I talk to Lunch and Learn community because I know some of you parents who listen, no, she isn't talking to me. No, she is, she is.

Dr. Candice Jones: Right. Let me tell you. I have parents who coming to the clinic and they have a paper which I love this program, I love initiative from the school and it says, they're telling the parent they have to bring their child to me because they met criteria for overweight and obesity. So the children, the schools are screening. (Interesting). Right. Yes, love it, and I go ohm.

Dr. Berry: When did it started?

Dr. Candice Jones: Oh! my God, I can see it now for about three years. (Wow! Ok.) I'm not like, sure. I should know that, I don't know is there any date. But I go, uhm. According to my note, I've been telling you that four or five. You know, but I go, but whatever it takes to make you hear it. But they upset, they are offended. There, that's embarrassing to my baby. How dare you to say my baby is fat. I don't appreciate this. They have to come in because you said my baby is fat. They mad on the school. Not all the time, but sometimes. And so, but I welcome and I tell them, I really commend school for doing this because this is how serious this is. They feel that they are lane. Like, school shouldn't be getting involved with this. Yes, they should. You know, this is what public health is all about. And so I explained that and I say, I'm glad you're here. I've glad they've done this. But this is what we've been showing you. This is what this means. Let's talk about it again. And so a lot of times, then I hear, all of us are big, right? This gonna be big. Like everybody's uncle. Everybody. And I heard, these excuses come. So is just have big bone. She outgrow anyway. Don't worry about it. I think she looks fine. I think she looks good. She's strong, she's healthy, she's keeping with other kids. They literally look at their child and think they look great. And then I also have parents with multiple kids, they bring the normal weight, we're in the right range on your growth chart and say this baby is too skinny, do something about it if she sick. And they have other kids who are off the chart, and that child looks healthy. They don't get it. So we're eyeballing it.

Dr. Berry: Too many cultural differences associated with?

Dr. Candice Jones: Absolutely. You know, different cultures eyeballing differently. You know, we like PHHT set, right? We like little, you know, kids to be little don't like fat and hefty looking right? It is definitely culturally. I heard the stories of and read about the phenomenon of cultures. From India to Africa, all over. Where, if you're wealthy, you're fit, right? You have money. You have food. You have everything. That's the sign of richness and having it all and great. But when you're skinny, that maybe the people who are perceived as being examined, not half, right? And so definitely, I definitely see it with my Asian families. You know, here in Orlando we're very diverse. Hispanic, Caribbean families, African, it just huge diverse in my patient population. I hear Spanish, I hear Korean, I hear French, I hear English, I hear everything. And so I definitely see it with my Hispanic families, my Haitian families. They concerned about their child is underweight, when the child is perfectly normal.

Dr. Berry: It is so funny. You start losing some weight around some Haitian families and they start looking at you (Oh yeah, that's the problem). You are sick? What's happening?

Dr. Candice Jones: And to the extent of, I have sat down of my best friend and office manager in our clinic station. And so we can go in the room together, we text him, we talked and some of the dishes the things they do to sat kids up is absolutely amazing. The recipe is…

Dr. Berry: As a proud Haitian, I can tell you my diet growing up, they are joking, like it was really rice, some type of sauce and some type of meat. I was like, five to six days a week.

Dr. Candice Jones: Right, rich season, all of that. Yes.

Dr. Berry: Taste amazing. But you are like, oh my God. Oh yeah.

Dr. Candice Jones: Yeah, absolutely and you know, it is dish is so rich more than pedia sure. Be pedia sure, any of that. Yeah.

Dr. Berry: It is very interesting, especially when you have these parents who are who are such kind of deflecting, right? They don't want to say that. I'm the one putting the food in my child mouth. Because I feel especially when we talk about child who are, obesity. I don't wanna say victim. I feel like, what can the child actually do? My parents are the one giving me the food. I just eat.

