Tag: sleep

I wanted to help people prevent chronic disease…

Dalia Kinsey, RD, LD, SNS, chose to be a dietician because she wanted to help people prevent chronic disease; this was before receiving a diagnosis of Graves Disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes an overactive thyroid.

In this first of a two-part interview, Dalia shares anecdotes of dealing with a chronic health condition in another country where certain modern conveniences, like continuous running water, are lacking.

Her lived experience and academic training have shown her that many people make the false correlation between weight and health. Dalia believes,

Health is not just determined by one or two factors. Eating is such a social thing and feeling connected to others and happy and not judging yourself when you’re eating, I think also plays a major part as to how your body relates to those calories. And it affects digestion, how you feel about your food, that I think it’s important not to have any strict food rules, but the basics that we all know from our mom or grandma from whenever is that you should eat vegetables and you should eat fruit and you should really, really eat vegetables.

As a healthcare practitioner Dalia views her role is “to be a facilitator and there for whatever the patient wants, not to be like this parental figure telling anyone what to do because you know better.”

Here’s part 2 of our conversation.

If you want to hear another healthcare professional speak about her journey as a physician diagnosed with autoimmune disorders, listen to this previous podcast episode.

September 18, 2020
Sleep Disorders: Insomnia, Restless Leg Syndrome, Central & Obstructive Sleep Apnea, and Sleep Hygiene

In 2018, a research study found that at least 36% of Americans were sleeping less than seven hours each night. Inadequate sleep can lead to a number of physical and/or emotional conditions. Some common sleep disorders include insomnia, restless leg syndrome, central or obstructive sleep apnea, and sleepwalking.

Have you perfected your sleep hygiene behaviors to achieve optimal rest and sleep each night? If not, perhaps you’ll want to hear what sleep specialist, Dr. Catherine Darley, has to say.

In addition to Dr. Darley’s advice, as well as the sleep hygiene tips I offer at the end of this podcast episode, check out this blog post on Brain & Life‘s website.

