Vitality, #82

Marcelle Pick:

I have three criteria that I pay attention to. Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? And those are the ways in which I kind of really look at what do I need to work on today? What do I need to do a little bit differently? Am I staying connected to all three parts of myself on a regular basis?

Michael Komich:

I needed to come back here and do something other than just resume life as normal. When you go to an area like that and see such unimaginable poverty and how people are living in such squalor and conditions, you say, how can I not be sensitized to this and try to have our students be sensitized to it? For our small part, our students will go, we'll help, but their lives will be touched and there'll be a platform for them to help others in a more sustainable way.

Dr. Masina Wright:

Well, I think you always get better results if you think about things that make you feel good and look towards what you want in life rather than focusing on the things that bring you down or the things that you don't want. And that's part of the whole law of attraction.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 82, Vitality, airing for the first time on April 7, 2013. Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? These are the questions that author and women's health expert Marcel Pick and asks herself at the end of each day. It is truly the ability to live love and matter that brings vitality to our daily lives. It is the ability to live love and matter that influences my desire to join with my colleagues in creating the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour for you each week. We hope you enjoy today's discussion on vitality, spiritual, mental and physical with Marcel Pick on author of the Core Balance Diet and Is It Me or Is It My Hormones? Michael Komich and Emily Manter of the Chevers Safe Passage Support Team and naturopathic physician, Dr. Messina Wright. Thank you so much for listening and for giving us a chance to help you live, love and matter. The nice thing about Maine is that it's a kind of a small town, small state feel. But we also have some really thoughtful and prolific and intelligent people that work here. And we've spoken with this individual before. She's actually a fellow Yarmouth healthcare practitioner and best selling author of three books. This is Marcel Pick, who recently came out with her book Is It Me or My Hormones? She also is the author of Is It Me or Is It My Adrenals? And the Core Balance Diet. Thank you for coming back in and having another conversation with us.

Marcelle Pick:

You're welcome. I'm delighted to be here.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Marcel, we're lucky to have you because you just came off a pretty intensive schedule with a PBS store. Talk to me about that.

Marcelle Pick:

There was a PBS show taken after the book, Is It Me or My Hormones? And the goal for me really was to try to get the information out about wellness and health and how much we can actually impact how we age as we get older by changing our diet. And that food is really a game changer for us. And also lifestyle. We have much more impact in our long term ability to be able to be healthy as we get older than we ever thought before.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been a healthcare practitioner for a while?

Marcelle Pick:

For a long time, yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I didn't want to put numbers on

Marcelle Pick:

do not do that for a long time.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

For many years, yes. So you've had a chance to spend time with women who have needed your help. So you've seen that it isn't just about diet, it isn't just about lifestyle, but it's about bigger things. So you've had to work through some of this yourself?

Marcelle Pick:

Absolutely. Well, I think we all do. And part of what I wrote in the book, Is It Me or My Adrenals? It used to be called. Are youe Tired and Wired? Is the notion that a lot of us carry a story with us. And the story is about what really happened for us in our childhood and how we carry that forward. And for example, if you're a perfectionist and you're constantly expecting high things of yourself, that's going to actually impact your adrenals and your cortisol level. And if it goes on too much, and women tend to do this a lot, they're thinking of everybody else but themselves. They're always being very critical of how they look and how they behave. And if they're perfectionists on top of that, it's non stop. I'm not enough. That impacts our amygdala of our brain which then sends messages to our adrenals. And the bad news with that is if it continues to go on and actually causes cortisol levels to stay elevated which then down regulate our thyroid and our sex hormones and our immune system. So understanding yourself and how you think and how you behave is crucial to that. And I really understood that. I started doing encounter groups when I was in college to find out more about myself. Was very curious about why did I think the way that I did, why did I behave the way that I did. So I've always been on that journey. And in 19, probably 89, 1990, I was introduced to the concept of the Hoffman process. And the notion is that our biography becomes our biology if we don't pay attention. And understanding about yourself and having an awareness is what the Hoffman is all about. And it's an eight day program that I found immensely helpful for myself to look at how do I have patterns of behavior that really affect my physiology and the way that I think. And so I became very involved with them. Did the process myself refer a lot of my patients there? Again, it's not the answer for everyone. It's just a nice solution for some people if they're finding that their thinking is affecting their emotions, which is affecting their adrenals, which is affecting their health. And they are in California. Also have a program in Massachusetts as well, in the Berkshires.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You grew up in Australia?

Marcelle Pick:

I did.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How is that different from what you've encountered here in the United States?

