Mindfulness as a Disease Management Strategy

Mindfulness as a Disease Management Strategy

Being diagnosed with a chronic, debilitating disease can certainly bring stress to one’s life. In fact, that stress can be significant enough to be called trauma.

How one handles this stress varies. Some people have amazing coping capacity and are hard-wired for resilience while others have more difficulty. None of it is easy.

Mary Holt, a Registered Nurse with a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology, shares her journey of loss and recovery and the profound impact a mindfulness meditation practice has had on her life and work. She brings this practice to the clinics where she helps patients and their families with neuromuscular and Parkinson’s disease.

Mentioned in this podcast episode is the annual International Rare Disease Day organized by NORD. Here are two relevant podcast episodes: Rare Disease and the Need for Research and It’s Not that Easy Being Rare.

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 listeners we’re nearing the end of february which means it’s almost international rare disease day i have a rare disease do you there are over 6 000 rare diseases i know i’ve met people with a disease so rare that they’ve never met anyone else with it i can’t even imagine what that would be like recently at my monthly support group we had a family joined us who had never met people outside of their family with myotonic dystrophy if you’re diagnosed and you live in or near a heavily populated city you will hopefully not have to wait too long before you meet others with the disease we have a patient advocacy organization that has an annual conference and this conference has given me the opportunity to meet others with the condition who live throughout the us and other parts of the world we’ve had people in the conference come from new zealand south america and of course you know a few european countries so rare disease day celebrated on february 28th is a day of advocacy getting out in the public to let others know about your disease last year a group of us met at senator dianne feinstein’s office in san francisco this year we’re joining others with rare diseases at a local museum and park so check the gospel website for links to learn more about rare disease day maybe there is an event happening in your neck in the wood and i will also include a couple links to podcasts that i did specifically about rare disease day today though is not about rare disease as i mentioned i’m part of a patient advocacy organization which meets in person annually usually in a different location throughout the country and last year we met in philadelphia and one of the sessions i attended was titled mindfulness as a disease management strategy now you can just imagine how that piqued my interest unfortunately the session was less than 45 minutes but i could tell the presenter had more to offer so i introduced myself gave her my podcast calling card it’s actually a postcard um if you want one let me know anyhow she and i recently had a chance to talk mary hope is a busy woman she works at two different philadelphia clinics and has a private practice in addition to her academic work she’s a registered nurse and has a master’s degree in counseling she has a lot of lived experience mary was a caregiver for her husband and experienced his loss at an early age with two young children to raise she’s also been in recovery from alcoholism for a number of years i have always worked in my nursing career uh with chronic pain and chronic illness that kind had always been my path and then there were actually a series of events that had happened personally in my life and i had not been working for a time while i was pregnant with my second child and yeah it was just knew i had to get back into the workforce my husband had become quite ill and i you know of course he was not able to work so i really had to kind of get back into the workforce um you know kind of help provide for us in a sense in my two children so i saw this job posting that was for a nurse coordinator i loved always being able to kind of have that integrative model so i love the coordination piece and it was neurology so it was it was the mda als center of hope um and at that time it was at diversity in philadelphia and that was back 2005 and then i started there as a nurse coordinator full time and i was probably seven years or so and had had a master’s encounter with a specialization in psychological trauma and bereavement so working with people that had you know a focus of course of chronic illness terminal illness that was really one of my passions so when the mental health specialist left that center then i kind of moved into that role in terms of being able to support the patients and the families yeah all throughout the journey really from time of diagnosis or from the time that we you know began with them and then journeying for as long as they stayed with us you know for a number of years the rest of my time my other full-time work i actually do three things so my other full-time work is working with parkinson’s and i’m a nurse educator a clinical educator with that population so i work with people that have parkinson’s and their families and i work with physicians movement disorder specialists and i do educate food i teach the families and the patients how to use a particular medicine medication and injectable medicine for parkinson’s and really how to live well you know as best as they can with their parkinson’s and then outside of that i am also i have a private practice in terms of life coaching speaking mindfulness practice and things like that so i’ve always had a desire to have uh and my you know goal still one of my goals is to be able to do that more to be able to reach people in a way that to have a greater impact in terms of helping people so i when i was working originally with a neurology team and during that time i had had a meditation practice of my own i’ve been sober for a bit over 12 25 years and i’ve had a meditation practice of my own for a number of years and when i was at jefferson i was working with chronic pain patients and they had a center for uh integrative medicine so i went there and i took a mindfulness course a mindfulness meditation it was actually a stress management course and at that time i fully impacted and shifted my whole experience in my own life my professional work my recovery my own personal health in such dramatic ways that i went on for more training and really have been teaching and doing that practice and really focusing a ton of my work professionally around stress stress management and how it relates to our health and also how mindfulness can be a foundational piece of that in terms of helping people live well in the midst of chronic illness and terminal illness so what is psychological trauma when it’s boiled down it is trauma if we look at just trauma in and of itself is something whether it be an experience a situation or an event that overwhelms the system right overwhelm the system physically of course it could overwhelm the system of course which is my my specialization psychologically and mentally emotionally spiritually as well so that can come from a certain particular event it can also come from chronic exposure to certain things whether they be you know external or potentially internal you know somebody is chronically experiencing anything you know negative perceived as negative to the point where it over overwhelms our ability to kind of integrate our experiences on a healthy level for us to be able to function kind of day in and day out in a healthy way yeah because when i hear the term trauma i think of people with ptsd or um some sort of sexual abuse i generally might and i’m not you know a professional in psychological or mental health but i um i think of it as like an incident or series of incidents that are traumatizing but the way you’ve defined it it sounds as if just the diagnosis of a progressive chronic illness can serve as trauma

