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I Always Bring My Lunch

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I was in NYC in August this summer, doing a short 4th year medical elective at the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery. I did some couch surfing, and stayed at an Air BnB in Williamsburg my last week. Medically it was an outstanding experience, and in my dream future, I will get to be a physician working at this clinic in Manhatten. Being away from home, I realized how much I rely on having my own kitchen! Making my lunch is I keep my body feeling good despite spending most of my time working in a hospital or relaxing in bed.

What do you do for lunch every day?  By lunchtime every day, I will eat basically anything. I sometimes eats my lunch at 10:30 AM I am so hungry. The more glucose my brain is burning, the more I need that hit of fat, phytonutrients and fiber.

Therefore, my cunning plan is to eat super healthy sometimes boring basics for lunch – lots of veggies, good quality fats, high fiber fruits, raw vegetables and very few processed carbs. Then,  I dont have to think as hard about what’s for dinner and still maintain a good nutrient balance.

So, what do I actually eat? Greens and grains, with cheese, avocado or nuts/seeds and random chopped veggies like carrots, cucumber, tomato, radish. In summer I love to put flowers in my food. A grain free diet is popular with the keto crowd, but I advocate to have at least a few cups of whole grains in the diet per week. The fiber, magnesium, B vitamins and serotonin release metabolically help keep the mind-gut axis regulated. We rotate our grains between short grain brown rice, wild rice, quinoa, and millet to maintain variety of flavor and nutrient profiles.

I heard once in a conference lecture that nutritional studies were done evaluating T4 –> T3 conversion activation (active thyroid hormone.) Subjects were fed fat based diets, protein based diets or carbohydrate (CHO) based diets. Only the diets with carbohydrates evidenced thyroid hormone conversion. Since I am a huge fan of having optimized T3 production for an effective metabolic mileau, I advocate for having a moderate amount of whole grains in ones basic nutritional foundation.I wish I had the study in-hand to back this up but I dont; maybe once I am out of medical school I will have time to research these things more fully. The bottom line is that whole grains are good for health and tasty and I like them in my lunch. They are filling and delicious and beneficial.

I like to layer the grains on the bottom, then a huge handful of greens – whatever has the latest expiry date when I am shopping! We rotate spring mix with herbs, arugula, baby spinach, crispy green leaf lettuce, and occasional kale salad (leftover.) I need fat with my lunch to feel satisfied, so I douse the whole thing with yummy olive oil and a delicious vinegar like balsamic or umeboshi or fire cider vinegar. Then, I add some protein: cheese is the easiest and I love cheese.  Tuna, egg or chicken salads are always a win too.

I also love toasted walnuts, pecans, pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds. I buy them raw, and toast them in a dry cast iron pan until they are warm and smell nutty but not burnt. Make sure to stir! I store these in glass jars in the cupboard. The pumpkin seeds are best toasted with some Chalula hot sauce and cumin! Yum. These add a crunch, some richness, protein, and delicious essential fats. Finish the lunch with 2 chopped veggies for color, fiber, and variety: an organic carrot, cucumber spears with pepper, pepper slices, whatever floats your boat.

If you are a hard paleo and refuse grains, or if you are like me and sometimes need a second lunch or a hearty snack then organic nitrite free salami is a good addition. It is filling, savory, and works well with olives, carrot rounds and other veggies for finger snacks. Just veggies is not enough for me.

Lunch Plan B: huge leftovers fan here. If I go out to dinner, I almost always save half for lunch the next day. This is a win-win, because I stop eating when I am full (or save room for dessert) AND I have a pre-made meal to go. I hate waking up extra early to deal with lunch, so I usually get lunch ready the night before. We generally also cook for more than two, planning a lunch or two and maybe even a supper into every meal we co-create. Leftovers are exciting to me because these are usually rich yummy comfort foods like pasta, steak, curries and other “real meals”.

Finally, making lunch saves me money. The first day of my August rotation I went to the nearby Whole Foods for lunch. I wasted 15 minutes wandering around the hot and cold bars, trying to figure out what to eat. My $15 salad ended up being an awkward mish-mash of flavors that did not blend well. That day after work I went and bought $40 worth of groceries (almond flour crackers, apples, greens, cheese, nuts, yogurts and paleo granola for breakfast)  and brought my lunch to work every day for the next week, supplementing with enchilada leftovers.

