July 26, 2023 • 48 mins
This week we are back together to discuss a few topics. The link between physical and mental health and how we treat ourselves shows up in our physical body.Some technical difficulties have been at play this week but you can expect high quality audio to return soon!
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Episode Transcript
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Hello and welcome to One Brain at a Time. I'm Dr. K. And I'm Dr. J. How are you doing today?
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I'm doing great. I had a great night's sleep and I am raring to go. And we got we had a double dip
up yesterday. Twice in the ocean. Oh so good. So we or actually I had said I'd like to try a different
thing not talking about the subject before we got going. And I know you love that idea. So
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let's jump in. I think currently and just as reference about three and a half months ago I
had foot surgery and it was pretty intense bone grafts reconstruction that kind of thing.
And what I've realized through this process is the connection between the brain, physical health,
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physical pain, all of that kind of stuff. And I thought it might be interesting to explore that a
little bit further because how many times do things show up medically or physically that it really has
the origin more so in mental health. For example about 10 minutes ago I was complaining about my
(01:30):
stomach hurting for the last couple of days. And when we sat down to discuss it tears came up and
it had much more to do with some past hurt stuff. And as soon as I talked to you about it the pain
went away and I'm never at a loss of awe of how that relationship works.
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Yes. Dr. Herb Benson that started the Benson Henry Institute at Mass General
stated that 60 to 90 percent primary care visits per year are due to a stress and
induced situation from the beginning. So you know when we go to the doctor we're already past
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recognizing that stress was the thing that induced it. And what you're actually talking about is the
relationship between trauma, that relative helplessness, and the physical body. And so when
we feel pain then that's the alarm system that something's not right. And the quick surgery you
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had was huge, huge, huge, huge. And so you were in pain probably for the first time in your life
chronically day in and day out for months on time. And that's going to encode again through your
sensory system. You're picking up that pain and it's being processed and put in the back brain
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for future data. So that pain part I was going to ask you this because you know all but
that wiring where the pain registers in the brain is that the same space in the brain that trauma
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lives. So there are a couple things going on. It's the pain center for the motor and cellular
and structural component. And then we have the trauma center. And the trauma center is specifically
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set up to forewarn us in the future and to encode the danger of the now so that we don't get into
that danger in the future. Then we have the reality of the body being in pain. And that's
in another part of the brain that's just letting us know that the system is under stress or
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inflammation. So you know it's a nerve messaging to the brain and then the brain will release
endorphins which are the morphine like derivative that our home psychopharmacology
will produce to help regulate that pain. Yeah well a couple of things that I think
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are really interesting as a consumer in the medical world is how huge of an impact the
surgery had on my obviously physical, emotional, mental, spiritual or whatever. And how there's no
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follow-up on the doctor side and not I love my doctor he's awesome. But it's not just baked into
the equation to have somebody following up to make sure that that mental health piece is in play. And
I also feel because I had had my shoulder done like 10 or 15 years ago and the impact of that
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surgery on me versus now and I don't know if it's because I'm in my 50s but it's pretty significant
and I thought to myself this is where the system kind of fails consumers that there isn't more of
a protocol and not saying that everyone is impacted but I can't imagine that there aren't more people
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who are impacted. Well as I've said before my PhD is in a field called health psychology which has
also been called stress medicine and if you went to Europe or Canada you would find health psychologists
on all medical treatment. It has been slow on the rise here in the United States and it's a
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necessary part of the holistic ones when we're talking about stress and healing. There's a
direct correlation between the two. Yeah I did have when I went to physical therapy their screening
asked about mental health and I said to him I said that's pretty progressive that that's a part of
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and I think it's every five sessions they do the screening over again which I thought that's
encouraging. Yeah I remember gosh it was 2010 I had picked up a I was unaware that those five
gallon jugs of water were close to 50 pounds and I had never put one in the dispenser
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and when I did unbeknownst to me I had pulled from my C2 all the way down to my L3-2. Yeah it was the
first time in life that I had ever been in chronic pain and I remember going to the orthopedic doctor
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and saying I'm my brain health my mental health is tanking like I'm clear on that and I asked him
is there anybody that specializes in chronic pain and his response was well I think you know
probably if you go to one of the larger hospitals you could find somebody and in my mind I'm like
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this is what you deal with day in and day out is chronic pain and he had no resources he just
wanted to give me opiates and at the time I was working in an outpatient suboxone clinic with
folks in recovery from opiate addiction and I was like nope. Yeah I know I currently work in addiction
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and I'm going to say 80 percent of the origin stories always start with some form of chronic
pain physical pain that led to prescription and so forth so on. Well the thing too about opiates as
I said earlier is that the emotional pain center in the brain we know will be triaged
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by opiates as well as the pain physically that we're experiencing and in my time working with
folks I just saw trauma trauma trauma trauma and it made sense to me it made sense why people's
brains would be pulled to this because it was triaging the untreated trauma system. Yeah it
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was interesting yesterday too because you and I had gone for a walk we took my dog for a walk
and we were probably a quarter of a mile into the walk and you said wow you wouldn't even know that
you had surgery how are you feeling and I said it hurts my foot hurts and then what did you say?
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All of a sudden your gait changed you were doing a perfect stride I would never have known
that you had had extensive foot surgery but as soon as I said something and brought it up to the
conscious level it was amazing to see how you started to compensate for that foot and your gait
became completely different. When you reflected that back to me I'm like no I'm not and then I
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got in my head and I'm trying to concentrate to get back into that sink but it is amazing though
again back to that relationship with physical symptoms mental health symptoms that kind of
thing and it makes me wonder about other health situations you know well let me stop there.