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 and happy new year to you happy new decade i was going to close out 2019 with this episode on sleep hoping you could use some of the tips during the frenzied holidays but i got to frenzied so now you can add this to your new year resolutions heck i’m always looking for new advice or research to help my sleep and rest routines i’ve been scrutinizing my sleep for a while now i’ve made changes to my daily rituals all with the intention of improving my night’s sleep i know sleep issues are common amongst my patient community amongst my friends pretty much across the western world there are many books about improving your sleep i’ve read many of them in the glass half full facebook group i did an informal poll asking people about their sleep there were four options do you have trouble falling asleep staying asleep waking up or is your sleep perfect the way it is well no one responded to the last option the majority of the respondents had trouble staying asleep and that’s usually my problem though here and there i have nights where i just can’t fall asleep at the end of this episode i’ll share some of my sleep hygiene tips with you everyone’s different so i don’t know if they’ll help you but i think i found a great guest for this episode her name is catherine darley dr darley is a naturopathic doctor and these types of doctors are guided by principles that include the healing power of nature they first try treatments that are of a lower force and have fewer side effects like behavioral or dietary treatments this happens before prescribing any pharmaceuticals and that philosophy certainly appeals to me i met dr darley at a day-long class she taught about sleep and mental health it was geared toward therapists counselors and nurses i was incognito she travels around the country teaching people about sleep research you can check out her website the link is in the podcast notes on the glass full website what is a sleep specialist so a sleep specialist is a physician who has not only the training of primary care but has also gotten specialized training in sweden as a student and there is actually an academy of sleep medicine which is part of the american academy of medicine and is it is it like a subset of neurology or is it just completely its own special it’s entirely recognized in its own right sleep medicine is actually a relatively new discipline of medicine compared to some others like cardiology or respiratory medicine the sleep annual sleep meeting has only been happening for about 27 years so it’s a relatively new discipline in light of some of the longer history of other disciplines yeah okay yeah it’s interesting i wonder if it’s a comment on society or where is our sleep has it just become progressively worse yeah i don’t know i think that you know it sleeps interesting to me in um you know in our social standing because even though we all sleep and we all must sleep it seems like it’s been an area that really hasn’t gotten much focus until the last 30 years or so and uh and that’s kind of surprising considering how essential and how basic it is but did we know how important it was you know more than 30 years ago did we just take it for granted i think it is taken for granted although there was certainly research being done since the 1940s if not earlier looking at sleep and one of the first when i first started getting interested in sleep was about 1991 in college and so i was doing literature reviews and reading research papers and at that point we knew that at least animals would die without sufficient sleep so i think that’s a pretty good indication of how essential it is and uh you know early 90s that’s a long time ago and the research i was reading at that point had been you know conducted in the 10 or 15 years prior to that so we’ve certainly known for a long time how essential it is so what did bring you into this field of expertise was it those you know that original that research that sort of lit a fire for you i have always found sleep very just personally interesting to me i’ve always been a pretty good sleeper and i’ve really my parents my household that i grew up in prioritized getting sleep and i’ve prioritized getting enough sleep and so i’m really very aware of what happens to my experience personally when i don’t get enough sleep and so that’s part probably of what motivated me i also when i was a kid i slept walked uh into the neighbor’s house when i was 12 which was a pretty um wow noteworthy experience and i think speak to my interest yeah so oh wait so did that run in your family or was that an anomaly or did you have an issue with sleepwalking my i don’t believe that sleepwalking ran in my family but i was a little bit of a sleepwalker that was the most extreme case or example of my sleepwalking but there were a few other times that i would sleepwalk and the last time was when i was in college about age 21. so how it ended abruptly i mean did you cause it to end abruptly by no i didn’t do any treatment it’s sleepwalking is something that people often outgrow it kind of peaks when people are around seven to twelve years old although certainly adults there can be adults who sleepwalk regularly but i’m not one of them okay that’s good because you you you spend time in a lot of hotels with the work you’re doing i’m sure that would be a little scary yes and for people who are regular sleepwalkers adults it can be distressing but it seems every magazine i pick up it doesn’t matter what kind of magazine there’s something about sleep and i’ve read you know a lot of books on sleep i attended your workshop i mean i’m just so intrigued about it but it seems like perhaps a lot of america is intrigued about it so i was wondering if you could tell me you know some of the statistics about sleep or or lack of sleep that contribute to poor physical sure i can and i want to comment on your your observation about many magazines now will have articles about sleep and that it’s something that’s really captured the interest a huge uptick in the amount of media interest and attention and public interest years ago so i think that’s a really positive sign for us improving our sleep on the other hand there’s some new research that evaluated americans sleep up to 2018 and found that 36 of americans are sleeping seven hours or is not enough sleep for adults most adults seven hours or less so that’s a increase in the percentage percentage of americans not getting adequate sleep and i think about it impacting five domains leslie i think i talked about this briefly in the course that you’ve got your physical health and and our quality of life and our kind of non-diagnosable symptoms to full-blown diagnosable anxiety depression as i think of our physical performance and mental performance so many people in america operate cars right which is a form of is absolutely impaired when you’re sleep deprived then there’s this cognitive performance things from simple memory all the way up to complex problem solving are going to be worse your performance will be worse in those areas if you’re not getting adequate sleep and then the fifth dome appropriately to them which can cause disharmony in your relationships and your social functioning basically i asked dr darley to tell me about other common sleep disorders especially insomnia we definitely want to be treating obstructive sleep apnea and there are other sleep breathing disorders is insomnia and we think this person’s uh insomnia is chronic if they’ve had it for more than three months which you know three months can speed by right and someone’s acute insomnia due to maybe a life event a good insomnia continues after that other categories would be movement disorders things like restless leg syndrome other categories are circadian rhythm disorders and this is a category that’s getting a lot more attention now as we learn how pervasive our circadian systems are throughout our bodies one population that really struggles with circadian issues is shift workers about 20 of americans do shift work where they’re commuting to work or working at times they would naturally be sleeping that can cause a big problem and actually increase cancer risk other two categories of sleep disorders are hypersomnias like narcolepsy and then the last category is parasol it’s where we see those more abnormal sleep features such as the sleep walking sleep eating those types of conditions one is you know roughly how common is sleep apnea and i recently read just a short little blurb that there are different types of sleep apnea can you you know elaborate a little on that so we think it’s somewhere between five and ten percent of men have sleep apnea and slightly lower percentage in women but i’d like to make sure that your listeners know that when women get through menopause and their post-menopausal at that point the rates of um be equivalent to the rates in men and it’s because estrogen has a protective function keeping the airway toned and as women go through menopause and no longer have such high estrogen levels their airway is more easily obstructed like men of their age so that’s something to keep in mind for women as they get older and yes there are another type of apnea is called central sleep apnea and the physiology of obstructive versus central sleep apnea is quite quite different what happens with obstruction of sleep apnea the brain is still telling the body to breathe so you’ll still see the diaphragm the chest rising and falling as the person tries to breathe but they’ve got an obstruction in their upper airway kind of right at the back of the throat usually but in central sleep apnea there’s a problem with the brain respiratory drive and the brain is not giving a signal to breathe and so the diaphragm actually will be still during these apnic pauses and they’re not even trying to bend again it may panel even attempt at respiratory effort the obstruction of sleep apnea is more common in people who have high bmi high body mass index but it’s not exclusively true and i think that we generally think that women tend to be more missed diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea because they tend to be slimmer or smaller people and so we don’t want to just assume that someone who isn’t overweight doesn’t have obstructive sleep apnea because thin young women could have obstructed sleep apnea also it’s really not only is it the entire body habitus but it’s the shape of the airway so for people who have maybe a small or recessed jaw they’re going to be at increased risk people who may have a deviated septum and can’t breathe through their nose and so therefore they’re breathing through their mouth that increases their risk of obstructive sleep apnea or you know if they have a large tongue or enlarged tonsils making the airway more crowded it’s easier to obstruct you know we did you know year decades ago think of it more as a overweight person’s disease but now we know it’s really mostly impacted by the shape of the airway i asked for a bit of an elaboration on the circadian rhythm and how it impacts us so our circadian rhythm is several many systems in our body that help us stay