Bringing your lunch ensures you know exactly what you are eating. It keeps you committed to your intentions with food, and lines up the healthy choices for you in moments of  “Im Starving” brain meltdowns that would otherwise allow for easy Trash. It is also a great way to plan your daily insulin for diabetics! Finally, it frees up dinner for more social food activities that may be less greens and grainy.

Oh, and bring a snack, maybe two. For Fall and Winter I find an apple is the hardiest fruit. Combined with nuts and raisins, it’s a great choice. Someone once said, if you dont want to eat an apple, you are not actually hungry. This holds true as long as your teeth are in good shape.  In winter and summer, cut up fruit like citrus or stone fruits an berries are refreshing and delightful. I also love dried mango slices from Trader Joe’s. If you crave yogurt and aren’t having it for breakfast, it’s a good option too. I love the dairy-free yogurts too like soy, almond and coconut singles, which are far better choices than anything a vending machine or a cafeteria might offer.

My basic formula is eating good quality food 65% of the time. Then I can easily process about 35% cheeseburgers, nachos, pizza, sweets, and other junk. To change your body composition this may need to become more like 75:25 and exercise has to be added in. I eat at least 60% of my daily food at work between 9-5pm. If I make sure these foods are healthy, wholesome and invigorating to my brain and bowels, my nutritional work is done for the day. Yay!

 

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Embedding Resilience in Medicine

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      Half an inch from the first four thoracic vertebrae lie the central nervous system transistors (stellate ganglion) for your fight and flight nervous system. Needless to say, my upper back is constantly aching. I am metabolizing the unique stress of being a brand new doctor/medical student in hospital life. It’s a different kind of stress than the first two academic years: those were crushing content & exams, but they were ivory tower academia. This is the very real medicine that is literally birth, life and death stuff. More visceral than literal, I find myself often crying,  sometimes gagging, and occasionally elated.

The purpose of third year clerkship aka #MS3 is to get a sampling of each major specialty to help us decide on a residency. Its a generic med school formula consisting of: Pediatrics, Surgery, OB/GYN, Internal Medicine Inpatient & Outpatient, Family Medicine, Psychiatry, Community Health. Inpatient, we legally cannot write patient notes. While we can actively participate in patient care,  everything we do needs to be seconded by a licensed doc; therefore, we are mostly shadows, errand runners, and absorbent sponges.

Unfortunately, some throwbacks to fraternal physician hazing rituals are still in place even for third year medical students. For example, my Internal Medicine inpatient rotation, which is already a 6am – 6pm shift 5 days a week (with a 1 hr drive on each side) also requires 6 -24 hour shifts in the 6 weeks. I asked a friend who is a year ahead of me and attended a different hospital clerkship if her rotation was scheduled as such, and she said she had to follow hospitalist hours for that same rotation – roughly 730am – 330pm. If the point is to learn each of the specialty’s roles, it makes sense to follow the professional hours. If the goal is to teach us that Internal Medicine requires an exhausting slog of hospital life, and how to forsake all other aspects of our personal and academic life for our career, then this approach in third year makes sense. Slate Magazine said it best: Third Year Kills Humanity of Medicine.

I haven’t done the above inpatient IM rotation yet and yes, I’m actively worried about my health, my marriage, and my coping skills during that onslaught. I did one 86 hour “sneak peek” week with our Family Medicine inpatient service last Fall.  I did enjoy the steep learning curve and patient contact; however,  I often felt lost and useless as my resident dictated her many notes and ran around the hospital following up on pages and other details. I did get some good studying done and learned some basic inpatient skills but there were hours, especially after the first 8,  that I wished I had something more productive I could be doing in.

In reality, the residents are much more forgiving than the administration and often let us leave early (6am – 10/11pm) saying “there is nothing we could learn at 2am that cant be learned at 2pm.” I am eternally grateful for this ray of grace. And I do understand that night shifts and on-call hours are foundational for many physician careers and practicing them could be relevant.  But why, when 55% of Internal Medicine and Family Doctors report burnout, are we being subjected to these mind numbing hours as third years? How will medicine ever change if the hazing continues to be perpetrated generation after generation?