Dr. Candice Jones: It's a learn behavior. It's behaviors. It's practices. Let's go back a little bit. Obesity even in adults or in children is most factorial. People want to know why. And so there is a component of what you eat. If you said interior activity level and that's behavioral and lead by what and how your environment is and all that stuffs. There still though, components to genetic. Those previous position and also even medical history. So some children. I ask some, fully control. I'm not gonna running around like everybody else I have thyroid condition. I had an increased risk of gaining weight. And so, there is some of that. We don't totally blame the parents. But a lot of it is behavioral and learned behaviors that promote, put us at risk for gaining weight and keeping weight on. Absolutely. Yeah.

Dr. Berry: Of course you gonna hear, I already hear my listeners of Lunch and Learn, what about the video games?

Dr. Candice Jones: Yes. Let's talk about it. That a huge, you know, that is, this the trend now, this generation. And I think, it has added to that tripling over the last 30 years. Because we know, this screen time thing is causing comes in every area. It's causing constant sleep which can affect the obesity. Is causing problems with learning. Is causing problems with behavior and is causing problems with obesity because of promoting a sedentary lifestyle. So when your child becomes addicted or spends too much time on screens, whether it's their smart phone, social media, playing video games or just watching TV. They are not moving and you know what else goes with that? Snacking. Having something and drinking, eating, and playing and that's it. And then also psychological. They isolate. And so there's those effects as well. So it's affecting everything about our children and so we definitely need to be cutting back on screen time and you know, there's a whole. I will just differ people to maybe the American Academy Pediatric, healthychildren.org website. They have a family media use clan and it so important to develop a customized plan for your family. What's fit your family for all ages of your children. Because you know, babies on that stuff now and then make that plan with your family. Put it up and that gives you all the guys to make sure your limiting, so your children can go out and play. You guys can play together. They can do their homework. They get enough sleep. Especially our teenagers, we cut all that stuffs. But it all plays in together and that's promote obesity.

Dr. Berry: When we talk, when we have these kids who kick the school, sending letters and you're saying like, hey a child is overweight, a child is obese and in your having to explain to parents, like if we don't get a whole that is not right, they become adult with all these related issues right? Is there any issue that you tend to see happen even when they're young at that age? Because they are overweight. Because they are obese. I know we talk about not sleeping, the school…

Dr. Candice Jones: I sure do. I sure do. So we are saying children developing conditions, obesity related conditions in childhood. So children developing type II diabetes. Children do have. I have patients with elevation in their cholesterol. That may be familial. But a lot of his weight and we can get down once they lose weight. We do have children who are depressed, suicidal, being bullied. So all the psychological ramification of obesity.

Dr. Berry: Hearing all of this issues that in complications that foreseen now being seen in children. Like what are some of the treatment options and treatment recommendations that you give the parents?

Dr. Candice Jones: Right. So what I first tell parents to explain what's going on and probably scared them to death right? I definitely tell them the good news is our hope is not lost right? Kids are resilient and we can dealt this back and that's the goal of my recommendation. So again it's preventable and it's manageable. This is what I recommend. We gonna work on this together right? And so first, I will have regular follow-up in check. So like I said before, you should know where your child. Is your child over weight? Is your child obese? And says those fact. Regular checkup right? And then once they're obese. We gonna have follow-up. We gonna have this plan. We gonna have follow-up to try to see how you're doing with your weight. Second, I talk to parents about those recommendations. I like to tell them about things that they can remember the 5210 rule. 5210 rule and so that's my 5. You want to make it simple for them. 5 to 6 servings of foods and vegetables every day. We talking about having the healthy diet, right? Less than 2 hours of screen time. That not only cuts down on all the issues of screen time but also will push them to be more active, which ties into the one which is one hour of physical activity every day. So I'm encourage them to get their children involve in activity. Work out together, walk right, bike, hit more, get outside more or put them in a sport that every day in small increments for an hour. They need to be doing some moderate activity where, they can't just talk through it. They sweat a little bit, right? And then zero is really trying to strive for zero sugary drinks and snacks. (You gonna) (laughing) You gonna tell parents there. I told parents the 80-20 rule. 80% of the time, if you do this things, especially the sugary drinks because I'll be realistic. 80% of the time, if you can do that. At least don't have it in your house. You know what I mean? If you guys go out in the weekend or you have something coming up. Then don't stress about and do what they want to do. But you gonna start cutting that. And that's the goal. To get the sugar out of the snack and the sugar out of the drink because you know kids... I just read this stat that I shared in social media. They drinking the equivalent of bathtub full of sugar. Just in their drinks alone. So if we can cut that. In a year time. If we can cut sugar on drinks and some of the snacking. Well put it that. So they're eating fruits and vegetables, limit their screen time, exercising and cutting back on sugar drinks and snacks. That's it. I think. I believe it.

