Doc Discussions with Dr. Jason Edwards
THIS is the podcast you have been looking for! "Doc Discussions" are just what the title says they are: physicians from a wide range of specialties, talking about relevant, up-to-date medical topics, not to mention tips on habits to help you live your best life. Your host, Jason Edwards, MD, is a board-certified radiation oncologist with a PhD in cellular and integrative physiology at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. Edwards explores not only diseases but also suggests techniques to optimize mental and physical health for a long and good life. Real people. Real advice. Real good. This is Doc Discussions, with Dr. Jason Edwards!
Doc Discussions with Dr. Jason Edwards
Navigating News Overload: Mental Wellness and Emotional Resilience
What if the relentless cycle of news isn't just keeping you informed but also compromising your well-being? Join us as Dr. Jason Edwards sits down with Emily Rosencrans, the insightful director of spiritual care services at St. Luke's, to uncover the profound impact of constant media consumption on our mental and emotional health. Together, we unravel the intricate link between stress and physical conditions like Takotsubo syndrome, highlighting how unchecked anxiety can manifest in unexpected ways. Emily guides us through practical strategies to establish a healthier relationship with the news, suggesting therapeutic activities such as absorbing music or seeking uplifting content. By exploring mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, we explore how staying centered amidst life's chaos can fortify your resilience.
Our conversation deepens with an exploration of emotional healing and vulnerability, drawing on Emily’s rich background in military upbringing and chaplaincy training. We discuss the transformative power of acknowledging and processing emotions, sharing poignant stories that illustrate the delicate balance between suppressing and honoring grief. Enhanced by insights from Brene Brown, we examine how vulnerability can be a conduit for personal growth and the necessity of support systems in navigating complex emotional landscapes. As we turn to hope and resilience, we challenge the misconception that our world is more perilous than ever, reminding ourselves of humanity’s enduring spirit as exemplified by Japan’s post-World War II recovery. Tune in to rediscover the power of hope and a positive outlook as keys to overcoming adversity and envisioning a brighter future.
Hello, this is Jason Edwards and this is Doc Discussions. I'm here with Emily Rosenkranz. Emily, you're the head of pastoral care here at St Luke's, is that right?
Speaker 2:I'm the director of spiritual care services here?
Speaker 1:yes, Very good, very good, you know.
Speaker 1:Before we start the podcast, I want to acknowledge that there are heightened tensions in the United States right now for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 1:You have financial stress, with many months of higher prices due to inflation, but you also have a lot of political turmoil in the country and I don't want to get too deep into the details of that because, first of all, I won't be effective at that and there are plenty of other places to go for that. But as a doctor, I'm here to talk to our audience, with you, to help me, about how we can navigate these challenging times to optimize our mental and emotional health as we move forward through this period of time. I think we have a compulsion as human beings to find out what's going on and what the news is. But with news being so ever-present and so readily available, I think it can easily get to a point where it can be overwhelming and it can kind of take up your resources that you need to deal with the other vicissitudes of life. What have you found to be helpful for people when they're going through a difficult time?
Speaker 2:First of all to acknowledge how the news impacts us. I tell my chaplains, when something is big in the news, especially hot button issues, if there's something that is getting strong reactions in very different ways, you're going to see that in patient rooms. They're going to be watching the news, it's going to be impacting them deeply. Something traumatic is going to stir up their trauma history. Something political if they agree with it, they're going to be happy. If they don't, they might be filled with rage. Agree with it, they're going to be happy. If they don't, they might be filled with rage. And sometimes being able to then talk to patients about maybe it's time to turn on the care channel, to turn on a chapel music and do something that might be more restorative.
Speaker 2:Very often I will ask patients what's going on in your life outside of being in the hospital, and there's a huge correlation between the stress in people's lives and what brought them to the hospital. Our bodies break down when we're enduring and suffering in other ways. Fascinating to me that in every case where I have encountered someone with, like Takotsubo syndrome, broken heart syndrome it's a physical problem, it's rare. But when I say, do you have a broken heart? They say yeah, say yeah, so the physical can manifest itself in ways that is a metaphor for how we are emotionally and spiritually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually, and that's a good point that you bring up we discussed this with our episode with Jonas Cooper, our cardiologist, about Takots, subo syndrome and and this is when high uh, I think it's a like a one-time um issue, but I'm sure it can build upon itself as well that ultimately results in a dysfunction of the heart, a cardiomyopathy.
Speaker 1:I think it's a dilated cardiomyopathy.
Speaker 1:I could be wrong on that and um, but you have physical symptoms and I, and I think you know, with this political stuff and and stuff that's on the news, I think people probably underestimate how much of an effect that that can have on their overall energy level, because I think when you're looking at the news and you're consuming this stuff, you would be shocked at how much energy you're wasting or not wasting necessarily, but using by consuming this.