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In our field how much are we caught well I know you are but the common therapist who doesn't have
that health psychology background how many are really diving into the physical wellness
to see what can be linked because I can only speak to the U.S. but you know I think
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the U.S. but you have a pain you go to the doctor you're uncomfortable you go to the doctor
and what's the first line of defense is medication or whatever which is needed
but it makes me wonder how many conditions or medical diagnoses are actually
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what you always bring up untreated trauma. Yeah and like I said earlier Dr. Herb Benson
got blessed when he passed last year. I didn't know that. I think he was 89. By education he was a cardiologist
and so you know the Benson Henry Institute is that space for a patient to go to to really look
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at the emotional body and to see what alternative interventions can be used
and you know quite frankly that and I don't know the exact number it's something like 40 billion
dollars a year that people are spending on alternative interventions for their health
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and the way I look at health is that we have this body and stress which creates a level of chemistry
in our bloodstream that will activate the fight or flight and over time in that chronic state
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there's gonna be breakdown whether it's the immune system or inflammation or an organ there's gonna
be something and it's just eyes wide open that in our culture we believe that the more stress we have
and the more multi-task oriented we are the stronger and better that we are and it's just not true it
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just hasn't caught up to us and you know I've shared before that at 50 I went into hypertension crisis
I didn't know what hit me and what I can say is that was so traumatic to me that just recently I
started to get some pain in the back of my head and my immediate response was to get my blood
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pressure crop to see if my blood pressure was up that's a trauma response because I had a trigger
to a physical symptom that has happened to me in the past right it was back when you were talking
about her but I was thinking about the other person who really kind of changed the trajectory
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of my thinking on the subject Dr. Janine Fisher she's awesome but I had seen her at a
she gave a presentation this probably 20 years ago and I was a newer clinician and
she was talking about somatic, somatic, psycho and she gave a example that I have used throughout
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my career because I just was so fascinated that she had a client come to her I think a 13 year old
I think a 13 I'm just gonna make this stuff up because my memory is not what it used to be
but say I was a 13 year old girl who one day got up and couldn't walk like had a foot I believe that
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just didn't function and had gone through all of the battery of tests specialists everything under
the sun I want to say for about a year or two and somebody suggested booking an appointment with Dr.
Fisher and went and within four sessions and I think her approach was let's give that
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foot a voice and so she took this who was now probably 14, 15 client and created a whole narrative
according to the foot and what it boiled down to was I can't take another step
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and at that point that's when the trauma work started and subsequently I found out that there
was some significant repressed stuff in the in the client but I tell you I heard that and then
of course it's what do they call that the medical student syndrome where you hear something then all
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of a sudden you apply it to so I'm driving home and I'm like oh give a narrative tell me some
pains but I will say that I have had migraines my whole life and ocular migraines and what I
realized was that once that site starts going I just can't take in the world anymore and I
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and it's almost like my body shuts me down to take a moment because it takes about an hour
for it to pass through and I thought oh my gosh we're so out of touch with understanding how the
physical stuff really is impacted so much by the brain and mental health well and I think too
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you know I've said this before that working with the military it's called the invisible wound
so if it's invisible and we haven't been educated on trauma then we don't see it yeah we can deduct
that some of our experiences perhaps fall under trauma but I've heard worse stories so mine can't
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be in trauma that's a very common statement that I get from folks is that you know I didn't have
these horrific things happen to me that I know others have had so I can't have post-traumatic
stress and that thought right there is what continues to allow a human to keep on going
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because of minimizing and not being able to understand the definition of trauma well I
I have so many thoughts I want to cover them all so in my mind I'm trying to like bullet point
but I want to say in my own trauma work how many times I would bring up a family story or a story
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I've told a hundred times that had no emotion attached to it and actually adopted oh it's funny
and having my therapist say that's not funny that's not okay by any stretch of mean and how
my brain as a little one attack you know created because no one else was making it seem like it
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was a bad thing or whatever but just going back I want to say real quick about the medical
interface I wish in a perfect world talking about holistic care how many times I've met with clients
who have trauma or anything going on and I'll ask have you ever had body work done
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and most people like what is that and I'm saying reflexology massage anything like that and most
people say no I wish that I could refer my clients to get massage to go to yoga to do but all of
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these things are out of pocket and it's never made sense to me why insurance companies don't
pay or cover that because I think long term it would benefit and be such a proactive measure
in someone's overall health and it speaks to more of this topic of how medical you know I just don't
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think we have it right all the time I remember having a soldier come and his drinking had gone
through the roof and we were just talking and he disclosed to me that he had just been diagnosed
with a chronic medical condition that actually could have discharged him and so we looked at
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this about trauma that you're young and all of a sudden you have this diagnosis that in worst case
scenario will kill you in 30 years and in that process it will deteriorate parts of your body
and you didn't invite this diagnosis into your world it's understanding that all of these things
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when they happen we are blindsided because we didn't okay it and we didn't invite it in
and that's the space where trauma happens yeah it's it's not fun it's not fun especially have
especially have still in it with recovery with my foot it's just I can't begin I mean you know
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because I've been talking to you about it but it just really took me off guard how impactful
obviously physically but mentally this process has been and like you said being in chronic pain
yeah no I hadn't experienced that and I realized I was ever interrogated
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and even a pain was applied I spilled the beans in two seconds well from a biochemical standpoint
when we're in chronic pain over time our serotonin levels will lower and that's what was happening
to me I was dipping into a mild depression and I could tell even though that wasn't something that
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is a common occurrence in my brain I just could tell that things are are going south here and then
I you know did the research to understand biochemically neurochemically what was going
on in my body and we have to recognize that that impact to a human that has to deal with suffering
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and today's topic is on the physical body yeah it's going to impact somebody and they may not
show it outwardly but they're experiencing it in the silence of their mind and in their body
what about I just kind of a pivot but I was thinking about that concept of chronic pain and
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how I'm mildly obsessed with documentaries on ultra runners people who run 100 mile races 200
mile races 200 mile races I I watch these documentaries and I just I'm in awe of
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them pushing through that pain and there's one runner who I'm a huge fan of and
she looks forward to it and in my mind I'm like what I can the one who will spill the beans with
one and how she and a lot of these athletes talk about the pain cave and how they learn
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how to go into the pain cave and it's almost like a dissociation if you will that they enjoy
the pain and pushing through it I don't know I don't know I mean I haven't watched
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it isn't we I just have to share we were watching the show toughest nails last night which I love
which is a competition show with that guy from amazing race bell and he puts a bunch of blue
collar workers together and they compete for money and whatnot and the the thing last night
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was bagging dirt to you and I go I think I should sign you up for this show and you're like I don't
think so yeah physical physical activity and output is not your jam I don't know I like to walk
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but when we're talking about pushing through the pain
um there's there's more going on and it's just in my world teasing it out what is the
