Full transcript:
Chris: Hey, everybody, it's Chris from Results May Vary. Welcome to our 8th episode. We've really enjoyed producing these shows. Tracy and I get a kick out of all of our guests. Each episode has been really fun, but I have to admit the last one, Kyra Bobinet, do yourself a favor, if you haven't listened to that show, check it out. It really blends the best of neuroscience with emotional behavior, and it will explain how your brain works. And if you ever wanted to change your behavior, somebody else's behavior, take a listen to the episode, there's a lot of really interesting bits that I think you'll take from it. On with the show today we have an awesome show in store. We've got Ellen Vora here today, though she's not a household name, yet, I would not be surprised if she is in the very near future. She's got a tremendous gift to give to the world. She's a personal friend. And as you listen to Ellen, you'll pick up on a lot of unique qualities in her philosophy in life, in our profession. She's a psychiatrist that prefers not to prescribe drugs and really looks at the whole picture from sleep, nutrition, relationships, foods, spirituality in order to help people optimize their lives and repair a lot of healing if they're in a really tough state. So look forward to hearing this episode. We can't wait to get your feedback. I look forward to hearing from you. Take care.
Chris: Thanks for joining us on the show, Ellen. To get us going today, would you mind just telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do? And maybe a little bit about what makes you different?
Ellen: Sure and thanks for having me on the program. I'm really excited to be talking with you, guys. I'm a Holistic Psychiatrist and what does that even mean? I constantly struggle to define it. But basically, I'm a conventionally trained psychiatrist, so I went through medical school and residency, and then had a bit of a crisis of, I'm not sure if I'm totally aligned with the way conventional psychiatry is practiced. So I just kept pursuing all of these other interests, ways of approaching health and healing. And here I am today, I do a real hodgepodge of different things, a little bit of acupuncture, some yoga philosophy, breathing exercises, meditation, nutrition, Ayurveda, there's a lot of different influences on how I approach when someone walks into my office and they say I don't feel well. It's depression or anxiety, or insomnia, or maybe ADHD, or bipolar. And I have a big toolbox that hopefully helps me bear witness to what they're going through and think how can I really get them back on track to feeling well.
Chris: One of the things we are really interested in talking to you about today is there are so many things people would like to change about themselves, good or bad. Why is change so hard for us as human species?
Ellen: I think, I'm not sure if after however many years I've been practicing, I have the answer to that. I think that there's tons of fear and uncertainty and just comfort and inertia. And here's the misery I've got. I see a lot of people who come to me after having seen multiple psychiatrists and therapists and doctors, and they haven't gotten better, and that's demoralizing. And they think of me as maybe the last resort like okay, I'm going to try something pretty radical now.
Chris: Are there commonalities or traits that we could share with our audience that says, let's learn from those that are literally in a position where they have to change for their survival, and help those that are looking to change, probably not for their survival, but they would really like to change these things?
Ellen: One thing I've noticed just recently is that we do stay a little bit stuck until something can really shift our perspective. It's an opportunity to completely shift priorities. So I recently experienced a loss. It felt like the only thing that was really real in my life or relationships with people. But I think every once in a while you can leverage the big shifts that come from a real change in our circumstances.
Chris: If I were to hear you correctly there, it's sounding like in a way embracing some of the sufferings is actually a way-through.
Ellen: Sure, well, yeah, we need sadness. It's part of the whole picture when we can't just have joy. I think that embracing some amount of the mess of our lives, the suffering, the sadness, not being afraid of those aspects of the human experience, I think to help round out the overall picture of a meaningful life.
Tracy: How does somebody work through sadness when everybody is so afraid of feeling that feeling?
Ellen: Yeah, a good friend of mine who's an acupuncturist gave a lecture on Chinese medicine, and she gave an image to describe this that really stuck with me. And it's basically that we should strive to be like a bamboo tree swaying in the wind, in this analogy, the wind can come along, and that can be an emotional wave, maybe it's sadness, or suffering or anger. And this tree can sort of sway in that direction and lean towards that and feel that way. But similarly, when something joyful, or some lightness or some reason to laugh comes along, you can just as easily sway back the other direction. I think the more easily you let yourself sway and probably the more easily you let yourself sweat as well, with some caveats.
Chris: Well, Tracy and I started and others can we create environments where we can help people design for themselves as an individual, the right person to help themselves?
Ellen: I think we can be, but many of us are not. I think that there are a lot of factors and influences in designing our lives. For us, there's corporate interest. There's this sort of as you go through a grocery store, even you know, the products being sold to you at eye level, that's something that's designing your life. That's not you, but it does influence our choices. Where we work has a lot of influence on how it designs our life, you work these many days, these particular hours, this kind of environment, open workspace in an office, what have you, it's rare that those greater forces really, truly have our best interests in mind. But it does take a lot of conscious effort to design your life against that tied to having really good buddies that are good at pushing you to constantly be questioning and reframing. What is it that you really want? That's a great way to design your life, have a team.
