Empowered Patients: BrainS.

Recently my wife and I took a class together. The topic came up about what questions a patient should ask when being told to consider a treatment or procedure. The instructor talked about using the acronym BRAIN to formulate your questions. I liked the basic structure of the acronym but like any good nerd (I say this lovingly)...I decided to improve it and I changed the acronym to brains BRAINS. So here it goes.... A doctor walks into the room and says "I want you to take this pill"....before you say "OK"; follow this train of questions. BrainS B: What is the Benefit(s) of the Treatment or Procedure? R: What is the Risk(s) of The Treatment or Procedure? A: What Alternatives are available besides this treatment? I: What is my Intuition telling me (or gut feeling) about doing the treatment or procedure? This you must ask yourself N: What would happen if I do Nothing? Or Need Time before making a decision? S: my addition. What happens if I suddenly stop treatment? This is a solid framework so you feel empowered to make a good decision. If you're my patient we should have this dialogue on each and everything I recommend, prescribe, or advise. Here's to your empowered self.

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HPA Management: How to decrease anxiety?

This post is about Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal gland Axis (HPA) management. Specifically how to decrease anxiety. How do we decrease anxiety? Ask people to be clear of what is expected of us. And upon hearing what's expected be honest with ourselves and others about what is possible. If we you have expectations from others and for ourselves that have no boundaries; then we are likely going to experience an arousal state in the brain. This trickles down to anxiety related symptoms. Vice versa by not setting expectations we can reak havoc on our inner self relationships and outer self relationships. Of course I could write all day about lifestyle changes and herbal interventions that might help but the inner game of anxiety is so much more.

Plateauing

Plateauing in the process of change. I have experienced and you have experienced it. Things are going well and then we hit a flat point of progress. The typical response to the plateau that I have seen is to "do more" ,"add more", and "be more". It makes sense,right? Or does it? You're climbing a mountain after learning, growing, acquiring skills, and carrying more responsibility, motivation, and discipline. It seems worth it because you're seeing your health improve, relationships improve, mental health improve, and spiritual health improve. Then you suddenly you're at a flat point. Things are not quite where they need to be and you have acquired new things, skills, tools that require maintenance and nurturing. If you don't continue them you would... well....fall back down the mountain. Or would you? So we add more stuff, more noise, more ideas, more skills, and suddenly we look like a pack mule climbing to our asc...

The Economy of Inflammation

The economy of Inflammation I spend much of my day talking about inflammation. Why? Simply because I feel inflammation is the marker of the economy of the body. If we are overly inflamed the economy begins to deteriorate and we start to first see belly fat, stiffness, fatigue, skin changes, mood changes, and this progresses to high cholesterol, insulin resistance, and/or hypertension. If the economy takes a hit for too prolonged period we see the body express imbalance in a degree where we see conditions such as Diabetes, Gout, Chronic Kidney Disease, Fatty Liver Disease, Osteoarthritis, Depression, Fibromyalgia, and yes, sometimes Cancer. This is so much of what I see happening in my practice that I have thought about changing my practice to the Sound Inflammation Clinic. The remedy to inflammation are plants in our diet, omega-3’s and other healthy fats, mild exercise, stress release, sound sleep, and a whole array of herbal and nutritional supplement...

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