core motivation in all of this and there could be a couple of things that are going on but on a
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conscious level it's like I just love this endurance and I love um there's there's something going on
yeah um that pushes a human to go beyond yeah um besides you know just winning on whatever
or whatever because honestly science has shown us that um that level of exercise
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actually impacts the brain in a negative way why does that jog the pounding in the well I I mean
I can't I don't know enough about this to speak on it but I just think that when you're using the
body you're burning for lack of a better word all the nutrients that keeps the body going in a
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direction and um when it's a chronic state of you know sling well I think it's um it's hard because
there are just people who are born into this world with uh ability that not everyone shares
and this woman who's a long-distance runner she'll eat McDonald's like she doesn't get into the
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science of how to refuel and do all the stuff and she's at the top of her game it's hard because
somebody would compare themselves and I think she's just a unique individual just like other
people but anyways all of that being said there was a documentary watch that was actually in
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Vermont and it was the hundred miler race and they were interviewing runners and that there was
a guy I think at mile 50 and they said how's it going or whatever why do you do this and he said
show me an endurance race and I'll bet half the entries are in recovery yeah that's what I'm saying
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there's there's a core and each individual is going to have a different core yeah I do love
I do love those documentaries so I that was the first topic I wanted to talk about the second one
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kind of relates a little bit but it's a conversation we had a couple weeks ago where
your knickers were in a bunch or your clams are really steamed as they say and it's that
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love Mel Robbins love love love Mel Robbins the high fives that isn't it the high five book
or something yeah yeah love that book but she had said something on her Instagram and
this is nothing directed to now because this is in common culture vernacular but
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the idea of emotionally eating
so I'll just preface this conversation with that my research from my dissertation title is
stress biochemistry food perceptions of primary care physicians working with obesity patients
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um I've had some people in my life that wrangled with obesity and I just couldn't understand how
they let themselves get to that size and so growing up in an alternative world I just knew
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that there had to be something else going on and so that was my research and having to do
with having worked in substance abuse again it's recognizing the amount of shame that humans carry
they may not disclose it they may not be consciously aware of it but it's there and we're in a society
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where well the last time I looked 67 percent of the American population is overweight or obese
I mean that's a staggering number and what I realized through my research is that 85 percent
of folks who are wrangling with obesity have a trauma history and having worked with some folks
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over the last 20 years that are wrangling with obesity I found that trauma in them and so when
we use the terminology emotional eating first of all it degrades emotional that somehow it's a
weakness and then we've got to eat in order to manage our emotions and what I learned was
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nutritional chemistry so we are not eating carrots and celery that put on weight that's not how we
get to a place of being overweight or obese we're looking at fats sugars and carbs carbs break down
into glucose and any type of nutritional chemistry we ingest is going to have a biochemical
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breakdown within our body and so I call it emotional regulation whether it's somebody who
is dealing with opiate addiction exercise addiction and that's that's a whole other topic of
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shame but what activated me was the amount of shame that was in this post and this individual
was calling out their alleged emotional eating and then the followers started you know joining
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in about their emotional eating and again that core that's the part that's missing in the medical
framework of getting deep of understanding what is it that drives the brain to crave
and everything we crave has a chemical component to it every chemistry is going to fill the gap
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that has either been depleted or organically where we don't have enough and food is something like
alcohol that we can go into a store and buy it's not regulated it's not considered illegal because
we have to eat in order to survive so it's this thing that when I see people shamed for their
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body size because I anybody that I've worked with that is wrangling with their weight I've never
I've never heard them say I am so psyched to be this way so how did they get there and from my
medical slice of the pie and the whole picture is that you've got a dysregulated nervous system
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and in that body there's a mild to moderate depression that takes place and
and ingesting sugars and carbs that break down to glucose will produce serotonin
there's a whole mechanical system to that but in our brain is made up of 60 fat and in order to
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maintain a healthy brain we have to have fat but we're not educated about that and the brain will
crave what it needs in order to maintain a certain level of health and that comes in potato chips or
burger king and fries you know there's just a whole array of things my foster son I mentioned
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this in the first episode but my foster son came to me and department children family said you
cannot have cheese in the house and I was like what and so I did some research and it was right
there that cheese has a chemical component called casomorphin and the morphine is a morphine like
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derivative so this kid who's an outgrown man had a horrific horrific abuse history and so unbeknownst
to him and everybody else he was trying to triage that through cheese because he would get a moment
of reprieve so there were three people in my life and my foster son was one and I had two others that
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really were the catalyst that brought me to this research and it makes complete sense and so part
of my passion is to push out well we had to have a social change component to our research and mine
was to de-shame obesity well I can speak to this from a personal journey because I have seen
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my brain shift over the last years of doing trauma work that that compulsion piece to sugar
hasn't been as present and I know I know that the sugar for me was bumping that serotonin
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you've made a point in the past that I think is so huge that somebody might say emotional eating
but we don't say emotional using with heroin or emotional whatever right we don't say oh
they're an emotional heroin heroin user emotional alcohol user I mean it's just the word emotional
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that has been attached to food and it creates this low vibration and people know what I'm talking
about when they put those two words together emotional eating there is absolute shame that
you can't survive any other way other than eating and my research brought this into medical
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medical template where it's not about your eating your emotions or whatever people say it's about
chemistry and that chemistry is in need because of the body makeup and the untreated trauma and so
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people who are thin judge people who are not and they again have aligned it with shame that you're
just lazy you're not disciplined you're not and in my research what I realized that dopamine and
serotonin are our two biggest neurochemicals for mood and when dopamine has over 500 drops
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and one of the things that it does is help our muscles and if we don't have enough dopamine
then our muscles are going to become exhausted so it makes sense to me why not just the weight
that a human is carrying but there's a lot more going on chemically within that body that is
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creating the thoughts of I can't and also with the chemistry in mind is how many times do you hear
people who are like I'm eating right I'm exercising and I can't lose weight or the weight's not coming
off and that stress hormone like if you're under stress your body's in protection and
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and it's not going to work at the efficient level of the engine to burn stuff and so people
I had a client I'm like you're actually working against yourself because you're so stressed out
about not losing weight that your body's going into stress response and it's not going to let
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go of that fat because it's feels like it's under attack. Yeah for me the person that I think about
is the trainer from The Biggest Loser who by physical standards was a discipline eater,
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exercise and yet he was in his 40s and he had a massive heart attack like he was on
a desk door and yet he was doing everything by cultural standards to maintain health
and what he came out of that near-death experience was he had never addressed his emotional body
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and what people have to understand is that the emotional body isn't this intangible it's truly
chemistry and so when we're talking about the emotional body we're talking about the chemistry.