Speaker 1:And you are kind of, when you wake up every day, you have a finite amount of physical energy and emotional energy to expend, and so it's. It just can be difficult to deal with these other things that you have to do in life. That can be very important and very stressful when you over consume or overindulge in some of these things, even though they're very important things. You know I'm not saying it's not important and I'm not saying it's not important to know about it, but you have to. I think it's important to modulate what you take in because it can have an impact on the short term or long term on you and your health and the people around you.
Speaker 2:And it can. The same things that can be stressful can also feed our spirits. So I found, during COVID, the number of people who turned to online church services for inspiration, being able to watch Hamilton free of charge from your home. I watched the Hallmark Channel to de-stress and I've told people it's not because of the plots, and I've told people it's not because of the plots. The plots are obviously predictable and simple. It's because I enjoy watching the way people work through issues and problems in a healthy way, because we don't always see that in life, and so to see people giving us an example of, well, here's how to work through a relational issue in a healthy way and here's when to walk away from a relationship. I think there are certain things we can choose to watch that can actually have health benefits, and there are things on the news that are very not. By and large, news has a tendency to bring up the negative things, but there are also things that help the human spirit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some news programs will finish with a segment. That's kind of uplifting after they've kind of beaten you over the head for 25 minutes.
Speaker 2:Or speeches during a national convention can be very inspiring, can help to galvanize people around important issues, make us realize we're part of something bigger than ourselves. So I think it's being a very informed and aware consumer and trying to make healthy choices.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's this practice called mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and or just the kind, and if you feel you're tense, maybe take some time to go for a walk or take a few breaths or say a prayer or do something to kind of relax through the day and not be so tense. It's kind of like a pop-off valve to just let the pressure out and then continue on with your day. And there are many forms of this. There are special classes that you can take with experts and things like that. But there are many forms of this. There are special classes that you can take with experts and things like that.
Speaker 1:But there's good data showing that this improves anxiety and many aspects of quality of life. And so I think that in general, thinking about mindfulness and kind of considering where you're at, even if you're doing good, I mean, that's the time to stay in a good spot. But I'm fearful that this is going to cause a lot of distress in a lot of the country's lives and I think if we can kind of stay out of this or modulate how you're doing throughout this process, you're going to be better off.
Speaker 2:Throughout what process?
Speaker 1:throughout this process you're going to be better off. Throughout what process? Well, throughout, I think you know. Specifically, I'm talking about the assassination attempt on the former President Trump. I think that that's kind of why I wanted to talk about this, and I think that, and then, in general, there's going to be this election process and some people, you know, half the country is going to be happy and half the country is not going to be happier, and that's a lot of people. And so if we can move the dial just a little bit for some of those people, I think that you know collectively, that would be good.
Speaker 2:So I have certification in mindfulness-based stress reduction. I think you do too right.
Speaker 1:I do not actually.
Speaker 2:I thought you were trained in that. I think it's very, very valuable to do things to help tune into our bodies, pay attention to our bodies, minds, spirits, emotions. I was raised in a military family and to be a good Marine. You don't really share your feelings. My dad was actually in the Air Force but by the time I was seven or eight years old I didn't even have words for feelings. I knew how to be a good girl, how to do what I was expected to do, and it wasn't until I had chaplaincy training that I learned how to connect to my heart again. I was very strong intellectually, strong academically and knew how to work in that world. But the first time my CPE supervisor that's chaplaincy speak said, how do you feel about that? I couldn't find a word. I had to relearn the language of the heart. You know mad, sad, glad. I think.
Speaker 2:Part of it in dealing and I actually preached about this Sunday in light of my sermon was based on the gospel text for the week and I was preaching about vulnerability. But I did mention the assassination attempt and what I spoke about in terms of vulnerability is I gave examples of what it means to be vulnerable. I brought a book with me. I'll just share some of these examples. This is from Brene Brown. She's a great, great writer and in her section about vulnerability she said it's the emotion we experience during times of uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. And in all of her research she asked people give examples of vulnerability and I love these. She said the first date after my divorce, talking about race with my team trying to get pregnant after my second miscarriage. Talking about my feelings starting my own business, watching my child leave for college. So I gave all the ones that she gives. She has more.
Speaker 2:And then I said being at a political rally and hearing shots fired, being a member of the family who was just shot, or watching someone be shot who's at the podium. That's vulnerable. And what I talked about was how we need to show up for our feelings. We need to be authentic and genuine and be there for ourselves. We can't go around them, over them, under them. When we do, it comes out sideways. But to be honest and honor our feelings, so do I expect people to be impacted by what happened over the weekend? Absolutely. For me, shock, sadness, that sense of here we go again from history, all the questions you ask which never have answers. There is never an answer to why that makes sense, sure, and I think, staying in that place of realizing how vulnerable we are, I think staying in that place, of realizing how vulnerable we are.