Marcelle Pick:

Well, I grew up in a very kind of different scenario. We lived outside of Sydney in a place called Bundina. And it was two hours by boat and train to get to Sydney. And I didn't have. We didn't have roads. I mean we had no paved roads. We didn't have. There were three stores in the little area that I was in surrounded by national park. I spent most of my day, if I wasn't doing homework, I was swimming in the ocean in the barrier reef or I was looking caves or I was going to some caves with a lot of aboriginal drawings. So I was very connected to the earth. And there were deer and all kinds of animals around all the time. So it was my meditation on a regular basis. So I became very sensitive to my environment and was very, very clear from a very young age that I wanted to have an impact in the world and health related from the time I was very young. And more than likely it was because I was so connected to spirit world in some ways, because the world, and I didn't know it at the time, but I was very clear from a very young time that I wanted to make a difference.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is part of something that you describe in each of your books. The need to reconnect with oneself on pretty much a daily basis, on at least a contemplative level, if not a spiritual level. Is this something you've been able to continue to incorporate in your own life?

Marcelle Pick:

Yeah, I get up generally now. When I was doing the PDFs, I didn't. But generally I try to get up at 5 and have a time that I'm kind of looking at my life. I have three criteria that I pay attention to. Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? And those are the ways in which I kind of really look at what do I need to work on today? What do I need to do a little bit differently? Am I stinking connected to all three parts of myself on a regular basis? And of course, you're going to have episodes in which you do that well and episodes in which you don't. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm aware enough that I want to kind of do that for myself in my life so that I don't lose sight of the other parts.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Are you able to connect back with nature to the extent that you once did when you were younger?

Marcelle Pick:

There are times that you are and times that you aren't. I was just in a time in which I was incredibly busy finishing the book and doing the pbs. Now I have a boat, so I spend a lot of time on the water. The water is really important to me. And I'm also a runner, so I really like to be outdoors. And I also bike, so I'm so excited that spring is really coming and the snow is starting to melt so I can be outside. Yeah, it's important. It's important for all of us because I think so many times we forget the connection that the earth has for us and the rhythm of the earth and the rhythm of the moon and the sun. Those of us that live in Maine, we're more connected because we're so appreciative when the leaves are starting to come on the trees and the snow's melting. We do pay attention to that, probably in more ways than other people do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When I was reading the Core Balance Diet, I was interested to see you reference your relationship with your mother and having to work through that. I don't know if she's she's still alive.

Marcelle Pick:

She's not. She actually died in 1999.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But having to work through that and having to work through that as how it impacted your own physical self. It seems as though these books have been intensely personal to you, not just written from a healthcare provider standpoint.

Marcelle Pick:

Well, you know what I've come to understand, when you write anything, it's important to connect with your audience, to help people in the audience understand that we all have these journeys that we're working through. So I don't know that they were really books that I wrote because of my personal. It's just that my personal came into it as well. And I think it really helps people if you personalize a book. I've written three now, so I understand how to do that. It helps people understand that they can see themselves in the books too many times. And I also tend to have a lot of stories of patience in there, too. So I wasn't really writing the books to kind of work out my stuff. I was really using myself as a reference point to help people understand that many of the journeys, we all have them, and I'm no different.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And that's clear. I mean, as I was reading, it wasn't like Marcel's doing therapy as she's writing books. No, that wasn't what I was getting. What I was getting was, it came from a place of purity, that there was really a very good reason that you thought it was important that you write this and that also that you could relate to other women who might be having similar things in their lives.

Marcelle Pick:

When I wrote the Core Balance, I remember being in high school, and I was one of those young women that just ate one meal a day, and I still was not really very thin. And I realized at that time I had done Weight Watchers once, and I was weighing and measuring everything, and everybody else in line is, like, using pounds and going, oh, I cheated last night. That there was something that was off. And we now call that weight loss resistance. So I knew when I had figured out pieces to that puzzle, I was going to write a book about it. And that's really what the Core Balance Diet is about. It's a book about health, but it's a book about what happens to those women that are doing everything they're supposed to do and they're still not losing the weight. I mean, there's many things that we understand now that we didn't understand before, and I even know more than I did when I wrote the book. But I wanted to have people, you Know not have to struggle in the same way that I had for so long because everyone was saying, yeah, you're eating bun, buns in the corner. It's like, you have no idea. That is so not true. But that then gave people the opportunity to look at what's blocking them. If the body's not working, what's wrong so we can figure out what the problem is instead of always coming up with a diagnosis of you're eating Bon vines in the corner. Because that's not true.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

One of the things in the core balanced diet, and I like the way that you gave a. I guess essentially it was a questionnaire and you enabled people to find areas that they were unbalanced in. And then it seems as though you were able to expand upon one of those areas and write, what is now, is it me or is it my adrenals? Then another area is, is it me or is it my hormones? So I liked that, that there's sort progression from the core balance to, okay, here, let's talk a little bit more

Marcelle Pick:

about, right More in depth and in

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

the is it me or is it my hormones? You even talked about, again, your own personal experience with trying to eat a certain way and things not being quite right with your hormones. And you couldn't quite figure this out. And then as time went on, you went, oh, wait, there is relationship. And there is a relationship also for my patients. So talk to me about that because I'm very, very interested in that, given what we know with especially young women and their eating habits.

