The Lifestyle MD

Episode 014: Uncovering Health Secrets with Dr. Angela Andrews

• Dr. Angela Andrews • Episode 14

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Are you yearning for wisdom from the trenches of healthcare? Look no further. Today Dr. Angela Andrews lets us in on the secret of why more time with patients can uncover underlying health issues, and how a physician's own wellness can directly impact their practice. It's a candid conversation about the medical world that you won't want to miss.

Transitioning into retirement or an empty nest can feel like a daunting prospect, but it's also a chance for reinvention. We navigate these uncharted waters, highlighting the importance of purpose and self-care. You'll be inspired by a man who found a new lease on life by donating a kidney, a true testament to the power of altruism. Later, we switch gears and delve into the demands of caregiving, balancing self-care, and the liberation that comes from letting go of grudges. Hold on tight, because this journey is about to get real.


There's a big announcement in this episode so make sure to give it a listen. I'm excited to share the next phase of my journey as a primary care doctor with you AND  my top six pieces of advice for patients that do not involve special diets or strenuous exercise routines.

Enjoy the show!

Follow me on Instagram @angelalifestylemd and don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to my podcast & SHARE this episode.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Lifestyle MD podcast, the podcast dedicated to high achieving women who are conquering their careers while striving for total wellness. I am Dr Angela Andrews and I am thrilled to be your guide on this journey. Hello, this is Dr Angela. Welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle MD. It's been a little while since I recorded my last episode and I do apologize for that. A little busy this time of the year and the exciting announcement that I said I was going to share can also give you a little bit more insight.

Speaker 1:

I am starting my own practice. It's a primary care practice, specifically as a direct primary care practice. It's called seeds of health and I am actually wrapping up my tenure at my current clinic, effective the end of this year. I'll be done seeing patients at my current office December 22nd and I will be opening my new office the second week of February of 2024. So this is an exciting time. I have been doing some health coaching as well as building up and planning things for my practice, so things have been a little bit busy in the Andrews Van Ness household for the last six months, so I'm very excited to share that and I'll be happy to talk more about that as time goes on, but of course I don't want to bore you with too many of the details, but if it is something that you're interested in finding out more about, you can visit my practice website, which is seeds of health, dpccom. That seeds as in seeds that you plant of health, and DPC is in direct primary care. Alright, so enough about that. In this episode I want to talk about something very near and dear to my heart, and it makes sense, because that's why I'm starting Well, one of the reasons I'm starting my own practice and it's why primary care doctors need more time with patient, and I wanted to use this episode to explain some of the top pieces of advice that I give to my patients and why time is important and why I take the time that I do with my patients.

Speaker 1:

So I went into primary care to help people and some patients. They need to have a very superficial relationship with their doctors. They only need to come in for a complete physicals once a year and that's just because their insurance requires it, and occasionally coming in to treat a sinus infection. That's gone on too long. Those are the patients that I see and they've been dealing with sinus symptoms for four weeks and that's compared to some patients who call after day three. That's okay, that's you? No problem, that's just how it is.

Speaker 1:

I'm here for those patients too. I'm here for the ones that don't really need to see me that often, but you know what? I'm also here for the patients that need more from their primary care doctor. I'm here for the ones who don't have anyone else to talk to. I'm here for the ones who feel insecure and unsafe discussing their health concerns with their doctor or anyone else for that matter. I'm also here for the ones who are really struggling to get their health together because other aspects of their well-being are out of sync, whether it's stress, sleep relationships, social connections. Yes, exercise and eating whole plant forward diet is important, but I can guarantee you that no one, including those who know the best or should know the best, doctors themselves eat well or get regular exercise when other aspects of their life are weighing them down. So this and many other reasons is why I take the time to dive into my patients' lifestyles and not just at their wellness check.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes a patient comes in and it's happened a lot this last week, I feel like and they'll come in for something seemingly simple and then they will bring up something unrelated that's a much deeper issue, like, oh, they've been struggling with sleep or they've been struggling with I don't know the relationship with their spouse, or maybe you know, their sex drive is low, but they don't understand why. Whatever it might be, and they might have just come in there because they stubbed their toe. I had this conversation with one of my good friends and we have a very similar style of taking care of patients and we actually recorded a podcast recently. So I'll be sure to share that on my podcast and I'll share that on my website in the future once that is posted. But one of the things we talked about is the fact that patients come to the office for one issue. The MA comes back and says so and so is here to talk about X Doctor comes back in the room, goes in the room and they bring up YZ, abcd, and what I explained to him is that a lot of times it's because the patient needs to know that it's safe, that they can feel safe, sharing those deep concerns with you.