I accept that being a doctor requires selflessness & sacrifice. I accept that long hours are often required and I like to work – for an income, for a team, and for a good reason. I’m a second career medical student, I study and practice clinical skills because this is what I love! I accept that as a resident I will bear the brunt of hours spent watchdogging and admitting in part because we are the cheap labor force of institutionalized medicine. But, I have 1.5 years of med school left, and 3-6 years of residency/fellowship ahead. What is the purpose of having me work 86 hour weeks now,  and how is it going to benefit my relationship towards medicine?

To embed resilience in doctors, we as a profession and as an academic incubator need to provide time & space for rest, relaxation, and quietude. Only in parasympathetics can we metabolize the soul-rattling experience that comes from facing death and sickness and the burden of chronic disease in North America. Not only are we facing grief/loss/mortality, we are taking on the enormous responsibility of decision maker. A backlog of unprocessed emotion leads to substance abuse, chronic pain, sleep disorders, lack of compassion, and who knows what other organic & chemical dysregulation. We need regular daily time to cook good food, sleep with our loves, be intimate and vulnerable, Netflick and chill, get to the gym or get outside. Only in that space can we emotionally integrate this transformation.

Our clerkship Dean Dr. Taylor sent out this  reaffirming blogpost last month in which an experienced physician Dr. Youngson writes to his younger self. He says:

     “As a medical student or junior doctor, it’s easy to feel powerless especially in a hierarchical medical system that too often teaches by humiliation, punishes those who question the status quo, and grinds people down through overwork and inhuman working conditions…”

Change medical education so that we as medical students (and residents and attendings and all doctors actually) are seen as people who are more than life-saving, problem fixing, chart dictating, disease curing machines. A more gentle, humane practice of time & space for medicine while living life alongside the role of physician has to start at the beginning of the clerkship year when we integrate it’s practice with our academic foundations, or it wont be ingrained as part of the way we approach medicine.

Once I started thinking about time, resilience and integration as the cure of medical burnout, I began seeing evidence everywhere. I heard a NEJM Interview from 01/03/18 with Dr. Armstrong from Massachusettes General Hospital’s new Pathways program where residents are given time and a scientific team to investigate complex patient-based cases. The 12/26/17 issue of JAMA has an article by Jack Coulehan, MD MPH from the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care and Bioethics on Negative Capability and the Art of Medicine that speaks to “sustaining the physician through the ‘humdrum routine’ of professional life… [Using]… the power to recognize the ‘true poetry of life'” and of medicine. This is a reflective practice. He says:

“In pursuing the steadiness and detachment required to master clinical practice, it is tempting to neglect the more difficult project of nourishing engagement and tenderness in our relationships with patients – and with ourselves.”

The future of medical education is not only about competencies met and clinical acumen. The true scholars of the next generations of physicians will be those who can achieve their best in patient care and scientific fulfillment, while also living a satisfying, integrated and joyful life.

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The Pitfall of Alcohol

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I’ve been avoiding writing this post for at least a week, probably two. Mostly because it has personal meaning to me as alcoholism runs in my family on both sides – My mothers father was one of the “Mad Men” of the 50’s, worked in advertising and died of liver failure due to alcoholism. I guess he got pretty ugly in the end. My paternal grandparents didnt drink at all (which leads me to wonder if their parents were alcoholic) but all of their children have a penchant for the sauce.

Before I was a medical student, I thought the damaging effects of alcohol could be traced directly by measuring liver enzymes – and as long as those harbingers of hepatic cell death stayed within a reasonable limit, one was “getting away” with whatever one was doing. Enter: neurology. Boy was I wrong. Oh and Ps. Dead liver cells cant release ALT or AST, so good liver enzymes in the face of chronic alcoholism is actually a pretty bad sign.

The blood brain barrier is an effective barrier to most things except: nonpolar and lipid soluble molecules. Enter: CO2, O2, and ETOH (alcohol.) This means that as soon as alcohol is in your blood, it is seeping into your brain. And brain cells/ neurons are permanent cells – they don’t have the ability to divide, so they don’t replicate. You get what you started with – some axons can be regenerated, but once the cell body dies, your numbers start to decrease.

gait-ataxiaThe cerebellum is one of the parts of the brain most affected by alcohol cell death; this is why people become unsteady and clumsy anterior-vermiswhen drunk – inhibition of cerebellar function! There are multiple and complex inputs to this lower brain region from almost every aspect of the nervous system, so it can compensate for loss of neurons (when sober) for a long time. Up to 80% of cell death can happen before symptoms become noticeable! Unfortunately, once this is happening in the sober state, the cells are dead and there is no ability to recover balance or coordination.

