Do It for Science: End of Life Decision-Making (# 1)

End of Life Decision Making

If you’d like to plan for the future and bring peace of mind to yourself and loved ones, you can engage in end of life decision-making while you’re still of sound mind and body. In this episode, Katharine Hagerman, PhD, at Stanford University talks about biobanks. If you know nothing about biobanks, give a listen and learn.

Find out more about the Stanford Neuromuscular Biobank and National Disease Research Interchange.

Transcript

welcome to glass half full with leslie krongold she shares her stories experiences and knowledge of living and coping with a chronic health condition learn about tools and resources and hear inspirational interviews that help you to live a life filled with quality and dignity with two decades of support group leadership leslie’s ready to help you make lemonade out of life’s lemons are you ready are you ready hello today’s podcast episode concerns intentional and mindful planning for the future and someone once said there are two sure things in life death and taxes well i would be bored silly talking about taxes so this is about death but we’re not going to be all dark and gloomy this is the glass half full we’re all about that silver lining right right can i hear a hell yeah

okay as i see it once you’re diagnosed with a health condition that is untreatable and incurable like mine you have two choices you can become a victim and feel bad for yourself or you can move through life trying to make the best of what you can and be very intentional about what you do and i’ve chosen the second option now you don’t have to have a life-threatening condition to acknowledge that you will die unless you’re larry ellison or elon musk fyi they’re both super wealthy men funding research to defy aging and death we all can acknowledge we’re gonna die except those two guys and if we spend some of our time while we’re still mentally and physically well enough to think a bit about end of life decisions we get a more peace of mind and also make the inevitable process easier for our family and loved ones i’ve been doing spring cleaning throughout the year because the idea of having my partner go through all of my stuff once i’m gone and make a million decisions while still grieving well i just don’t want to do that this episode is the first of future podcast episodes where i’ll explore an aspect of end of life decision making and this may not be a new area to ponder if you have a driver’s license you’re likely to have considered whether you want to opt in to organ donation should you be in a fatal car crash so we won’t be talking about advanced directives living wills or what type of music you want played at your memorial service those are all aspects of end of life decision making will cover in the future but this episode focuses on science and medical research i realize that death is a very sensitive topic people have some very strong feelings and reactions to these issues for some reason i grew up knowing that my mother did not want to be buried in the ground i knew this because she said it many times when she died 25 years ago my father and i immediately knew we had to find a mausoleum she never written this down or made any other specific requests about end of life decisions but just to keep her out of the ground i may have hair inherited her genetic disease but i definitely didn’t inherit her ideas about death once i’m gone my body is not me i want the simplest and most eco-friendly handling of my physical remains and if any part of me can help advance medical science i’m all for it so that’s why i strongly support making the decision to join a research facility’s biological bank take my tissues

okay no more humor no more levity all right it’s time to tell you about my guest for this topic katherine hagerman catherine is the research associate for dr john day at stanford university and dr day is a neurologist with nearly 40 years of experience in neuromuscular disease research and clinical practice catherine has been in stanford for four years now and she helps run research studies and drug trials and manages the stanford neuromuscular biobank i know catherine because both she and dr day are part of my myotonic dystrophy community which is also referred to as the dm community catherine’s presented at my support group meetings and she attends our annual patient advocacy conference but let me assure you before we go on this topic and the information provided is not only for people with neuromuscular disease so please continue listening i have one more little story to share but i think it will make more sense after you listen to my conversation with catherine i don’t know if i ever asked you this but i was wondering you you have a phd what was your dissertation on i went to the university of toronto to get my phd and my supervisor was interested in um what we call unstable microsatellites and human disease and what that means is there are these places in your dna that sometimes can get larger and when they get larger or when they get too small they can cause a condition so that includes conditions like huntington’s disease and myotonic dystrophy and spinal cerebellar ataxias and there’s a whole list of them that are caused by the unstable repeats so my thesis was trying to understand what made the repeats unstable and so how did that how did did you choose that because your the the professor you were working with was involved in that line of research or had you already had a avid interest um i always had an avid interest in genetics as a whole starting in high school and when i was trying to narrow down exactly what i wanted to do for a phd um i found dr christopher pearson who eventually became my supervisor and after i interviewed with him i thought hey his genetics are really cool and i i called my dad and i said hey dad um i had this really great interview and um dr pearson is doing all these kinds of um research on all these different diseases my dad said well you know myotonic dystrophy that’s the one that your step family has and i hadn’t put two and two together so it became the perfect fit for me both from a fascination in the genetics and a motivation to help myotonic dystrophy research move forward

from the beginning when you started four years ago were you involved in the biobank when did that come about well so dr day came to stanford more than five years ago and he already had this master plan for developing the neuromuscular research program developing his research lab and creating a biobank but at that point the biobank didn’t exist so that was one of the first projects that i worked on once i joined the lab was to help develop the biobank decide how it would be run to develop materials for people so that they could understand it better and so can you give sort of a generic explanation of what a biobank is sure um in general i like to define a biobank as just a collection of bio biological samples they’re usually collected in order to help support scientific research mostly because there are lots of researchers out there that don’t have access to people with these rare conditions so there can be people in a laboratory working on a disease but they rarely get to meet someone with that disease so biobanks are often set up to collect samples from people so that they can facilitate the sharing of these very rare samples to researchers do you have any idea how popular or pervasive biobanks are connected to medical schools like stanford’s well i think medical schools the majority of them that i know about do have what they call anatomical donation programs and that’s where they you can donate your whole body to research in the sense that you can help train a medical school student and they will learn how to all the different parts of the body and you know how to do surgeries on those different areas but in terms of banking samples there’s very few that i know that would actually collect tissues and store them so yes medical schools have anatomic donation programs but most of them don’t collect samples to then be shared for research and so the tissue samples that you look for are not only from the deceased correct so every biobank is run differently and has a different set of goals at our biobank and many other biobanks it does not have to be what they call an anatomical donation or tissue donation after someone passes away we are very interested in getting tissues when someone has a scheduled surgery so once the doctor or the surgeon has gone in and you know taken out tissue that they might need for whatever diagnostic purposes if there’s extra tissue left over we make arrangements with them in advance that they will freeze it and ship it off to us i know it this is you know discussed in the dm community but is there also a push in the other neuromuscular diseases for the biobank at stanford um there definitely is a push and there is a need for tissues from many different neuromuscular conditions so our biobank is open to collection of tissues from all different neuromuscular conditions and how about the geographic parameters anywhere in the country or just california the stanford neuromuscular biobank is designed to be able to collect tissues from people from anywhere in the united states in general what we do is we work with surgeons or other people in the area where someone is interested in donating and they do the tissue collection on site and then they send the samples to us so is there any type of universal process or procedures by which all biobanks operate every biobank is run differently our biobank is run specifically to collect tissues from people with neuromuscular conditions but there are other biobanks like the ndri so the ndri is the national disease research interchange and you can go check them out online they don’t have very specific goals for the types of conditions people have or tissues i know that they collect both tissues from surgical procedures and when people pass away they can collect tissues then as well with a larger organization like that their system for enrolling is online and there’s a you know a 1 800 number to call at any time of day or night for questions so every biobank is different and they run their enrollment differently depending you know on their size and their goals okay so if someone who’s listening is interested and they don’t have a neuromuscular disease then that would probably be a good place for them to start yes the ndri is definitely set up for people with any condition or no condition whatsoever what is the process for registering what is that like what are your conversations like with families to communicate the availability of a biobank usually our process is is that we send an information and enrollment package to someone who’s expressed interest in the biobank um and then they fill out the forms and sign the consent form and send all the information back to us and that information includes not just their contact information but information on their doctors or if they’re considering tissue donation when they pass away then they can even include funeral home information and next of kin information and we really push that it’s important if you’re considering donating tissues when you pass away to have a conversation with your family because it’s actually going to be your family member that calls us if you pass away or if you’re quite sick so you want them to be mobilized and motivated and know what your wishes are and then if you pass away then they are the one that actually still has to sign a consent form to allow us to move forward so getting your family on board is very important part of the process that’s how our stanford biobank works with our consent forms other biobanks may have a different procedure but for us that’s what we require even if you have their signature on file yes because now i don’t know a lot of the legal logistics but my understanding is that when you pass away your rights are now in the hands of your next of kin and so they have to be on board in order to let this process move forward okay have you had situations where you were under the assumption that the family whether it was a spouse or a parent or a sibling was clued into what the the patient wanted and then they decided they didn’t want to go through with it yeah we have had instances where um someone with neuromuscular conditions signed up for the biobank and when they passed away either the next of kin didn’t call us in time or the family sat down and talked about it and they decided they didn’t want to go through with it there’s a lot of different reasons people may choose to not get involved or not support this type of work so it has happened but usually we have the most success when people have pre-enrolled and they have had those conversations with their family in advance so when you said in time can you clarify that in general tissues start to degrade when someone passes away and so we need the tissues to be collected usually within 24 to 36 hours after someone passes away so if someone’s in hospice care or on life support we’re already at the stage of making arrangements with the hospital or the hospice making arrangements with the funeral home perhaps having the conversation with the family members just providing them with the blank consent form so that they’re ready to sign when their family member passes away and so let’s say the patient the person passes away they never went through the process of registering for the biobank and the family hears from someone in their community hey are you going to donate tissues of so and so and then they want to get the wheels in motion you know right when the person passes away is that possible or or is that uh just you know too late it’s definitely a possibility at our biobank i’m not sure about others but within our biobank we can get a call from a family member that hasn’t had their family member registered and we can get the ball rolling because in the end it is that next of kin family member that is making the final decision so we can get a call usually within the same day of someone passing away and we have a lot of success at getting tissues collected but the ideal situation is that the family has already been involved this person has already pre-enrolled because then we have things more set and in place and we have more time to find someone that could do the tissue collection locally and so are there any costs to the family there are no costs to the family that’s how we’ve designed this whole process so basically what happens is if there’s any extra fees that might be incurred in that 24-hour period where we are collecting tissues the stanford biobank covers them even if tissue samples are collected the actual body can still be prepared for a funeral right so with a tissue collection that happens after someone passes away we make all the arrangements with the funeral home and the hospital and whoever else needs to be involved in the process the tissue collection happens within 24 to 36 hours and then the body is transported back to the funeral home that the family has selected and at that point the family can go ahead with any type of arrangements they had already planned whether it’s a memorial and or an open casket or a cremation you know these are all still available options for the family so do you have any idea i mean just roughly the percentage of patients that you’ve talked about this with or families that you’ve talked to about this the biobank how many actually do register um i would say the most number of tissues that we have coming in are from people that were not pre-registered and that’s in part because we’re a relatively new biobank and also because a lot of the conditions we work with are not ones that we expect people to pass away very soon so there are other conditions where people may have a very fast progression but the time between enrolling in the biobank and tissue collection could be relatively short what tends to be the most common concerns of patients and their families when you engage in the conversation with them about biobank um i think there often aren’t really concerns with families they just want to understand the process of what happens who they should be calling and what they need to do and so we stress that other than making that first call to us to let us know what’s going on and making sure they sign that consent form after someone passes away we try and make there be as few barriers and stay out of the arrangements with the family so the only other questions we’ll often get are related to cost so there are other biobanks that are set up like the medical schools so i wouldn’t call them biobanks but the medical school’s anatomical donation programs where the family would actually hand over the body to the medical school and that medical school will take possession of the body for several weeks and at the end they will provide a cremation and return the cremains to the family and so that’s a very different situation from how our biobank is run so sometimes people have questions about the pros and cons of those two different options and you would also mention to me that you get a lot of questions about saliva and other bodily fluid donations our biobank is set up to really focus on the tissues that are most important to researchers that are getting requested the most and those are things like muscle because it isn’t these are neuromuscular conditions so we get a lot of people that say oh yeah you know i can give you a vial of blood right here right now but in the end there aren’t as many researchers that need blood or dna from people with neuromuscular conditions especially because most of them have already been identified like the genetic cause of those conditions so we sometimes if someone is undiagnosed will collect blood but for the vast majority of other conditions that have been already diagnosed in someone we don’t necessarily need blood or urine and um oh gosh my brain just