Marcelle Pick:

Well, you know, the part that's always so amazing to me is that when I have my patients change their diet and it sounds so easy to do, but it's more complicated because of our desire for sugar and our rushed life and the fast food industry and all those things. But when you get back to basics and you just do breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, and you do protein and whole foods, it's a. I mean, it really impacts because the three major hormones we have are not estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. It's insulin, cortisol and adrenaline, those things. So stress and what we eat actually impact our hormones more than anything else. And I think that's a surprise for my patients, and it certainly was a surprise for me, is as I cleaned my diet up, my cortisol stabilized. And as I cleaned my diet up many years ago, everything else went into balance. Now, it's not the only thing we need to do, but it's a great place to start. And so many people don't know the power of that. You know, and what I was saying on the PBS show, it's a game changer, and it really is. Even now, we know from epigenetics and nutrigenomics that if we change the food we eat, we can actually impact the expression of genes. Oh, my God. That's so powerful. Because it doesn't mean anymore if you have heart disease as a history or if you have diabetes as a history. Well, it's just a matter of time. It's so not true. And it gives power back to us instead of thinking it's just a matter of time. It isn't. And that's amazing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

When you talk about cleaning up your diet, you're not talking about becoming a strict vegan.

Marcelle Pick:

I'm not. You know, it's interesting. I have many magazines that are calling for interviews now. And the interesting part for me and many of my contemporaries is. And again, I'm sure there's exceptions to every rule. I don't find that many people can stand being a vegetarian long term. What happens to many of them is they get. They have no energy, they have fatigue. The difficult part for all of us is that we do need protein and oftentimes beans are not enough and tofu is not enough. So I'm someone that really believes that eating food from the ground plant based in terms of half your plate, vegetables and fruits, and perhaps not that many fruits if you're a little bit sensitive or insulin resistant, and then having protein and some carbohydrates, whole carbohydrates, lower glycemic carbs that balance more of the Mediterranean type diet. We know scientifically it's fantastic for your health and we know that it really keeps blood sugar stable, mood stable, neurotransmitters stable, all the hormones stable. It's amazing what it can do for you. So, no, you don't have to have juice five times a day. And all those things. And the part that's so important for people to know is it can be simple. I don't want people to spend all their day in the kitchen. I don't have time for that. And that's why in all my books, all the recipes are 30 minutes or less. I just don't have time to cook in the kitchen. Sometimes I'll spend time doing it. It's fun. But I wanted people to have real food that was really healthy, that the whole family could eat, that is made from scratch.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The vegan vegetarian piece is hard, as you talk about in your book, is hard for people to give up sometimes because it is something that we get attached to this idea that we have to rid our plates of all animal products. And you have experience with this. I think on the phone you were telling me that you did a macrobiotic.

Marcelle Pick:

I was a macrobiotic for 15 years. Absolutely. And there was a place in which I hit a wall and I had no energy, I couldn't think clearly and I added protein, unfortunately. I remember going to a store and just looking at the steak going oh my God. And I got some organic meat. It was really amazing for me and started really looking at some of the literature and the research, and it started. I see it often in my practice. I have people that are vegetarians, and I'll say, I really think you need to have more protein. I'll tell them, and they'll come back and I wrote about it in the book, and they'll say, I feel fabulous, and I hate you because there's so much wanting to not do the meat. And I get it. I understand that. So it's finding out for them what works. And it's an individual issue. We all are going to be different. We don't all have the same needs. And physiologically, we're going to have differences as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

For people who listen to this show on a regular basis, we've interviewed functional medicine practitioners before, but some people may not be familiar with the ideas behind functional medicine. So tell me a little bit about that.

