EP 39 Health Tips for the Stressed - Dr. Sherri Thomas

After a decade of gathering women together for prayer, we are inspired to bring our words of encouragement to you. This is iRefresh. Welcome to iRefresh, where we're ordinary women who desire to do extraordinary things through the power of prayer and God's Word. Today is our first time. We're going to do something a little bit unique, and that is, well, welcome first, Christy Waters, Sherry Thomas, and I'm Sheryl Clare. We are friends for I don't know how many years. Our kids all went to school together and actually still going to school together in college. But Sherry is like very, very special because she is our doctor in the house. So welcome. Thank you. My pleasure to be here. Awesome. So, okay, we brought her along because we thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for us to talk about a main topic all of us talk about. And with us at our young age that we're going through, the topic of health, both physically and emotionally, something that with iRFresh, we deal with a lot of the emotional, sometimes the physical that we're praying for. but we thought it'd be wonderful to have Sherry really address some of the main things that she sees happening in her practice. Like, what are some of the common things you see or interwinding between the people you meet with? Well, as a family doctor, we see everything. So that's the... important thing is from pediatrics from birth to death and so it's such a wide spectrum and when you ask about emotional and physical they're so intertwined that you really can't separate it. The thing I like really about that is that I trained at Oral Roberts University. So you see those praying hands? They say it's the hand of prayer and the hand of medicine. And that was ingrained in me during my four years of medical school because they just said you can't look at a person's physical problem without considering all the other background, their social, their emotional, their spiritual background. And we had that opportunity working with prayer partners and things at the City of Faith Hospital. It was a very unique atmosphere and experience. So I loved my training and I'm thankful that I get to use that now in just my everyday practice. I wish I had more time with patients because those 15-20 minutes go by so fast to try to address everything. But it is so intricate the way the spirit and the soul and the body are all together. So what are some problems I see? Okay. I guess a typical day, we could start head to toe or toe to head. So I'll start at the bottom. For women, at least. Okay, so pinpoint women, maybe our age, middle age. Wait, no, we don't have to tell numbers. Okay. We're very young. Okay. So I've only been a doctor for 30 years, but I went to school in kindergarten, I'm pretty sure right after that. I believe it. So we see a lot of orthopedic problems, starting legs down, back pain is very common in women. I think just because we do more and heavier work and maybe aren't as strong as we should be. So exercise is definitely very helpful because that can prevent some of the orthopedic issues. So I see a lot of that back pain and... knee pain, neck pain, because we're texting in on computers and this little lightweight head isn't supposed to be looking down all the time and that can breed a lot of neck and back pain. Okay. I see a lot of intestinal problems, whether it be just bloating and indigestion, heartburn, and I think that has to do with some of our eating habits too and just the the rush of our society. People tend to build up a lot of acid or drink too much you know coffee or tea. Wait, she looked at me when she said coffee. This is water. I was, yesterday I was like, oh I think I've had four shots of espresso. It was like Americano, so there was a lot of water involved. Yeah, no, you're right. We love coffee. Yeah, it helps us go. Sometimes that even causes chest pain, too. We know that women have a little less cardiac problems than men, but sometimes that chest pain is just too much caffeine. Wow. Other things we see is a lot of headaches. So headaches, fatigue, weight gain, and underlying a lot of everything is stress. So often I'm in a room and I might just hear every sentence, you know, there's just so much stress, so much stress, so much stress, and you think, well, I think there is a lot to that, that there is stress underlying a lot of that. Like if, I mean, 15 minutes to talk to someone who really goes back to stress, how is it that you're able to work with someone in a way to where you can give them tips that you think that they're really gonna take heart and like, okay, you need to truly change some kind of behavior. How do you go about that? It's difficult and that's why I do get behind, but I think my patients kind of appreciate that when they know I'm gonna spend a little extra time with them, they're a little more patient with me. for why are you 30 minutes late? My time's valuable too. I was like, I know, I'm so sorry. But you try to get to that point as quickly as possible just because when you start hearing some of that undertone of stress being an issue, bring that up so that we can address that. And I have some pre-typed out little blurbs that I can add on to with some recommendations for books to read or people to listen to. So they need to listen to iRefresh podcast. You know, I need to do that to... To learn. But sometimes people need to come back for another