Dr. Berry: Do you find especially the parents that you take care of that seems to be a huge, like maybe not eating a lot of food, but their drinking a lot of calories from a general total calories sample? Do you feel like drinking more than eating or got some who eat just as much as they drink?

Dr. Candice Jones: I have a little bit of both. I have some kids that parents say I cannot stop this child to eat and we know kids go through growth spurt. And he or she just wants to eat all the time. We couldn't just eat the meal and she says she is hungry again. So we know there's a whole group of kids are like that. They're just overeating, they're hunger, center. Is just always on, right? And so we have to work around that. And there are programs for that maybe. And we do have some kids that just constantly drink sweet drinks. They don't want water, they can't stand water. So there are sugar, juice, sweet tea, everything. And parents see that innocent. They're not counting that in. Even if you talking people about their eating, they just equate obesity to eating. They not even counting the drinks. So we really have to talk to them about that. My other thing I talk to parents about is eating clean, green, lean and as a teen.

Dr. Berry: I just want to stress that. Nobody think about, your kid gotta eat.

Dr. Candice Jones: You have to model it. You can't isolate that child who's overweight or obese and cut everything out of their life and focus on them losing weight. And you are in the same predicament or you know is just not fair. It's a family affair. You need to support them. Everybody needs to change. We need to take inventory the house, what is in the house. And change the stuffs and what we're buying, bringing into the home. That's how we support that child, for sure. So quickly, clean eating is, as we know, reading labels and trying to eat real, whole foods and not all of these packaged process high -salt, high-fat, high calorie, sugary things. So I have a whole lot of kids that their main staple of eating is cereal and noodles. That's a problem. (Well,ok) Yeah, that's a lot of unclean eating. Right? Green eating, as we say, 5 to 6 servings of fruits and vegetable every day, that make sense Lean. I have families who only wanted to drink cold milk. Child's 200 pounds, you still to drink cow milk. That's the problem. You know what I mean? We can make tweaks. You know. Cooking with olive oil. Not frying everything. You know. Learning how to steam and bake can all these, other ways to cook. To make sure that those unhealthy fat are out of our food. That's so important. And we talk about teen. It's so important to do it together. (I love it.) And you know, for those children who are overweight or obese. Or even children were not and they had abnormalities with their exam. So the child has a chance to diagnosis cans around the back of the neck. You see that in an adult. As a sign of insulin resistance, which is a sign of pre, possibly will be called pre-diabetes, right? That the pancreas on or insulin and this fat is causing problem in the body, right? If I see that or you're at 95% top of bodies index over and I'm doing some lab work and you have elevation in your cholesterol. Your A1C is elevated or your insulin level is elevated. Your blood pressure. Maybe a little elevated. So by getting any of that data, then those of the children that we need to be a little bit more focused on losing weight. Because most of the management of that, is to get them to lose weight. In so we can work with nutritionist, dietitian. There are comprehensive weight loss programs for children and most academic centers. We can put those children in those programs. Even on my podcast, I have spoken with bariatric surgeons were now seeing bariatric surgery in adolescent way to treat some of those you know, reverse cholesterol issues, diabetes in those types of things.

Dr. Berry: So now, actually a very interesting episode, because now, like magic. Because again, I'm naive, right? If you not 18, I don't even see you. I don't even see you and I don't care. So, I was like, wow! Pediatric surgery? There is a type of this now? I don't even know that was lane for them.

Dr. Candice Jones: Yes, some of these kids are 3, 400 pounds, they're severely obese and have all of the problems of obesity and certainly that is an option for them to start reversing those, those medical problems.

Dr. Berry: Wow! Yeah. I know. This episode definitely kinda do me because I was like, oh ok, alright.