oh how about brains that’s what you you’re also interested in brains aren’t you yes so um muscle and brain are the two main tissues that we get requests for because muscles are very difficult to get your hands on but you can collect it through some surgical procedures but other muscles you’ll never be able to get before someone passes away and obviously brain samples you won’t be able to get unless someone passed away so they are they’re very hard to get and they are probably the most requested tissues um i think it’s really important to consider donating to a biobank whether it’s the stanford neuromuscular biobank or another like the ndri with people that have a specific medical condition sometimes it can give them a sense that they are helping people in the future so even if there isn’t a cure available for them today they might be able to help people tomorrow that have their condition to make sense of their condition and to help things move forward in the future are you ready for my little story it happened nearly two years ago a member of my dm community called me from a hospital located in the middle of the united states when his adult son passed away his son had the congenital form of mitotic dystrophy and probably wasn’t expected to live as long as he did when he was born but still it was sudden and devastating and his father who had become a friend called me in tears to see if i could help make it happen he not pre-enrolled his son in the biobank he didn’t say much but i felt like not only did he want to do what he felt was the right thing but it was a way to make sense out of a difficult and senseless back that his son died far too young and had led a difficult life with a devastating disease it was a weekend and i started making phone calls katherine was actually on vacation but her role with biobank is pretty much 24 7 so she eventually put the wheels in motion from hawaii or someplace exotic she put a local stanford person in touch with the midwest hospital’s morgue and the midwest funeral home and everything moved fast so my friend could focus on his grieving process and his son could help advance medical research

thank you for listening to glass half full leslie invites you to leave a rating and review on itunes this helps spread the word to others dealing with chronic health issues for show notes updates and more visit the website glass half full dot online.online

you

Ayurveda: Moderation is the Key

Woman Discovers Ayurveda

Shaaranya Geetanjali Chakraborty’s health journey includes many stops along the way before finding Ayurveda. Not only did the ancient tradition of medicine cure her of chronic constipation and eczema but it changed the course of her career. Shaaranya is a graduate of Vedika Global founded by Acharya Shunya, scholar of the Vedic Sciences of Ayurveda, Yoga, and Vedanta. You can learn more about Shaaranya’s work here.

For more information about Ayurveda, check out Acharya’s book, Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom: A Complete Prescription to Optimize Your Health, Prevent Disease, and Live with Vitality and Joy.

Transcript

okay okay boom um so well actually first i want to make sure that i not only pronounce your name correctly but have your entire name because the name of the skype account could that be your husband’s name or no that’s my birth name so my birth name is gitanjali and the last name that you see there it’s my parents i haven’t quite done the conversion to my husband’s last name because of all the paperwork and then the name that you know me by shahrunya that was a spiritual name given to me by acharya shunya and it’s a very interesting process you know so most of the students in our school got an additional name to their birth name based on what goal they needed to achieve so my name sharanya actually means the one who gives refuge and more than refuge i think that sounds more egoistic but really who can’t who doesn’t make distinction between who comes to that person for help and given that i was a very judgmental person now that i can see that when i was studying in the school i never quite knew why she would give that name to me and now the work that i do in the clinic you know i can’t deny service to anyone just because of whatever i may be thinking or the opinion i’m forming so that name is very apt in that sense and she and she really like sort of zeroed in on something it was like a psychic sort of uh vision for her pretty much that’s how she gives name you know like she’ll go into her zone and she’ll give a name and she’ll say this is this is your name in addition to whatever you have and you can choose to go just by that or continue with your birth name as well and yeah so it just comes to her i wouldn’t say randomly that’s not the word but really the psychic power of you know where she thinks you need to be going and these are students who have worked with her for four or five years so it’s not like i’m meeting her for the first time and she’s coming up with something so she’s known me she knows my patterns and then you know she’s going into a zone and coming up with a name because i asked for it uh-huh wow okay so how when i when i introduce you because i don’t you know i i do like an intro and a little bio information and then in the podcast notes which is you know text on the webpage uh what what name would you best do you prefer i go by so okay i can do that i can type that for you in the oh no i have well i have your signature from the email and then so i have it all available just if you could say it one more time slowly and i will be able to practice that before i record my intro okay it’s