entrained to the 24 hour a day that we’re seeing on our earth and it’s signaled mostly and it’s uh we’re entrained to the day uh environmental day by the time that we get bright light in the morning so you know sometimes people really focus on getting to bed at the same time and that that is the most important for sleep but i would suggest that actually getting up at the same time each morning and getting bright light as soon as you can helps in train your circadian rhythm and your sleep we want our circadian rhythm to be robust so that we are widely awake during the day and deeply asleep at night one of the things that is really confusing our bodies now in modern lifestyle is the amount of artificial bright light that we have available to us at night both on our electronics on the evening cell phones tablets computers tvs etc and then also just with the ambient lighting that we have in our homes and that is that actually causes a delay in our sleep hormone melatonin and it causes a shorter time of that root melatonin is being released each night so that can impact our sleep so in these uh winter months where you know we have less light and i often wake up here in northern california and i don’t have a clock in in the bedroom but i look and it you know i think oh my god it’s like 5 a.m but it turns out to be 8 a.m and there’s just you know like minimal sun and even you in seattle you know how do you how do you get that hit if it doesn’t exist naturally for some people they may choose to use a light box other people may choose to just get up you know even though it’s dark and maybe cold outside get up at the same time turn the lights on really actively start their day and then as soon as it’s light out a great practice is to go out for a walk 20 minutes of a walk with the bright outside light and for those of your listeners who are in seattle or other places that are known for being overcast and cloudy even on an overcast morning it’s going to be brighter outside than almost any indoor setting is going to be and that amount of light will really help clue to your body its day and switch into daytime physiology awake physiology and then i think the other corollary is to purposely be turning down the lights in your home and not only turning down the brightness of them but also switch to more historical types of light waveforms that people would historically be exposed to at in the evening which would be your yellow and think uh sunset or fire light or candlelight those kinds of hues of lighting so what i recommend is people set an alarm on their phone or something for an hour hour and a half before their bedtime and at that time they turn off all the lights in their home except for maybe one light which they’ve put kind of a yellowish hued relatively dim bulb in so they can still do their recreational wind down activities you know snuggling and talking with the family or reading a book or doing some gentle yoga or listening to a podcast or something but they’re not getting bright light they’re not getting blue light i was curious if jack and darling could give us more suggestions on how to improve our sleep hygiene nutrition and exercise have gotten a lot more media attention over the last 60 years than sleep has well if you just had the exercise and nutrition piece that’s not very stable is it you’ve got to have the sleep piece and then i think of some other some other pieces of a healthy foundation being positive social relationships loved ones that we can count on and that we and who have esteem for us and we have esteem for them another one would be joy having joy in our lives and then the sixth connection to nature and there’s lots of research coming out now about how nature improves our health and i know when i’ve been out nature or i exercise on a day my sleep my ability to sleep that evening is easier is enhanced so sleep hygiene is basically creating a lifestyle that promotes healthy sleep and a strong circadian rhythm uh and so there’s many many components of this if i was just going to choose out the top five components of sleep hygiene i would say i mentioned bright light in the morning for 20 minutes ideally in the first hour or two of getting up sooner the better after getting up the second one would be like i said earlier avoiding the blue light and the artificial light at night and replicating as best you can naturalistic historical lighting conditions which would be dim yellowish reddish spectrum of light would be deciding to give yourself enough hours of sleep because insufficient sleep syndrome is definitely the most common sleep problem that i see people having and it contributes to so many domains that can be negatively impacted the physical health the physical performance measures so the way that i think about this which i’m not sure that other people do is that if you are an eight hour sleeper and that’s the ideal amount of sleep for you that means you can have a 16-hour day and if you’re trying to have 17 or 18 hours of activity each day you’re not going to be getting the sleep you need and therefore you’re going to be having some domain and i encourage people to think about the question would you rather have a long day or would you like to have a good healthy day that’s shorter because you’re getting enough sleep and i’m not sure that people are thinking about it quite as explicitly or quite in those terms so that would be the third thing get enough sleep the fifth thing is your sleep hours to rest and sleep and don’t take your daytime rolls and responsibilities to bed with you i think that idea that we’ve probably all heard of leave a bet pad of paper and pencil at your bedside so if you have a good idea in the night you can jot it down i think actually that’s a horrible idea because it trains you to be on all the time instead of practicing some limit setting that it’s okay and it’s valid for me to stop taking care of my responsibilities and just rest and sleep and recover and be recharged for the next day when i can pick those up again so those are my recommendations and then the fifth one would be about probably exercise and just giving yourself enough wind down time between your active day or eating or exercise and turning lights out some people transition more quickly others need a little bit more time but you know kind of evaluating that for yourself and determining how much time you need to wind down so that you’re ready to sleep once you’re in bed regarding insomnia does this refer to something more than having difficulty falling asleep i asked dr darley about waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back to sleep depending on what their problem is if they are aware of waking up gas with a gasp in the middle of the night or if a bed partner or someone sharing the room says that they’re snoring loudly or pausing in their breathing at night they definitely should be evaluated for a sleep breathing disorder if they’re having difficulty with intimates at the beginning of the night to fall asleep being awake in the middle of the night or waking up too early not refreshed not ready for their days insomnia can manifest at all those different points in the night that is something that should be addressed we know that the more episodes of acute insomnia that somebody has the greater their chances of having insomnia in the future so that would be important and then if they have restless leg syndrome where they’re feeling like they just have to move their legs in the evening and that movement uh or that sensation subsides when they move that would be an indication to go see a sleep specialist such high percentage of americans are not getting adequate sleep i would really encourage people to do an optimal sleep plan for two weeks where they’re really prioritizing getting the amount of sleep that they need and just then noticing how does it impact their health and their sense of well-being is it worth it to get more sleep does it really make a difference and how can you do that that’s what i would recommend and i think i ended with that leslie in our sleep class i’m wondering if you had the chance to do it and if so how did that work for you oh i know yeah the more i sleep the better i feel years ago i did my silver presentation i was doing for my patient in my disease community and i had you know impairment like maslow’s hierarchy of needs but it was based on my self-care routine and the foundation is sleep and getting a good night’s sleep is critical for my next day and a lot of what i do during the day is to lead to that optimal sleep experience so it’s based on exercise and winding down stimuli like lights and sounds i take a hot bath every night the only thing i do which is probably contrary to uh what sleep experts suggest is i i watch a little tv in bed i mean there’s you know there’s these recommendations that we make that are based on physiology but every person is an individual and has different success abilities i mean as we know we we’ve all got probably friends who can drink more and and handle it fine you know there’s you know we can give examples in any area of health where we see individual variability and so i encourage people to follow the rules and then if they find that they can break them in one area more power to you dr darley has certainly provided us with food for thought one thing i’ll definitely start doing is getting outside in the morning even if it’s overcast not mentioned in this podcast but we did talk about it during our conversation is starting a sleep journal or diary there are also online versions or apps to help with this dr darley believes it’s good to document and look for trends rather than relying on your subjectivity and another way to track sleep and include relevant data is to use a wearable device to sleep this wouldn’t be comfortable for me but my partner does it and can check to see how much sleep she got the previous night and at what time she may have awakened during the night i remember from my time receiving regular acupuncture treatments that when you wake up in the middle of the night i can point to issues related to different body organs this is all part of traditional chinese medicine so you might if you find that you’re waking up at a particular time every night you might want to consult an acupuncturist anyhow as i mentioned in my conversation with dr darley i am intentional during my day to create a fertile ground for restful sleep i exercise earlier in the day i eat frequent small meals with my last meal several hours before i’m gonna go to bed i do wind down and i limit stimuli such as lights and noise and i take a hot bath using essential oils like lavender which is known to have a relaxing effect and i also take a one to one thc a cbd tincture sublingually under my tongue about an hour before i anticipate falling asleep and this routine usually works but nothing is foolproof anxiety can still rear its ugly head and keep me awake or arouse me from asleep it’s all a work in progress so rest peacefully my friends and when you wake up well rested the next day turn one of your friends onto this podcast thanks 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 online classful.org