Marcelle Pick:

Functional medicine is probably, for me, it's really what changed the way I practiced. And I've been doing it for 25, 26 years, a long time. And I was always curious if I had a problem with a patient. And I was trying to kind of come up with a diagnosis and then treat it. It didn't seem to really get rid of the issues. So functional medicine is more about kind of looking at the body like a cobweb, trying to understand all the pieces that make up that web. Is it the endocrine system? Is it about the mitochondria that not producing enough energy? Does it have to do with lack of energy from nutrients? Is it lifestyle? Is it emotions? Is it what they're eating? Is it lack, love and joy? What is going into the equation that's causing the problem? So I'm a detective. I'm trying to figure out, well, it could be a little of this, and it's a little bit of that, and it's a little bit of this. Toxicity is another part that we don't ever talk about in kind of the conventional world, all of which we now know affect people. So the part that's wonderful is when you figure out the pieces and you see people change, it's dynamic because you have people that have never felt better. You know, with polymyalgias, from chronic fatigue to even itp, which is a blood disorder, people are on medication and they still don't feel well. And ultimately, you change all these things and they're no longer on medication. They feel better than they have in years. That's amazing. But it is how it works because it's getting to the root. Cause of the problems.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You're still seeing patients at Women to Women in Yarmouth.

Marcelle Pick:

I am, yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you have recently published Is It Me or Is It My Hormones? You just had this PBS special. You have a radio show that happens on Thursdays from 6 to 7. You have a busy and exciting life. What's next on your horizon?

Marcelle Pick:

What's next? Well, I also have a very big online presence with the newsletter that I write called. It's@womentowomen.com well, they're asking me to do another book proposal actually, right now, and I have to kind of think about whether I want to do that or not. I was thinking I'd take a little time to just kind of breathe a bit here, but I don't think that that's how the industry goes. So more than likely another book will be coming as well, and I may be doing another pbs. We'll see. They're kind of pushing me to do that as well. So we'll see.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Marcel, how can people find out more about Is it me or is it my hormones, or is it me or is it my adrenals or the core balance diet?

Marcelle Pick:

Yep. The website womentowomen.com, that's a place you can order the book itself. Going to marcelpick.com as well. And we have lots of resources on women to women. The goal for me many years ago was to help teach people how to be their own midwives, to learn about themselves so that they could then take that information and get healthier, which is really my goal for people so that they're not on 15 different medications by the time they're 70 with 100% drug interaction needing more because they've got so many side effects. I mean, that's really what we need to teach people is they can change so many things by changing the way they live their lives.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We've been speaking with Marcel Pick, who is the author of multiple books and most recently is it me or is It My Hormones? And I am so glad that you are a resource for the state of Maine that you are right in my own hometown of Yarmouth. And I appreciate your coming in and spending time with me today.

Marcelle Pick:

It's delightful to be here. Thanks.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

My son Campbell, who's been on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour before talking about his experiences, went down to Guatemala and spent time with the organization Safe Passage for a year in between high school and college. And I'm sitting across the microphone from a gentleman who has had a child with actually even more of an experience with Safe Passage and also an individual who will soon be going down to visit Safe Passage for the first time. I'm here with Michael Komich of Cheverus and also Cheverus High School student Emily Manter. Thank you so much for coming in and talking to me about this trip that you have planned coming up in June.

Emily Manter:

Thank you for having us.

Michael Komich:

Thank you very much for letting us appear today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So Michael, you became interested in Safe Passage? Actually I believe from before your daughter even went down to Safe Passage to work for the last few years?

Michael Komich:

Well, yes, my daughter was a Cheverus student as well and embarked on a career of service that began at Cheverus and took her to Fordham University where she worked in El Salvador for a semester, helping in a pre school there outside the capital city. She also worked in a battered refugee women's center in Mexico and upon graduation that led her to look at Safe Passage and we have a connection at Chevere's to safe passage because Henley Denning, the founder, had three brothers attend Cheverus. Two that graduated and one that was with us for a short time. And so there was already a built in connection to that. And Kelsey started as an English teacher and then now has assumed the role of English coordinator. And we went over to visit her last September. And that was a. A life changing event.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It is a life changing event to go down to Guatemala and actually see. I mean, you hear about this, you hear about the Guatemala City dump, and you hear about the children who barely have enough resources to brush their teeth or eat regular meals. But until you're actually there, it's impossible to know what it's really like. This happened to me when I went down to visit my son when he was there for a year. Was it hard for you to know that your daughter Kelsey had been working in this atmosphere and trying to make a difference in a place that really could be so fundamentally hard?