that’s the first name and then gitanjali

okay and chakraborty you could just skip that completely if you wanted to oh no no i can do it i i did an interview with uh a man i met at a yoga conference uh merely and and i can’t remember his last name but i was able to pronounce it but i had met him in person and he i don’t know if you happen to see it it’s called the science of yoga i saw it on your podcast i haven’t had a chance to hear it but i definitely saw merlie’s recording there okay have you heard of him no i haven’t oh he’s you know i just i went to two of his sessions in seattle and i just i i was fascinated with his talk and it may be a talk that other people gave but the way he he made it just so accessible and it’s really you know goes into a lot of uh you know physiological processes that happen uh you know while practicing yoga and i i just loved it so um yeah if you listen to it sometime i mean i’m sure you’re familiar with a lot of it but i found him very accessible so that’s why i asked him to participate that’s amazing but it was good for me to listen to his pronunciation a few times because i i i was saying merely but it was kind of more like a a melodic you know flow to it than i uh anyhow so um can you tell me about the chronic condition you you spoke about at the the class the workshop i went to because i you know i i just find um when someone has a personal story that led them to you know significant changes in their life and for you not just increasing your health and vitality but also it changed your course of direction um i’m i’m very moved by those kinds of stories yeah i thank you actually those um you know i mean it it was completely a turning point for me so uh it started i actually used to suffer from chronic constipation and actually i’ll start again because chronic constipation was not the root cause so what had happened is that in 2006 is when i was doing a yoga teacher training course and right around that time after i finished it i found a patch on my leg which looked strange and i didn’t know what it was but i ignored it for some time and then i was getting married uh in 2007 and then things were starting to advance a little more so right before i was getting married i wanted to resolve everything that was going on and so i started exploring you know the regular dermatologist and i was in india at that time and i went to a skin specialist and he saw and examined my patch and he’s like oh it’s nothing it’s just dry skin it’ll go away and then i said but i’ve had this for almost a year and he said ah well okay in that case you know let’s do different tests and we’ll take a patch of it and test it for different things so they tried all different things a couple of testings and nothing came out and then interestingly they sent me for blood work to test me if i was hiv positive and and i was like wait wait a minute you know i know how that actually happens but i’m pretty sure i haven’t been in contact in that sense you know so it doesn’t make sense to me they were like oh no no no we’re not you know we’re doing this just to rule things out so i was like okay fine so i did that and nothing came out so interestingly you know they just kept moving me from one department to the other and nothing actually came off it because it was a really tiny patch and it’s interesting that i keep emphasizing on it because it’ll become more relevant uh you know in the later part of the story so then uh finally you know they sent me the to um they told me they recommended me to a psychiatric department saying that i’m just imagining things and i don’t really have something going on so i said okay that’s it you know i i really need to find something else and i’m going to give this up for now and try to heal myself but then i got married i got married moved to the u.s and then you know we were on an insurance and i restarted reinitiated that whole um health thing to find out if the doctors here could find a reason for it so here they told me okay it’s eczema and it’s you know will give you a steroid and you know it’ll take care of it i said great and how long am i taking it so they said we’ll start you with a lower percentage and then we’ll keep increasing the dosage you know it it’s hard to say if you’ll ever stop using it it may happen or it may not happen and i said no but that’s not my solution i need something where i’m not dependent on anything so that’s where my alternative search started ayurveda not being the first one so i started with homeopathy macrobiotics and um i also went vegan so i tried everything for six months each and nothing you know they they definitely had their own value because they would resolve some other thing that my body was going through but i wasn’t really getting help with what i was suffering with which is when um we went for you know a yoga retreat me and my husband to grass valley farm and which is not too far from here and there there was it i’d with a practitioner on the center and my husband said why don’t you give this a try it has like it’s too expensive i think the consultation was about 250 dollars and to me i don’t know that at that point it felt a little outrageous i said this is so expensive and i don’t even know if it’s going to benefit me but you know given that he pushed me into it and i said okay i’ll go to her so then our consultation began and it was i think it lasted about an hour 15 minutes and you know she went through the entire life story you know the medical history and what i was going through and then we came to this part where she talked about digestion and i told her oh yeah i don’t have bowel movements every day i have constipation but that’s because my grandfather had it my father has it and i have it so don’t worry about that i took pills for it so she said no no no let’s focus on that how long have you had it i said no you don’t get it i came here to you for my eczema which started with the patch and now it’s you know in quite a few places and i really need to take care of that so she said don’t worry about it we’ll get to it but let’s just focus here on the digestive system and it was back and forth and you know so i was getting a little antsy with her and because i felt i wasn’t able to get through and she had her point but you know she had to scold me at some point to tell me that either you surrender and believe in what i’m going to tell you or you know we can end this right here so then that had grounded myself and i said okay fine given i have tried everything else let me give this a faithful shot before i give up and you had invested 250 dollars exactly that was no refund definitely so then you know she she changed that course for me basically of sleep patterns on when i should be there were multiple things in lifestyle that she wanted to fix and also she gave me some sort of a medication um combination of ghee and some other herbs which would focus on the digestive system and constipation and you know interestingly when i walked away there was nothing in the herb list which was directly going to be an application on the eczema but i said okay you know it’s okay i will just trust her what she has to say and try it and so for the next three months i um get you know ate whatever she gave me and interestingly what i had ha suffered for for 10 years that went away i mean with that medication and change of lifestyle those five six seven things i did it completely transformed my life where you know the bowel movement you know interestingly in ayurveda it’s such an important aspect of your life which we completely ignore you know so i had never thought that having a great bowel movement is going to give me that moment of aha and satisfaction so with those herbs for the next three months it just magically transformed my life and uh and and that was something i never thought i could get off pills i thought i would always need it so that actually got me interested in ayurveda i mean it didn’t handle my eczema directly but that got me interested in studying ayurveda to really understand the science and how she arrived at what she was thinking and why she tackled what she did so interestingly my background is biochemistry so i had done i’ve studied biochemistry masters in biochemistry and then i did research for about five years and so i had that analytical mind where i really need to know why i’m doing something and how it’s affecting my body and how the pathways are acting so because this thing tackled my condition i wanted to know exactly what was the science behind it yeah no so i just i would like you to reiterate that what she gave you when you refer to it as medication they they were just herbs sort of the the source not any sort of compound right it was it was basically um food based so it was ghee which is clarified butter mixed with some of the other herbs which are locally available and you know they are legal here so and uh and it was basically just having that and i don’t think she gave me any other pills nothing else so i was supposed to have that that one teaspoon of that ghee early in the morning on empty stomach and prior to that you know my lifestyle was kind of all over the place because my husband was a grad student so we would go to bed at 3 a.m and wake up at noon so with the her consultation that shifted you know from um we would go to bed maybe 10 p.m and then wake up by 6 a.m and then i would do my yoga practice and so that was a huge change as well and and then incorporating that uh medicated or you know herb potentiated ghee and just for two months or three months so after that you know when i started i started looking for places where i could study ayurveda and i found a few online classes but i felt like i needed a community because i would read these books and i would get stuck on the 10th page or 11th page because there was some concept which i just wasn’t to dig through so finally you know i found our school which is vedica global and that was a very interesting encounter so it happened in a bookstore near our home and you know we would get these magazines where you have the listing of all the upcoming events so my husband was browsing through it and we we would never actually look at it so we would get that magazine because we were in that neighborhood but that month he was looking through it and he found um acharya shunya giving a talk in this bookstore and he’s like you got to go to this talk and i was like uh why why her so he said you know she he had heard her talk maybe 10 years ago in berkeley and what she had said at that time really stuck with him so she’s a very powerful teacher and conveys things in a very simple format so i said okay so it was a free you know wednesday evening class for one and a half hour just to introduce the topic so i showed up there um and there was a workshop on the weekend which i hadn’t signed up for but i thought i’ll just go see and check it out so at the end of that one and a half hour talk i was really moved and you know i was i went up to her to say hello but i was i started crying and um i i don’t think it was tears of sorrow it was just i couldn’t help myself there was something which had really shaken for me and uh when we met you know i’m not even sure if i should say it but when we met she said where have you been i’ve been waiting for you and we have a long way to go and i said uh okay

you know i live in mountain view and school is in emeryville and it’s quite a drive and i have a full-time job so i’m not sure she’s like logistics are you know something which you should never be concerned about it’ll all work out but come you know we have a lot a lot of work and we have a long way to go and then i took the weekend class and then you know that’s how the journey really began with not knowing what lied in the future but just doing it more as a self-care and for self-healing so i joined the school for you know the school at that time we had these different programs where the first two months were set was self-care and then there was a year program which was you know more into self-care where you can go deeper into it and really help yourself and your family and then there was a three-year course which would um allow you to help the community and then there was a five-year course beyond that like if you wanted to do which would make you into a practitioner so i said okay you know i’m going to take one thing at a time and i started with two months and you know i went and talked to my boss and i said that um you know i really want to do this and this is a course which is happening but you know it’s in the evening and i work till five is there a way i could leave earlier and he said anything to support yourself journey that’s totally fine you know for two months it’s not a problem i said okay excellent so for two months i found a carpool and it was just amazing but the moment the two month ended and i was like this is not enough i want to go deeper so then you know again that conversation with my boss and he seemed fine and you know somehow it just worked itself out and interestingly at the end of finishing the one-year course i had already started to heal my eczema because you know with a lot of lifestyle and food and dietary habits things started to shift and so i i didn’t really need any uh major herbs for it but just a few changes with food and lifestyle had a huge impact on it and that’s when i found out that you know some of these skin things are really triggered by stress at the i didn’t experience active stress but there was something lying subconscious which i didn’t quite connect the dots so the map started forming for me and so what started more as a two-year one-year program you know it just kept happening and then i finished as a five-year graduate