Dr. Candice Jones: It's serious. (laughing)

Dr. Berry: It's a problem. Again, I think a lot of my patients, I work in the hospitals so I get. When we talk about complications, I get the ones, who get stroke. I get the ones to get a heart attack. I get the ones with uncontrolled diabetic. And now we talk about kinda foot off. Like I get the end-stage, end-stage. And you here Dr. Candice telling you if we can get you early.

Dr. Candice Jones: Yes. Early detection.

Dr. Berry: If we could stop that early, you wouldn't have to see me. You wouldn't have to see me with a heart attack. You wouldn't have to see me with a stroke. You wouldn't have to see me because your blood sugar is out of controlled. But the problem is you and you see me because you're not taking care of it. Again, I don't want to blame the kids. That's why I'm talking to Lunch and Learn community, I'm talking to you parents that you know that your child is a little bit on heavier side, right? You know. You've been told. Now, that the schools are telling you all now. So, (laughing) a lot of times, sometimes toward, going to the doctor, right? But now the schools are saying, oh oh you got hammered with, wow, it's interesting.

Dr. Candice Jones: So there is no, you know, there's one thing about awareness. I didn't know. But, in most cases you are aware. So let's stop rushing this on the rug, to being in denial and let's do the work, need to do for our kids.Because you are so right. We, I don't want any child as an adult to have to go to the things that you're dealing with as an adult medicine position. We can prevent this though. In most cases, we can prevent these stff. And I always say, in our community, we love calling Jesus and with all prayer warriors togeher. Like you said, when the heart and slip getting cut-off, I'm always thinking, that's fine now but that's reactionary. We need to be more proactive and prevent it in the first place. That God is in that too. Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Berry: I love it. I have questions. From obesity standpoint, I know as an adult physician, a lot of the stuffs that I will learned, I've had to learn outside of my traditional training. Do you feel like, this is this is something that's kind of being intertwined in the training as a pediatrician or this is something awful that you kinda have to, you kinda go outside to get really a good handle on what was happening?

Dr. Candice Jones: Absolutely, you know, as physicians, with most things, as physicians we definitely have to be lifelong learners and you have to know how you learn and for me I think that God put this interest in me. Because He knew that's how I would best learn. So not only this is for my patients, in the masses and parents etc. It's for me. I'm learning. It constantly keeps me reaching out to the experts, reading the latest studies, staying current with management so I can come back and share with my parents and with my patients. So we definitely have, if we just, are operating as doctors on what we learned in medical school, we're already behind. We're not up to date. So we definitely have to stay on it. And then, you know, medical school and residency can't teach us everything so we are responsible for filling in the gap. You know a perfect example of that, and something that can tie in obesity and how it so difficult for some people to lose weight even children and families is aces. I just learn about ever childhood experience or childhood trauma and toxic stress about three or four years ago in the process of my, doing my podcast never was taught in medical school never was taught in residency and here now I know it is a silent epidemic that takes every part of our life and in our health. (Wow).You know what I mean? We should be screaming and wasn't doing screening or anything. Yeah. You know, it's amazing that I learned on my own, just in the last few years so we always have to be learning.

Dr. Berry: Always learning. Aright physicians, you heard that. You gonna learn. You keep learning. Really it's a life or death situation. Again, it may seem like a cookie here in a juice box there but again it's it's medications over here and medication over there in the hospital visit over its add and builds. So, for my parents were listening, we definitely want to stress, like we gotta be on it for our kids and not to our kids. Chemist said, it's a team thing right. So when you have sweet and yum, making stages very good. You most likely, again not all the time. But most likely you got to make some of the changes in your own health and your own diet as well.

Dr. Candice Jones: That's right. I always tell parents, its start to have to, for the very first time we started, we start putting food in their mouth, even the cereals. Packing in cereals in the bottles. Before we have to alter the nipples. I mean, we just to start over feeding and giving. Can't wait to give you french fries and chicken. You know (laughing). Why? Slow down. Start with the high chair and we have to figure out our problem's area. This child's problem area may not be over eating, but this child maybe he just eat for some vegetables. Whatever your problem area is and work on that and make those small adjustments and keep working with your doctor and you can do it.