you

January 9, 2020
Self-Care Challenge: Avoid Fatigue

So, what is fatigue? It’s not a fancy word. Most of us probably think it’s synonymous with being tired. But, is it?

Wikipedia’s entry for fatigue includes:

Fatigue is a subjective feeling of tiredness that has a gradual onset. Unlike weakness, fatigue can be alleviated by periods of rest. Fatigue can have physical or mental causes. Physical fatigue is the transient inability of a muscle to maintain optimal physical performance, and is made more severe by intense physical exercise. Mental fatigue is a transient decrease in maximal cognitive performance resulting from prolonged periods of cognitive activity. It can manifest as somnolence, lethargy, or directed attention fatigue.

There were frequent times when I felt like I had a good night’s sleep but I would experience sudden fatigue during the day. It didn’t make sense until I started paying attention to when the fatigue would appear. It took awhile before I fully understood a pattern and started to have more control over the bouts of fatigue.

Aside from doing my best nightly sleep hygiene, I changed my diet to smaller, more frequent meals. My body can’t handle larger meals nor certain types of food. Once I made these dietary changes, my bouts of fatigue became less frequent.

If you’re using the Health Storylines app, you might want to explore the Fatigue Manager tool to help you track and identify the cause of your fatigue.

Fatigue Manager Tool in Health StoryLines app

March 5, 2019
Do It Yourself: Cannabis

Need help with sleep? David — resident DIY expert — explains how to decarb, squish, and infuse cannabis. Unfamiliar with these terms? No worries. These terms, and more, are explained for the novice. Podcast episode, and complementary YouTube video, demonstrate the processes involved with creating cannabis tinctures and infusions for making edibles.

An earlier podcast episode features six people sharing how cannabis helps with their physical and/or emotional challenges including cancer, depression, muscular dystrophy, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, bone fracture, and bipolar disorder.

Once you’re familiar with the process known as decarbing, you may want to check out this podcast episode featuring a fine dining chef who prepares meals infused with cannabis.

January 18, 2019
Sound Therapy: I had to do this every day if I wanted to become well again

Sound Bath? Sound Meditation? Sound Symphony?

Sound therapy has become a wonderful tool to access deep relaxation. For many, it is a gateway to meditation. Melissa Felsenstein of Inner Sounds Meditation shares her story of how playing crystal bowls and metal gongs helped her heal from symptoms of anxiety and depression. A self-proclaimed Nervous System Advocate, after several years of exploring these musical instruments, she now shares her process to help others.

Check out a video from this Summer Solstice Sound Bath.

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 to the summer if you listen to the last podcast episode about nature i hope you’re now trying to get a daily dose of it vitamin n that is this past week i was quite fortunate to get this great double dose of vitamin and at the university of california’s botanical gardens in berkeley on wednesday i attended my first forest bathing led by a certified forest guide but the two and a half hour experience ended in a redwood tree grove and on thursday morning i found myself in the same grove i didn’t sleep there overnight and i was not kidnapped and taken there but i returned for a solstice sound math i would assume most of you listening out there have never been to a sound bath but it’s an experience i bet will come your way soon my first sound bath we always remember our first time right was nearly three years ago in july at a yoga studio in oakland california sound practitioner was melissa felsenstein and she is my guest for today’s episode so perhaps you’re wondering just what is a sound bath is it always experienced in nature and how is leslie able to read my mind