Michael Komich:

It was like it was to send her to the Bronx, New York to go to Fordham. A leap of faith, Kelsey, where most young people would look at something like that with fear and trepidation. With Kelsey, she's wired to look at it with an adventuresome eye. And I think that because Chevreus is a Catholic Jesuit college preparatory school, there's a faith component that we deal with every day. And so a lot of time spent in daily mass, in prayer, trusting that she would be cared for. And when we got to Guatemala and saw how happy she was doing the work that she was doing, it was very reaffirming for us as parents that that was the right place for her.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Emily, you're a student at Cheverus and you've been exposed to this idea of service and the importance of giving back to others and also of having faith at the same time. You've heard about the fact that this is a dump and there are children that are living amongst trash and it smells and it's going to be June, so it'll be warm. And there are all kinds of reasons for a high school student not to want to go to Guatemala City. But you're going. Why would you want to do that?

Emily Manter:

I mean, I think I'm really excited about going and seeing another culture and being immersed in another culture. I've never been out of the country before, so I'm excited about that. But on the other hand, it's like Mr. Comer said, that it's going to be hard to see, like, the poverty that's in Guatemala city. So I think that it's worth it, and it's meaningful to go, and it's meaningful for me, meaningful for other Chevreuse teams to go in the future, and I think it's worth it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you took this challenge on. One of the reasons that you contacted me, Michael, was because you said, we have to raise so much money in a really short period of time, and is there anything you can do to help out with this process? Again, that's another challenge. You have to raise a lot of money in a short period. It did turn out all right, as we'll talk about. But why were you so willing to just jump right in with both feet? What was it about Safe Passage that just kept drawing you down there?

Michael Komich:

When I went to visit Kelsey, they show you a video as part of an orientation before you go to Guatemala City. And Henley Denning was featured in the video and speaking about how when she first went there and saw the almost undefinable poverty that human beings live in, she could simply not turn her back and needed to do something. I was similarly touched. And when I took off from my daughter and saw her, I said to myself, I. I needed to come back here and do something other than just resume life as normal. I think a lot of people at our school do various immersion trips, and I used to wonder, having been there over 20 years, why would they do it? There's so much help that's needed for people here in Maine. But when you go to an area like that and see such unimaginable poverty and how people are living in such squalor and conditions, you say, how can I not be sensitized to this and try to have our students be sensitized to it? And I think for our small part, our students will go, we'll help, but their lives will be touched, and there'll be a platform for them to help others in a more sustainable way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There is something about this story that clearly touches people. And for longtime listeners of our show, they know that we created the book Our Daily Tread, and we raised tens of thousands of dollars for the organization Safe Passage. And this was after Hanley died as a young woman in her 30s. You found the same thing when you set up your first giving site and you opened it up and you said, we need $10,000, and we need to get it within a month, people started giving immediately. Were you surprised by that, Emily?

Emily Manter:

Yeah, I was completely blown away. I mean, and it's amazing. I thought we all. We had a goal of $10,000 for the group, and there's nine students going. And so we were thinking, okay, that's $1,000 a student. So we set up a first giving page, and the response was unbelievable. One student had $1,300 over the course of a weekend just from contacting relatives. And I know I wrote a long Facebook message to my Facebook friends explaining the trip and putting the link to the website. And I think so many people have heard about Safe Passage in Maine. And I had a couple friends who'd been. And they commented and they said, this is amazing. This is a great experience. And I think that everyone can see what a meaningful experience it can be.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Now that you're very close to having reached that $10,000 goal, you have the opportunity to not only donate more money to Safe Passage, should you surpass that goal, but also lay the foundation for future trips. And this is your intention, from what I understand?

Michael Komich:

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So how can people give to the Chevreuse Service team that's going to be going down in June and also lay the foundation for future teams? What's the best way to access that information?

Michael Komich:

Good question, Dr. Belisle. The site First Giving will likely be turned off this week because we'll have met our goal. But anyone who does want to support the cause can donate to Cheverus High school. Our website, www.cheveriss.org, will show you the contact information and address. If they want to put it to the attention of Safe Passage Support Team Trip, we'll give them a tax deduction, deductible receipt, and apply it to the trip cost and any surplus that can either go to Safe Passage or for future groups.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I appreciate your taking the time to raise the money to go down and visit Safe Passage and to visit the children that my son Campbell actually helped teach for a year alongside your daughter Kelsey. And actually, Michael, I thank you for being such a good father to Kelsey because I know that she helps keep Campbell going strong the entire time he was down there. I know that they're great friends. And, Emily, I know that you are going to end up being just as wonderful as Kelsey is. It's really been a great privilege to have you both in the studio with me today. I've been speaking with Chevros student Emily Manter and also Michael Komich of Cheverus, and I wish you all the best on your Safe Passage trip.

Emily Manter:

Thank you so much.