absolutely yes absolutely i’ve experienced that with people you know when we say in particular when we you know potentially give somebody the diagnosis of als or something um what can happen is that i mean on the flip side of this too i you know i don’t know if we’ll talk about it but is also the amazing resiliency of the human spirit in terms of being able to you know kind of integrate and wrap our brains around certain things and being able to function in the midst of these kind of crises these crises that happen in our lives but you know when somebody is you know faced with a situation that is in many ways i’m going to say potentially but can many ways alter their existence and how they perceive that it can absolutely be traumatic i was actually just this weekend i was working with our team our multidisciplinary team and in terms of the and talking about the effects of you know continually working with the population of you know in neuromuscular conditions and neurodegenerative conditions that you know it is a traumatic environment because we’re continually working with emotions that may arise from time to time such as frustration powerlessness not being able to make an effect potentially loss grief sadness you know and that can be incredibly distressing to the you know our mental capacity and our psychological capacity to be able to manage so how do you define resilience so i would define resilience as the amazing capacity which always seems to surprise me the amazing the amazing capacity of the human being and the human spirit to be able to integrate and rise above

what may be perceived as incredibly negative circumstances and find meaning continue to move forward um serve continue to serve in some way not that all of these are necessary but these are the things that i see in the people that i work with and the families that i really tiny amount like couldn’t even fathom what it’s like yet you are serving the world rising above taking your experience and helping others that is to me incredibly resilient because some people fold i also see a lot of people fold and i don’t believe that there’s a good a right or wrong necessarily we all do with the capacity that we have um but when you ask about resiliency it’s definitely i think you’re a living example of that so the session you read at the conference this year how i met you was titled mindfulness as a disease management strategy so i think we’ve led up to this right you talked about how mindfulness helped you and you your training and i’m assuming you’ve implemented it in all the work you do does a mindfulness training or does it as a strategy help build resilience for me personally you know mindfulness is kind of a buzzword around healthcare around the corporate world somewhat um and it really is a way of it really is a way of relating to the world you know i mean when i so i practice minds when yes there are strategies within mindfulness and from the bigger scheme it really is a way of relating to our life and our life experiences and ourselves and others um so it definitely can build resiliency because what mindfulness gives us is number one it gives us awareness so i’m not a and the other thing i want to say is it’s a practice so it’s something that is certainly cultivated over time i am absolutely not an expert it is something i practice every day um every moment of my life that i can become more aware so it gives us an awareness so we’re not just acting on autopilot so we have some sense of you know when we’re going down the rabbit hole per se so it gives us awareness and then it has this underpinning in terms of non-judgment and compassion so it offers me the opportunity to meet my life and my life experiences to number one become aware of my you know how i’m perceiving something and how i’m relating to it and then it gives me ways of coping with openness and non-judgment and compassion for self for others and for kind of life as a whole which is simple in words yet incredibly in light so yes it can 100 yeah build resiliency how do you do that in the clinic setting i mean i i’ve been to the interdisciplinary clinics in san francisco and at stanford you know for my disease and i imagine they’re kind of similar and you know i went for years i haven’t gone recently but i had a pt who i saw you know uh every year for many years and one of the last times i saw her and unfortunately she had to leave the clinic she moved away but she started talking about mindfulness meditation and i was blown away because it was such a departure from anything she spoke about before so i’m wondering you know is it something that the other clinicians are talking about too or is it just you that’s actually yeah that’s a great question so it is um it just depends on everybody’s level of comfortability uh in our life right now it’s not something that everybody talks about people they are becoming more aware of it and more i would say open to it you know whether that is because of you know kind of what i do you know i talk about there so i would love to see it one day as kind of a standard of care um interesting and really offering people ways to manage you know all of i mean you think i’m just thinking about the physical therapist so if your physical therapist is there talking about mindfulness meditation that shows huge kind of integration to me that says you know there’s a lot of integration there in terms of what can help support you that she’s not just just addressing you linearly right with a solo focus you know acknowledging the fact that you are simply as a being right you have a mind you have a body and you have a heart so how then can we because they don’t none of them operate individually so how is it then that we can take our health care management and also approach people you know i really meet people in the sense that you know that we each really do have the capacity within ourselves to kind of answer all the questions that we have and we do have the resources within us um whether we need to find some more outside but we really do have a that within us so i meet people hopefully with that uh intention that you really do have everything that you need um and my role with you is then just to help you uncover that and get clear what’s your relationship with yourself you know that’s a big thing so when i’m seeing people in clinic a lot of our conversation is around um what’s the you know what is the relationship with the illness you know a lot of people are you know fine you know quite they they’re angry they’re and those emotions sometimes are controlling them in ways that they are not even aware of and impacting choices that they make choices that they don’t make whether they’re going to use their walker or not use their walker whether they’re going to accept a feeding tube or not accept the feeding tube so how to how how help them explore the reasons underneath that why is it that you don’t want to use the walker when you’ve fallen three times right no not in a fault-finding way but just to help them explore that oh you know it means that um you know that much worse in my illness or i’m giving into it or you know what will people think of me i’m weak you know all sorts of things so um yeah so i really try to help them you know to provide a space for that to arise because the body does hold you know there’s a book called the body holds the score or keeps the score and it really i mean you know our bodies just like it needs to you know all these negative emotions they all kind of you know they can i mean whether we’re giving a space for them or not they need to come out some way right so especially people that have physical conditions you know like you all the people that i work with i i stress that it’s even more so important and myself you know i it is more so important if we already have a physical condition or a medical condition that we you know somehow manage the stressors and you know negative emotions in our lives when they arise because our body is already kind of working somewhat double time um you know to manage and you know negative emotions build up or not given space can just impact that in a profound way there’s a lot of research around that as well in terms of the cascade of events with the you know neural chemicals that kind of run through our body so i hope to just meet people you know i hope to just provide a space where people feel that they can uh you know be real and really explore what they need to so then they can make the best decisions that they can you know for themselves whether it’s using the walker or not using the walker having the feeding tube or not having the feeding tube so a lot of my work in the clinic is around life choices all the choices we have to make yeah i invite you to check out mary’s website especially if you live anywhere near philadelphia she teaches a variety of classes i wish i could take thanks for listening i hope you’re able to take away something you heard in today’s podcast and apply it to your life take care of yourself and i i hope to see you online in our facebook group on youtube instagram or on the glass f4 website 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.online you

Patient Advocates, Patient Leaders

  • Andrea Klein
    Andrea L. Klein
  • Melissa Talwar & Leslie Krongold
    Melissa Talwar

What is a Patient Advocate? A patient advocate can be an actual patient with a mental and/or physical health condition, a caregiver for someone with a health condition, or a paid professional advocating on behalf of others with a health condition.

Andrea L. Klein, of Cleveland, Tennessee, has collagen six intermediate congenital muscular dystrophy. She started a Facebook group, Breathe with MD Support Group, for people with a neuromuscular disease who struggle with respiratory health. Recently, she established a nonprofit organization with the same name.

Melissa Talwar, of Pasadena, California, has struggled with fibromyalgia since she was 14 years old. Her experiences with different medications and their alarming side effects catapulted her into focused research on the condition and potential treatments. After volunteering with a patient advocacy organization and then traveling around the U.S. to meet others with fibromyalgia, Melissa also established a nonprofit organization.

