FIXING YOUR HEALTH STARTS WITH BEING HEARD! [FFYH Episode 1]

Have you sought help from one professional after another for a persistent health issue only to end up with……the same persistent and unresolved health issue? If this is a yes for you, you are not alone….

 

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FIXING YOUR HEALTH STARTS WITH BEING HEARD!

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Have you sought help from one professional after another for a persistent health issue only to end up with……the same persistent and unresolved health issue? If this is a yes for you, you are not alone. So many people have gone from one health care practitioner to another hoping to finally find a solution to their problem but only end up feeling frustrated, confused, hopeless and feeling that they’ve not been understood.

As a health care practitioner who has experienced my own hard to explain let alone hard to solve health issues, I have come to learn that having a full understanding of how you arrived at your current health complaints is fundamental to a successful treatment plan and that begins by listening to you and your health story. This, of course takes time, an ingredient of our medical model that seems to be running out as evidenced by this recent article on the economic UNfeasibility of your doctor spending more than 2 minutes with you.

I would encourage you to get an understanding from your prospective practitioner what their evaluation of you entails. Can you tell if enough time has been allotted to not only hear about your current symptoms but also to listen to your entire health history? Your health today is influenced by all that you have inherited and encountered since the time of your conception. I am interested to know if you are an only child or are you #7 of 7 children in your family? If you are the latter, that tells me that the potential for adrenal dysfunction at a very young age exists for you since your Mother’s adrenal reserves were probably low by her 7th pregnancy and it has been shown that pregnant women can infringe upon the adrenal energy from their growing fetus. I am interested to know if you were born via C-section or a vaginal delivery and whether you were breast fed. This lends information about the earliest establishment of your microbiome, the dynamic balance of all of your microorganisms that plays a critical role in your immune system’s perception and response today. I am interested to know whether you had ear infections when you were 2 or got your tonsils out when you were 6 or had allergies that "you grew out of." It’s not about a check mark in a box of your health history’s laundry list, it’s about piecing together the answers to the very rich question of……..Why?

I hope that you could notice that your practitioner is interested in not only WHAT you are saying with regard to your health history but also HOW you are saying it. How my patients say what they do about their health reveals so much to me about their connection and knowledge of their symptoms. Someone might tell me that they eat a small breakfast, often skip lunch not eating til 3 or 4pm and in a cavalier fashion, remark that it doesn’t bother them, they’ve done it for years. This tells me that they aren’t very aware of, after 7 hours without food, their low blood sugar symptoms. Another dismissive phrase I hear is "…….oh that’s my usual pain, I’m used to that, what I’m really here for is……..". This tells me that the information behind a recurrent pain issue has not been not fully understood or perhaps even attended to.

There should be 2 parts to being heard by your health professional. The part where you are allowed time to explain your situation, symptoms and give information you feel is important and the second part where you are being asked carefully crafted questions. I find that this part of a skillful inquiry is not only informative to me as a practitioner but can also be the seed that sprouts your first awareness about solving your long standing complaints.

For me, listening to you and encouraging you to answer questions and tell your story is fundamental to finding a solution to your situation. I have come to realize that your symptoms today are a result of an underlying ongoing previous story. It may be a short story or a long story but the clues and even answers to solving your issues are within your story and hearing your story is the first part to finally fixing your health!