I didn’t know that memory loss is also a component of chronic alcoholism. There are two halves to the cognitive decline that will happen eventually called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, and these are from alcohol related destruction to two more areas of the brain.

confusionThe first set of symptoms is reversible, and is related to a deficiency of vitamin B1 aka thiamine. The mammillary bodies are wee nubs on the underside of the brain that are part of the social and emotional brain. They take information from the hypothalamus and hippocampus, and run it to the anterior nucleus of the thalamus. nrhpth08

 

 

 

 

This is a critical loop in emotional and social behavior integration at a cognitive level. I guess this is partially where the numbing effect of alcohol on the emotions could occur? With a deficiency of B1, the mammillary bodies hemorrhage and cause Wernickes encephalopathy, characterized by confusion and your eyes not tracking properly, as well as the unsteadiness from the damaged cerebellum. This is why in hospital treatments, alcoholics are first given thiamine/ B1 to see if it can reverse the symptoms. From a prevention standpoint, taking a good quality capsule (not tablet) daily multivitamin seems like a good idea for anyone drinking on a regular basis.

This condition can progress to irreversible memory loss for the past, with an inability to make new memories, plus psychotic symptoms. This is called Korsakoff psychosis. As people lose their ability to remember, they start making things up to fill in the blanks called confabulation. This can be really depressing for friends and family members as it becomes clearly evident that the damage is permanent.

and THEN, there is the metabolic damage that is occurring below the neck. (This next section is biochemical mumbo jumbo, but since this is my review exercise, I’m going to include it for my medical interest:)

screen-shot-2016-09-26-at-12-32-00-pmEthanol/ your drinks/ are 80% broken down by cells (cytosol) of the liver. 15% of alcohol is broken down by microsomes in the brain and liver, and this pathway is upregulated in chronic alcoholism. The remaining 5% are converted to fatty acids and phospholipids that are thought to play a role in tissue damage. Both primary pathways break down ethanol to acetaldehyde, which is metabolized  down to acetate…..Acetate, where have you heard that before? yes, NAIL POLISH REMOVER, flooding your liver and brain.

The major metabolic consequence is from the elevation of NADH that occurs in the cell and in the mitochondria in steps one and two with excessive and continual amounts of alcohol intake, because this NADH will inhibit the TCA cycle from running. No TCA = no glucose metabolism = no fuel for the cells. The brain will still need fuel, so the liver cleverly shifts the glucose from the alcohol (which can no longer be metabolized) to ketone production + free fatty acid synthesis (aka fat storage.) This explains, in painful detail, why alcohol makes you gain weight and affects blood sugar levels.

screen-shot-2016-09-26-at-12-36-56-pmFinally, I wanted to add this last slide for an important prevention note. This is the process of the 15% microsomal pathway that is upregulated with chronic high alcohol intake. Note the second step produces ROS – this is reactive oxygen species aka free radicals which are known to cause cell damage and cell death. Higher levels of ROS are bad in general and associated with greater inflammation and cellular damage across the board. This points to another potential place for prevention – with use of high dose antioxidants like CoQ10 200-300mg, resveratrol (500mg), alpha lipoic acid (200mg) and vitamins C (1000mg) and mixed tocopherol E (400IU).

screen-shot-2016-10-08-at-4-29-14-pmWhen alcohol intake gets high enough to start causing brain damage, obviously the primary treatment goal is to reduce the intake. Our first case study had a 37 yo male drinking 12-16 beers PER DAY. How many drinks, realistically speaking, are you having per day? How many does that add up to per week? Does that seem reasonable to you?

I don’t know enough about addiction to know how to address real chronic alcoholism. I imagine it is incredibly hard to quit, and even to reduce daily intake without a pure and strong internal directive to do so – no one can be told to do it,  the drive Must Come from Within. Treating underlying depression, anxiety, or life stressors are surely part of the picture, but what if you just drink to have fun? Sometimes, the party needs to stop, or gets out of control. I guess we all need to grow up sometime and learn to tolerate whatever it is we harbor inside our minds (before they get destroyed.)