An R.N. Talks about Herbal Relief for Muscle Pain, Anxiety, Insomnia & GI Problems (at a support group meeting)

Nurse with a Heart

Registered Nurse and proud septuagenarian, Barbara Blaser, was the guest speaker at my Northern California myotonic dystrophy support group. With her healthcare background and deep knowledge of medicinal herbs, she spoke about the use of herbal tinctures, edibles, and lotions to help relieve muscle pain, anxiety, insomnia, gastrointestinal problems, and more.

Barbara’s nursing career was predominantly in the mental health field. But at some point in her 60s she had an esophagectomy and due to complications, she developed septicemia. She turned to natural herbal healing to help her pain, anxiety, and GI problems.

For other podcast episodes about medicinal herbs (medical cannabis), check out DIY Cannabis and Medical Cannabis.

Handouts that Barbara provided at the support group meeting are culled from this website.

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

Sleep Disorders

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

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NeuroJewology: A Tale of Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson’s & Muscular Dystrophy in South Florida

Neurological Conditions

Two friends from grade school share their stories of a diagnosis of a neurological condition. Marc has Multiple Sclerosis and Steve has Parkinson’s disease. I have a form of muscular dystrophy called myotonic dystrophy. It’s purely coincidental we all went to the same synagogue; there is no correlation between being Jewish and having a neurological condition.

Both Marc and Steve maintain positive attitudes. Marc has educated himself thoroughly about MS. Steve has tried different exercise programs customized for people with Parkinson’s and now facilitates a support group.

Steve has a travel planning business; you can visit his 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 welcome to the next to last episode for 2019. i’m planning to get the last episode out in just a few days before i head out on my holiday road trip