Dr. Carolyn Pert was a part of my research and her book is Molecules of Emotion and it really
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breaks down just how much how we feel has to do with the chemistry that's in our body and so it
makes perfect sense that we're going to crave other chemistry. Do you know he's a hot yoga
instructor? No. Oh gosh. I love hot yoga. I just started back this week and talked about chemistry.
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I again I always say to my clients because it's what I do and I know you do using myself as my
own science project and I hadn't been to yoga in gosh probably a year because of the pain
that my foot had been in prior to surgery and just kind of being a little bit like oh go
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tomorrow one of those things and the first class I went to the night and day difference with my
mental state from when I went in to when I came out I was like oh my gosh I have to get back into
this practice because it regulates the chemistry and obviously because I've been sitting around
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for three months not moving which has been torture but well I just want to leave people with that
but if you've got a pattern online and it carries shame what you need to understand is that there's
something below that that is driving the behavior and it's understanding that at least from my
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professional lens there's something going on with your brain whether there's an undiagnosed traumatic
brain injury whether there's a level of chemistry that needs to be regulated whether there's
untreated trauma there's something going on below the behavior the behavior is just the symptom
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and it doesn't mean that the behavior doesn't cost us but focusing on reduction of the behavior
is not going to I want to use the word cure but that's not what I'm trying to say is not going to
rectify things and we saw that with the bypass surgery in the 90s that it was something like 80
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to 90 percent of bypass patients became alcoholics because they had to switch their chemistry.
Well I was going to say too with education how many conversations have you had
just on basic nutrition that people don't understand the impact of food in the body
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versus fuel in the body and how much is coming out about gut health and how I read something that
kind of clicked for my brain that it was saying how with body intelligence and whatnot if I put
if I eat an apple or I eat whatever organic whatever's grown and on the earth excuse me
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that my body intelligence my stomach everything knows what to do with that and so it's moving
moving through a smooth function of burning fuel and whatnot when I put a Twinkie or
or a fast food burger or something the body doesn't have knowledge of what that item is and so it
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have knowledge of what that item is and so it it works against it and it has to work extra hard to
turn it into fuel and what was interesting was how many chemicals like we think about the brain
having all these chemicals but our stomach has the same chemicals and so if I eat something that is
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not natural fuel for my system to process then it can send messages saying we're under attack or
we're not whatever and for whatever reason that image made sense to me that over a long period
of time of putting non-fuel stuff in our system can really impact mental health in a very profound
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way well and that's where people will start to develop inflammation yeah in different parts of
their body and it'll manifest it just it's again one of those things that we have to be aware of
this trauma system and you know I'm very well aware of it and it still catches me today yeah
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and in my work you know I say to the folks that I work with that I wish I had a wand and I could just
tap everybody and their trauma history is gone but that's not a reality it's about the recovery
time and it's understanding what's going on it's when we don't understand what's going on
that further traumatizes us and it's just critical to our overall health and well-being
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to be clear on it and to understand why we fire some of the thoughts and have the emotions that
we do yeah well those are my two topics to cover kind of a deep dive into some some things that
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were on my mind and both super important and I think also too as we had talked about with this
podcast is trying to cover topics that might be helpful for the general audience to hear and
I think pain management and tuning into yourself and physical pain and maybe doing a little exercise
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with from Dr. Fisher's vantage point if you've had a chronic situation sit with it and give it a voice
and see what maybe you hear and then as far as weight emotional eating all of that knowing that
if this is something that has been a part of your journey that looking from a different lens right
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and it's you know again it's just looking at these two topics and how we manage them
and how do we manage them without despair and shame amen so is it time to go jump in the ocean
and next time I'll bring the topic all right take care bye bye have a great day
Hello and welcome to One Brain at a Time. I'm Dr. K. And I'm Dr. J. How are you doing today?
(00:08):
I'm doing great. I had a great night's sleep and I am raring to go. And we got we had a double dip
up yesterday. Twice in the ocean. Oh so good. So we or actually I had said I'd like to try a different
thing not talking about the subject before we got going. And I know you love that idea. So
(00:38):
let's jump in. I think currently and just as reference about three and a half months ago I
had foot surgery and it was pretty intense bone grafts reconstruction that kind of thing.