it’s such a beautiful science it’s so amazing i mean till this date i graduated i think 2014 um end of 2014 and it speed almost three years but i’m still learning because now you know i i also teach so as i teach i find more questions and then i go back into the books and then i’m learning more so it’s it’s a lifelong study but it’s just so beautiful on how it factors into every aspect of life and it’s not just a compartment of oh you know you have a headache let’s just focus on your head and forget everything else because you know there is no body under it no let’s look at everything in your life house you know how’s your relationship how’s your digestive system how’s your mental health how are you doing lifestyle wise how are your food habits how are your interactions everything so when you were um you were studying to be a yoga teacher in india right that’s right did did you um had you trained at all in biochemistry yes prior to that so so was were you going to teach yoga on the side or what was sort of your your game plan at that point you know i actually don’t know i was always drawn to these things so with the yoga teacher training my agenda really was that it was a month long and it was called yoga teacher training so it was a month long um going away in an ashram shivananda ashram and it was in the hills so for me it was more of the experience you know just to be living a certain life in an ashram and learning yoga and getting something out of it and going deeper into the knowledge so it wasn’t really from a career perspective it was more from a deep learning perspective that i wanted to know more and know more of the philosophy be behind the yoga asanas and that school did focus on that you know maybe not so much in depth but still we would have the asana or the posture practice on how to learn it and then how to teach it both but there was a significant amount of time where we were also taught the philosophy and i love that part and and did they cover any ayurvedic principles was that part of that training no not really actually there’s a real separation i mean yeah i think even food wise they had very pure food you know satwik food but i wouldn’t necessarily say that they were following ayurveda principles actively they may be doing it subconsciously but you know we weren’t taught about it it never happened you know interestingly the first exposure i had to ayurveda was pre-biochemistry so in my past life i also did an mba um so my uh education journey has been pretty crazy so as an undergrad actually in india when you finish your middle school and when you’re in high school in the 11th 12th grade you choose a stream it’s either arts which is liberal arts or science or commerce meaning more on the business side and i didn’t i wasn’t a very bright student and so um you know so then you can’t just choose something because you like it it is based on how much percentage you make so because i was on the lowest end my only option was liberal arts so you know so it’s like the highest if you’re getting above 80 percentile you’ll be in the science if you’re getting you know a little lower than that you have an option of going into commerce but if you are even below that then you go into liberal arts because they don’t ask you to leave the school so i did liberal arts and you know political science history and i took mathematics too and then after my 12th grade you know then the options were again limited but then i studied business in my undergrad which was a lot more fun than what i had studied in school so i did that and then in india you know your parents really decide your trajectory on where you’re going to go regardless of what your interest is so i was interested in psychology but they felt no no no we need you to study something else so i studied business in my undergrad so automatically because you’re business undergrad you do a master’s in business so the masters in business happened for me in maharashi university in iowa in iowa yes that’s how i came to the us in 2000 and so there you know that was a very interesting school it’s an amazing school so the way they work is it’s a block system so you take one subject you study that over a whole month and that you know in between you have a midterm and then you have a final and then you have a long weekend at the end of each month but they also have the spiritual aspect integrated so there is you know transcendental meditation and um the other there is also yoga and they’re big into ayurveda so a lot of the teachers who teach in that school they would you know as a part of their incentive i believe they would go for yearly panchakarmas within ayurveds the place the place is called the raj and so i would i was exposed to this you know so that was the first time when i heard about vata pitta kapha and all the teachers are eating this chavan prash and there are these teas available in our bookstore and i said what is this stuff you know why are people going crazy about this what was so fascinating is that you were born and raised in india and you had to come to iowa exactly and and seeing people’s dedication to it you know that going for panchakarma and the food was so fresh and they would emphasize on it and and sadly because i had just come from india you know um i wanted more fast food and so the school was completely vegetarian so and you had to walk miles to access any fast food place like the closest being a burger king which was at least three mile walk but call it desperation we would go all the way there to eat the junk and not eat the healthy food which was provided in our cafeteria wow and you know so and the timings were according to the daily routine how we have in ayurveda you know so morning breakfast was at a certain time and lunch but the best was dinner like you would not be served dinner after 6 30 p.m i think that was the latest 6 30 or 7. so they really followed that rule and uh again you know that was so strange for us that who eats dinner at 6 p.m and so yeah but i didn’t have that appreciation for it at that time so um your your studies in biochemistry were were in the states or in india that was in the us so after mba i studied biochemistry at georgetown university in washington dc and uh yeah it was a it was a one and a half to two year program and that that got me interested into you know learning more of holistic approach reason being because i was coming from business so in business you have like a overall vision you know when you’re looking at an organization with different departments and everything so you’re not just compartmentalizing but with biochemistry or any kind of science you’re going at a cellular molecular level so you’re really coming down to narrow it to one little pathway or one little thing that is happening inside which was good but i kind of like the bigger vision that okay you know we are studying so i was after i finished my biochemistry i was working in a lab which worked on alzheimer’s disease and so our focus was really you know one tiny part of the brain and uh we were more into the you know and and when we would study these brain sections of people who passed away with alzheimer’s and look at a certain part of the cortex under the microscope our focus was just that i mean there was a huge story there but we were still missing the bigger picture and that always you know somehow i felt there was a missing piece that this is not it i need to find something bigger you know something bigger which encompasses this but it’s not it and i i didn’t quite know how to put it together at that point and then i thought maybe it’s this particular condition which doesn’t quite excite me because you know we’re not getting too far with it i was in a basic science research so um so were your days i mean were you like wearing the white lab coat and you know working in a very clean environment just doing research looking through microscopes what was your daily life like was it really like that it was like that and it was spending a lot of time in the dark room you know either developing films because we would do all these uh x-rays of you know certain it’s called western blot where you’re studying certain um proteins and uh or slicing the brain and then you know staining them and then looking it under the microscope and seeing all these in alzheimer’s disease there is there are these plaque formation in the brain so you would see these and and you know all of that is so fascinating just to see it under the microscope and you know one tiny thing can impact your neurons so heavily and uh but there was a lot of alone time you know when you’re doing things on your own you’re imagining things and you’re literally having these stories come alive where you have some kind of hypothesis and you’re trying to match it with whatever research you’re doing to see if the results are coming together so and what you do now like how different is it dramatically different is it from that type of work it’s completely you know 100 no 360 degrees or 180 degrees so then you know actually after um georgetown my job i once i was done with that i moved back to india got married and came to bay area and then once i was here and my husband was a grad student so i had to find a job and so he wanted me to go explore and my only experience was in a lab so i had no other option so then i went back into a lab doing research of a different kind and it was uh studying fishes and again you know similar we’re spending a lot of time in the dark room and you know a microscope and looking at all of the stuff but then once ayurveda studies happened and i think around my third year in ayurveda is when i decided to quit my job because one i was expecting our first child and two i felt like i’m done with this you know i’m not doing justice to my soul by being where i was um because it was a very limited thinking process of just a whole field so i wanted some more expansion to it and so when i with ayurveda now um i do multiple things i wear many hats one of them being i am the program director at the school from where i graduated so i get these um you know i get to design the curriculum design workshops and how the classes will flow what will go in it it’s amazing on you know having that flow on how i want to teach it and you know the whole field is my play area and i can pick anything from anywhere and um i run a clinic which is donation based it’s in its fourth year of running and that has been going on for since you know early 2014 and along with that i also teach at different places one is within my school and different you know one was where you came to attend the class i also teach um yearly at least once or twice at stanford which started happening um also about two years ago so you know so with the teaching and with you know designing the programs and with the clinic they all kind of feed into each other where there’s a lot of community some you know constantly involved with people not in microscope rooms anymore but also you know it is it’s much broader uh questioning but interestingly you know given that when i worked in the lab i didn’t appreciate it so much because i didn’t quite know what was the meaning in it but now studying ayurveda i appreciate my science knowledge so much more because what it did to me was it gave me a very analytical thinking so i wouldn’t just stop at oh because so and so sage says this so this is it you know so be it i have to know why you know if certain foods are not working with each other i have to know why and so that research uh mindset has really helped me even to teach you know given when people ask certain questions it really helps to bring that element of the biochemistry where you’re just thinking in one pathway and to have that holistic perspective to have a bigger picture so it’s almost like when i’m hearing the question i’m literally imagining going inside the body and seeing how things are playing out i mean not that i can see anything but you know no no i mean it all feeds into you know a deeper understanding so as as part of your work at the clinic are you doing consults with people who come in and and may have some kind of condition like a skin rash but you dig deeper to help them find sort of the source of of the problem yes it’s it’s all over so the age group is literally you know from birth or you know i’ve seen the youngest i think six month old and the oldest i have seen is a 88 or 89 year old and the conditions vary you know from um it could be a minor cold which keeps reoccurring to something like um people are struggling with cancer and to them because our clinic you know so one of the things our school specializes in and it’s unique is that it focuses just on diet and lifestyle and it’s fundamentally based on the principle that if your diet is wrong medicine is of no use and if your diet is right medicine is of no need and that’s um such a powerful court to sit with that you know i use it while teaching i use it while i’m in the clinic and i’ve seen that work through with people so for instance you know when people are coming with cancer i have to clarify to them that i don’t prescribe any medication or herbs you have to still consult your regular physician for whatever treatment you’re taking but what i can support you maybe is with food and lifestyle if you’re open to it so sometimes they follow through sometimes they don’t because you know they have a strict um food regime around it so there is no imposition or you know we don’t take them off anything whatever they’re comfortable with but it’s more of an education platform as to how things are working and what is going on and for them to be able to make the decision if they wanted to go with it or they didn’t want to but worth it i think the success has been mostly with metabolic issues where um you know people have suffered with digestion related issues for years and they haven’t quite been able to connect that one food that they’re eating and how they’re feeling and just eliminating that it’s literally you know making these minor changes which has such a huge impact and it’s amazing to see that and it you know keeps repeating itself like just incorporating for instance hot water or just incorporating waking up early i mean i can vouch for the waking up early you know from the from waking up at noon all the way to waking up at 6 00 am and i think i’ve continued that even now it’s amazing it’s like you feel more energetic you have more time in the day and you’re more functional you’re more efficient but it’s hard to explain that but it’s so experiential so that’s how we uh you know ayurvedically when we would interact with people we would try to bring that element that try one tiny thing and see how that works on you and from there you would know because once your body which is a lab has experienced it it knows how it’s going to behave and once you have experienced the fruit of it the chances of you incorporating that more in your life are higher and we wouldn’t have to micromanage your life well you it sounds like you already had that seed planted by your approach to handling your eczema before you discovered ayurveda because you what you told me was you try this alternative modality for six months and then you try another and you were very methodical about it i was impressed with that i don’t think you talked about that at the workshop i went to yeah i think the story has become so long it’s always hard to say you know what to incorporate and what to leave out i do remember and i believe it was you that told this story and if you don’t want to talk about it that’s fine but it was about someone who came to you and you discovered that all they consumed were smoothies uh-huh i have many of those that’s your story right uh which which one can you remind me again it was a woman who had i can’t remember what the issues were right but she said they’re healthy i read that a smoothie is healthy and you found out that’s all she consumed that was her total diet was that right right yeah i remember that story so this lady was actually interestingly you know when um um when you attended the class and you went through these concepts of vata kapha so you know the air element right i’m just gonna give that brief outline for anyone who’s listening for the first time that the five elements come together to form these three doshas and these five elements also play out on a daily basis you know certain time of the day they are more active and similarly even with stage of life so air element is most active in the third stage of life so post 55 years of age or 60 years of age so that’s there is a little variation there and basically means that you know at that stage of life your body is more in that depletion mode but if you’ve had enough nourishment in the first um 40-50 years of your life as in you’ve been healthy and lived well and done things correctly then you wouldn’t have that much depletion in that stage so she was above 55 and she’d been on a smoothie diet because somebody had told her that’s what is um good for her so she would have the green smoothie for breakfast and then for lunch and for dinner almost for two years and when i had seen her what she had come with is you know a lot of um dryness in the knees you know cracking bones as well as some kind of a strange bump in her hand and right yes yes it was you know it was almost like a dip it wasn’t a bump it was a dip and um and you know i have to say this sadly i got excited seeing that after questioning because i was like oh my god you’re a perfect case of what an aggravated air quality can do you know it really dries you up so the cracking of the sound is air and the dip which is depletion is again because of that air and space element and i said what you know so when we went through her diet i was like wow there was absolutely no element of oil and no warm foods and i said all you know if if it were up to me i would keep you in a tub of oil for almost a week because i can almost imagine you know the body coming back to shape after being in an oily place you know it’s i love these analogies and um imaginations where you can imagine things coming back to their shape because they were so dry have you seen that you know i’ve seen my daughter’s toy where you soak a dinosaur in water for 48 hours and it expands