Speaker 1:So you say to kind of lean into some of these feelings Sometimes. I think there's value in that. Certainly you want to be kind of honest with where you're at. Do you think you can lean into feelings too far and like overdo it.
Speaker 2:Do you think that ever happens? I'm trained as a marriage and family therapist. Um, and what I truly believe is if we, if we lean in deeply and honor our feelings, we move through them and we heal and honor our feelings, we move through them and we heal. It's when we don't, or that is truncated, that there are problems. I'll give a story about that.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Early in my ministry my husband served a small country church and there was a young couple expecting triplets spontaneous. They were pregnant with triplets In that family. A generation before an aunt and uncle had also been expecting triplets. The aunt and uncle lost the triplets at 20 weeks. They didn't survive. They were told. First of all they put her under when she went into delivery. They did not tell her whether they were male or female, whether they anything about them. They didn't see the babies. They didn't name them. There was nothing to honor what had just happened. They were told to go home and pretend it never happened and that led to all sorts of issues.
Speaker 2:Substance abuse, depression. You can imagine the same thing happened in the current generation Better resources, medically, but they lost the babies at 20 weeks. The difference was the hospital knew to rally around them. There was a chaplain, there was a social worker, they had burial plans. They tell them to look at their babies, name their babies, celebrate their short lives. And there was a church service. People came Because they were allowed to grieve. They moved past it in a really healthy way. So can we get stuck, yes, and not move through things? Absolutely, absolutely. Can we be unhealthy in the way we have a?
Speaker 1:you know, just keep perseverating, ruminate on things Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I think we need to ask ourselves why am I doing this? Do I need help?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But most of the time it's if we truly honor our feelings, we move through them and we heal. Yeah, so it's a balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think so. That's what I've kind of found, just like talking to a lot of patients who have cancer, is that you need. You know, the first example was like zero out of 100, you know. And then the second was like they got a good, healthy dose of support and were able to kind of work their way through the process and then sometimes you can see where it is too much, where sometimes it can be a big deal or not a big deal. But somebody like you said that's a good word gets stuck on it. They just get stuck and they always. To me it's like they go to the bottom, bottom of the grand Canyon and they didn't they didn't.
Speaker 2:They didn't have to go to the bottom.
Speaker 1:They, they, they. They just had to go in a little bit, but they ruminate on it and they, they, and, and now they're. There's an opportunity cost that develops where you're living here and and life is passing you by and you're not able to, and then I think that's where you need medicine and things like that a lot of times in professional help.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I am a big fan of trying to do some of these non-pharmacological things first, and there's actually a few studies that show that whether it's mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy or exercise, even singing, and so I would say to try to calm your mind down and to seek beauty would be kind of a simple way of saying all these things. Exercise is under the calm your mind down category. Can be very powerful and oftentimes what I've seen is it can be a better long-term solution than medicine. But certainly if you get to a point where you can't quote unquote, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and do some things like this, then for sure reach out and there's no shame in it, and I think over the last 20 years that's really changed a lot. People have way less shame in starting an antidepressant or something like that.
Speaker 2:And as chaplains, we're trained in offering non-pharmacological ways to relieve stress and pain.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I've even worked with CEO-type individuals who I walk in and say, well, would you like to know some other ways to handle the pain you're in? And at first they're skeptical. And then doing hand massages, guided imagery work, teaching people that something that you know anxiety begets pain, which begets more pain. So, working on anxiety and one of the things people don't always know is that when we are perseverating on something, do something with your hands. When you work with your hands, it allows the mind to process those things we're getting stuck on. So my mother, when she was grieving the loss of her husband it was her second husband, a 30-year marriage, and she was in the depths and I gave her coloring books and crayons and I said I prescribed.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I said I want you to color for one hour a day, and my mom's a rule follower, so she colored for one hour a day and she said I don't know what that was, but I would sit there and make myself 10 to 11 every day, I would color and I felt better. And I wasn't crying as much. So I tell people you know whether it's needlework, it can be music. You know Todd is a musician. And if you're playing an instrument, if you're doing woodworking, have a hobby.
Speaker 1:Anything we do with our hands releases mental tension, you know, uh, I've had actually several patients who say, um, I do these adult coloring books and you know that let's like, let's be real the first time you hear that you're, you're like what?
Speaker 1:like what I know and so but? But if you as silly as this may be, let's unpack that a little bit so you're doing something other than ruminating on your problems, exactly Okay, you're focusing on something, you're moving your body, you're using your mind, you are embarking on a challenge although it's not a gigantic challenge and then at the end you make something that you can look at and you can say you know what, I'm proud of that. And that might sound silly, you might think that's not true, but every time I mow my yard, I look at my yard and I say you know what? I just did that and and um, and, and. Plenty of people out there who mow their yard will have that same sense. And maybe later on in the day you'll go look at the yard and say, yeah, my yard looks good. I did, and it's not that much different.