And what I've realized through this process is the connection between the brain, physical health,
(01:02):
physical pain, all of that kind of stuff. And I thought it might be interesting to explore that a
little bit further because how many times do things show up medically or physically that it really has
the origin more so in mental health. For example about 10 minutes ago I was complaining about my
(01:30):
stomach hurting for the last couple of days. And when we sat down to discuss it tears came up and
it had much more to do with some past hurt stuff. And as soon as I talked to you about it the pain
went away and I'm never at a loss of awe of how that relationship works.
(01:56):
Yes. Dr. Herb Benson that started the Benson Henry Institute at Mass General
stated that 60 to 90 percent primary care visits per year are due to a stress and
induced situation from the beginning. So you know when we go to the doctor we're already past
(02:22):
recognizing that stress was the thing that induced it. And what you're actually talking about is the
relationship between trauma, that relative helplessness, and the physical body. And so when
we feel pain then that's the alarm system that something's not right. And the quick surgery you
(02:46):
had was huge, huge, huge, huge. And so you were in pain probably for the first time in your life
chronically day in and day out for months on time. And that's going to encode again through your
sensory system. You're picking up that pain and it's being processed and put in the back brain
(03:11):
for future data. So that pain part I was going to ask you this because you know all but
that wiring where the pain registers in the brain is that the same space in the brain that trauma
(03:32):
lives. So there are a couple things going on. It's the pain center for the motor and cellular
and structural component. And then we have the trauma center. And the trauma center is specifically
(03:58):
set up to forewarn us in the future and to encode the danger of the now so that we don't get into
that danger in the future. Then we have the reality of the body being in pain. And that's
in another part of the brain that's just letting us know that the system is under stress or
(04:23):
inflammation. So you know it's a nerve messaging to the brain and then the brain will release
endorphins which are the morphine like derivative that our home psychopharmacology
will produce to help regulate that pain. Yeah well a couple of things that I think
(04:48):
are really interesting as a consumer in the medical world is how huge of an impact the
surgery had on my obviously physical, emotional, mental, spiritual or whatever. And how there's no
(05:09):
follow-up on the doctor side and not I love my doctor he's awesome. But it's not just baked into
the equation to have somebody following up to make sure that that mental health piece is in play. And
I also feel because I had had my shoulder done like 10 or 15 years ago and the impact of that
(05:36):
surgery on me versus now and I don't know if it's because I'm in my 50s but it's pretty significant
and I thought to myself this is where the system kind of fails consumers that there isn't more of
a protocol and not saying that everyone is impacted but I can't imagine that there aren't more people
(06:01):
who are impacted. Well as I've said before my PhD is in a field called health psychology which has
also been called stress medicine and if you went to Europe or Canada you would find health psychologists
on all medical treatment. It has been slow on the rise here in the United States and it's a
(06:24):
necessary part of the holistic ones when we're talking about stress and healing. There's a
direct correlation between the two. Yeah I did have when I went to physical therapy their screening
asked about mental health and I said to him I said that's pretty progressive that that's a part of
(06:50):
and I think it's every five sessions they do the screening over again which I thought that's
encouraging. Yeah I remember gosh it was 2010 I had picked up a I was unaware that those five
gallon jugs of water were close to 50 pounds and I had never put one in the dispenser
(07:19):
and when I did unbeknownst to me I had pulled from my C2 all the way down to my L3-2. Yeah it was the
first time in life that I had ever been in chronic pain and I remember going to the orthopedic doctor
(07:42):
and saying I'm my brain health my mental health is tanking like I'm clear on that and I asked him
is there anybody that specializes in chronic pain and his response was well I think you know
probably if you go to one of the larger hospitals you could find somebody and in my mind I'm like
(08:05):
this is what you deal with day in and day out is chronic pain and he had no resources he just
wanted to give me opiates and at the time I was working in an outpatient suboxone clinic with
folks in recovery from opiate addiction and I was like nope. Yeah I know I currently work in addiction
(08:31):
and I'm going to say 80 percent of the origin stories always start with some form of chronic
pain physical pain that led to prescription and so forth so on. Well the thing too about opiates as
I said earlier is that the emotional pain center in the brain we know will be triaged
(08:58):
by opiates as well as the pain physically that we're experiencing and in my time working with
folks I just saw trauma trauma trauma trauma and it made sense to me it made sense why people's
brains would be pulled to this because it was triaging the untreated trauma system. Yeah it
(09:24):
was interesting yesterday too because you and I had gone for a walk we took my dog for a walk
and we were probably a quarter of a mile into the walk and you said wow you wouldn't even know that
you had surgery how are you feeling and I said it hurts my foot hurts and then what did you say?
(09:49):
All of a sudden your gait changed you were doing a perfect stride I would never have known
that you had had extensive foot surgery but as soon as I said something and brought it up to the
conscious level it was amazing to see how you started to compensate for that foot and your gait
became completely different. When you reflected that back to me I'm like no I'm not and then I
(10:16):
got in my head and I'm trying to concentrate to get back into that sink but it is amazing though
again back to that relationship with physical symptoms mental health symptoms that kind of
thing and it makes me wonder about other health situations you know well let me stop there.