appointment, too, because you just can't take care of everything really thoroughly in one appointment. We may have to address the headaches and what can we do for the headaches and do some extra testing and then come back to address the stress. Or thankfully, there's so many good counselors in the world, too, that are helpful. Okay, so if you're... That sounds to me that you have to refer a lot of people over if it's stress. You know, I mean, Christy, you and I can think about it like our days are filled with. I mean, you know, we talk about that. Sure. Like what would you tell, okay, Christy. What would you tell Christy? Oh, yes, please. Free advice. I'm all for it. Because she goes through a lot of stress. How would she counteract stress in her life so it doesn't have physical symptoms? Well, you know, the Lord is good. Amen. And that he, so many things that are gonna help with stress will also help prevent diabetes and also prevent heart disease. And I've read some things lately about Alzheimer's disease. So even those things that we do for our everyday stress will help with Alzheimer's. And that's a lot of really practical things. One, getting some sleep. So we do require sleep to refresh our bodies, let our brain detox. and just get our rest. So getting some good quality sleep is helpful. Getting some exercise is always good. And people always tell me, I don't have time for exercise. Well, none of us have time for exercise, but you work in a few minutes here and there and you do what you can. And I get some of my exercise by demonstrating things in the office. I'm like, okay, I'm doing push-ups against the wall. This counts, right? You want to drink lots of water and eat healthy. And our society isn't really bred toward that. But the little things that we do, we know that that does help our brain and it helps our spirit and it helps our body. And just like we were doing a few minutes ago, laughing. I mean, laughter is such a good medicine to really help your spirit. So to be around friends and be around people that you can just laugh and get a good belly laugh going. I mean, that refreshes you so much. That's good. Spending time with friends and family and then just having some time for yourself. Before I came here today in between work and being here, I was cooking dinner real fast, but I just cranked up some music real loud. So even while I was working, I just had the music to kind of, you know, refresh and, you know, get... Just let my brain kind of not think about my day's work. I mean, you want to try to leave things at the office. Sometimes you have to discuss things. But when you leave school, leave it at school. Turn the phone off. So one of the things I've noticed as we've been ministering 11 years together is We've seen an increase in anxiety and depression in women. And I would definitely say that comes with the stress that you've been referring to. Are you seeing that in your practice as well? And what would you say to a woman that might be listening to this podcast that's dealing specifically with anxiety and depression and or depression? Yeah. All right. Well, one is to seek help. We all, you know, I think just Facebook and so many things have such a false just look at that everybody has the perfect life. And we know that none of us do. And so being vulnerable, being willing to ask someone for help, ask someone for prayer, seek out counseling, you know, read some books, have someone to walk along that path with you because it is difficult and something that we all face. And then also not being so hard on yourself. I feel like we all, we want to achieve to do our best in things, but we don't have to be perfectionists. And so we need to cut ourselves some slack and realize we all mess up and we all have our down days and we're not going to be perfect. And God does not expect us to be perfect. And so why should we be that hurt on ourself to cause ourself to be so perfectionistic? But there is help and there is, and there's so many ladies groups and things that you can be involved in at times. But it does affect our health so much. And so it is definitely a thing that we need to address. It sounds like when you talked about just that being less hard on yourself. You know, I think I've heard, too, when we had our life coach, Patty Gerstenberger, it was our very first episode. She talked about self-care. And when you're describing that, I'm like, as I'm writing them down, that sounds like a little bit of the self-care is just learning to pause and kind of reset and regroup, which the music is. It doesn't always have to be worship music. Sometimes you just have to get out there and just release some energy. Right. Which is what I think that's why I've made sure lately in the last year or so, it's been more moving, like exercising or moving or getting a friend. We've got Veronica here that she will help me to walk, and she walks so fast. I'm like, it's like my husband. I'm like, you have to keep up with them. But just that movement, I mean, it's exhilarating when you realize how fast you walk because you're talking and doing all that fellowshipping. The time goes by so fast. Right. It's not nearly as bad. So, yeah. So when you look at some of the health issues like that, okay, so other parts, exercise, diet, you didn't say anything about vitamins and minerals and all that. Where does that play a part in taking care of ourselves? Sure, that is helpful. If you could just live the perfect