so it was like that i said you know i almost can see that your issues would be fixed because there is so much dryness and it’s almost sad that you know when people would come to the clinic and they say i eat mostly healthy and that’s always alarming for me because you know the health defined because we have all the access to internet and all these different places people don’t rely on authentic sources so that’s an issue that they would not you know go back and check where is this reference taken from if it is just someone’s blog or writing basically you’re just relying things on people’s opinion and that’s a problem because it has no coat from the source text so with her what we did was you know primarily put her on oil and oiling regularly all all over her body as well as incorporating some amount of cooked foods and you know getting rid of the smoothie so the bump of course i mean the dip in the hand of course didn’t go but she definitely felt better with her knee pain and and the other bath experiences that she was going through and so i was telling her that that should be you know enough testimonial for you to see that your body needs that kind of nourishment and you know this so-called healthy food is actually not helping you yeah what i i i’ve actually repeated my interpretation of this of your story to several people because for me the most astonishing thing is that somebody can hear information you know this food kale is good you know how every few months there’s another rage about the superfood and so they take that piece of information and they they treat it like gospel and that’s all they eat and i it just you know it’s scary that people can sort of misinterpret information like that so thank you for um filling out that story because it it’s a bigger story i had forgotten about the um

you know what what it was indicative of in terms of our ayurveda yeah so one of the other things is also that you know people don’t apply things in moderation and i don’t know if it’s a problem of the current age or it has always existed i’m not sure because you know i’ve just been in the clinic for last three and a half years um anything like you said you know kale is a super food so people would go in extreme it’s part of every diet and ayurveda’s message really is moderation so for instance khichari is a superfood and it’s considered medicinal in many ways you know as a cleanser as a digestive but again overdoing it would also hurt you so it’s not that anything which is overdone it may have the most amazing qualities it cannot help you because that’s not the goal moderation is the key that is a good bumper sticker moderation is the key okay well i um this has been fascinating and i’m conscious of the time and i think um i think what i’d like to have you um talk about and you know this is such a a broad question but what would you recommend to people out there who have some sort of condition and they know nothing about ayurveda uh what would you suggest they do because i i know something with such a rich history can be daunting you know people write they want that quick fix they want are you better light right right i think you know i mean given with my teaching experience right now in the last two two and a half years where you know when i’m going into the stanford community and um interestingly you know the workshop we did with you guys was a two day long workshop which is a little more intensive and we can get more information down but it’s still pretty encapsulated and so with these shorter classes and workshops it’s so hard to pass the information in a way that it’ll stay with you and also for you to be able to apply i feel that you know my main key points for people have been one moderation is the key no matter what you’re doing and anything that you feel is healthy to re-question it you know how to do it and so you would read different books with ayurveda and even when you know we were in the workshop we gave information about our daily routine the kind of foods the timing of the day but it’s important to make one change at a time because again the moderation is the key here as well where you don’t want to apply everything in one go and go to the other extreme because you’re gonna shock your body it hasn’t been used to it so one one implement you know implementing one tiny change by just maybe switching from cold water to little warmer water depending on the season because if it’s hot weather you won’t want to drink hot water and um if you know you’re waking up at 8 a.m for instance then going back a little 15 minutes so doing some of these books give you a lot of information on what are the key ways of living a life and taking those and implementing maybe one or two things on a daily basis and seeing how that feels for you because um you know one of the things is also that ayurveda can deal with um chronicity of a situation far more than you know when you are dealing with something which is just super basic meaning that you’ve suffered with a condition for many years you know for instance that eczema patch that i had um you know it was just a patch until it manifested in a full form on my two legs they couldn’t call it eczema because you know it was more of just starting to come and surface and it hadn’t manifested into a disease so conventional medicine is great handling when it comes to a full fledged disease but with ayurveda if you’ve suffered with those lightness of things for many years you know like a chronic cuff for instance or a chronic cold then it will intervene and say oh you know let’s look at the root causes how you’ve been living how you’ve been eating how are your bowel movements how is your sleep so it’ll go back into all of that and tweak things to adjust to see where things are wrong and to fix it and it may take three or four months but it’ll actually handle it from the root cause and it won’t just be symptomatic relief it won’t be okay like let me just give you a cough drop and you’ll be fine at night and you’ll be able to sleep through no we want it to go away you know we’re not going to do just a band-aid on this for you to be okay for just a few days and then go back and suffer so um i think i know which book you’d recommend i would say i’m so biased towards my teacher’s book so ayurveda lifestyle wisdom definitely is the book that i absolutely think has you know mostly lifestyle related tools that can be implemented and and it also goes through the daily routine and how things should be done it’s a pretty fat book but it’s not recommended to read like cover to cover if you want to great there are some amazing stories there but uh it’s really you know one of those books where i would just randomly open a page and i would read two or three pages and i’m you know i have to digest it because there is so much information and more from a deeper knowledge perspective that you can’t just read clothes and forget about it it’s really food for thought i will definitely include a link to uh the book and how about a website um the the center’s website uh that’s vedica global.org okay any other website was so you know people listen to this podcast all over the country and actually i have listeners you know uh in uh different parts of the world what do you recommend or is there a quote-unquote clearinghouse of you know where to go for ayurvedic treatment um so treatment per se our school is currently working on a clinic to be launched in 2018 um i was running this donation-based clinic and i’m on a pause because of maternity for about five six months but my colleague has taken over so if they go to vedica global.org there’s information about where to go for a consultation for diet and lifestyle it also has information about classes because the school’s purpose really was you know when when i mentioned that 250 dollars was a stiff price tag for me you know i when i started my practice that was something i couldn’t do um not because i felt that what she charged was wrong but because i felt that i wanted ayurveda to be accessible for people to be able to try and really you know transform their lives so the donation-based clinic happened because of my teacher’s vision because she really wanted ayurveda to be accessible to the whole community so we resonated on that and you know it has been amazing that we just we don’t charge money so it’s it’s very interesting the way this clinic runs it’s a three series appointment so the first time they come in with their forms and you know we’ll talk to them and it’s a full one our intake second appointment is where we hand out the diet lifestyle recommendations and third appointment is a month later where they’ll come and report how things were with them and at that point we’ll give them a feedback in a donation form if they wish to donate so you know interestingly this uh process evolved more over the last year and a half so now you know sometimes when people come in the first appointment they’re like i really want to make a donation and i and i’m very strict about it i’m like no because you haven’t been through the process and nothing has happened yet unfortunately we can’t accept it because we are also in that philosophy of that the generosity has to come from the heart when you’ve experienced something so you know so i you were allowed to make that donation in the third appointment and we would gladly accept but we cannot in the first and second hmm i like that it’s beautiful so yeah you know so with on the website there is information about classes a lot of classes are free as well you know there is uh the spiritual studies which is offered by webinar as well as in person so a lot of those classes are partly free partly donation based because the goal of the school essentially is more of an outreach to the community for healthy living and so they can you know make basic changes just with where they’re living with diet and lifestyle and to really be in sync with nature because the more we’re going inside our computers the more we are going away from the plants and trees so it’s really reconnecting with the soil well is there anything else you’d like to add i think that’s it sorry i i i thought i didn’t have much to say no it was wonderful and and you know i’m just i i so appreciate you doing this um because you you do have um you have a lot of wisdom and knowledge and you’re still a young woman so imagine what you’re gonna be like when you’re 60 you know i hope the knowledge keeps coming my way and i keep getting opportunities of learning these classes and workshop really helped me go deep and interacting with people and you know knowing their stories you know just like you are learning so much with people’s stories i love knowing people’s health stories and what what their take on it is and where we are coming at it from and then arriving at you know some mid-level ground to heal it yeah i mean it is you know the bittersweet part of having a condition is that it offers opportunities to to dig deeper um learn more that helps you physically emotionally and spiritually and um and this podcast series definitely is uh you know quite a journey for me well thank you so much rania thank you did i say right almost right almost right okay i’m gonna definitely before i introduce you i’m gonna you know practice so i’m gonna send you uh an email just to confirm a few things and what i would love is if you could send me a photo of you whatever photo you like you know if it’s um you teaching or interacting with a client and the client you know could be their back it doesn’t you don’t have to reveal a face or anything whatever you feel comfortable with that would be great okay sure we’ll do that or i’ll just send you my headshot okay well i i hope these next three weeks are um very relaxing and comforting and do you know if you’re having a boy or a girl it’s a boy and you know it’s amazing he supported me all through you know and he’s also going in all these classes and teaching with follow-ups it’s super fun you know interestingly my daughter when i was pregnant with her i was studying at vedic i was in my first year of school or second year of school and then when she happened i used to take her with me as a carpool partner so you know i had hired a babysitter in emeryville so she would take her and in between i would nurse her and take notes in the class so she’s been with me through my ayurveda journey and it’s amazing because now you know with foods that she eats you know she knows when she’s coming down with the cold she’ll tell me what medicine and honey and you know she’ll avoid certain foods it’s it’s it’s so amazing to see that that you know it’s part of her lifestyle and education that she got that concept so early on cool wow that is great well i and and she’s ready for her brother she’s excited she’s super excited and i told her i had planned it in such a way that the baby arrives in summer vacation so she had something to play well thank you so much and i look forward to i’m um you know seeing you again you know hopefully at the emeryville center i’m looking forward to going to an event or something there yeah that’ll be great i would be there again back maybe in a couple of months but you’ll have a lot of fun people to meet there it’s a it’s a good place yes why i so enjoyed the the workshop that i went to well thank you and have a wonderful weekend and um you know we’ll be in touch yeah you too thank you leslie bye bye bye