(10:42):
In our field how much are we caught well I know you are but the common therapist who doesn't have
that health psychology background how many are really diving into the physical wellness
to see what can be linked because I can only speak to the U.S. but you know I think
(11:10):
the U.S. but you have a pain you go to the doctor you're uncomfortable you go to the doctor
and what's the first line of defense is medication or whatever which is needed
but it makes me wonder how many conditions or medical diagnoses are actually
(11:32):
what you always bring up untreated trauma. Yeah and like I said earlier Dr. Herb Benson
got blessed when he passed last year. I didn't know that. I think he was 89. By education he was a cardiologist
and so you know the Benson Henry Institute is that space for a patient to go to to really look
(12:03):
at the emotional body and to see what alternative interventions can be used
and you know quite frankly that and I don't know the exact number it's something like 40 billion
dollars a year that people are spending on alternative interventions for their health
(12:26):
and the way I look at health is that we have this body and stress which creates a level of chemistry
in our bloodstream that will activate the fight or flight and over time in that chronic state
(12:47):
there's gonna be breakdown whether it's the immune system or inflammation or an organ there's gonna
be something and it's just eyes wide open that in our culture we believe that the more stress we have
and the more multi-task oriented we are the stronger and better that we are and it's just not true it
(13:12):
just hasn't caught up to us and you know I've shared before that at 50 I went into hypertension crisis
I didn't know what hit me and what I can say is that was so traumatic to me that just recently I
started to get some pain in the back of my head and my immediate response was to get my blood
(13:35):
pressure crop to see if my blood pressure was up that's a trauma response because I had a trigger
to a physical symptom that has happened to me in the past right it was back when you were talking
about her but I was thinking about the other person who really kind of changed the trajectory
(13:57):
of my thinking on the subject Dr. Janine Fisher she's awesome but I had seen her at a
she gave a presentation this probably 20 years ago and I was a newer clinician and
she was talking about somatic, somatic, psycho and she gave a example that I have used throughout
(14:26):
my career because I just was so fascinated that she had a client come to her I think a 13 year old
I think a 13 I'm just gonna make this stuff up because my memory is not what it used to be
but say I was a 13 year old girl who one day got up and couldn't walk like had a foot I believe that
(14:53):
just didn't function and had gone through all of the battery of tests specialists everything under
the sun I want to say for about a year or two and somebody suggested booking an appointment with Dr.
Fisher and went and within four sessions and I think her approach was let's give that
(15:20):
foot a voice and so she took this who was now probably 14, 15 client and created a whole narrative
according to the foot and what it boiled down to was I can't take another step
(15:42):
and at that point that's when the trauma work started and subsequently I found out that there
was some significant repressed stuff in the in the client but I tell you I heard that and then
of course it's what do they call that the medical student syndrome where you hear something then all
(16:08):
of a sudden you apply it to so I'm driving home and I'm like oh give a narrative tell me some
pains but I will say that I have had migraines my whole life and ocular migraines and what I
realized was that once that site starts going I just can't take in the world anymore and I
(16:34):
and it's almost like my body shuts me down to take a moment because it takes about an hour
for it to pass through and I thought oh my gosh we're so out of touch with understanding how the
physical stuff really is impacted so much by the brain and mental health well and I think too
(16:58):
you know I've said this before that working with the military it's called the invisible wound
so if it's invisible and we haven't been educated on trauma then we don't see it yeah we can deduct
that some of our experiences perhaps fall under trauma but I've heard worse stories so mine can't
(17:25):
be in trauma that's a very common statement that I get from folks is that you know I didn't have
these horrific things happen to me that I know others have had so I can't have post-traumatic
stress and that thought right there is what continues to allow a human to keep on going
(17:52):
because of minimizing and not being able to understand the definition of trauma well I
I have so many thoughts I want to cover them all so in my mind I'm trying to like bullet point
but I want to say in my own trauma work how many times I would bring up a family story or a story
(18:24):
I've told a hundred times that had no emotion attached to it and actually adopted oh it's funny
and having my therapist say that's not funny that's not okay by any stretch of mean and how
my brain as a little one attack you know created because no one else was making it seem like it
(18:49):
was a bad thing or whatever but just going back I want to say real quick about the medical
interface I wish in a perfect world talking about holistic care how many times I've met with clients
who have trauma or anything going on and I'll ask have you ever had body work done
(19:16):
and most people like what is that and I'm saying reflexology massage anything like that and most
people say no I wish that I could refer my clients to get massage to go to yoga to do but all of
(19:37):
these things are out of pocket and it's never made sense to me why insurance companies don't
pay or cover that because I think long term it would benefit and be such a proactive measure
in someone's overall health and it speaks to more of this topic of how medical you know I just don't
(20:08):
think we have it right all the time I remember having a soldier come and his drinking had gone
through the roof and we were just talking and he disclosed to me that he had just been diagnosed
with a chronic medical condition that actually could have discharged him and so we looked at
(20:33):
this about trauma that you're young and all of a sudden you have this diagnosis that in worst case
scenario will kill you in 30 years and in that process it will deteriorate parts of your body
and you didn't invite this diagnosis into your world it's understanding that all of these things
(20:59):
when they happen we are blindsided because we didn't okay it and we didn't invite it in
and that's the space where trauma happens yeah it's it's not fun it's not fun especially have
especially have still in it with recovery with my foot it's just I can't begin I mean you know
(21:29):
because I've been talking to you about it but it just really took me off guard how impactful
obviously physically but mentally this process has been and like you said being in chronic pain
yeah no I hadn't experienced that and I realized I was ever interrogated
(21:55):
and even a pain was applied I spilled the beans in two seconds well from a biochemical standpoint
when we're in chronic pain over time our serotonin levels will lower and that's what was happening
to me I was dipping into a mild depression and I could tell even though that wasn't something that
(22:19):
is a common occurrence in my brain I just could tell that things are are going south here and then
I you know did the research to understand biochemically neurochemically what was going
on in my body and we have to recognize that that impact to a human that has to deal with suffering
(22:49):
and today's topic is on the physical body yeah it's going to impact somebody and they may not