so this episode has an unusual title neuro zoology which i will explain to you my two guests are both guys i knew from high school actually i think we met in middle school in south florida the first one is mark and the second guest is steve in the in the past few years each of them told me about their neurological conditions i think it was probably through facebook and mark has multiple sclerosis and steve has parkinson’s disease and each one asked me to maintain their privacy until recently they knew i was interviewing them for this podcast episode i i wasn’t spying on them i promise so we all grew up in south florida went to the same middle and senior high schools and developed neurological conditions in our adulthood and we actually all went to the same synagogue at first i was going to call the episode neuro jews sounds like you know super heroes and then steve suggested neuro duology and i kind of like the sound of that so there was absolutely no known correlation between being jewish and having a neurological condition you know that right okay we’re we’re just having a little pun fun my first conversation is with mark who still lives in florida and steve now lives in new york anyhow so mark no longer works full time i believe he and his wife have three children though i think they’re more like teenagers and young adults i haven’t i haven’t seen mark in many many years but our high school reunion is next year so i hope to see him i asked mark how he discovered he has ms so i woke up one morning i woke up one morning and the part below my knees and the part uh this the part below my elbows were numb and the numbness was like you know if you sort of lean on a place too long and your hand arm goes to sleep and you have to shake it out and or you lean on something like you sit on your leg and it goes numb and you sort of like have to shake it out to get going well i woke up that way and i was like that’s kind of weird and it didn’t go away and so i think it might have been a friday on monday i went in to see a neurologist that a neurologist said there are a couple of ways to confirm whether you have ms ms is can be confirmed by basically doing taking fluids out of your spine and doing a test or like the name sounds you have more than one episode on more than one date so he did an mri i had active lesions at the time a demolition of uh the tissue and it looked like i had had a couple of points that in the past had been uh part of it he said it’s probably ms but until we see another active lesion or a next episode we can’t absolutely say ms and he says at this time we’re gonna just go ahead and not put you on the medication well uh i’m gonna say within a month i had another lesion did another mri and uh they confirmed that i had ms so it really just started with my below my knees and below my arms not being able to feel see you were scared no it scared the wrong word for it i was concerned something else was going on something was going on and i’m reasonable and when i always tell people just act as a reasonable person will and if a reasonable progression is to go see a doctor about what’s going on that’s what you do and i talked over with my wife and she’s like yeah i think the right doctor is a neurologist and that’s where i went so i mean if you wake up one morning and you can’t feel your arms you say well you know maybe i’ll wait a day maybe whatever i did or you know pitch nerve or whatever it’ll go away now in the ms world uh if something is happening for more than two days on the third day they want you to seek uh attention usually that’s in the form of depending on your doctor a steroid drip and an ib to stop or lessen the impact of the demonetization so i luckily had gone and had sought early treatment because it did stop that in its tracks well floated enough so that there was no more damage and then um it’s all about how much of the feeling returns when the episode ends so that’s how it started uh and that was 2006. so had you ever had you known uh family or friends with ms before your diagnosis no i was the first person i knew that had ms i don’t even remember hearing rumors about other people but of course once you have it you start to hear more and more but no i was the first person i knew who had it i remember thinking that you know this is 2006. so i remember thinking that i don’t want to make things worse and so i struggled a little bit with whether or not since it happened while i was sleeping whether or not the way i was sleeping was causing anything of course i was naive at the time and so other than trying to do the right things i didn’t really freak out to be honest with you what i all i did was i went to the websites and i read as much as i could read about all the medications read about all the treatments read about what a diagnosis is um i got myself educated and i’m way more educated than most people on it right now and in that first month i would say i read hundreds of pages on ms like literally hundreds well huh did you uh when did you decide to tell your children well it’s the weird thing is i tell my kids everything i mean they know absolutely everything i’m pretty sure i told them that first year but not just right away i’m going to say i probably told them by the end of 2006 but i don’t think i did exactly right away um no i take that back we had a trip planned in august and this happened in early early june and i remember telling them in august and saying to them that nobody else knows because we’re going to a family wedding nice and talk to them and say hey this is private don’t say anything about you know anything that’s going on with regards to that and so i talked to them about it then so i’m gonna say i waited probably just two months so i’m not sure when you and i connected and and you told me i feel like it was maybe three or so years ago but maybe it was more or maybe it was just about three years ago but i know that you asked me not yeah you asked me not to tell anyone or i i didn’t of course i wondered