Type 2 Diabetes: A Model to Reduce Shame and Blame

Listen now to the show on February 1, 2021 on @KPFA.org— 94.1FM, at 2PM.

**https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=350131**

My guest, Veronique Mead, reports:  Dr. Vincent Felitti, co-investigator of the original and most well known ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) study spent over 25 years running a weight loss clinic. His team found that trauma is a risk factor for type 2 diabetes and also for bigger bodies. “Obesity,” it turns out, is a “biomarker.” Bigger bodies are an indication of stressful events in the past and a physiology that is no longer regulating in an optimal way for current circumstances.” (Wickrama, 2017; Felitti, 2010).” Veronique Mead says, “There is a profound and deeply shaming stigma assigned to larger bodies or having type 2 diabetes (T2D) in our culture.”

We’ll  talk about how to reduce shame and blame and deepen our understanding of the connection between adverse experiences and disease.

 

Veronique Mead was an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and practicing physician at the New Hampshire-Dartmouth Family Practice Residency program when she changed careers and retrained as a Somatic Trauma Therapist. For the past 2 decades  she has been integrating the science of adversity into a new model for making sense of chronic illness and has pulled together a database of more than 12,000 references. She also draws from her personal journey of gradual recovery from disabling chronic fatigue syndrome and emphasizes how effects of trauma are not psychological as is still often mistakenly believed. Veronique shares the science on her blog, ChronicIllnessTraumaStudies.com 

Racism in Medical Care

Not all patients are treated equally.

Racism affects many aspects of healthcare in our country, including pregnancy and infant mortality, emergency treatment, pain management, addiction, and mental health care. Actually, you can find racism in any part of the medical care system as long as there are people who are not doing the vital anti-racist work that we are all called upon to do.

***LISTEN NOW: https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=349349 ***

This show was on 1/18/21 on 94.1FM—KPFA.org

This was a timely discussion about racism experienced in medical care settings.

Some health care professionals actively discriminate against patients, even though it’s rare that they are held accountable.  During the Covid-19 crisis we have also seen how racism has caused more deaths in the Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities. “A May 2020 study estimates that in the U. S., Black people were 3.57 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people. Similarly, the risk of death within the Latinx population was nearly twice that of the white population.”

Guests:

J. Miakoda Taylor is the founder and Lead Steward of Fierce Allies (www.fierceallies.com), a body of worksuite of services, and community of practitioners catalyzing dynamics of power and privilege towards equity and justice. The work integrates the fields of Restorative Justice, Somatic Trauma Healing, embodied and popular education, group facilitation, conflict transformation, and storytelling. The community of practice is comprised of leaders from a wide range of sectors including: public health, environmental justice, child and family services, technology, immigrant rights, criminal justice, and food sovereignty. Together, Miakoda and the community of practice are creating a new road map for intersectional collaborations and coalitions. An award winning photographer, Miakoda has received several fellowships, including a J. W. Fulbright, to conduct photo-ethnographic studies of diverse cultures around the globe. Images from their work focused on street children and women working as domestic servants in South Africa from 1993-1996, have been exhibited throughout the world, most notably as part of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are also an avid meditator, yogi, and dancer.

 

Diane Barnes an actor, writer, speaker and physician. She is a graduate of Stanford University and the Yale University School of Medicine, with postdoc training at UCSF and Stanford. Her award winning solo show, My Stroke of Luck, developed with David Ford, shares her story of stroke, recovery, and reinvention as a single mother and working physician. Extended multiple times at The Marsh, it has played internationally, at numerous theater festivals, universities, and medical schools.  The murder of George Floyd inspired her new work, Not One of Us,  a comedic/dramatic exploration of the intersection of class, race, gender and privilege in her life. Also developed with David Ford, Not One of Us, premiers at the Playground Solo Performance Festival Jan 22-Feb 7th, 2021. This version revolves around her experiences in medicine: from training at Yale Medical School to Lagos Nigeria, from practicing medicine to becoming a patient. Diane is a Meisner-trained actor and BATS trained improvisor.  She completed the Global Identities Workshop with Anna Deveare Smith, ACT Summer Intensives and Berkeley Rep Spring Intensive.

Resources from Diane Barnes:

  • Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A Jackson

  • Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century, by Dorothy Roberts

  • Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, by Dorothy Roberts

  • Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, by Deirdre Cooper Owens

  • https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2025768 Misrepresenting Race — The Role of Medical Schools in Propagating Physician Bias, New England Journal of Medicine.

Your Health in 2021: Food, Mood, and Renewal

During this time of heightened stress and uncertainty, are you feeling good about your body, energy, and overall well-being? How is your mood, and do you turn toward food for comfort? There are ways to get back in touch with what nourishes you and helps you stay well in body and mind. There is no “One size fits all” formula for health. We are all different, and finding ways to tap into our body’s wisdom can be transformative.