Chris: You succeeded in this pioneering role, and you're still on it, which is really interesting to watch it grow and evolve. What is it that you're doing that's making this work?
Ellen: Yeah, I think misery mostly, it's really convenient to be someone who shouldn't have gone to med school, go to med school, I was forced into reaching a tipping point pretty early on in my medical career, whereas a lot of my classmates were happy enough that they kept going with the flow. But I was the whole time and sort of this existential crisis. So I was just kind of going through the process of med school and the whole time feeling not aligned with the approach to health and healing. I had to kind of make a call pretty early on, am I going to drop out and do something different? Or am I going to somehow make this work for me, and the way I made it work for me was to just with all of my free time and elective time, I pursued the things that did feel in alignment. So that's what I started doing things like yoga, teacher trading, and acupuncture, trading, integrative and functional medicine training, so that at least I was spending at least some portion of the day doing something I believed in, I was passionate about. I had no idea how this would all come together if it would at all, but I had to do it kind of for survival.
Tracy: How did you steel yourself against the influences of your classmates? And I'm assuming also, the faculty that you're interacting with sort of being this lone wolf?
Ellen: Well, I'm not sure it went that smoothly. I think my friends in med school, I didn't really feel philosophically at odds. We were all struggling. It was you know, it was hard for everybody. Whether you philosophically agreed with it or not. There was camaraderie in the trenches. How do you get people started? Can we curse on the podcast? One of my favorite things to talk about with patients is a shitty first draft, the idea of getting something down, we hold ourselves to such high standards, that it's crippling. So I really encourage people to get a shitty first draft down, because it's so much easier to edit your shitty first draft and to start from scratch. And it's so much easier to get anything down on the paper. If you've taken all the pressure off of it has to be good, or it has to be right. When people kind of have their crisis like, Okay, I'm a lawyer and I don't want to be then someone says, Well, what are you going to do? And there's all this fear that rushes in. There's disappointing your parents, there are financial obligations, there's the sunk cost of I've done law school and I've paid my dues at this corporate law firm. And people think, well, if I'm going to leave this, it's going to be for my passion. But I think it's a lot of pressure to say, well, what's your passion and to figure that out? It's so rarely clear. It's more about figuring out where your flow states where you feel a bit challenged by the activity, but you feel good at it, you're able to meet that challenge, and time falls away a bit. People also benefit from defining what kind of work environment they thrive in. Some people want to work in a really social environment. Some people don't want to have interactions when they're at work. And some people want to work from home or have a flexible work schedule, some people really thrive with structure. So defining that is important as well as I think that just getting into a flow state, and having a positive micro work environment, that's enough. I don't think you have to figure out that you're a cartoonist at heart, those two things are enough to have meaningful work.
Chris: A lot of people, ourselves included, are trying to do something that for the most part, they just suck at it. But they're just really curious about it. The idea of being in a flow state in something that's so foreign and brand new, will they find that flow state that early? And if not, how do you guide them through that?
Ellen: Yeah, I don't think that's an easy answer. You can't go looking for your flow states, you kind of have to know what some are. And they might be few and far between, and they might not seem to be all that professionally applicable. But just keep spending time on those things. And just vaguely in the back of your mind be scanning for parallels of how that might apply itself in a professional capacity. I mean, for me, if someone had asked me, what's your flow state when I was trying to figure out what to drop out of med school or not, I would have said, Well, I only really get into a flow state when I'm playing Dance Dance Revolution and so I should probably become a Beyonce backup dancer. That was kind of my going hypothesis for a while. I don't know what I wanted to do.
Chris: By the way, Tracy Ellen is a phenomenal dancer that needs to be added to the record here.
Ellen: Everybody manages expectations, particularly any patients. But that is something I love to do and I could not see how that translates. At the end of the day, it didn't translate. I'm not actually dancing for Beyonce, although I hear that this podcast is a global phenomenon. So Beyonce, if you're listening, I'm available. I'll drop everything I'm doing. I will do that in a second.
Tracy: But I will, it will be sure to put the video of your dancing routine on the blog so people can see and get it to Beyonce.
Ellen: Okay, perfect. Yeah.
Chris: How do you describe your relationship to the patient? Are you a coach for them? Are you their inner voice that's most powerful? Like, what role do you play in that interaction?