often i use wikipedia as my go to web page for a solid definition of something but there is no entry for sound math i’ll have to rely on my experiential knowledge so you know when you’re in a bathtub you’re enveloped in water for me this is a truly relaxing experience well in a sound bath you allow yourself to be enveloped by the sound not any sound like i don’t think any cdc concert would qualify but you know who knows melissa uses crystal balls gongs and chimes to create her sound math i’ve been to several sound experiences with different practitioners sometimes it’s called a sound meditation or sound symphony where other instruments in addition to bowls and gongs are used such as a harp wooden xylophone and even a human voice each sound experience is unique many factors contribute to the overall experience who is the practitioner what is the environment like if it’s indoors what are the acoustics like how close to the practitioner am i seated or am i reclined do i shut my eyes and let myself be carried away or do i remain seated so i can watch and listen on thursday i chose to have my eyes open it was a gorgeous sauce this morning in a redwood tree grove and i wanted to videotape portions of melissa’s performance best to keep my eyes and ears open for that what you’re listening to in the background is from that day in the redwood grove you can hear birds communicating in the background and actually when melissa stopped playing the bulls and gongs the birds really went crazy i think they were beckoning for an encore you can already tell i’m partial to melissa’s sound performances i’m a fan shall i say her journey to this work and you know and now after three years she’s making a living as a sound practitioner or healer anyhow her journey is what this episode is all about you can watch a video of the solstice sound bath on the glass half full youtube channel but it’s a best experience live a link to the inner sounds meditation website is in the podcast notes and that’s melissa’s website so i was introduced to sound as therapy in 2008 and i was traveling india and i was at one of those bazaars there was this big market i walked into one that i had i’d known about the tibetan bowls the metal ones they’re metal bowls that are handmade in tibet and in india this was in rajasthan so it’s the northern part of india and so i i went there i saw i saw this this shelves and shelves of metal bowls and i thought oh that’ll be a really fun thing to have and i started talking with the man the store owner and i kept kind of coming back to it like we were there for a couple of days and i kept just wanting to be around this man and just sort of talking with him and i helped him with his business card and some other things and we were just kind of becoming friends and eventually he told me that he used these bowls he used the sounds to help heal children specifically of different ailments and that’s what he was known for and i remember i had this moment like oh my gosh like i’ve always been interested in music i was a dancer so the idea of sound as a way to help people i was just so blown away and i thought and then he was showing me some techniques and i eventually bought a bowl from him and then i convinced him to give me his mallet you know he didn’t want to give me like his mallet but i really wanted his mouth i felt like he was infused with this like power you know and he was very reluctant but somehow i convinced him um and i uh yeah so i came home and i was so inspired from that trip and i thought i’m gonna become a sound healer and then i got home away from india back in the grind of los angeles and i was like that is a crazy idea like who who would ever want that you know i completely denied the dream like i felt the dream and then i i denied it and i was working a corporate job and i just continued and then it’s interesting how you know you have this little if it’s meant to happen it will happen right so i i said i said no and then of course you know a short time later it came back to me like a boomerang i think i just felt like it was just too wild you know and anyway so needless to say um a few years later uh my father fell mentally ill so he was dealing with bipolarism and he was on lithium but then the lithium was really hurting his kidneys and so he was abruptly taken off the lithium by a really bad doctor i don’t know you know someone is a certain way and then you have no idea what might happen really when they’re taken off their meds you just assume it’ll be fine kind of you’re like well what’s gonna change really well everything changed for him everything changed he became manic and he just never recovered he was manic for eight years until he died so uh in the beginning you know he was on the street and it’s interesting how the system i i’ve said this before but the system doesn’t really care that that person was an mit graduate on a scholarship i mean my father was brilliant he worked for hewlett-packard his entire career starting right when he graduated from mit just this really brilliant man very kind and soft-hearted and always taking in stray animals and just a very introverted introverted quiet genius and but the system doesn’t care it doesn’t care that what you were you’re just like another person you’re another number and so he was lost in the system of just mental hospitals and um all sorts of situations that i i don’t really want to go into too much too much detail because it’s um it’s painful but we’ll just say that it was it was a really bad time and so i was very close to my dad i’d say we both had this kind of wild adventurous self that we both understood and we were both a little bit weird and we liked like kind of things that were a little different from other people and he really encouraged me to be an art major he loved the arts he loved that i loved music he loved that i danced so it was really supportive and just i don’t know fun we were like pen pals during that you know my college years so anyway when he got sick um i was doing yoga i was doing kind of your typical exercise and but my nervous system was becoming so

it was becoming so severely imbalanced because i was so afraid all the time for my dad i was afraid for his health i was afraid for my mom’s safety i was afraid for everyone else’s safety he became kind of a dangerous man he became an angry man so um and his his own safety for himself and uh it just became too much you know there’s a certain amount of stress you can deal with but then when that stress keeps going like whether it’s a chronic illness right you understand that and just dealing with this something that’s relentless it doesn’t it doesn’t ever let you go and you don’t know what’s down the line you don’t know what’s down the line you have to become it’s very uneasy it’s unsettling you can’t ever get kind of grounded and feel confident or sure and i think about that like chronic illness or or cancer treatment and sort of my experience too there’s a lot of commonalities and i think a lot similarly this happens for everyone’s nervous system that’s under chronic intense stress you know basically like everyone else i stopped sleeping i was insomniac um because i just couldn’t rest my mind at night so that and then i stopped sleeping then i wasn’t able to eat and digest you know i could barely eat anything i was losing weight i felt sick all the time and bloated and it just felt awful i had migraines i had tmj i had teeth grinding and eventually it got to the point where i had like a shake as well like like and i was losing my hair i mean it was wow severe anxiety severe severe anxiety and as that started to compound i was also greeted with depression because you start to really feel down when you can’t get yourself healthy and you’re seeing you know i think depression it’s different from sadness i mean i was sad about my dad but depression is this there’s a quality to it that’s um so gray it’s so bleak and i could feel that with just this idea that tomorrow is going to look exactly like today right and when you look into the future and that’s all you see is a broken body and sadness grief you know at the time i didn’t realize i was grieving the loss of my dad right like i had lost my dad he was here but who he was was someone like completely foreign to me occasionally over those seven years i’d see this little spark and i’d remember who he was and he’d do a little joke or something and it gets me like teared up just thinking about god it was such a hard time um but was there also an element of fear that this could be your future oh yeah that’s a really good point yeah like i looked into my own future and i was like oh wow this could be it because i was still going to yoga classes and i remember being so like angry and i was very bitter a lot of the time because i was so um mad that my life was lost and my dad’s life and my family my family you know we were sort of broken up by the situation as any family would it’s very very hard to deal with mental illness i asked melissa about her reintroduction to the sound work how did she recapture that dream she originally had in india so i would go to these yoga classes and yoga had always been my savior it always been my refuge and i would sit in shavasana i would just steam i was just so mad because like i kind of felt like even that was taken from me like no matter what style of yoga i did it didn’t work i was doing acupuncture which i always felt exhausted by like i felt like it took something from me to show up to get there to receive treatment and then afterward i was always super tired reiki same thing i tried talk therapy i tried some western medicine i was basically just doing anything i could and i just i just didn’t have any extra energy for anything i was barely able to kind of just show up in my life and just kind of just get through the hours of every day so a few different people um encouraged me to take some time off and i and i did and one person actually said she was like you know i really she was my my therapist and she said i think you should like go to an ashram so i did i did and it was a brilliant move because they’re so disciplined there’s a lot of chanting and that’s kind of when i opened up to this other side of yoga that wasn’t just asana you know asana is the movement it was the chanting and then the meditation um and you know just kind of broadening out what what this concept of of yoga was and at the same time i was taking some classes around my neighborhood and i walked into this class and little did i know at the very end in shavasana she plays a crystal ball and i just had this moment where i could feel my whole body responding to the sound you know that deep deep relaxation and i could feel even my nervous system kind of calming down and it was really brief you know it was only like a minute or two and i just thought i don’t care why or how i’m just going to i walked up i was like what is this i didn’t even know what it was she’s like this is a crystal ball and i was like what and then i just bought them and i had them delivered and i taught myself how to play i bought i bought three of them from home shop in florida no they don’t make them there no no almost all the bowls are made in china actually but um so uh and they were delivered in like you know eight business days and i just unpacked them and just started to play them because i just at that point i was like i don’t care what it is i don’t care what tool it is because i i think i think the pivotal moment too wasn’t just how i felt when i heard the ball and i think it also was that it created hope for me a hope like that future that i saw before that we were talking about where every day is the same and you almost just want to give up you know it’s like why keep living why do i want to live i don’t want to live like this you know and i think a lot of people are confronted with that um often in our lives uh but so it brought me this tiny bit of hope like maybe it could be different maybe i could just try and use this so the sound came back to me under much more rough circumstances um and you know unlike some sound healers uh sound is taking off right now and there’s a lot of different healers out there but i think the thing that makes it slightly different for me was like it was necessary this wasn’t a choice it wasn’t like i like gongs these sound so pretty they’re fun they are fun they’re outrageously fun to play to feel it in your body as you play it’s amazing and i could see that draw but for me it was necessary like i had to do this every day if i wanted to become well again