show it outwardly but they're experiencing it in the silence of their mind and in their body
what about I just kind of a pivot but I was thinking about that concept of chronic pain and
(23:14):
how I'm mildly obsessed with documentaries on ultra runners people who run 100 mile races 200
mile races 200 mile races I I watch these documentaries and I just I'm in awe of
(23:36):
them pushing through that pain and there's one runner who I'm a huge fan of and
she looks forward to it and in my mind I'm like what I can the one who will spill the beans with
one and how she and a lot of these athletes talk about the pain cave and how they learn
(24:05):
how to go into the pain cave and it's almost like a dissociation if you will that they enjoy
the pain and pushing through it I don't know I don't know I mean I haven't watched
(24:36):
it isn't we I just have to share we were watching the show toughest nails last night which I love
which is a competition show with that guy from amazing race bell and he puts a bunch of blue
collar workers together and they compete for money and whatnot and the the thing last night
(24:59):
was bagging dirt to you and I go I think I should sign you up for this show and you're like I don't
think so yeah physical physical activity and output is not your jam I don't know I like to walk
(25:22):
but when we're talking about pushing through the pain
um there's there's more going on and it's just in my world teasing it out what is the
core motivation in all of this and there could be a couple of things that are going on but on a
(25:42):
conscious level it's like I just love this endurance and I love um there's there's something going on
yeah um that pushes a human to go beyond yeah um besides you know just winning on whatever
or whatever because honestly science has shown us that um that level of exercise
(26:09):
actually impacts the brain in a negative way why does that jog the pounding in the well I I mean
I can't I don't know enough about this to speak on it but I just think that when you're using the
body you're burning for lack of a better word all the nutrients that keeps the body going in a
(26:34):
direction and um when it's a chronic state of you know sling well I think it's um it's hard because
there are just people who are born into this world with uh ability that not everyone shares
and this woman who's a long-distance runner she'll eat McDonald's like she doesn't get into the
(27:01):
science of how to refuel and do all the stuff and she's at the top of her game it's hard because
somebody would compare themselves and I think she's just a unique individual just like other
people but anyways all of that being said there was a documentary watch that was actually in
(27:26):
Vermont and it was the hundred miler race and they were interviewing runners and that there was
a guy I think at mile 50 and they said how's it going or whatever why do you do this and he said
show me an endurance race and I'll bet half the entries are in recovery yeah that's what I'm saying
(27:55):
there's there's a core and each individual is going to have a different core yeah I do love
I do love those documentaries so I that was the first topic I wanted to talk about the second one
(28:16):
kind of relates a little bit but it's a conversation we had a couple weeks ago where
your knickers were in a bunch or your clams are really steamed as they say and it's that
(28:38):
love Mel Robbins love love love Mel Robbins the high fives that isn't it the high five book
or something yeah yeah love that book but she had said something on her Instagram and
this is nothing directed to now because this is in common culture vernacular but
(29:02):
the idea of emotionally eating
so I'll just preface this conversation with that my research from my dissertation title is
stress biochemistry food perceptions of primary care physicians working with obesity patients
(29:28):
um I've had some people in my life that wrangled with obesity and I just couldn't understand how
they let themselves get to that size and so growing up in an alternative world I just knew
(29:48):
that there had to be something else going on and so that was my research and having to do
with having worked in substance abuse again it's recognizing the amount of shame that humans carry
they may not disclose it they may not be consciously aware of it but it's there and we're in a society
(30:14):
where well the last time I looked 67 percent of the American population is overweight or obese
I mean that's a staggering number and what I realized through my research is that 85 percent
of folks who are wrangling with obesity have a trauma history and having worked with some folks
(30:43):
over the last 20 years that are wrangling with obesity I found that trauma in them and so when
we use the terminology emotional eating first of all it degrades emotional that somehow it's a
weakness and then we've got to eat in order to manage our emotions and what I learned was
(31:12):
nutritional chemistry so we are not eating carrots and celery that put on weight that's not how we
get to a place of being overweight or obese we're looking at fats sugars and carbs carbs break down
into glucose and any type of nutritional chemistry we ingest is going to have a biochemical
(31:40):
breakdown within our body and so I call it emotional regulation whether it's somebody who
is dealing with opiate addiction exercise addiction and that's that's a whole other topic of
(32:00):
shame but what activated me was the amount of shame that was in this post and this individual
was calling out their alleged emotional eating and then the followers started you know joining
(32:22):
in about their emotional eating and again that core that's the part that's missing in the medical
framework of getting deep of understanding what is it that drives the brain to crave
and everything we crave has a chemical component to it every chemistry is going to fill the gap
(32:48):
that has either been depleted or organically where we don't have enough and food is something like
alcohol that we can go into a store and buy it's not regulated it's not considered illegal because
we have to eat in order to survive so it's this thing that when I see people shamed for their
(33:16):
body size because I anybody that I've worked with that is wrangling with their weight I've never
I've never heard them say I am so psyched to be this way so how did they get there and from my
medical slice of the pie and the whole picture is that you've got a dysregulated nervous system
(33:44):
and in that body there's a mild to moderate depression that takes place and
and ingesting sugars and carbs that break down to glucose will produce serotonin
there's a whole mechanical system to that but in our brain is made up of 60 fat and in order to
(34:10):
maintain a healthy brain we have to have fat but we're not educated about that and the brain will
crave what it needs in order to maintain a certain level of health and that comes in potato chips or
burger king and fries you know there's just a whole array of things my foster son I mentioned
(34:34):
this in the first episode but my foster son came to me and department children family said you
cannot have cheese in the house and I was like what and so I did some research and it was right
there that cheese has a chemical component called casomorphin and the morphine is a morphine like
(34:57):
derivative so this kid who's an outgrown man had a horrific horrific abuse history and so unbeknownst
to him and everybody else he was trying to triage that through cheese because he would get a moment
of reprieve so there were three people in my life and my foster son was one and I had two others that
(35:25):
really were the catalyst that brought me to this research and it makes complete sense and so part
of my passion is to push out well we had to have a social change component to our research and mine
was to de-shame obesity well I can speak to this from a personal journey because I have seen