life and eat all your, the food pyramid is not the correct one. So you want the bottom to be a lot of the vegetables and a few fruits and things. But if we could all eat perfectly and eat, have no stress, we wouldn't need vitamins and supplements, but thank God we do have them, because you can't always eat the right way. I can try to buy healthy food for my family, but if I eat a meal at the hospital, I'm not sure what's in my food. At the hospital, nobody. At the hospital. Honestly, I don't get that. But their chicken might have antibiotics or it might have hormones in it, and that can mess up women, too. That's an issue that we see is our hormones do fluctuate as we get older. And if you're getting hormones from your chicken or your eggs or whatever, that can definitely affect your body. So I feel like some basic vitamins that most all women need is to get calcium. So we need calcium for our bones, and that goes along with your exercise. So definitely some sort of weight-bearing exercise, whether it's walking or cycling, pretty much everything except for swimming doesn't really count. Swimming does it? Swimming counts as far as helping our heart and our cardiovascular, but because you're floating in a pool, it's not stressing your bones. So we want our bones to tug on, our muscles to tug on our bones to make our bones strong. So it needs to be more of a weight-bearing exercise and weightlifting is very good too. But calcium and vitamin D are really helpful. You're lifting weights, aren't you, Christy? You chuckled about that. Yeah, here we go lifting weights. For those who can't, if you're only listening. It's on my list, but then it stresses me out because I'm not doing it. And so then I go, so then that's where, no, you're stressing me out. Right. No. So I ask my patients, don't think you're going to make it to the gym every day. Pick two or three days a week and make it easier for you. And if you can't go, don't be so hard on yourself. My kids sometimes tease me because they know I faithfully always go work out a long workout on Sunday afternoon. And they say, Mom, are you the weekend warrior that does it once a week? You're going to get hurt. I was like, well, it's better to do it once a week. If that's all I get in, then none at all. So don't cut me some slack. That's true. But if you can get some good workouts during the week, it does get stress out and it does help our bones. So as women, as we age, we do need to be concerned about osteoporosis because we don't want to fall and break our hip or collapse our spine. So calcium and vitamin D are very helpful. We prefer you to get it actually in your diet if you can. But if you can't, then there's supplements. Magnesium is a great one. I love magnesium. Mm-hmm. And I'll have to qualify this, you should discuss these things with your doctor because there are some people that my blanket statements may not go to. I mean, you may have a certain condition or certain immune problem where these supplements may not be beneficial for you. But magnesium is great for sleep. Because sleep is another problem that I see a lot of people just say, I just don't sleep as well. I have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep at night. Magnesium helps with sleep. It helps with muscle spasms, which are very common during pregnancy and after menopause. And it also helps with constipation, which is another big issue I see in people. All those gastrointestinal things. We love magnesium. Irritable colon, bloating, magnesium, just it's wonderful. Wow. It is a cure-on. Picking it up tomorrow. I'm going to make sure I have lots of stock of that. So that, you know, I think that that's interesting, though, the magnesium. You always talked about, I've heard more about vitamin D in conjunction with a multivitamin because it helps to absorb. Is there anything like with magnesium that you need to take along with it to make sure it absorbs into your body? Well, the calcium and magnesium and vitamin D all help each other for sure. Yeah, and it's kind of interesting. We get the vitamin D from the sun, but yet we don't want you to get skin cancer, right? So I tell you, wear sunscreen so that you don't get skin cancer. But vitamin D actually is protective against skin cancer. So isn't God so good that he gives us a sun to help us heal? Absorb that vitamin D and that vitamin D also helps to keep us from getting skin cancer. So even though we don't want you to get sunburned, still getting out and getting your walk and getting 20, 30 minutes of sun is not a bad thing. That's good. But then, okay, so for the people that maybe don't have the opportunity to do that... What would be the kinds of foods, because like so that maybe they can't even afford vitamins. What are the foods that you would probably say on those key vitamins and minerals, what would they need to be eating for those who may not know? Like what would you say on a weekly basis, make sure you're getting this. You said vegetables, but is there anything specific? Because I don't think corn is probably one of those. Corn, I'm sure corn has some nutritional value, just like they talk about iceberg lettuce. It has no nutritional value. Oh, okay. But I'm sure it does. There's water in it. So at least you get some water from corn. the animals eat corn. So, um, calcium you can get a lot from vegetables because some women just don't do very well with dairy. And so definitely there's a lot of calcium in milk and yogurt