i don’t know i just feel like the gongs what what they did for me i felt like you know i started for like a month or two with just the bulls and they really rewired my nervous system but i was missing the jump for my depression like i still couldn’t quite mitigate that and um i think the gongs really help with that because they take you into this ethereal meditative open space so when i got the gong it’s jupiter jupiter was the gong each of each of the gongs have a um they’re a certain note that’s aligned with the orbital properties of each planet and they have they have the base note and then they have two overtone notes as well that’s how they’re different from orchestral gongs which are not tuned at all so when i have eight gongs or something i can set them up to be very harmonious based on notes or feelings or dissonant you know but orchestral gongs you can’t do that they’re all just set they they’re tuned to sound pleasant but that’s about it so these are really special instruments and they’re so high quality they’re all made of an alloy of of metal oh okay so they vary in what they’re made of well depending on the maker yeah every maker has their secret recipe so piste’s got a recipe and meinel has a recipe and um nobody wants to give up their secret recipe because it’s a combination of different metals okay to make the sound and of course you know there’s also there’s gong gongs have been around for thousands of years um so there’s chinese gongs and tai gongs and burmese gongs and how did you know you wanted to go to gongs like yeah that’s that’s a good question i don’t know there was an intuition that just you know i did go to a few sound meditations at the time in l.a and i would go and i would feel this like distinct calling like if if i really really want to feel healthy i’m going to need this and i i think it was so it was intuitive but once i got it i did notice a big difference in my healing experience

it’s very hard to describe this the state of being

i always struggle with it on paper and through voice because it’s like a place that’s beyond time i don’t know it’s a place beyond words it’s a it’s a feeling it takes you into this almost like to the soundless place that’s where the gongs take you it’s like you’re you’ve got to prepare the the mind you got to create the pathway in into the silence and i think the gongs really help with that and when we can find silence in different ways rather than just through meditation which is so hard for most people including me i mean i became a meditator after i used sound as meditation as a meditative tool but um so we all struggle with sitting there you know and in yoga they they have you do pranayama first so that way you can do a little breathing technique and then hopefully get your mind ready well in the same way that’s what the sound is doing the sound is stimulating your mind it’s stimulating your senses it’s stimulating your cells it’s vibrating everything it’s unpredictable the gong i don’t even know how it’s gonna show up you know some days i do a hit that i’ve done a million times and it just looks like crazy um so it’s very unpredictable and so the mind can’t um the mind relaxes in that actually it doesn’t it doesn’t grasp it’s not able to grasp to rhythm you know it sort of has to deal with unpredictability which is good because it makes it more flexible but the the sounds i think or this is what i know the sounds of the gongs

are trying to prepare your mind for the sounds without the gongs to prepare it to kind of clear those everyday thoughts out of the way with sound because it takes over just it’s not going to let you spend a lot of time thinking about your grocery list

melissa explains how her playing of the gongs was a healing process remember she was doing this on her own still the gongs and the crystal balls were tools for her own healing also getting a lot of strength from that space too right resiliency you kind of feel like you can get through these difficult points of our lives and you know my dad’s story you know as as i got better and better and better you know dad got worse so you know right as i was launching my business my dad was dying you know so um and i’m smiling right now which no one can see uh and it’s because you know he brought me the biggest gift like would i have found this if everything had stayed the same probably not or maybe it would come to me in a different way we don’t know um if you’re meant to do it apparently it comes back again again yeah but uh yeah i mean his he’s he’s he’s an inspiration for it and also i really felt like the sound as therapy and for myself really expanded my capacity to just handle more you know and so even though dad was going through so much i felt very robust and i let go of the need for him to be the way he used to be and i accepted who he was and i accepted his own karma if you believe in that his own path like i can’t change that it’s what his soul needs and i can just support him with love and kindness and caring and it really having those kind of realizations helped immensely with the guilt and the pain