Stories of Healing with Essential Oils

Two bottles of essential oils

This episode features personal stories about how the use of essential oils has helped with a variety of conditions including depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia, fatigue, post-surgical pain and post cancer treatment.

If you’re interested in deepening your exploration of essential oils, please leave me a note here.

For information about Dr. Kris Gast’s medical practice you can visit her radiation oncology website or Beauty through Health website.

To learn more about Lori Melero’s alternative care practice, visit her website.

Loose Transcription

It’s hot this week – in northern California – and heat is a trigger for me. It exacerbates my symptoms. Oddly enough, most people I know with my condition – myotonic dystrophy – tend to feel better in the heat and have problems with the cold. Give me the cold any day. We have the air conditioning turned up right now and I’m using a variety of tools to help me through it. And one of those tools is natural essential oils. Peppermint is a good one to help with a little cooling.

Using essential oils isn’t necessarily a new tool for me but as I learn more about various oils and how they can help with my physical and emotional well-being, they’re becoming a more helpful and necessary tool.

So this episode is all about essential oils. I wanted to share personal stories rather than a bunch of factoids about essential oils.

Actually, he used to say…we have a really BIG show for you tonight…but I couldn’t find that sound bite. But…we do have a REALLY BIG show for you. Stories about how using essential oils have helped for a variety of conditions including depression, fibromyalgia, post-surgical pain and post cancer treatment.

First let me share my story. I remember buying essential oils at the health food store when I was young. I bought them for the fragrance…I loved jasmine, patchouli, musk. It wasn’t until years later when I realized there were differences in the quality of the essential oil. So many of them have additional chemicals added and weren’t a pure therapeutic grade quality oil.

My first experience with a therapeutic grade essential oil was…lavender. I’ve been carrying around a lavender roll-on with me for at least 10 or so years. I use it every night as part of my sleep hygiene routine but I also use it to fight a bout of anxiety during the day.

About two years ago I met Valerie Jew — an Urban Zen integrative healing practitioner featured in an earlier podcast – she introduced me to other essential oils. I’ve been gradually exploring them since and learning about their healing qualities. There is a lot to learn. I’m using oils in a variety of ways – rubbing on my feet, diffusing them in the air, and occasionally using them in foods and beverages. They’re a great addition to my nightly bath ritual.

Just this month I began a year-long program that culminates with a certification as an essential oils wellness practitioner. But, I digress…I’ll tell you more about this after you hear a few personal stories.

The first guest is Mindy Kim – Mindy was in this year’s first podcast episode when I asked people to share their New Year’s resolutions. Mindy lives with her family in North Carolina and she also has myotonic dystrophy. Exploring the use of essential oils was one of her goals for the new year.

Mindy I bought my oils and I’m ready to start using them. I hope it will be a healthier year in general.

Back in April Mindy and I spoke again and she shared how her health goals were progressing.

Mindy I ordered the DDR prime oil. I roll it on my feet. I love it. I can’t pinpoint it. it makes me feel like I’m doing something good for my body. I ask about other oils she’s tried. In the book it mentions basil but I haven’t used it yet. I like the idea that I’m doing something positive for my body. I don’t have to use it every day with a meal like medications. It feels good on my feet. I like the idea that it’s ancient since before Jesus’ time. I’m very happy with my oils.

The oil Mindy mentioned is considered a supplement. I’ve been applying it to my feet every morning for the last couple of months and I, too, feel like it’s a positive experience. It apparently works on cellular energy and it’s been helping with my daily fatigue. Plus, I appreciate the morning ritual of oiling the bottoms of my feet.

Previously I mentioned Valerie Jew who turned me on to oils beyond my lavender. Her daughter, Laura, is my next guest. Laura began exploring essential oils as a child.

Laura My earliest memory when I was 10 and my mom and my brother went to Bali for a yoga retreat. There were so many mosquitoes. My aunt took out lavender EO, rub it on our palms…it took mosquitoes away. It wasn’t associated with my use of them emotionally. In the program Urban Zen an integrative…one of the modalities. I got introduced into the spectrum…it’s been an all-around journey.
Laura So, one part of my story is that I have chronic depression. I’ve had it since adolescence. At that point see a therapist, get on anti-depressants. For year – I’m almost 30 – it was fatalistic view…your mental health is up to some foreign expert and taking drugs. My epiphany came when I was in the UZ program – along with restorative yoga I started noticing I felt more grounded. A happy accident – I forgot to take my anti-depressants one day. I stopped taking pills and did oils, meditation, yoga…I had my ups and downs…I learned a sense of empowerment. I’ll start with citrus oils in the morning. I’ll bring 2-3 oils with me for the day. I’m more in tune with my body. I’m feeling my energy drop a little bit, I’ll take peppermint. It has fostered this amazing connectivity between my physical self and my spiritual self and my mental self.
Laura One of the first things I do is take a shower I put oils in the bottom of the shower. It creates a steam…I mention the shower mister…usually I put peppermint on the back of my neck or on my palms I’ll inhale. I will take peppermint oil with a full glass of water. I’ll use cedar wood, vetiver…floral oils are calming. Lavender or clary sage. I mention so many…geranium is another favorite.
Cinnamon is one of my favorites for the winter. My body wants something different. She’s completely off anti-depressants. I say “that’s very powerful”

Laura’s story is very inspirational. I’d love to hear from other people that have had a similar experience of transitioning off pharmaceuticals but the friends I know who are either diagnosed with clinical depression or bipolar disorder have quite adamantly told me they the drugs they’re on and it would be frightening to stray from the routine that now works for them.