and cheese and ice cream, but you don't want to necessarily get too much dairy because sometimes that can upset your stomach as well. I won't like that. Right. So the green vegetables have a lot of broccoli in it. I eat tons of spinach and broccoli and it has a lot of calcium in it. Vitamin D is hard to get unless you get some of the fortified, the milks that have extra vitamin D or orange juice with vitamin D. But mostly you get it from the sun. Our biggest source of vitamin D is the sun. And then magnesium is also a hard one. That's why so many people are deficient. And it is in the soil, so I guess if you eat dirt, Yay! Don't wash your vegetables very well when you get a little extra dirt with the magnesium. I will buy the supplement. Thank you. Yeah, I'm thinking so. But magnesium is very helpful on so many levels. What do you think? I'm sorry. I keep thinking about these fads and trends that we're seeing. There are so many... things that people get on the bandwagon and all of a sudden this is how you should eat, this is how you should eat. And as a doctor, how do you look at people and say, this might not be the best thing for you or let's stick with the basics. If you were to, and I know it's different for everyone and everyone has different needs, but how do you counsel women and how do women find out what really does work for them? Because is it keto? Is it plant-based? Because plant-based is very popular right now. And it's very different. So how do you help a woman figure out what is best for her physical needs? That's interesting. And there's nothing new under the sun. You know, the keto is the big thing now. But I'm old enough to have lived when Atkins diet was everything. So I see it just go in a circle. And then you rename it and call it something different. So... Is that Atkins really a keto? It's very similar where you're eating a lot of meats, a lot of fats, and you stay away from the carbohydrates, the bread, the rice, the potatoes, the pastas, the cereals, and even a lot of the fruits. So for some people, they do very well. Their body... you know, thrives on a higher fat and a protein. But I feel like anything that's an extreme is probably not in our best interest. God gave us everything here on the earth to consume in different ways. And he does say in the Bible things to stay away from and the clean and the unclean. So really we can get a lot of advice by following the Bible. But I think you have to listen to your body too. Some people do great not having any animal products and they can do the plant-based and thrive and be healthy and strong. But other people feel like their bodies crave some of the animal products. And I feel like you do definitely have to listen to your body. The two biggest problems I probably see of intolerances are the glutens and the dairy, though. My own personal feeling is the way that they're processed so much now, that if you have more of a sprouted grain versus... a processed bread that your body assimilates it and uses it better. And dairy, too. You may do better on a fermented kind of kefir versus just cow's milk. So we definitely need to listen to our body. And if you do have that bloating and indigestion, you know, eliminate some things for a while and see how you feel on it. Because I believe God will reveal that to you and how you feel and your energy and just even... When I was referring to as far as the things that help with digestion in your heart and your brain, that most people function better when they have a mixture of everything and not just go into an extreme of all plant-based or all keto. In fact, I see medical problems when people are on keto sometimes because their body just rejects it. Wow. But I think you can go by how you feel quite a bit and just how your body is reacting and doing in your temple. Right, that's good. That's very practical, you know, is balance. That's why I've always saw because some of these diets, when they remove something out of a diet, it's like, well, one, the reality is, I know when I've seen, I used to have a trainer, she would remove the carbs right before she would compete because that way it shrinks everything up and gets really tight, but boy, she was irritable. I'm like, she should get back on the carb. Whew! Howdy, you know, so I'm like, Little carbs is not a bad thing, because it seems like it alters people's personality. Right. It does. And one thing we see, though, way too much in our society is the sugar, though. I mean, there's so much carbs and so much sugar available. Yeah. And I personally see so much of the issues when people are just living on sugar. They don't have the energy, and of course, my concern of diabetes and so many preventable diseases. And even Alzheimer's, they call it, Alzheimer's now is type three diabetes. So type one and type two is adult, but Alzheimer's, the reason why we're seeing so much is that there's so much of a rise in diabetes. and sugar that if we contain that, and that's what I think the cool thing is, is the same dietary instructions for Alzheimer's and heart disease and just arthritis even to avoid a lot of the sugars and to calm down a little bit on the glutens and get that basis of your vegetables, a little bit of fruits and then fill it in. If you do prefer some animal, things great. If you do well on grains and dairy, add those in but really our plates should be beautiful so much just the color of all the greens and the reds and the oranges and