Speaker 2:when I make a beautiful meal, I think, wow, you know action, action.
Speaker 1:do something. Don't sit there and let your mind work against you. And I always tell patients, you know, if you can work as we go through your cancer treatment, work, because sometimes your mind works for you, but most of the time it works against you. And you know, as they say, uh, an idle mind is the devil's workshop, and you know, grandma wasn't too far off on that one.
Speaker 2:I agree, and we know that keeping mentally and physically active is so good for our brains, and especially as we age our brains, and especially as we age.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I've said this before, I think walking is so good for your mind, it's good for your body, but it's way better for your mind and it's almost meditative. I mean, you are meant to walk as a human being, and so I think walking, prayer, listening to beautiful music, talking to friends, writing a letter to a friend these are all things that you can do.
Speaker 2:Pet therapy.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know what that. I'm sure I could go into the AI engine or the Google engine and find all kinds of articles showing that. I know it decreases your blood pressure and.
Speaker 1:I'm sure it turns the mind down a few notches, and so I think we shouldn't ruminate on these things that we see in the news. It's good to consume them to some degree, so you know what's going on maybe. But you can't live there and you can't look at the tail ends of the bell curve and extrapolate these rare things, these rare events in life, and extrapolate that out to the rest of humanity. But they're not going to show me saying hi to somebody in a hallway on the news. They're only going to show the tail ends of the bell curve, the ultra-rare events, because otherwise they're not noteworthy. But if that's all you see, you start to assume that the whole world is like that all you see, you start to assume that the whole world is like that.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you've seen that. Um, somehow in the last 20, maybe 40 years, we've begun to think the world is a more dangerous place because we see news around the clock yeah, um, and actually the world is not more dangerous than it was before. We just see it, hear it, talk, talk about it, digest it more. I grew up during the Vietnamese War and you turn on the news, then you sit down to eat dinner and there's war behind you all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 1968 was not a great year.
Speaker 2:It's not normal to be sitting down to dinner watching people die in the background every single day. Not that we watched the news as we ate dinner, but it was that ever presence of we're at war. And so moderation and everything, including moderation.
Speaker 1:I agree 100%. And I think there's a book called the Rational Optimist which I think would be really great for everybody to at least read a summary of. And you see how, in a general sense, from decade to decade to decade if you look at the past, you know 500 decades things have only gotten better. They've only gotten better in every measurable metric. Are there, is there going to be a tough year here and there, for sure, for sure it's not linear, but in general, things will only get better.
Speaker 1:I'd like to tell a quick story here, and I think an essential part of if you're having trouble mentally and emotionally is hope. I think you need hope for the future is hope. I think you need hope for the future.
Speaker 1:And in the 1940s in Japan, the country was in utter devastation. After World War II, major cities Tokyo, osaka and Nagasaki were all in rubble due to extensive bombing. Over two and a half million Japanese have died. Industrial production had fallen to less than 10% of its pre-world levels. There was a severe food shortage I think the number was like 700 to 800 calories per person and so inflation was rampant, rising 500% in 1946 alone 1946 alone.
Speaker 1:And nobody could have predicted that japan would turn that around and become the world's second biggest non-communist economy in the world by the late 80s I mean, japan rivaled was probably doing better than the majority of europe countries and almost as good as America and you know, out of rubble and there's a million stories like that. But it's important to have hope that not only things get better in your life but things get better in the world, that they get better in the United States, and I think it's our duty to have some hope for the future. You do have some control over the thoughts in your mind and you should take control of that. And if you want to have a good life, try to have a good day to day, and you're not going to be able to do that without a little bit of hope.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so extreme political rhetoric says if you vote for this person, the world is coming to an end on both sides on all sides and that's not true.
Speaker 2:And you're right that having hope I mean I'm a Christian, I'm in the spiritual care realm, I mean I'm a Christian, I'm in the spiritual care realm. I know that people struggle mightily, suffer incredibly. What gets us through is having a sense of a light at the end of the tunnel, having a sense that the sun is going to come out tomorrow, looking at the people who love us and the people we love, and realizing there are reasons to go on and every generation has challenges, but we also seem to rise above them and I am a real believer in the power of the human spirit to overcome. So, yeah, hope is essential.
Speaker 1:Emily, thanks so much for your time. I've really enjoyed speaking to you and I can tell you've got a big heart and a wealth of experience and we're lucky to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you All right.
Speaker 1:Tune in next week for our next episode of Dr Sessions. Thanks so much.