Listen Now to the 1/4/21 show on About Health on KPFA.org—94.1FM

*** https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=348385  ***

Guests:

Valerie Tookes is a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC) and an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) who believes that trusting your body’s deepest wisdom, equals true health. Her work is devoted to helping women transform their world by changing the way that they see their body. She works as a Health and Wellness Coach with The Women’s Vitality Center in Berkeley; and as a Lead Coach with the online Courageous Living Coach Certification Program. A graduate of Florida State University, University of Oregon, California Institute for Integral Studies, and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, she happily lives in Oakland with her new rescue kitty Austin. To find out more go to https://womensvitalitycenter.com/

L. Rebecca (Reba) Connell, LCSW, (LCS 19814) Is a Certified Mental Health Integrative Medicine Professional, who teaches Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Nourish Your Mood: Meditation and Eating with the Brain in Mind classes. She is deeply engaged with science-based and traditional approaches to healing through food and self-care. She is a graduate of Brown University, where she focused on multicultural women’s issues, and UC Berkeley, where she researched the connection between depression and pain in women at UCSF. Finding mindfulness, movement, and food to make big differences in her own healing from chronic pain, she feels called to share what she is learning with others and to help people make their own discoveries. While focused on studying food for mood, sleep, and pain, she accidentally learned about the latest developments in the science of nutrition.You can find out more at http://www.centerforstressreduction.com. 

Pandemic Update

Listen now to the 12/21/20 show on KPFA radio—94.1FM, for current information about vaccines, Covid-19 cases, and what we can do to stay safe and out of the hospital.

https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=347531

More than 17 million people in the U.S. have had confirmed coronavirus infections and more than 310,000 have died of COVID-19. Tens of thousands of new cases are reported daily nationwide, and California has had over 23,000 deaths. There is hope with the rollout of vaccines, but it will be some time before we can be confident of our health and safety.

I was joined by Dr. Christine Doyle. So grateful she took time to answer some of our questions.

Dr. Christine Doyle is a physician trained in anesthesiology and critical care. She practices in the Silicon Valley, and is the Immediate Past President of the California Society of Anesthesiologists (CSA), and a Fellow of the American Society of Anesthesiology. As President of the CSA when the coronavirus pandemic hit, Dr. Doyle was responsible for initial recommendations about protective equipment, and performing surgery, for members of the society.  She also provided expert background information for state officials who were developing guidelines and changing protocols for California healthcare systems. She continues to serve as a leading voice in professional medical association activities through political advocacy, engaging with the media, and keeping anesthesiologists informed of key issues facing their specialty.

Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them

Listen now to the show on 11/30/20, KPFA radio, 94.1FM, About Health

https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=346379

 

It’s often difficult to separate health information from health misinformation. What are reliable sources? Are you more likely to believe a dramatic story about a disease rather than a recent study in a medical journal? Is what you are reading about the Covid-19 pandemic based on science or are social media sites spreading news that is even more contagious than the virus?

My guest, Dr. Seema Yasmin, has written a book called Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them, where she dispels common myths and casts a critical eye on the cultural misconceptions, disinformation, and conspiracy theories surrounding health.

Dr. Seema Yasmin is a Stanford professor, medical analyst for CNN, and science correspondent for Conde Nast Entertainment. She is an Emmy Award-winning journalist, medical doctor, disease detective and author, known for her reporting on Ebola and Zika. Her new book is Viral BS: Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them. Dr. Yasmin was a disease detective in the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where she chased outbreaks in maximum-security prisons, American Indian reservations, border towns, and hospitals. You can find our more about her at seemayasmin.com, or connect on Twitter @DoctorYasmin and Instagram: @drseemayasmin.

 

Understanding Depression

Listen now at to the show from 11/23/20 on KPFA.org—94.1FM

https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=345836

I was in conversation with Monique Thompson, PhD, about her new book, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression

During these stressful times many people are feeling anxious and depressed, and some people are struggling with grief from the loss of a loved one. Feeling stress, grief, or having the blues, is not the same as suffering from depression. Depression is one of the most common mood disorders, and is highly treatable, although no two people are affected the same way by depression and there is no “one-size-fits-all” for treatment.

1-800-273-8255  is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, call this number. The Lifeline provides 24/7 free and confidential support for people in distress, and resources for you and your loved ones.

Guest:

Monique Thompson is a licensed clinical psychologist. She received a doctoral degree in clinical psychology from California School of Professional Psychology. She is a certified cognitive therapist and Diplomate of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. Dr. Thompson is trained in Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), an empirically supported treatment for insomnia and other sleep disorders. Dr. Thompson has extensive experience providing individualized cognitive therapy to adults and teens. She treats depression, anxiety disorders, sleep disorders, executive functioning deficits, and challenging life transitions. She has practiced in a variety of settings, including Kaiser Permanente in Walnut Creek and Pleasanton, UC Berkeley, and private practice. She spent several years at the Golden Bear Mood and Sleep Research Center at UC Berkeley as a member of a treatment development team, and has published research on memory mechanisms and interventions to improve individual therapy outcomes. She is adjunct faculty at UC Berkeley Extension. She recently co-authored a book on Teen Insomnia with Dr. Michael Tompkins, The Teen Insomnia Workbook. Her second book, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression: Strategies to Challenge Negative Thinking and Start Living Your Life was released on November 13, 2020. You can reach her at Monique Thompson, PsyD.
(510) 652-4455, ext. 1.