(35:53):
my brain shift over the last years of doing trauma work that that compulsion piece to sugar
hasn't been as present and I know I know that the sugar for me was bumping that serotonin
(36:14):
you've made a point in the past that I think is so huge that somebody might say emotional eating
but we don't say emotional using with heroin or emotional whatever right we don't say oh
they're an emotional heroin heroin user emotional alcohol user I mean it's just the word emotional
(36:41):
that has been attached to food and it creates this low vibration and people know what I'm talking
about when they put those two words together emotional eating there is absolute shame that
you can't survive any other way other than eating and my research brought this into medical
(37:09):
medical template where it's not about your eating your emotions or whatever people say it's about
chemistry and that chemistry is in need because of the body makeup and the untreated trauma and so
(37:30):
people who are thin judge people who are not and they again have aligned it with shame that you're
just lazy you're not disciplined you're not and in my research what I realized that dopamine and
serotonin are our two biggest neurochemicals for mood and when dopamine has over 500 drops
(37:58):
and one of the things that it does is help our muscles and if we don't have enough dopamine
then our muscles are going to become exhausted so it makes sense to me why not just the weight
that a human is carrying but there's a lot more going on chemically within that body that is
(38:20):
creating the thoughts of I can't and also with the chemistry in mind is how many times do you hear
people who are like I'm eating right I'm exercising and I can't lose weight or the weight's not coming
off and that stress hormone like if you're under stress your body's in protection and
(38:47):
and it's not going to work at the efficient level of the engine to burn stuff and so people
I had a client I'm like you're actually working against yourself because you're so stressed out
about not losing weight that your body's going into stress response and it's not going to let
(39:09):
go of that fat because it's feels like it's under attack. Yeah for me the person that I think about
is the trainer from The Biggest Loser who by physical standards was a discipline eater,
(39:31):
exercise and yet he was in his 40s and he had a massive heart attack like he was on
a desk door and yet he was doing everything by cultural standards to maintain health
and what he came out of that near-death experience was he had never addressed his emotional body
(39:55):
and what people have to understand is that the emotional body isn't this intangible it's truly
chemistry and so when we're talking about the emotional body we're talking about the chemistry.
Dr. Carolyn Pert was a part of my research and her book is Molecules of Emotion and it really
(40:20):
breaks down just how much how we feel has to do with the chemistry that's in our body and so it
makes perfect sense that we're going to crave other chemistry. Do you know he's a hot yoga
instructor? No. Oh gosh. I love hot yoga. I just started back this week and talked about chemistry.
(40:46):
I again I always say to my clients because it's what I do and I know you do using myself as my
own science project and I hadn't been to yoga in gosh probably a year because of the pain
that my foot had been in prior to surgery and just kind of being a little bit like oh go
(41:13):
tomorrow one of those things and the first class I went to the night and day difference with my
mental state from when I went in to when I came out I was like oh my gosh I have to get back into
this practice because it regulates the chemistry and obviously because I've been sitting around
(41:36):
for three months not moving which has been torture but well I just want to leave people with that
but if you've got a pattern online and it carries shame what you need to understand is that there's
something below that that is driving the behavior and it's understanding that at least from my
(42:02):
professional lens there's something going on with your brain whether there's an undiagnosed traumatic
brain injury whether there's a level of chemistry that needs to be regulated whether there's
untreated trauma there's something going on below the behavior the behavior is just the symptom
(42:25):
and it doesn't mean that the behavior doesn't cost us but focusing on reduction of the behavior
is not going to I want to use the word cure but that's not what I'm trying to say is not going to
rectify things and we saw that with the bypass surgery in the 90s that it was something like 80
(42:54):
to 90 percent of bypass patients became alcoholics because they had to switch their chemistry.
Well I was going to say too with education how many conversations have you had
just on basic nutrition that people don't understand the impact of food in the body
(43:19):
versus fuel in the body and how much is coming out about gut health and how I read something that
kind of clicked for my brain that it was saying how with body intelligence and whatnot if I put
if I eat an apple or I eat whatever organic whatever's grown and on the earth excuse me
(43:48):
that my body intelligence my stomach everything knows what to do with that and so it's moving
moving through a smooth function of burning fuel and whatnot when I put a Twinkie or
or a fast food burger or something the body doesn't have knowledge of what that item is and so it
(44:16):
have knowledge of what that item is and so it it works against it and it has to work extra hard to
turn it into fuel and what was interesting was how many chemicals like we think about the brain
having all these chemicals but our stomach has the same chemicals and so if I eat something that is
(44:41):
not natural fuel for my system to process then it can send messages saying we're under attack or
we're not whatever and for whatever reason that image made sense to me that over a long period
of time of putting non-fuel stuff in our system can really impact mental health in a very profound
(45:10):
way well and that's where people will start to develop inflammation yeah in different parts of
their body and it'll manifest it just it's again one of those things that we have to be aware of
this trauma system and you know I'm very well aware of it and it still catches me today yeah
(45:36):
and in my work you know I say to the folks that I work with that I wish I had a wand and I could just
tap everybody and their trauma history is gone but that's not a reality it's about the recovery
time and it's understanding what's going on it's when we don't understand what's going on
that further traumatizes us and it's just critical to our overall health and well-being
(46:01):
to be clear on it and to understand why we fire some of the thoughts and have the emotions that
we do yeah well those are my two topics to cover kind of a deep dive into some some things that
(46:22):
were on my mind and both super important and I think also too as we had talked about with this
podcast is trying to cover topics that might be helpful for the general audience to hear and
I think pain management and tuning into yourself and physical pain and maybe doing a little exercise
(46:51):
with from Dr. Fisher's vantage point if you've had a chronic situation sit with it and give it a voice
and see what maybe you hear and then as far as weight emotional eating all of that knowing that
if this is something that has been a part of your journey that looking from a different lens right
(47:17):
and it's you know again it's just looking at these two topics and how we manage them
and how do we manage them without despair and shame amen so is it time to go jump in the ocean
and next time I'll bring the topic all right take care bye bye have a great day
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