and i’d say i really started to feel better about a month into it and then really powerful changes in the nervous system three months later and i’d say the depression was really reigned in and sort of obliterated probably six months into it wow so yeah within a year i was already doing really i was a really different person and over the years people were like wow you’re so less gritty like you’re so much more soft i used to be really kind of intense and kind of feisty so it’s it’s it’s changed my pulse you know it’s changed my own vibration and and um but it was you know i started out with myself and i remember my friends they were like what have you been doing you seem different and i was like well i was kind of embarrassed about it i was like well i kind of do this stuff with sound and they’re like what i’m like they’re like that sounds cool like they’re all into it you know and i was like i don’t know and they’re like we should you should you should play for us and i was like i don’t know about that it really like i was pretty reluctant to share um for many reasons you know i kind of felt like well what kind of person is a sound a sound practitioner i’m even afraid to say healer it just feels too heavy what kind of person is that like who does that you know and i’m like that’s not me i like to eat hot dogs and hamburgers bacon i love bacon god if i could have that every day i would and i love to like drink wine and i i’m very standard in many ways just like i’m just a normal chick like you know who is this and so i was very um embarrassed and even when i first moved here you know that was a three years ago i launched my business full-time after doing a few of those events you know and then kind of growing a little bit in la but but i knew i just knew i needed to come here i need to come back home this is where i’m i’m bored i was born in south bay and now that melissa’s been sharing her healing tools with others for over three years she’s learned a lot about the instruments and how people respond to her performances i asked her to elaborate on this it’s organic and you’re really like for me i’m just listening i’m listening so intensely to wait and sort of find the sound that’s special because every sound meditation has several of them and it’s a it could be a rhythm it could be especially with the gongs the bowls are interesting how they show up every time too a little different but the gongs they definitely have their own

individual way to them for each one and so i’m just searching i’m looking around and just trying to find okay where’s that nice and i hear it and i’m like oh what’s that what’s happening here and i’m like oh that’s exciting you know even after years and years and years and years of playing i have those moments every time or where one gong who normally plays very dark and deep is showing up right what’s this about what happened and i’m sure you could go into all sorts of like um the physicists are always like well it’s the temperature of the room and this and that but really i i think there’s something more to this that’s um less scientific and less rational because i could have the same exact two gongs playing for a private session and the person changes but nothing else does and they show up differently and i think that’s also me as a practitioner because like i said i i’m intimate with these instruments they were a big part of who i am and who i’ve become and i have a great respect for them so i’m really i could there’s many people who just want to you know aggressively go at the gong because it’s so exciting it’s so stimulating and it’s fun as a player it’s fun but as a recipient it can be create a lot of intensity and i’ve heard so many people go to these other experiences and say i hated it you know i will never do it again i found that to be like i was panicked the whole time and it’s because your nervous system you know doesn’t understand these sounds and they sound scary and they it just goes into fight or flight so as a player i’m very aware of that and because i’m a nervous system advocate and i’m trying to re-teach people how to relax i’m trying to calm their nervous system down and to clear their minds that’s my intent it’s like a healing environment i am mitigating the gongs quite a bit you know what i mean i i’m really working with them from that standpoint it’s almost like they know that that’s what they need to do and i know that’s what i need to do so but they will play very very very differently and we’re talking like nothing else in the environment has changed so you have to wonder well what is that about well it depends it depends how scientific you want to be or if you want to be open to you know the potential that there’s some greater forces happening that affect how they show up but it’s this idea that this is what i mean by there could be something more and i think there is i’m saying could because i’m being a coward well do you think the energy of the people yeah okay i think so the energy of the people that i understand right you do but you know the average person i don’t know um but yeah the energy of the people um and i get a lot of intuitive because i’m going into a very meditate meditative state i get a lot of intuitive hits as well about people so about like a stranger i don’t even know them but as i’m playing you know there’s a rhythm and there’s a feeling and i’m like oh

i had a few questions from melissa that were less about her journey and more about the science behind the use of sound as a therapeutic tool i asked her to talk about brain entrainment a term i wasn’t familiar with but is often mentioned in this line of work so entrainment is the ability for our brains as animals as humans um and animals to synchronize and so this is how large fish can swim together as one organism or if you’ve ever seen a huge group of birds and they’re might and they’re they’re turning like a mass and it’s not because they’re talking to each other like let’s make a left no it’s because they’re entrained they’re near each other and they’re synchronized two heart cells placed near each other but not touching synchronize pendulums synchronize together um in a conversation actually there’s entrainment with body language so if i were to sit here and put my my chin on my hand you might eventually do that if i rub my nose you’re gonna rub your nose actually that happens every time because people are worried about like is this the whole mirror neurons yeah it’s mirror neurons yeah and yeah entrainment so um in this case your brain waves are synchronizing with the sound waves and the sound waves have tons of properties that induce deeper states of slower slower brainwave states or deeper states of relaxation some of it’s the tonal qualities they have high tones and low tones going together they have very low frequency tones as well that can help they aren’t pure notes so they’re normally flat or sharp by a random amount as your your brain receives these tones it entrains and naturally starts to slow down and it’s through that process that you can go into these deeper states so you can drop into the beta state you know relax tape and the theta lots of people drop into delta as you know so delta brainwave state is deep deep sleep so it’s the kind of sleep that you get after like massive travel right and you’re so tired and you’re like oh my god i’m exhausted boom and then 12 hours later you wake up so it’s like that but imagine getting that in just a one hour experience and say you get 45 minutes of it and it’s rich sleep