Dr. Berry: Perfect. Before we let you go, I always like to ask, how can, what you do empower other parents to really take better control of their children's health overall?

Dr. Candice Jones: Well, I would say taking all this information. Dr. Berry, what he's putting out for adults and all of these information that doctors and professionals, experts in their fields are trying to put out there. This information is to raise your awareness which empowers you because it gives you the power to be the change agent, change agent for your life and for your family. So what I'm doing is, is the work. Take it. Share it. Listen to it. Internalize it. Make the adjustment. Because sometimes, you know we say knowledge is power. You know, know better, you do better. But we know, but we still have to do the work to make the change. Breaking those cycles and habits and changing behavior is another whole beast. But I hope that just giving you knowledge gives you the power to make the change. (I love it). Absolutely.

Dr. Berry: So before you go, where, first of all, we need to have, to find your podcast, just everything associated with Dr. Candice and of course if you listening to this, you're in the shower, you're at work, where at you, all of this information will be in the show notes and will make sure you know, you find a way to Dr. Candice. Because her podcast is amazing, especially for parents. I got three kids. I'm actually way for vaccine one. I got lot of love of discussion on that but I keep it. I got a lot of thoughts associated with the vaccine. I will wait for her to talk kinda critique. Especially because I have to deal with it as an adult.

Dr. Candice Jones: I'm on it. I'm on it. I'm all about filling request. I'm on it. I'll do that for you. It is actually on my list. So I'll move it to top list for you. (laughing) But you can find me at drcandicemd.com D R C A N D I C E M D .com that's my website. It has, open the right-hand border there. It links to all of my social media platforms. You know, Facebook, Instagram at drcandicemd. I'm on YouTube Candice W Jones. Linkedin, whatelse is there, the podcast, kiding around with Dr. Candice. So it's K I D I N G. So kid is the focus. Kiding around with Dr. Candice. Anywhere you can listen to podcast. The mainly, SoundCloud, Google play and Apple podcast. You can hear it I heard radio tuning anywhere you can listen to podcast. And I would love for you to subscribe, rate and review, especially on Apple podcast, that matters.

Dr. Berry: We need her to get five stars review.

Dr. Candice Jones: Yes. Thank you and you know, definitely follow me on all those platforms. I love to hear from you. Give me feedback. Tell me if you want a certain type of topic just like Dr. Berry just did. I mean, I have people all the time asking me questions and I'll try. I'm not a replacement for medical advice, from the advice of your doctor. But I can give you general direction and I love to do that. So I think that's it.

Dr. Berry: We stress all the time. Remember you, even though you hear us talk. I want you to take that grain of salt and go right to the doctor that you supposed to. Because we obviously can't legally give you any help or advice. We can just give you what our opinion is but we gonna sure about our opinion.

Dr. Candice Jones: That's right, that's right and there's one resource to further help you, to ask to help you. Do food diaries to see where you fall. Because a lot of people think, you don't eat a lot. If you plug it in for two or three days. You'll find out especially it's point to all sugary drinks.

Dr. Berry: Oh yes. Don't forget the drinks.

Dr. Candice Jones: That's right, add that in. But here's a wonderful doctor, African-American woman. Dr. Cody Stanford out of Harvard. She's obesity medicine doctor with children and adults. And she's put out a wonderful book. I just got, I gonna bring her on the podcast sometime in the next couple months. Facing overweight and obesity. A complete guide for children and adults. And I think she has wonderful approaches. She does a lot of research and it looks great. I'm reading it now. So that might be a resource if you like books.

Dr. Berry: Yes we like books. Yes we like books. Her book will be on the show as well too. Make sure we support. (Awesome.) And Dr. Candice thank you for coming to Lunch and Learn. Much appreciated. I already know, my parents are going crazy because they been asking for, like, talk about some kids. I'm like, I don't know kids but I know someone do that.

Dr. Candice Jones: We can do it anytime. Let me know.

Dr. Berry: Yes. Thank you very much.

Dr. Candice Jones: Thank you for having me. I enjoyed this.

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