like what’s changed for you since then because obviously you you’re doing this podcast you know uh interview so something changed i’m not sure you know that life isn’t just about an evolution of growth and change and changing your perceptions on things and i think one of the things that’s changed for me in that time frame is i have way different outlooks on the way you should live your life the way that you should go forward in other people and i think that ultimately i decided that i wasn’t going to hide it but i wasn’t going to flaunt it and so i thought you know what you asked me once i’ll circle back to it it had been in the back of my mind anyway for when you first asked i was just hesitant at the time because uh quite honestly i figured that we probably know 300 of the same people you know something some absurd amount initial hesitancy and i think i’ve decided along the way that there’s probably enough people who do know that it’s probably not that much of an issue anymore to come out but i think the reason i overall never said things to people and i still don’t prime at a to a large extent leslie is because and maybe you can be reflective of this that the first thing out of people’s mouths are how you feeling i i i don’t live my life harping on how are you feeling answers um i’d rather just be perceived as you know uh yeah just being able to you know have a normal conversation instead of always harping back to you know a disease or or a symptom or something that’s pulling i just don’t i just don’t like harping on stuff like that i i tend to gravitate towards positive things and stay away from negative things um and it i just don’t feel comfortable talking about myself that way a lot of times so that’s probably one of the reasons that i was hesitant anyway all along have you been able to connect with others with ms perhaps younger folks or people you know newly diagnosed i guess it goes without saying in a way having read all about the stuff i’m very well educated on it and being very well educated on it sometimes when you talk with people who aren’t ms patients they don’t quite understand they have a perception of that i should be in a wheelchair that i shouldn’t be walking that i shouldn’t be doing this and everything like that and i’ll give you a little side story on that and then there’s the other side is that uh the people who are newly they just want to get educated so i tended not to really be in a lot of support groups or anything like that i’d let my neurologist know if he had some briefly that some of the people have expectations of what your physical symptoms and restraint should be and um i was carpooling with a another mother or kids to school last year and i said hey i’ve got to do an mri uh and something in like march or something and she said no problem i’ll get them at the end of the day today and then something in passing i mentioned like yeah just you know i had headaches today and stuff like that it’s sometimes it’s a side effect you know that you get and so she then heard me it’s like oh yeah that’s right you have ms her she decided that it was no longer safe for her daughter to be driven by me around you know i so you can’t change people’s perceptions sometimes because it never would get resolved i gave her every logical explanation i could but you know she was trying to say well what does it feel like early on i said you know i once heard somebody in adt say what their neuropathy felt like and i said it’s very similar the pains are very similar the issues are very similar but i don’t have neuropathy i have ms i don’t know in her head where it got all jumbled i don’t know how much it was a discussion at home with her husband but it just fell apart when she learned i had ms and i think that’s kind of ridiculous to be honest with you but everybody has their own neuroses let’s put it or bring their own issues to the table but i sort of think that’s ridiculous because people are people you know i asked mark if he’s tried any alternative modalities to relieve some of his symptoms early on i had trouble sleeping i don’t know whether or not because the numbness you know there’s a there’s a period of uh self-awareness and when you quiet down at night and it’s just you thinking and you’re not moving you can sort of feel that there is numbness and it doesn’t feel right you can you can sort of hyper focus and i could fall asleep with my arm under the pillow and it would get 10 times worse than being numb and uh those types of things and you just know you’re not yourself so first thing i did is i reached for um acupuncture and i went to acupuncture and i told myself so that worked for me my wife was like you should go to a chiropractor too i was like what for so i went to a chiropractor and he’s like you know if you give me 10 weeks i might be able to open up some of the uh things that are i don’t even know how he put it but it he made it sound like i’ll be able to open up the pathways of your nervous system by allowing your uh structure to be realigned correctly i was like wait i don’t think you quite understand the nerves aren’t there to be allowed to breathe so but i did give them a little bit of a try and of course it did nothing so what kind of advice if any do you have for someone newly diagnosed with ms well i think the first thing you do is you get yourself educated um obviously there are uh different what the medications are what the choices are and to find yourself a neurologist who will spend the time necessary to answer your questions instead of just push you out of the office because he has an appointment in five minutes so that would be my overnight you have time to learn everything you have time to make decisions just getting a new diagnosis doesn’t mean oh my god i have to change tomorrow or i have to do something in the next two weeks or this you don’t you just proceed as a reasonable person word if they tell you that you need to get an mri to go ahead and confirm what’s going on you schedule it you do it