my belief you know there’s been a lot of connection around sound healing and cancer treatment my feeling is you know with some of these conditions fibromyalgia chronic pain conditions where our sleep is affected i really it’s extremely nourishing because it’s that rich rich sleep and they find that people are falling asleep and sleeping eight hours but we wake up and we’re tired and there’s disputes about that right maybe it’s you’re waking up at the wrong time of your cycle of your sleep cycle but there has been some research um of late that says that actually it’s you’re not getting delta because we go to sleep and we’re thinking about all these things and we’re stimulated by the ipad and whatever else that we’re using which i’m guilty of and many others right we’re we’re on the line or we’re reading a book or something and we’re too stimulated and we sort of fall asleep thinking about our to-do list and then we wake up thinking about our to-do list and we’re not rested because we’re not actually getting that sleep but you can train your brain and that’s what the sound does so it’s cumulative so each time people they come to the sound meditations and their brain through neuroplasticity which is so amazing right we used to think that your brain was done growing at like 17. and now we know oh my god brains are changing all the time all the time and so you can get better sleep i mean i’m proof of it right like you can restore your entire nervous system from you know it was [ __ ] before to like robust and healthy and healthy immune system and everything just with sound that’s what i did but it’s not some kind of snake oil it’s through science you know if you can get into these delta brainwave states and your brain also starts to learn about the theta brainwave state which is so hard to describe that was the space i was talking about you know inner space a place that is boundless it’s free every time i walk in i it just gets bigger you know there’s so much space in there and there’s so much beauty and it’s a feeling um but your brain starts to get used to it it starts to unlock and become more comfortable with these states that we’re becoming less and less aware of and our ability to get into them on our own is becoming harder and harder simply because we’re being pulled in so many directions right like technology has been great but now we’re always kind of multitasking and the brain necessarily wasn’t made for that or the nervous system the nervous system hasn’t really improved in the way that technology has right it’s an old system so your nervous system doesn’t realize like oh actually i’m not being chased by a bear i’m just late to a meeting like it could be worse right it can’t differentiate but and the body responds in the same way either way and that’s where we get destructive with stress that’s when stress becomes destructive but there’s ways that are easy have no side effects you know sound has no side effects it has only benefit and you know when i said in the very beginning i was doing these other modalities and i felt like they took away from me and i had a private client say the same thing and he so beautifully said he’s like when i come to sound it always feels like it gives to me it doesn’t take it just gives and i love that about it as a therapeutic tool i hope you enjoyed this episode perhaps you might consider exploring this healing modality by attending a sound bath in your area or even trying to see how you react with different sound tools watch the youtube video segments on glass apple’s channel to learn more and check out melissa’s website thanks 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 online last half full dot online

June 24, 2018
Respiratory Challenges

Prepared for Overnight Sleep Study

You know when you have a progressive disease sometimes it seems like the next step — the new normal — is dramatic? It seems to come out of nowhere…whether it’s your mobility, your energy, breathing capacity, or any of the myriad of bodily functions that can decline.

Well, I’m there with respiratory weakness. Yet it didn’t really happen overnight. I can recall 10 or so years ago going to my annual visit at the Muscular Dystrophy Association Care Clinic and, after taking a rather simplistic diagnostic test, being told by the nurse that my breathing capacity was at 70%. I don’t think I took it seriously because the diagnostic device was rudimentary and I felt healthy.

A year or so ago I was supplied with a ventilator for night time use. The whole experience freaked me out and I couldn’t handle the forced air. I would sit with it for ~ 15-minutes and then stop. After a month or so I tried to take a nap with it. I couldn’t handle it. Long story short, I ended up returning the device. I told myself the pulmonologist was moving too fast…like installing an outdoor ramp over stairs when you’re still ambulatory.

This past winter was a difficult one for me — one respiratory issue after another and I didn’t seem to have a full recovery. I’m with a different healthcare provider now and went to see a new pulmonologist who scheduled me for a sleep study. It took a couple of reschedules on my part because I was in denial of what I must have known was the inevitable.

The overnight study was conducted in a hotel-like environment though it was far from a luxurious experience. The sleep technician set me up with a Bi or C-Pap machine at the start and I just couldn’t handle it. It was too forceful and I panicked. She wasn’t able to adjust the settings and eventually got permission to let the sleep study be a baseline without the intervention. I slept for ~ 6 hours. Within a few days I heard from a physician who analyzed the study; I’d never met him. His phone etiquette was…despicable. He admonished me for not using the machine and said I needed it. He also offered that I “have few options — the machine or a trach.”

This brief phone conversation set off a period of depression. I was not operating with a glass half full perspective. Thankfully my pulmonologist led me to what I thought was another pulmonologist colleague of hers but he is actually a Critical Care doctor. After our first meeting my spirit lifted. He is listening to me and really understands that I need to gradually ramp up to the optimal settings.

These adjustments to a progressive disease — a new normal — are difficult physically and emotionally. I’m grateful to be working with a physician that gets it. I’m also grateful for two Facebook groups — one specifically for adults with myotonic dystrophy and the other for breathing issues related to having a neuromuscular disease. I’ve learned valuable information and received support from these cohorts.

So far I’ve acclimated to one air pressure setting increase and using the humidifier. I also fell asleep twice with both on. Small steps. That’s what I can handle. I’m feeling hopeful.

May 6, 2018
Every Breath You Take: Tips for Respiratory Health
It’s cold and flu season so I asked a respiratory therapist I know — Lee Guion — to offer some guidance. Here are Lee’s 7 Tips for Respiratory Health which are critical for those with a condition that causes weakened muscles:
1. Attend a Multi-Disciplinary Clinic
2. Get the flu and pneumonia vaccines
3. Treat upper respiratory tract infections
4. Hydrate
5. Maximize your nutrition
6. Exercise — especially disciplines coordinating the breath with movement
7. Sleep Well
But this list is only a list. You should listen to the podcast.

There are many online videos to guide you in a practice combining breath work and movement but here’s one from the Niroga Institute for people with asthma.

Here are Homework Assignments for the rest of 2017:
- Listen to previous podcast episodes about everything from medical cannabis to mindfulness meditation as well as fermentation.
- Soon there will be cool videos here.
- Check out this documentary film, Unrest. It’s a “story of love and loss” about people diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome).
November 19, 2017

Stories of Healing with 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.

June 22, 2017

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.

April 28, 2017