I wonder how doctors would respond to this switch from pharmaceuticals to the use of essential oils? There are medical doctors exploring the application of essential oils in their practice. I recently met one – well – virtually met – Dr. Kris Gast. Remember I said I’m studying essential oils; the course I’m taking has an online classroom component and I saw Kris’ post about implementing essential oils in her medical practice so I jumped at the opportunity to speak with her. Her medical practice is in Fort Smith, Arkansas which is on the border of Arkansas and Oklahoma.

Kris I originally started in medicine in the 80s – radiation oncology – a lot of computers, big linear accelerators…at this point people retire…I have so many patients have followed and see them once/year. I have a huge population…2/3 to 75% cancer patients survive. It’s part of the practice to make them happier and healthier in their lives. It’s been driven by their patients to expand the practice to have other tools.
Kris A lot of our patients will go through chemotherapy or placed on hormone pills and all of that causes health issues. They always gain weight. I searched for diets. Not just a cancer provider to make sure their other health issues are…I asked about implementing EO. We started using the recipe for insomnia. One menopause recipe. I’m in the process of doing this right now. it gives them an alternative to adding another pill to their ever-growing pile. Old now is like 85. They’ll be like on 20 meds. We get them detoxed and out there doing what they like to do.
Kris I ask how receptive they’ve been. Most of these people in our practice they’re pretty much rural; they have land, grow gardens. They have a history in their family that may date back Indian blood…they used to use this concoction. Our location…Irish and Choctaw and Cherokee Indians. They like natural.
Kris It’s so much fun; it’s helped me be able to say I can practice for another 20-30 years. My staff is so good for our patients…we’ll all take it. anything give a patient I’ve tried it on myself. It helps us understand that something really works.
Kris

Kris

 I think that most doctors do not come to their full potential until they’ve been a patient. I’ve had a chronic illness for 20 years – fibromyalgia – and it’s been a struggle to find anything that helps. I ask about EO for fibro. The first thing that has helped the most was to keep moving…the movement was the only relief. One of my employees encouraged me to become gluten free. Now I look at food to see not how it will taste but what will it make me feel like. The EO for myself to help me sleep better…my recipe is frankincense and lavender. I can sleep 5-6 hours straight. I rub it on my hands and on the back of my neck before I go to bed.

Until doctors get sick and have to take pills, I don’ think they’ll be very receptive to it…

Wouldn’t you want Kris as part of your medical team? We can all hope for a future when doctors will be open and receptive to alternative modes of healing.

The final essential oil story I have for you today is also part of that cross-section of natural healing and western medicine. Lori Melero has been a massage therapist and wellness coach for 20 years. I knew Lori from a local qigong class and had heard through a mutual friend that she recently used essential oils to recover from a rather dramatic surgery.

Lori My earliest experience with oils was in 1997 when I did massage therapy. In 2014, someone introduced me to doTerra. In 2014 I got reintroduced to them. I stopped using oils and they had synthetics and I was allergic. I ask if she did it for the aroma; she was. She didn’t know about the healing benefits. Lavender, eucalyptus, peppermint. A yoga instructor offered a massage with her oils. Aroma Touch session. My body completely opened like a flower. It was like a cleanse.

Once reacquainted with therapeutic grade essential oils, Lori used different blends for allergies, digestive issues and created a lotion with frankincense which helped her with inflammation and a hematoma from a fall.

Lori Back in 2010 I had a gall bladder attack. I went to doctor and advised I get the gall bladder removed. The stone was 2 millimeters. Drink olive oil and lemon juice. I passed the stone. I changed my diet. I was great for 6 years. I ate an egg and cheese experienced with pain. Rushed to the ER. They did tests and I had a 7-millimeter stone. After the procedure, they put a scope down the throat…I became septic. They had to consult with surgeons. They waited a few days to see if would heal. I came out of it and…my white blood cell count was going up. I had a blood transfusion. Another major surgery – clamped my stomach…I don’t remember a lot because they had me on a lot of medication. I asked for my diffuser and lavender. I was in the hospital for 11 days. Once I came home they offered me Norco for pain. My husband had to say, “she said no.” I took Advil for 1-2 weeks. I used frankincense and DigestZen. I put it on the bottoms of my feet. I was in bed for some time. I had feeding tubes…
You used the diffuser…my oils next to me. I would pick which one was suitable for me. Whatever one resonated for me at the time is what I used.
Lori I’m doing great; at least 90%

So…now I ask you…are essential oils part of your tool chest? If not, and you’d like to learn more, please contact me via the Glass Half Full website or the Glass Half Full Facebook group. I’ve embarked on diving deeper into my knowledge of essential oils and will soon be starting a side project for those that would like to join me.

Future podcast episodes may touch upon essential oils but I’ll continue to mix things up. After all, it’s good to have a lot of tools available.

Skydiving, Triathaloning, and Mountain Climbing!

Joe sky dives, Nancy runs, and Rob climbs

Three stories about people taking on physically and emotionally challenging adventures. Joe Akmakjian, who lives with Spinal Muscle Atrophy (SMA), is the first adult MDA National Ambassador. Joe celebrated his 24th birthday by jumping out of a plane with friends. Nancy, after surgery and treatment for ovarian cancer, trained for an AIDS ride and moved on to compete in triathalons. Rob Besecker decided to celebrate his recovery after a series of cardiac surgeries by climbing Mount Everest.

Resilience & Aging with a Disability

Resilience & Disability

Research findings from the Aging and the Quality of Life survey — conducted at University of Washington’s Rehabilitation Research & Training Center — report higher quality of life associated with a disabled person’s higher level of self-reported resilience.

After listening to this episode, check out this Fact Sheet for more information about building your resilience. Additional resources for building resilience can be found at the Greater Good Science Center and the book, Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being by Linda Graham.

If you’ve participated in research or clinical studies for your chronic health condition, please message me at our Facebook page.