when you look at somebody who has ms and given that i just said that the attack could be in so many different places that you have to sort of realize that there is a broader spectrum within the disease that doesn’t mean that somebody is necessarily going to live the stereotypical worst case lifestyle or is going to die and i think that having that sympathy towards other people because you’re gonna have to uh learn that others will have their own preconceived notion towards you will give you a little bit of a better aspect of what’s going on the other thing i’d almost pinpoint every lesion i’ve had and say man that was a during a period of time where i just was not under a lot of stress and so to me i think that if i was going to give advice keep things around you that are positive don’t surround yourself with negative reduce your stress that i’m talking to you today and that is something that helps you feel better about yourself and what you’re doing a midst of everything else that’s going on and i think that’s always a good thing when you can feel good about some other things that you do for your you know to for other people and you can feel good about yourself like yeah i’m fine man no worries i’m good and so i just think that that overall surrounding yourself with that positivity and that experience leads to better health and i don’t know i mean that might sound crazy to a lot of people but i just i just feel him and trying to stay positive and my kids have noticed the change as well in the last couple of years and um they’re like work as well anymore to just lose your temper but uh the second reason is because what good’s it gonna do right so steve as i mentioned lives in new york in fact i saw him just about two years ago on a trip to new york we had lunch and caught up it had been many years since we’d seen each other maybe since we graduated high school anyhow his work for most of his career was computer related and i know a few years ago his organization downsized and he decided to start a venture that he’s long been interested in travel planning so there’s a link to his website in the podcast notes so i know a few years ago uh you know you sort of personally came out to me as having been diagnosed and you didn’t want to talk about it but then i saw you a couple years ago and it seemed like you were talking more about it where are you at now with you know discussing your condition

um i don’t talk about it with too many people because some of the reactions i get to well well they don’t want to really seem like they’re just like the way they respond like oh that’s too bad and kind of blow it off they don’t realize that they could they could really be offensive but that happens a lot and i you know i’ll tell i’ll tell some closer people to me and you know i know they’re they’re they actually have feelings and care about each other so you know the the acquaintances i have on facebook they don’t they don’t really need need to know about medical conditions of each other can you tell me what led to your diagnosis of parkinson’s you know when did you have your first symptoms were you diagnosed with any other conditions and then you know gradually found out that wasn’t correct tell me tell me about that journey may not be in chronic chronological order i got diagnosed in 2012 with parkinson’s