Ellen: Yeah, I think it's really different patient to patient and even week to week within a given patient. And I find it's really evolving over time, especially as I grow and mature in my own life. So I was a health coach, and I had this medical training. So I could have an eye towards whether we need to start this medication, is it dangerous for you to take this on, is this actually Hashimoto's, like a thyroid condition, it was a lot of health coaching. And I think that's actually really shifted, where I'm at right now, and will probably continue to shift. But where I'm at right now is that I think, a major part of what people need is to be witnessed, and to be heard and understood. So it's a lot of empathy and kind of holding space for someone to give their narrative. And so I don't know what that is, it's definitely not a coach. I think it's basically someone trusts you, and then you're giving them that generous gift. That's a really therapeutic thing for someone to go through. But it does require a kind of belief in you as a worthy person to be holding space for them to earn that.
Tracy: Yeah, I'm just and this really resonates with me right now. Because I have a loved one who's going through a deep depression. And so I'm really at a point where I don't think that they know how to begin, they're so far into the depression that any step seems herculean. And so to even get to you, or to consider you in the first place, how does somebody take those first few steps when they feel completely hopeless?
Ellen: Yeah, so that's often the million-dollar question with depression because it's sort of this catch 22 of an illness where what you need to do to get better requires this energy and motivation and effort. That's by definition, what you don't have because you're this depressed. So I use a lot of different tricks. It's really a lot of different tricks. The different trick works with every person. But I think some people actually need to feel that there is a reason for hope. And I think there's so much reason for the hope I have like a real bee in my bonnet for the way mental health is practiced. And I think that we're not leaving people with a lot of hope. Right now the party line is depression is genetic. It's a chemical imbalance. If your mom had depression and you have depression, you're always going to be depressed, but we can medicate it with this treatment. And we're sort of talking about depression as a serotonin imbalance, basically a Zoloft Deficiency Disorder. And I don't believe it's a Zoloft Deficiency Disorder. And so I think when someone feels hopeless, they basically feel like they've already exhausted that treatment. hasn't worked for, you know, their relatives, haven't worked for them. So they think why should I believe this doctor, feel hopeful, and that doesn't make it any easier to get out of bed to go see somebody and get started. So I'd like to correct that. I think where we're at right now, it's a really exciting time, we have a more evidence-based hypothesis for depression, then the serotonin model, which was never really all that evidence-based. And so it's really the inflammatory model or the cytokine hypothesis of depression. And it has to do with the fact that when we're inflamed, the brain manifests. That is feeling depressed. For some people. For other people, it manifests in different ways: ADHD, or anxiety, or maybe bipolar. But depression is a really common manifestation of depression. And it makes sense, this is called sickness behavior. So if you have the flu, your brain, it's adaptive for you to feel like you want to stay in bed all day like you want to socially isolate because then you don't go get everybody else sick, you're not interested in sex, that wouldn't be the right time to reproduce, it's a time to rest and heal, you don't feel a lot of motivation, it'll affect appetite choices, it's kind of everything that we know to be depression is really consistent with here's how the brain experiences and manifests being sick, virus or bacterial infection. And that was our evolutionary model. So it made sense to go and rest, and then you got better. So these days, the trouble is, it's not really an infectious disease, that's our number one culprit of inflammation. These days, it's kind of this very rare, weird illness that hits us, which is the mismatch between our genes and our environment. So we're all being inflamed all the time. But it's not really from catching a bug that our immune system knows how to fight off. It's from catching a Doritos for a snack, or bad air quality or bad water quality or chronic stress or chronic sleep deprivation, or that we've taken antibiotics, or we've been born by C section. And so our gut flora is compromised. And these are at the heart of a lot of inflammation these days. So when you get sick like that, and then you feel depressed. And that's the adaptive response so that we stay home and rest and get better. Your immune system is trying to fight this off. And the immune system does not know how to fight off Dorito-fueled inflammation, so it doesn't work. And the immune system keeps trying and trying kind of goes rogue, maybe this relates to why there's such an epidemic of autoimmune illness. But basically, we don't successfully get better, and then bounce back a few days later, we're just in this self-perpetuating cycle of inflammation. And so I think that correcting that in people's mindsets and sort of giving them validation, of course, you don't want to get out of bed, you effectively have the flu, this is not a moral failing. This is not because you're lazy. You know, this is your body inflamed, and it makes sense for you to respond this way. But we have to outsmart the system a bit to address the inflammation because our system is used to fighting infectious disease. That's the source of inflammation. These days, it's different. It's Doritos. So we need to support the body and fight off modern-day inflammation.
Tracy: I find that completely fascinating. I brought up a question to me of in third world countries or places that don't have access to clean drinking water, there's a lot of air pollution. Are there high rates of depression there as well, because I almost feel like depression is a first world problem, right?