the purples that God put in the plants fill that plate up with a lot of the vegetables and then fill in with whatever your body agrees with but stay away from the sugar so you mentioned a word that has become real in my life in the past couple years, arthritis can you prevent it? Or is that just part of the natural process of our bodies breaking down or whatever? People keep saying, how did you mess up your knee? I play basketball, blah, blah, blah. Is it possible to ward off arthritis? And if so, please tell us how. I don't know how. Sorry. But we can say that, you know, if you look in the Bible, people did age. And, you know, as they were wandering in the promised land, their eyes... God protected them for a while, but the natural progression was that they would have some changes in their body. So I think we have to accept, yes, our bodies do change. And at 50, 60, 70, we're not the same as we are when we're 20 and 30. And we also know that you can get away with a lot more when you're younger. Right. You know, when you're 20, 30, you can go without sleep. You can go without eating. You can torment your body. And you're like, oh. I'm good. When you get to be 40, 50, 60, not so much. I mean, our body doesn't withstand that wear and tear as much. And so we can expect some wear and tear of our body. Not that we all think we're all going to get arthritis, but there is some natural changes. We just don't have as much cushion in our joints. And if you have had some injuries, like I had some injury skiing and I've paid the consequences of some of that with my knees. But exercise really helps. Exercise helps so much because as women, we don't lift weights as much. So I encourage women, try to be active. Do upper body, do your push-ups, do your weight training. Do your sit-ups, do your squats and your lunges to keep your legs and your arms and your abs strong, and that will help your bones too. And then there are some good supplements and things that you can do too. But you're not alone, that's an issue that a lot of women have, and there is medicine for it, and there are supplements too. you can get stem cells and you can get shots so there's a lot of procedures that can be done now that weren't around 30 years ago. Awesome. Thank you. Definitely more hope for sure. Alright so I'm gonna kind of put it all together as far as what I took away from this besides the vitamins if we can't get them all in in our diet which is what we want to do, we want to go to the vegetable aisle and get creative and make them phenomenal, which I actually enjoy that. But the other parts, you talked about exercise, more sleep. Okay, so I really could use that one. Drink more water, so definitely drinking, eating healthy. Then just the self-care. Stress reduction, for sure. Listening to music, calming music probably, or fun music. You said just having that personal time helps your brain and your body, just having the time for you to kind of regroup, reset. And laughter, which I'm all for that, and having fun with friends and family. You gave some great input, even like doing ladies' groups, Bible studies, or just ladies' doing activities. You know, the church usually has activities even. even in our community. But I think all of those, to me, that's a lot to even just focus on doing those and try and do them well. Those are really great. And underlying all is the Lord. I mean, just asking for his grace each and every day to be able to accomplish the things that you need to do that day and to have that time. There's nothing that replaces just some... time with the Lord, just the two of you alone, reading your Bible, praying. But even if it's listening to the church, you know, Bible reading online as you're driving to work or as you're picking kids up from school, I mean, there's so many ways that you can just feed your spirit. Because it is that, you know, prayer and medicine, the spirit, soul and body that all works together to keep us healthy. That's so good. Well, I think as we just wrap it up, Christy, tell them how we can connect and even maybe they can engage with more conversations, even with Sherry and with the team. Absolutely. So we have a website that you can go to www.irefresh.net. There you can find links to watch more podcasts just like you've seen today. And we really hope that you would do that. We are on Best Brout and Spotify and iTunes. Just about any way you can find a podcast, we're out there. We have scriptures online. If you're looking for a specific need, whether it be healing, like what we've been talking about today, or marital issues or different things, there are... put them together for you to go and look at so that you don't have to do the hard work. You might be going through something where you don't have the time, so it's out there for you. But we would invite you to connect with us on Facebook and Instagram. Follow us, and you can get lots of neat opportunities to see podcasts just like this. Oh, yeah. And so, you know, if you have questions that you want to give us to get a little bit more into, like, wow, I do a few of these things, don't give up. I think if that's what Sherry's message is, she's been doing this for years, it's probably a similar message she gave when she first started, is being consistent and trying. And don't condemn yourself, but just keep trying. So we want to encourage you to do all those great recommendations that Sherry gave us. And until then, go change your world. you