my wife she sent me to my primary care doctor said you got to go to he goes no i’m usually wrong 100 chance it might be parkinson’s disease and you know i i know parkinson’s diseases i think michael j fox says i don’t know much more than that and i’m like really he goes yeah but i’m usually wrong about these things so i went to a neurologist a neurologist he tested me with a bunch of tests which don’t really tell you if you have parkinson’s or not but it rules out other illnesses but the true test is when you use a levodopa carbidopa if you react to that then that’s like yeah that’s then you have parkinson’s because it’s the treatment for it so i went back to my primary doctor and i said yeah did you you know did you really think it was 100 chance because no i knew exactly what it was i just want to freak you out i have a pretty good primary doctor it’s like i hear stories that people get a real run around like you have this illness you have bad illness and it’s like it could take years before they come up with parkinson’s and you know while they’re suffering and taking the wrong medications yeah what led up to that was i had non-motor symptoms there was a mood changes

obsessing over different things and this was going this was going on over several years before 2012. so you know this you can go year and like not get diagnosed for years like that’s weird i don’t you know you don’t really pay much attention it’s like i don’t smell things anymore i didn’t realize that

friends at work like my pals at work noticed there were some weird things going on but they didn’t really say anything because after i got on medication my boss made a comment hey steve’s back and i thought that was that was very weird and i you know i was talking to my wife about that and like it’s weird right my boss said steve’s back and she kind of she got it right away like you know the pers person with my my personality changes isn’t the person that she met and then all of a sudden he’s back like after after one day of being on the medication there’s also other symptoms like sleep problems i was acting out dreams like waving my own uh interesting one i lost like 10 10 15 20 pounds real fast and the guy running the department he’s like you lost a lot of weight steve and he pauses and he’s like i hope it’s all for good reasons it’s like he kind of got it too there was something weird going on but he didn’t say anything did you seek out any support groups because i know parkinson’s has a lot of different programs you know all the movement classes tell me some of the things you’ve tried and what has helped and what you you know found no use or or help from i went to several support groups and exercise programs when i mentioned the lack of initial lack of of initiative and apathy that’s that’s really a strong part of the young onset parkinson’s disease groups i’d go to the meetings and it was just me and the organizer then a month later i go to the meeting and me and the organizer and so so i’m like what’s what’s with the city of millions of people don’t they they must have they must have some people with young onset parkinson’s that want to go to a group or maybe they just don’t want to hear about it i’ve got an email address we all exchanged email addresses over a couple of months so i had a list of email addresses and i was like all of a sudden i feel like i’m the organizer of the group so i’m emailing people and i’m helping people out because i’ve been been diagnosed since 2012 this people that just got diagnosed a year a year and a half ago maybe just even a couple of months ago and they’re scared and they were like what’s going on i want to hear from somebody that’s not 90 years old you know what’s going on with you so i’m i’m actually unofficially running the young onset parkinson’s group for new york city and i’m looking for yeah and i’m looking for a new location to meet so i’m looking for like a meeting space up this way and i’m trying to get creative and not like go into a hospital environment so i’m looking for i’m looking for a meeting space at one of the museums i think that’d be really cool

and one guy showed up and me but we had conversation he was he was asking a lot of questions and i was i was happy to share my experiences and it was it was a great support group meeting it was two people it doesn’t doesn’t doesn’t take 30 people in a room to make a good meeting you know it’s like it’s not not the nothing asses in the seat it’s the quality of the people coming in so there is another guy he keeps emailing how many people were there how many people were there and i’m like you know it’s like what is there a cover charge ten dollars a person like it’s it’s all in the quality of your conversation

i was doing a weekly yoga class and i found one that was charging just like a free class in the community around here i was i tried i tried boxing dude it’s not that’s not a contact boxing like you put the gloves on you get a bag and that that really aggravated my my elbows so i don’t know what i was doing wrong but i’m willing to try that one again i did a or i’m still doing it there’s a dance class at juilliard dance class dance dance for parkinson’s is the group and they they hosted the free class and you just got to get evaluated and you go to the class every every week you you do a little you don’t do much dancing it’s like that’s like an extreme thing but you you move around you’re stretching out your muscles and getting out of your house and most most of all i do walking i could walk three four or five miles a day and it’s only because i’m getting lost and i’m looking for no that’s not true i’m just kidding no it’s like you know i’m fortunate to be in new york city where it’s a walking city and i live and live towards the north end of town and i’ll just i could walk easily two to three miles and just keep going down the streets or maybe if it’s a nice day i’ll walk through central park but i i like the city city walking better than the park walking park i like to sit in