Transcript

welcome to glass half full with leslie krongold she shares her stories experiences and knowledge of living and coping with a chronic health condition learn about tools and resources and hear inspirational interviews that help you to live a life filled with quality and dignity with two decades of support group leadership leslie’s ready to help you make lemonade out of life’s lemons are you ready are you ready welcome back well that’s for me it’s been three weeks since my last podcast episode and i have really missed it did you miss it too i hope so hey this process is good for me but i hope it’s also good for you i was out of town in the big apple so to speak attending the accessible yoga conference what a city i’m so glad i lived there when i was young and more able-bodied it’s not so much having mobility issues that prove difficult for navigating new york city there’s just so much stimuli the sights the sounds the smells all the people moving at a fast pace stairs everywhere small spaces to move through or live in oi one big oi okay back to the here and now this is the first of future episodes i hope to explore one’s participation research studies relevant to your health condition i’ve participated in several most are self-reported surveys that are either mailed to me or i take online and but self-report i mean i’m responding to questions about my behaviors feelings activities and no one is observing me it’s how i view myself this type of research is by far the easiest for most people you don’t have to leave your home i’ve also participated in research studies where i did leave my home over a period of four years i traveled across the country to rochester new york for three separate visits to a hospital clinic where not only did i fill out self-report surveys but i also had diagnostic procedures and even gave them a piece of me a piece of my leg muscle which they said was the size of a pencil eraser but i digress i won’t talk about the noise the machine made which captured my leg muscle i’ll save that for another time i’m going to focus on a different research study that i participated in since 2009 i’ve been involved in an annual self-report survey affiliated with the university of washington i’ve never met anyone affiliated with the research study and generally takes me less than an hour to complete the survey and i recall receiving a few newsletters over the years about the progress of the research well this past january i decided to contact one of the research study coordinators affiliated with the study to see if they were open to an interview and they were i spoke with amanda smith the research manager for rrtc that stands for rehabilitation research and training center this is a program funded by the national institute on disability independent living and rehabilitation research and that program is housed at the university of washington the state not dc amanda explained to me that the study i’ve been participating in for the last eight years is called aging and the quality of life survey it’s a longitudinal survey across the united states whose initial goals were to learn more about healthy and successful aging of people with disabilities and what that means as well as how people experience secondary conditions those secondary conditions secondary to their disability include pain fatigue and depression over time the study has received additional funding so the researchers have also sought to find out what barriers may exist for accessing health care and they also explored what role positive psychology has played and how people experience and manage their secondary conditions the birth of the positive psychology movement is said to have begun in 1998 it is the scientific study of human flourishing and an applied approach to optimal functioning so positive psychologists examine concepts such as happiness resilience as well as other strengths and virtues that enable individuals communities and organizations to thrive so let’s pause now and define or as researchers might say operationalize the term resilience resilience refers to the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties and balance back into shape research is affiliated with this aging and the quality of life survey at the university of washington asked people with disabilities to describe resilience and some of those comments were being buoyant rolling with or dancing with a disability taking things one day at a time while also planning for the future finding a new normal as life changes and i would say that description most resonates for me because i always feel like i’m acclimating to a new normal and when i say always um i don’t mean always i have repeated episodes of assessing what a new normal is um back to the list another uh response to what is resilience making the best of life with a disability and trusting that stressful times will pass like the weather but before we go too far into resilience let me tell you more about this study and how did they find me a men explained that they were most interested in people who were living with a disability that they had acquired earlier in life and had aged with the condition rather than aging into a disability such as osteoarthritis so it’s a notable distinction don’t you think aging with a condition but just regular aging and because you’re aging you’re more inclined to have certain disabilities such as osteoarthritis they selected four chronic conditions multiple sclerosis muscular dystrophy spinal cord injury and post polio the primary tool the researchers use to find people with muscular dystrophy is a registry at the university of rochester and i’m in that registry so i was interested to know how many people have been involved in the study and how the researchers decided to focus on certain areas such as secondary conditions so we had um 862 participants in our first survey and today we have 1518. however we did recruit some new folks into the survey when we got that new round of funding because we had initially you know folks consented to completing up to four surveys so then um we had to reconsent when we got the new grant um so i went ahead and looked and of the 1862 who completed the first survey we have 70 of those folks still participating so 1322 of them are still participating in the study is that a good sort of retention oh it is okay that’s great particularly i think for a study that um we had to reconsent so we couldn’t you know we couldn’t bug people and say hey but you completed you know this last one are you sure you don’t want to keep you know we kind of just invite them once and you know if they’d like to continue then they can we have about a 90 response rate each time point so for everyone that we send a survey to we get about 90 of them back which is pretty high and that may be due to our diligent reminder letters and reminder calls that we make i wonder if there are differences between different conditions because in my disease community myotonic dystrophy most people that i meet are so eager to participate in some type of research and especially something that is self-report just you know once a year is is very accessible yeah um and you know i know that we do get some comments that our surveys are quite lengthy um and i understand that a sentiment the primary reason i would say that that we lose folks is because of their passing um and that’s particularly true for our participants with post polio syndrome who tend to be older than the other groups of individuals and then the second reason i would say is just because we lose their contact information that they’ve either moved or gotten a new phone number and we’re not able to reach them again back in 2008 before we even did the first cycle of the survey or the first survey itself we ran some focus groups with you know folks who were living with these conditions and we asked them about what healthy aging meant to them what types of things would be important for us to look at what should we be asking and that’s that was one place where we came out of this real focus on secondary conditions and also about the importance of support so social support resilience ability to participate in valued activities so that really informed some of the questions that we asked in the subsequent surveys and then we did another round of focus groups when we got the second cycle so that would have been between the fourth and fifth survey and we asked again about this idea of healthy aging but we also asked about access to health care you know are there things that you’ve encountered and your healthcare experience that were a barrier to you you know like a scale at your doctor’s office that that is a wheelchair accessible things like that and then we drafted some access to healthcare questions based on the feedback and then went back to our our participants and asked a few of them to read them over you know are these appropriate are we missing anything uh things like that so we try and incorporate more qualitative pieces to our work when we can we also have an advisory board that includes folks from our from our projects the research is still ongoing with the seventh survey currently being processed the team will spend the next year evaluating the data and hopes their funding agency will sponsor another grant but there are tangible results and products available to the public i asked amanda about these you know researchers are using some of the data so it’s not as if it’s been held somewhere and you’re just waiting for an end date to start analyzing it what can you or other researchers glean from uh some of the work that’s been done already sure yeah so i think one of the primary themes that came out of the data from the first few years of the survey was really this focus on middle age we learned that for folks who were living with with a physical disability they tend to experience these secondary conditions like pain fatigue or depression most acutely during middle age and we found that participants who reported that these secondary conditions created just about as much trouble in their daily lives as the primary physical problems of their disability did so really this focus on a middle age we published a paper about chronic comorbid medical conditions so prevalence of things like cancer diabetes arthritis and we learned that our prevalence rates in our survey participants were slightly higher than that of the general population not a lot but slightly higher and that the age of onset was was a little bit younger than the general population and again it fell in between that middle aged middle age bracket so between 45 and 64. so so this this real focus on middle age was a big take home for us and you know a lot of the aging research that is out there is focused on people who are 65 and older well you know what about middle age so um so that was a big takeaway for us well i’ve often felt that that my i could characterize my condition to friends and family who don’t really understand it as imagine i’m 20 years older and yeah you know what would a 70 year old or plus be going through and just you know the moving slower the all the um as you call them secondary conditions that are sort of heightened at an age when my peers are not necessarily experiencing them so sure that’s a concept that we would call accelerated aging perhaps not such sobering news regarding comorbidities and accelerated aging where is the good news you ask remember i started this episode talking about resilience well i saved the best for last here amanda talks about a relationship between resilience and how people with disabilities experience their secondary conditions and we were interested in learning how resilience may be related to the ways that people experience their secondary conditions or their ability to to manage those secondary conditions as they get older i’ve had a couple podcast episodes where we do talk about resilience so that’s very interesting to have that term come up it’s it’s interesting to see the research sort of shift from you know how do we help people who are experiencing pain or fatigue to sort of this more positive focus on how do we help them build resilience how do we help them stay engaged in activities that are of value to them so i know i sent you a bunch of questions and i will get to all of them but some just pop up and i’m wondering what have you learned about resilience if anything yet yes so we’ve um we’ve published a few things about resilience i know you mentioned uh one of the charts that was included in a newsletter that we had sent out to our survey participants and that was done or that came from an analysis that we did with our survey data from the first year through the fourth year and we looked at how people reported resilience and also how they reported things that they were experiencing like pain or fatigue and also their satisfaction with their ability to participate in social activities and their physical functioning what we found was that resilience seemed to act as sort of a buffer if you will in the trajectory of those secondary conditions so people that reported higher levels of resilience at the first survey reported less of a change in things like pain over time so of those who had lower resilience reported their pain also getting much worse over the four years and those with higher resilience reported less of an increase if you will but we still don’t know uh is resilience or maybe we do know i’m not familiar with the research but is resilience something that you sort of garner in childhood and it’s stored away or is it something that people in their 40s 50s and 60s can build that i think is up for debate in the literature as a whole i i think that our researchers would argue that it’s a little bit of both um that some people you know start out with a little bit more resilience than others but that it’s certainly something that you can build and strengthen over time we produce a few different evidence-based fact sheets on different components of aging with disability and we just published one on resilience and ways that you can build resilience and so that’s available it’s free to download it’s on our website we it’s called how to bounce back okay and all of our fact sheets are written by one of our investigators or postdoctoral fellows and then reviewed by our researchers and then they go through a set of reviews with consumers so with folks who participate in our studies who are living with these conditions um we usually do at least three rounds of those on each fact sheet to get feedback on you know what’s useful what’s not is there anything we left out um what don’t you like things like that and then we do another round of revision revisions and then we publish them so we’re pretty proud of our fact sheets and i think people have found them to be pretty useful so certainly take a look we’ve got quite a few of them up on our website so how do these trickle down in healthcare workers hands throughout the country so we partner with a few different organizations to try and disseminate these as best we can certainly we don’t have a marketing budget to be able to get these out as widely as we would like but we do partner with the american association on health and disability and they promote our fact sheets for us we’ve also partnered with the national council on aging our funding agency helps to promote these for us as well and then we have you know our website and our social media accounts that we use to promote these kinds of products more good news there are organizations and books out there that can help you cultivate resilience the fact sheet which amanda talked about is linked to the podcast notes on the glass half full website i’ve also included links to the center for greater good a program affiliated with the university of california berkeley with articles and videos about resilience i invite you to check out these resources to help you build on the reservoir of resilience you already have i’m definitely working on that for myself take care and thanks again for listening thank you for listening to glass half full leslie invites you to leave a rating and review on itunes this helps spread the word to others dealing with chronic health issues for show notes updates and more visit the website glass half full dot dot online.online

Accessible Yoga for All

Accessible Yoga includes persons with disabilities, seniors, at-risk-youth, and many others not comfortable in more traditional yoga classes.

Jivana Heyman — registered yoga therapist and teacher — talks about the origin of the Accessible Yoga organization and the upcoming conferences in New York and San Francisco. Want to know what Accessible yoga is all about? Tune in to find out more.

During our conversation Jivana mentions Dean Ornish’s book, Love and Survival: 8 Pathways to Intimacy and Health. Why not buy it now?

Medical Cannabis

This podcast episode explores the experiences of six people who have used medical cannabis for a variety of conditions including cancer, depression, muscular dystrophy, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, bone fracture, and bipolar disorder.

There’s a lot of information about medical cannabis but I recommend watching this CNN documentary. Check this map to see where your U.S. state is in terms of medical cannabis legalization.

The Science of Yoga

Murali in the cow-face pose

Murali in the cow-face pose

In this episode my guest, Murali Ventkatrao, discusses the yogic perspective on health and current scientific research exploring how yoga, pranayama (breathing), and meditation affect human physiology and has the potential to treat many pervasive diseases.

For additional information about Murali and an introductory webinar delving deeper into the science of yoga, visit the Ananda Institute.

Glass Half Full Podcast Episodes

August Archives: Check Daily

Leslie at her computer

Visit the Glass Half Full storefront

Just one of many Podcast Portals

listen to podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

Subscribe to Monthly Email Newsletter

Stay in touch by signing up for monthly email.

More about Leslie