Michael Komich:

Thank you, Dr. Belisle.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we're into a new season and. And it's spring, and we're all feeling energized and Excited to go out in the world and wake up after this winter of dormancy and looking inward. So we thought it would be a great opportunity to talk to a woman who is the Wright. Dr. Wright. W R I G H T. This is Dr. Messina Wright, who is a naturopathic physician practicing in the area, and she has a special interest in women's vitality. So talk to us about why you decided to make this a topic of interest for yourself.

Dr. Masina Wright:

Well, women's health is something I specialize in. You know, as a woman, I always feel like I am better equipped at helping other women get better rather than men who I don't always totally understand. And that's not to say that I don't treat men, but, you know, I understand women's health because of my own body and my own health. And so many people that come to see me just don't feel good, you know, and they have low vitality. They are drained and they're tired and they feel like their hair isn't thick enough or their skin is too dull or, you know, various signs of low vitality. So I started to focus more on finding ways to help women enhance their vitality using naturopathic medicine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, and it's a. It's a fascinating take on it. Instead of saying fatigue, which is, I think, what we often talk about. We talk about all the things that are bad. We talk about fatigue, and we talk about being tired. You're talking about the other side of the coin. You're talking about vitality. So let's. Let's. Whatever it is that's holding you back from that vitality, let's move you forward. Why did you decide to go for the positive?

Dr. Masina Wright:

Well, I think you always get better results if you think about things that make you feel good and look towards what you want in life rather than focusing on the things that bring you down or the things that you don't want. I mean, that's part of the whole law of attraction. And as a human, I want to be a more positive person myself. So I feel like. Like it's good medicine to think about the things that you do like and not get too caught up in what brings you down. And, you know, I do. I started with a list of things that drain vitality. Age, illness, disease, grief, sadness, infection, hormone deficiencies. You know, all of these things drain vitality. But. But it's not helpful to focus on those things. It's helpful to figure out what are the sources of the depleted vitality and then look at ways to replenish them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I want to talk about that because I know our listeners are going to relate to that topic very much. But talk to me a little bit about why you chose naturopathic medicine. What drew you to that?

Dr. Masina Wright:

I think about this one a lot. Basically my story is I was one of those kids that at age 5, what do you want to be? I want to be a doctor or a hairdresser. So I went for the doctor thing and my junior year of college at Middlebury, I just took a real sharp left and got off this straight and narrow track towards med school and started doing a lot of anthropology of medicine and sociology and feminist studies and religious studies. And that's what I was really interested in. And it was what I was good at back at the time. And somebody came from a naturopathic college out west and presenting on naturopathic medicine and I was like, this is it, this is what I want to learn how to look at medicine from a more humanistic perspective and less of a science based, but still having the foundation of medicine. So I decided at that point to become a naturopathic doctor. And here I am.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what is naturopathic medicine?

Dr. Masina Wright:

Naturopathic medicine is an umbrella term. It's a philosophy of medicine as well. So the umbrella that we hold that we offer includes botanical medicine, clinical nutrition, homeopathy, stress management, lifestyle counseling. We're trained in physical medicine like chiropractic manipulations, which I don't do because I've always worked with a chiropractor. And we're also trained in some hands on body work, which some people do more of and some people do less of. So every naturopath is an individual and we can choose which of our modalities that we focus more on. And in some states we have prescribing rights and in some states we don't. So we can also prescribe antibiotics and female hormones and topical products and some pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How do you approach somebody coming into your practice who says, I just don't feel as energetic as I once did?

Dr. Masina Wright:

Let's see, there's a few different answers to that, so I'm not sure which answer you want to hear, but I always let people tell their story of what's been going on with them because that's where the clues to the depleted vitality come in. Is it stress? Is it? You know, as people are telling their story, I'm analyzing for classic signs and symptoms for adrenal deficiency, thyroid deficiency, reproductive issues. So I'm always analyzing the case as they're telling me their stories. Even if they're talking about their mother. You know, I'm putting the pieces together in my brain. I always talk about digestion and nutrition because food is a huge piece of our vitality and our health and wellness. I break down in my mind we have physical vitality, which is our inherent sources of vitality that comes from our hormones Primarily. And anybody who has a hormone deficiency will tell you how depleted they feel. So sometimes it's actually just replenishing a physical state. And then there's the energetic vitality, the vitality that we get from other things, primarily from nature. Whether it says food or nature, the actual environment that we live in, people do too much. Not enough people sit around and watch the tide come in or go out. And, you know, that's one of my prescriptions, is to rest and to relax and to watch the flowers grow. You know, I feel like nature is actually really an amazing resource for vitality. And people who are low and depleted and exhausted sit outside for 20 minutes twice a week and, you know, just absorb. Sometimes we do too much, even take this vitamin, take this pharmaceutical, take this hormone, take this prescription, make this smoothie, do this thing, do that. You know, it's exhausting. That is, the irony is that you're

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

working so hard to feel better that you're actually depleting yourself in the process.