Alcohol is a depressant, so withdrawal symptoms are the opposite – agitation, irritation, worse case scenario people can have seizures. Benzodiazapines, some sleep drugs and alcohol all work on the GABA-A receptor in the brain. Chronic alcohol use downregulates the expression the neurotransmitter GABA, one of the “off switches.” Once high levels of alcohol start to lower, it takes time for the brain to start making enough GABA again, resulting in foul moods, irritability and general unpleasantness.

There are medications like naltrexone and acamprosate that can help reduce the cravings for alcohol, and medications to treat the side effects of withdrawal, mostly aimed at these same parts of the brain. These are definitely worth exploring with a psychiatrist or addiction specialist to figure out what approach will work best for you. Complete abstinence does not need to be the goal. GABA as a supplement is not absorbed well, but is readily available and might be worth a try for someone who is just cutting down on daily intake, and has addictive enough a personality that switching to benzos instead of alcohol could exacerbate rather than relieve the problems. However, it is unlikely GABA alone would be enough to support sobriety. Making the very personal and often terrifying choice to look at one’s habits and face trauma/addiction is the place to begin. A comprehensive medical assessment with an empathetic and respectful health professional who has experience in addiction is next step. (if you are in Maine, I highly recommend Dr. Merideth Norris!)

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Will Power

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I am two weeks into second year medical school, and the majority of our content has been NeuroAnatomy and Brain Diseases. As a physician it is pretty darn important to be able to figure out when someone is having a life threatening stroke impinging on brain tissue,  versus a flare up of a genetic disorder that is starting to show neurological signs and symptoms. Knowing the anatomy of the brainstem, and the arrangement and progression of the long tracts of nerve fibers throughout the spinal cord, medulla, pons, brainstem and beyond can create a Cartesian like diagram where one can fairly accurately isolate the nature and location of the lesion. That is, if you can remember where and how everything goes.

Brainstem_07-02_smallI never quite knew where the medulla was even located, and now I know more than I probably ever will again about the arrangement of nerves, radiations and nuclear cell bodies in its little bulbous body. This tiny part of the body has nerve fibers that do cardiorespiratory regulation, the trigeminal cranial nerve nucleus, tracts, and radiations for face sensation, ascending dorsal column and spinothalamic sensory tracts for the entire body, descending corticospinal and pyramidal motor tracts for the entire body, and some complicated cranial nerve regulating nucleii that coordinate the eyes and hearing. As you go up fun things show up like the olives, and the solitary nucleus and nucleus ambiguous (both associated with the vagus nerve.) And, the tongue. Problems with the tongue can be from a medullary lesion including slurred speech and not being able to stick your tongue out at someone very effectively, because it points wiggly off to the side the damage has occurred. There is probably more things in this tiny medulla oblongata, but I cant remember them right now.

Starting back into school is also an exercise in letting go. I am fairly certain this is a cerebral condition, and not a brainstem function.  Letting go of free time, of relaxation, of life without an alarm clock. It takes a lot of will power to focus for so many hours at a time. I personally also find myself needing to cut back on alcohol, Netflicks and social time with the advent of academics.  I have been having a lot of conversations about this topic of will power lately, as in, do I have enough, or am I lacking? I have such restricted foods from all of my food sensitivities that I feel like I have pretty good will power overall but maybe, just maybe I could work on a higher level control of some of my more primitive impulses (stay tuned for amydala updates next week.)

untitledBack to the topic of stroke. And willpower. Smoking is a huge risk for stroke, especially intraparenchymal stroke. 45% of people die within the first 30 days of having a stroke. Why? Because the brain is special. And when you put pressure on it, by adding more fluid (blood) into a closed small area (the skull, or calverium as I love calling it) then, the brain tissue simply LIQIUIFIES in an effort to make more room. Disgusting right?! When your brain liquefies, you get signs and symptoms associated with damage in that place – if you hit a small area and just nerves and radiations of nerves, your body can often recover loss of sensation or muscular weakness on one side of your body. When you hit a nerve nucleus, like the facial nerve cell body nuclei, you probably wont recover those functions because the cells themselves are dead.

Apparently I still need to learn more about strokes, especially the ones that can kill you. What I do know, is high blood pressure, diabetes and smoking are huge risk factors for stroke, and those are all related to will power. So, you do have a choice, like I do, about how to live on a day to day basis. I am choosing to decrease my daily alcohol content to improve my studying. What will your choice be?

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