Speaker 1:

A lot of times there are things that are more soft, maybe more touchy-feely, or stuff they might be embarrassed about. So, for one, they don't want to share with anyone in their mama. Second of all, they don't know that they want to share with you yet, so they're not going to bring it up. So that's why it comes up. You know, at the end of the conversation it's the oh, the by the way moment. And I expect those because I know that when I'm in the room with the patient, even if I'm rushed and this isn't happened 100% of the time I'm not claiming that I'm perfect, but I do my very best for them to feel like they're the only person that matters in that moment. So that's why things come up that maybe they did not initially bring up, and that happens to a lot of doctors.

Speaker 1:

I am, fortunately and unfortunately, likely to go ahead and address some of those issues. At least. At least try to assess how important or how deep seated or how critical the issue is, to decide if I can have enough time to deal with it then or if I need to have them come back. I'm not going to just put it off completely. So this is also why I encourage doctors to get their lifestyles in order. Okay, because a healthy doctor, it's a good doctor.

Speaker 1:

If you're not taking care of yourself and you're not feeling good, you're more likely to experience things like burnout and also less likely to have patients or the energy to do some of the things that some of your patients need. This is also why I chose to become board certified in lifestyle medicine and it's also why I think women make great primary care doctors. Yes, I'm biased, I recognize that, but we as women, more often than not, are tend to more naturally gravitate to some of the more quote touchy-feely subject when it comes to primary care and, quite frankly, I think that's imperative to a primary care relationship. It's not just about the cough, the cold, the runny nose, the diabetes and the screenings. Yes, all that stuff is important, but the things that really influence a patient's health go beyond that. So women certainly, in my opinion, make some of the best primary care doctors, but we are also, unfortunately, the ones who are most prone to sacrificing our own wellbeing for the sake of the job, our own wellbeing for the sake of our family, our own wellbeing for the sake of insert whatever. So that's why I coach specifically, try to help other women physicians do better with their own lifestyle and improve their own health and wellbeing. It's also why I help professional women do the same because we're all kind of in the same boat.

Speaker 1:

So in this episode I'm specifically going to share with you my top advice for patients, things that come up office visit after office visit, week after week, regardless of why people are there to see me. First thing I bring up often is it's important that you have purpose. The second thing is the importance of self-care. The third is the importance of not sacrificing your own wellbeing for the sake of your employer. Same advice I give to my coaching client. Fourth, don't hold grudges and put up boundaries Instead. Fifth, get help. Ask for it, pay for it whatever it takes. Get help for the things that you're struggling with or don't have time to do. And then the final point, number six, is to let it go. So over the course of this episode I'm going to take a brief little dive into each one of these things and hopefully share a little story.

Speaker 1:

I don't want to take too much time explaining these, but if it sounds like I'm providing counseling or coaching to my patients, that's because I do. I am the same person everywhere Dr Angela the coach, dr Angela the doctor, angela the mom, wife, whatever. I'm the same in all environments. The difference between my patients and my coaching clients is I don't have as much time with my patients as I do with my client, but I try to give everyone the best of me and the best that I can share my coaching clients. I get to help them strategize, troubleshoot, fine tune things over time to help them meet their needs. And everyone struggles in certain domains of wellness, in certain domains of lifestyle, and so that's what I try to do with my patients, what I try to do with my clients as well.

Speaker 1:

I also want you to keep in mind that this is by no means an exhaustive list of things that I think is necessary to help every patient and client, or whomever, be their best. I mean, you're going to have to tailor that to the person, but these are the things that come up time and time again. I only have 15 to 30 minutes per patient and I may only see them to maybe three, at most four times a year, depending on what's going on. I mean, I have some patients I see on a monthly basis for weight management, but these things are the are the ones that come up the most often and also seem to have the most potent impact the patients that walk out of the room or message me later or follow up another time, and they're like yeah, remember that one thing. You said that one time. It really made a big difference, and so that's why I wanted to share them with you, because I'm hoping that it can help one of you, or maybe you can take that advice and, if you're a doctor, you can use it to help one of your patients.

Speaker 1:

So let's get into it. Okay, before we go any further, I want to make sure to remind you to leave a review. Follow the podcast, follow me on social media Angela Lifestyle MD. Okay, so let's get into each one of these individual pieces of advice. Okay, and number one have purpose.