Dr. Masina Wright:

And sometimes, you know, like, I'm into superfoods and green smoothies, and, you know, that's one way that I think is really important to replenish vitality that is going to give back eventually. Even if you have to go to the store and buy the things and make this smoothie, it's going to give back. And so will supplements, and so will hormones, and so will a lot of other things. But resting is really important, so you start with rest.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of the nutrition recommendations that you make with people?

Dr. Masina Wright:

The thyroid is a really important part of our energy levels. And a lot of people are like, oh, my thyroid's been tested, like, you know, 20 times. And my doctor says the level's normal. And I take a look at the same test that the doctor does, and a holistic doctor or a doctor more trained for this kind of stuff can see that even though it's in the normal level, the TSH actually needs to be within a fairly narrow range to show that it's optimal thyroid function and not what's called subclinical hypothyroidism. So I look for things like that on blood work. And iodine is really necessary for the thyroid hormone to be produced. And, you know, we don't get enough iodine from our diet in general. So I make sure that people are eating seafood and fish, which are plant sources of iodine. Seaweed is super important. So, you know, sushi or seaweed salads or learning how to cook with seaweed. You can just put little pieces of kombu in your grains when you cook them. You know, there's lots of little kind of macrobiotic nutritional tips. And plant sources of iodine are also things that we don't necessarily eat a ton of like Swiss chard and mustard greens and cucumbers and watermelon. But if you grow those plants in a, in an iodine depleted soil, you're not going to get any iodine from them. So, you know, I'll make sure that people are trying to eat some of the iodine rich foods. Selenium is also needed for the thyroid conversion of T4 to T3, and it's pretty much only in Brazil nuts in any sort of significant amount. So I'll have people starting to eat some Brazil nuts as a snack. It's a good protein, it's high in selenium. Just looking at food sources of minerals other than just here, take this pill, take this, whatever. Sometimes that's not what's needed. Like I said, superfoods are something I'm into right now. So superfoods are like goji berries and blueberries and kale, maca root, cacao, like chocolate powder for the real chocolate freaks out there and making smoothies using greens and organic fresh fruit and some superfoods and either water or some alternative milks and, you know, getting a real super nutrient rich smoothie that's going to be full of enzymes and phytonutrients and plant nutrients and things that are absorbed really quickly. So I always look to food with every patient.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

If you need to go beyond food into supplements, what are some of the nutrients that people get depleted in that they might need to look toward a supplement for?

Dr. Masina Wright:

When I do supplements, I often do botanicals, I often do herbal medicine. It's just, you know, it's one of my passions and it's something I'm really interested in. So I will often look towards adrenal tonics as supplements. When people are really depleted or you know, somebody's low energy and they've never taken an adrenal tonic in their life. These days I'm seeing teenagers, you know, people in high school that have depleted adrenals. Like we just, we start burning the candle at both ends pretty early these days. And so by the time you're 25 or 35 or 45, 55, you know, you're depleted. So there are a lot of really fantastic herbs out there. Ashwagandha is one that I'm into right now. For whatever reason, you know, I think a lot of people are into it. It's a very popular supplement. It's quite safe. Rhodiola is also one of my favorites. I love rhodiola, possibly because I'm a rose person and it's called Arctic Rose. So rhodiola grows out on the Siberian tundras, and the Russian army did a whole bunch of research studies on it to see what it actually did. It's classified as an adaptogen. It helps improve mental clarity. It improves stamina to cold, it increases endurance. You can run longer and think better out in the Siberian tundra when you're taking Siberian gin. Pardon me, when you're taking rhodiola. So I like that one. And there's also another study on rhodiola, which is the rat on the pole study. So a rat can stand on a pole longer when it takes rhodiola than the rat not taking rhodiola. So there are patients out there, they feel like a rat on a pole. You know, it's just like, I just have to stand on this poll for one more day and keep going. And those people, they need the rhodiola.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So what about ginseng?