so what kind of advice would you offer someone newly diagnosed don’t freak out whatever people tell you may or may not be true for you uh every every single person with parkinson’s has a different type of different type of progression and their symptoms are different some people shake like their hands are shaky they can’t pick up a glass of water without spilling it some some people don’t have any shaking and some people have internal shaking that’s that’s my main advice i went to a support group right after i got diagnosed and they had a guest speaker come in and she was like do any of you have dissed this and this and i was looking around and like nobody really responds well you’ll get it she was like the wicked witch of parkinson’s yeah she she ran a group in another city and she was just speaking in in our group especially like you know if you you don’t have anything nice to say to a group of people that just got diagnosed just don’t don’t say it yeah just shut up

i hope you’ve enjoyed meeting mark and steve i don’t believe they’re in touch with each other but i found it very interesting that their perspectives are similar if you have a comment about the episode i hope you’ll visit the glascefl website and share your comment below the podcast notes so stay tuned in a few days for the final podcast episode of the year and it’s all about

sleep 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

The FLU is not for you: How to build immunity

Man Sneezing
Cover that cough!

A family physician talks about ways to avoid the flu, and enhance your immunity, during this peak season for influenza. Plus, you might learn some flu factoids for your next flu trivia contest.

Stay on top of flu statistics by following the weekly FluView on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.

If you provide care for someone with a chronic health condition or an elderly family member, you might want to glean additional flu information from this online article.

For the Attitude of Gratitude Give-Aways through December 19th, check the Facebook group for details.

End-of-life: End Well, Bedside Yoga, and Death Doula

Molly at someone's bedside

End-of-life planning is a huge topic. In previous podcast episodes we’ve covered the donation of body tissue for scientific research and attending a life transitions retreat. With three fascinating guests you’ll learn about an annual symposium which brings together healthcare professionals, patients, caregivers and others all “committed to generating human-centered, interdisciplinary innovation for the end of life experience,” a yoga therapist who trains others to care for the dying with bedside yoga, and a death doula.

Bedside Yoga Training
Bedside Yoga Training
Molly works with yogi
Molly at bedside

Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, founder of End Well, speaks about her motivation and the need for the annual event. Molly Lannon Kenny shares how a Life After Loss program evolved into Bedside Yoga. Sarah Miller talks about becoming an end-of-life doula and her work at AARP.

For more information about the death wellness movement, check out my article on Spirituality & Health magazine’s website.

Diabetes? Two personal stories about movement and plant-based diet

Instructor Dianna Rowley

Dianna Rowley, diagnosed with diabetes type 1, was a professional dancer. Although she had health issues in her childhood she wasn’t diagnosed until her early 20s when she experienced a major health crisis. Her journey to wellness and life balance includes a lot of exercise and movement with setbacks and successes along the way. Today she is a Health & Fitness Coach inspiring others with disabilities and chronic health conditions.

  • Dianna Rowley
    Dianna teaches Brain Fitness class.
  • Heather Brock
    Heather and Dr. Michael Greger

Heather Brock was diagnosed with diabetes type 2 nearly three years ago. An endocrinologist put her on medication which caused an adverse reaction. Determined to find a better way to manage the condition, Heather began reading books about reversing diabetes. Inspired by physicians like Dean Ornish, Michael Greger, and Joel Fuhrman, Heather adopted a plant-based diet and reversed the disease. She highly recommends Mastering Diabetes and Chef AJ.

Pilates: Core Strength, Alignment, Pain Relief, and Neural Reconnection

Pilates and Core Strength

Practicing Pilates can be done on a mat or with any number of devices such as the Reformer. Shannon Knorr, a yoga and Pilates instructor, talks about therapeutic Pilates to help with body alignment, pain relief, and more. Julia Carver, a Pilates and Movement Therapist, works with veterans who have experienced PTSD and other trauma to help them with neural reconnection.

For people with muscle weakening conditions, like muscular dystrophy, Pilates can help strengthen core muscles.

Autoimmune Illness: A Physician’s Journey

Physician writes about autoimmune illness

Imagine if your physician not only understood your invisible chronic illness but also had experience healing her own autoimmune illness. That physician could be Cynthia Li.

Dr. Cynthia Li talks about her book, Brave New Medicine, and answers my questions covering everything from autoimmune illness, functional vs. integrative medicine, the writing process, to the role intuition played in her healing process and now plays a role in her medical practice.

Dr. Li mentions the organization, HeartMath Institute, in this episode. To read Dr. Li’s 2014 (pre-Brave New Medicine publication) contribution to the San Francisco Medicine Journal, check page 19.

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