Speaker 1:

So I find that people often, or most often, lose their sense of purpose after retirement. For those who have spent most of their life being employed and dedicating their time and energy to perfecting a profession or just working for someone else some of my patients it is when their children go off to college or when their children get married and go on and have their own families and they no longer feel that they're needed. So there's a couple of scenarios that I come into often, and this tends to be in my late middle aged and retirement age patients. It is also no surprise that this is also right around the time that their health tends to go downhill. It is right during this transition that they start gaining weight, maybe start having health issues, become more sedentary, et cetera, et cetera. I try to get ahead of this with patients by counseling them before retirement occurs or before they become empty nesters, but it's really hard to wrap your head around it until you experience it for yourself. So, simply put God calls us all to purpose. He calls us all to do good works. We are tailor made for some purpose.

Speaker 1:

I recently saw a gentleman. He had just retired, maybe a year ago, and he was lamenting about how he was feeling down, not really motivated to do anything, in other words, depression my words, not his. I asked him if he felt that he had lost his purpose. Agreeing, he said to me unexpectedly that he had been thinking about donating a kidney and he had been thinking about this for a while at least, maybe since the onset of his retirement. He said it may sound odd, but I just really feel like this is something that I'm being called to do, something that I'm being called to do for someone else. He wasn't talking about donating a kidney to a specific person, not a family member, not a friend. He just wanted to do something good for someone, and he even said I don't even know if I qualify, but I have to at least try. I told him yes, go for it, why not? If this is something that's tugging at your heart and it's come up over and over and over again, you owe it to yourself and to whomever may benefit to at least explore it. Within moments, his demeanor had changed. He has posture, appeared more uplifted. He was himself amazed at how such a seemingly small commitment to just investigate it could have such a positive impact on his spirit. So my question to you is what do you feel called to do? You don't have to wait until retirement to explore that, and by all means, please don't. I encourage you not to wait, but if that's where you are right now, please remember that as long as you have breath in your lungs and a heartbeat in your chest, you can have purpose and you should explore it, and that's what we're built for and that's what we're designed for. Number two self-care, and number five get help. So this is a little bit out of order. Clearly I should have ordered these differently, but oh well, these two are related because I use them in a story for the same patient.

Speaker 1:

From the same week as the gentleman above, a lovely woman came to my office for an annual wellness visit and she had just recently retired as well. She was challenged. Her challenge was a little bit different, though. She has purpose, and for her, that's taking care of her husband. She's his primary caretaker and she does this with honor, and it's a loving act that she does without question or any regret. My challenge to her, however, is what was she doing for herself? Who was taking care of her? And it had been very hard, as the primary caretaker, for her to make time for herself, and anyone who has a job as a primary caretaker understands this and can relate to it. There seemingly never enough time to do things that are for yourself, and also the things that you wanna do for yourself seem unimportant by comparison.

Speaker 1:

The time that she could have had for herself she was using to take care of her husband and using it to take care of household chores that he had once done. They had spent their life sharing the workload, but now that he wasn't able to, she was picking up that slack, and not begrudgingly. She was just doing it because it had to be done. My conversation with her was much more long winded than what I'm gonna tell you, but my advice was that she needed to recruit someone else to help with some of those household chores. My example in her case was breaking the leaves in the backyard. It was something that was taking up her time that she did not need to do. She could have used that time to exercise I mean, granted, baking leaves is exercise, but it wasn't enjoyable to her. She had been putting it off cause she didn't wanna do it Enjoying some time with her friends or simply just enjoying quality time with her husband, which is something else I encourage her to do, so that all of her time with him doesn't necessarily revolve around taking care of his needs, that they needed each other in a different capacity as well, and that was something that she'd make time for. Whether she got volunteers to do it, family friends paid a neighbor kid to do it, or hired professionals, it didn't matter, as long as she wasn't doing everything all the time. Just because she could do it doesn't mean that she should, and the same applies to most people, and I'm sure it applies to some of us out there today.

Speaker 1:

My third piece of advice is do not sacrifice your wellbeing for the sake of your employer. Now, this one may be a little controversial, but I stand by it anyway. This, the story for this one comes from a middle-aged woman who came to see me also on that same week, and this is also some advice that I took for myself about a year ago. So this woman had left a job and in fact I think she might've mentioned that she was given early retirement for some reasons and she actually did not need to work. They had asked her to come back and in some ways, perhaps even begged her to come back.