Dr. Masina Wright:

There are a lot of different ginsengs. There was a really interesting article in, I think it was in Adirondack today on American ginseng, which you can Google and track down. There's the original article, and then there's blogs written on the article. There's American ginseng. There's Asian ginseng, which is mostly Panax ginseng, or Korean ginseng, which is a specific subspecies. And then there's Siberian ginseng, which I was mistakenly referred to before. Siberian ginseng is most known for its endurance capability and is great for athletes. The Asian or Korean ginseng is very hot. It's mostly recommended for men. And in my training, we did some Chinese medicine and in my training as well. That's right. A lot of naturopaths can do acupuncture in addition to the other things I mentioned before as an additional license thing. But I tend to not use Panax ginseng or Asian ginseng unless it's prescribed because it can actually do some damage to the body if you're not the right kind of person to take it because it's a very, very potent herb. And American ginseng grows from, like, Virginia all the way up to Canada and across to Montana. And it's another adaptogen, another tonic. It's literally a stimulant. So it would be a good option for people who are very fatigued and have very low energy.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What are some of the other tips that you can offer people who would like to improve their vitality?

Dr. Masina Wright:

Get your hormones checked. You know, go to a doctor, either somebody who specializes in age management or who has a more holistic understanding of how the hormones all work together. And get your, you know, your testosterone for both sexes is really important to test. Get your cortisol levels, a full thyroid panel. Just, you know, it's really important to do that blood work or to do a salivary hormone analysis and make sure that your up to par because it's, you know, that's what lab work is for. You don't necessarily want to just work in the dark and just buy a whole bunch of things or take stuff if you don't actually need it. The adrenal tonics are pretty safe for anyone. But if you're on multiple medications, there's a, there can be a lot of interactions between the herbs and the medication. So it's not necessarily recommended to just go ahead and take a bunch of herbs if you're on. Especially things like some of the more high test cardiac herbs, some mental health herbs, pardon me, some pharmaceuticals for antidepressant are kind of safe. But any of the antipsychotics, you should definitely not be taking botanicals without a doctor's or a naturopath making sure the contraindications are in place. Any autoimmune herbs should definitely be double checked. So there's, that's the one thing about herbs is they can have interactions. So get your hormones checked, spend some time outside, introduce superfoods, have more local fruits and vegetables, get some of those enzymes in there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It strikes me that you're an individual who likes to collect helpful information for patients. And I know you have this master in homeopathic certification, I believe. So what's next for you? What keeps you interested in the wellness world? What's your next adventure?

Dr. Masina Wright:

Well, I'm still just getting started here in Maine, so I work at the age Management center which primarily does improving vitality. And I do most of them women's work. Dr. Beatik's does most of the men's work. And so I'm gonna keep doing what I already do for the next little while and get really good at it. I'm still learning my way around the main healthcare system and you know, I also am excellent with all of the Canadian supplements and products out there, but I'm still learning my way around all of the American resources. So I think that I've had Quite a bit of change and I may not be jumping into something new at this point. Point. I think I might just spend some time perfecting what I've got going on.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How can people find out more about your practice?

Dr. Masina Wright:

Well, I've got lots of social media out there for all of the online people. I'm on Twitter hereightdoctor and I'm on Facebook as the right doctor. I have a page on Facebook. I have a website blog. It kind of does both the right doctor dot com. So I've got a lot of that going on. I work, as I said, I work at the Age Management center so I can be reached through them. And I also do boutique medicine, which is kind of an unusual model, which is that I will do home visits or office visits for people who have unusual schedules. So, you know, I had a phone consult with a patient on the 4th of July last year who was sick and just needed, you know, to check in with somebody. I do Skype visits with people in Arizona on a Sunday, you know, so I recognize that there's a some people work 9 to 5 and can't actually just or don't want to leave for a doctor. And so I just fill in that gap because I have a little bit more of a flexible schedule. So that is, you know, I'm going to continue doing that. It's unusual, but it's worked for me. And I like doing this Skype model of care and it doesn't replace having a primary care physician with that model, but it does help to have the alternative and the naturopathic support for healthcare.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, we've been speaking with Dr. Messina Wright, who is the Wright Dr. W R I G H T about women's vitality and her own background in changes that she's made. Congratulations on all these big changes, moving from Toronto to Maine and doing it for love.

Dr. Masina Wright:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I hope that this continues to be successful for you and I appreciate the work you're doing for women and men in the state of Maine.

Dr. Masina Wright:

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 82, Vitality, featuring author and women's health expert Marcel Pick, Michael Komich and Emily Manter of the Chevers Safe Passage Support Team and naturopathic physician Dr. Messina Wright. For more information on our guests, visit doctor. Org. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our e Newsletter. And like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page, you can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest Dr. Lisa and read my take on health and well being on The Bountiful blog. Bountiful-blog.com we love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. I am privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle hoping that you have enjoyed our show on Vitality. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you go forward to live love and matter and may you have a bountiful life.