Speaker 1:

In her time outside of work, she also takes care of two elderly women in her community. This work, she feels, is her real purpose taking care of these two women. She finds joy in it and she loves taking care of them. However, feeling obligated to this job, she said yes to that job and continues to say yes to their request and concede to do things and fulfill their needs, even if it means stretching herself too thin. So she has, in effect, allowed this job that she does not need to control her life and control her schedule and take away from the things that she truly to take, away from the things that she truly wants to do.

Speaker 1:

So I said to her hold on, wait a minute. They need you, not the other way around. This is a perfect scenario. Not too many people have this scenario. You don't have to be rude and you don't have to be mean about it, but you do need to set boundaries. You can tell them what you will do and when you will do it, the days and the times, et cetera, that work for you, that you're available and you need to be willing to walk away from that job if they don't abide by those terms. So you can negotiate with them, but at the end of the day, they need you and that is it.

Speaker 1:

Well, the funny thing about this story is that she came in for a sinus infection. You may be wondering how do we get to that topic? Well, she also said that she'd been feeling run down and getting sick more often. So I probed a little further and voila, she's stretching herself too thin, she's not resting, she's not recovering. Her immune system is having a hard time fighting things off. Her words before she left was wow, I got therapy and sinus treatment. Two for one. What a deal.

Speaker 1:

Pieces of advice. Number four and six these two also go together. Number four is don't hold grudges. Grudges eat away at the person who was holding the grudge and usually do very little to the other person or persons who you're mad at. Now I don't have exactly a specific example for this one, but it does come up a lot and this is something that's very difficult to tackle in an office visit. These things are usually deep seated, require the patient to have acceptance, self-reflection and potentially even get some counseling and therapy to dive even further as to why they're having a hard time letting these grudges go, or what these grudges are, why they're there in the first place. Like all of the pieces of advice I give, this is something that requires the patient to take action, the patient to make the change, similar to the patient above who was allowing her job that she did not need to dictate her schedule and zap her for time and energy. She was angry at them and, in effect, maybe she was at risk of holding grudge against them, but why she let them do it. So stop holding grudges, stop being mad at other people.

Speaker 1:

The solution to having grudges, forming grudges, not having grudges in the first place is to manage your expectations of others. Don't give your time and energy to things that don't align with your value and purpose, and certainly don't give your time and energy to things that are going to just piss you off later. You're bad. Why did you agree to do that in the first place? Say no, it's okay, trust me. Sorry, I had to give a little tough love on that one, all right. So finally, perhaps on a more positive note, maybe let it go.

Speaker 1:

And again, this relates to not holding grudges, because not holding grudges means that you have to be able to let things go. I may or may not break out in song when I tell this one to patients. Again, it applies to so many people and so many things. You have to let go of perfection. Let there be dust, let the laundry sit on the floor for an extra day, let go of anger, let go of unmet expectations from others, let go of the person you used to be and work toward the person you want to be. That's it. I don't have a story for this one and keep it simple, All right. So that's it. That's all I've got for today.

Speaker 1:

I wanted to keep it relatively short. Just share some of my common piece of advice that I give out on a regular basis. I hope that you found it helpful. Also, just as a simple request, please take time to rate review, like I gave you, my top most common piece of advice that I dole out in my office that have a lifestyle medicine, lifestyle spin to them. Number one have purpose. Number two make sure you engage in self-care. Number three don't sacrifice your wellbeing for your employer. Number four don't hold grudges, put up boundaries. Instead, get help, whether you ask for it or pay for it or whatever it may be, and finally, let it go.

Speaker 1:

Thanks again for tuning in. I hope that you can use at least one of those pieces of advice, or maybe you find an opportunity to share it with someone in your life. If you're a physician, share it with your patients. Maybe you'll hopefully see the value and dig in a little bit further, maybe probing on it something, and it may actually help someone improve their health in ways that you didn't expect. I wanted to thank you again for tuning in and listening to this episode. Subscribe. If you haven't already subscribed, share it with a woman doctor, woman, professional or anyone you think might find this podcast helpful In our next episode.

Speaker 1:

We are approaching Christmas, so I am going to get in some topics around how to enjoy the holidays without losing progress on your wellness and losing progress on your goals. So hopefully that'll be a good one, and thanks again for joining me. I hope that you guys all have a great week and tune in next time. Bye. This has been another episode of the Lifestyle MD Special. Thank you to Lou Musa for the show theme music created with brief photography and makeup by Jene for the cover photo and if you enjoyed this podcast and you haven't already, please subscribe today and share with another woman doctor who may benefit. You may also follow me on Instagram at Angela Lifestyle MD. I am Dr Angela. Thank you for joining me today.