Ellen: Yeah so it's, it's something that I don't have the statistics in my pocket by any means. I don't know if I have the authority to speak to the question. But there's pluses and minuses to both situations. In a third world country, maybe some of the quote advantages are that people do have more diverse gut flora, they're less likely to be born by C section and have had multiple courses of antibiotics in childhood, or even to have antibiotics and their food supply or the residue and their water, drinking water. However, I'm not inclined to say that everyone's happy and okay, and they're not experiencing this as we have been gut flora deprived, privileged, first-world person. I think that there are other things that matter to mental health beyond physical health. And I think, for example, you're more likely to have experienced losing a child if you live in a developing country. That's a factor in happiness, that it's pretty universal, for the most part, that's going to make people less happy. And so we can't just say, okay, so like, you don't have clean drinking water. You have old friends, you have the old bacteria and the parasites in your gut, and you're good to go. Because then there are real harsh realities of daily life that can still impact our overall mood.
Chris: Hey, Ellen, this is fascinating. I think, looking at the flip side of this, what's your definition of a healthy life?
Ellen: One of my biggest influences in how I think about health and really everything is a guy named Chris Kesser, who's based in Berkeley, California, and he's a functional medicine practitioner and I'm gonna roughly quote him, but he basically says, health is the ability to lead your version of a fulfilling life. So physical health kind of optimized physical health can be one part of that. Because if you're not physically healthy, that can get in the way of your ability to lead a fulfilling life. However, once you get into my world, and people start to really, really optimize their physical health, and they start to be what's called like Orthorexic and kind of obsessive about eating everything, right, you get diminishing returns or even you kind of get over to the other side. And it becomes counterproductive in terms of leading or fulfilling life. So if you start to turn down an invitation to a homemade dinner at your friend's house, where all these people that you love are going to be sitting around and drinking wine and talking into the wee hours of the night. If you're like me, and you find that enjoyable, and you turn that down, because you don't eat gluten, dairy, corn grain, whatever, then you've missed the big picture, I really agree with that idea that you have to kind of define for yourself, what's your fulfilling life, and then do the very hard work of constantly making conscious intentional choices about does that mean? I should eat this brownie sundae right now or not. And I think it's often a tough call, there are physical health and the overall way of enjoying your life and sharing experiences with the people you love. They are sometimes at odds, so you have to kind of make those decisions case by case.
Chris: Interesting. So it seems that from our observation, and I think yours, too, that those that are living that definition of a healthy life are kind of rare. So what are they doing that is different from the rest of us or the rest of America?
Ellen: And you mean the people that are leading a healthy life?
Chris: Yeah, that's balanced, mentally there and, you know, just really fulfilled and, you know, devoid of suffering, what characteristics set people up to live in that optimized healthy way?
Ellen: Yeah, I think it takes a lot of luck and a lot of conscious choices. And some of the things that are lucky are how well you were parented. That matters, not like you needed to be perfectly parented, it needed to be good enough. And then I think when people put relationships first, people first and their other-oriented, and that's that priority, it becomes second nature to make those intentional choices that create happiness, and fulfillment. And that can look like so many different things, especially on the scale, you can put people first and it can really just be your nuclear family. Or you can put people first and you can have a ton of friends. I think they're both versions of that. But I think that's something that sort of creates a cascade of other choices that create happiness. If you're not prioritizing people, I think you're more likely to prioritize prestige or money or working longer hours, or having a bigger house and a longer commute or really just shopping more and buying more crap, I think there are all these ways that it'll just sort of subtly push you towards the choices that we're being very steered towards. But we know it doesn't really create happiness.
Chris: So good. I'm just absorbing what you're saying, it's so spot on.
Tracy: I liked what you were saying about being other-focused because I was thinking, another thing that you could do is try and amass a lot of friends around and have really shallow relationships with them, or have more selfish relationships that are just trying to feed your loneliness. So the aspect of being other-focused and generous with those people, really creating deep meaningful connections with them. That's more of the path you want to go in. But I could see how you could bastardize it just how you're talking about with food, and gluten and corn and all of those things.
Ellen: Yeah, and I think even other-oriented, there's nothing you can lean completely into the more the better. It is good to kind of know your own limits and your energetic limits. I think being other-oriented is a beautiful way to go through life until you start being so other-oriented, that you've compromised your energy. And it's not really sustainable, we have to be other-oriented in a sustainable way or else. There's nothing other-oriented or self-oriented about it, if we burn the system out, so sort of being sustainably other-oriented is really important and hard to figure out that balance. And then, of course, all of these things like the scarcest resource at the foundation of it is our time and our energy. Those are just scarce things other than money in modern life.
Tracy: I feel like there's almost a pride in going beyond what is physiologically possible to your superiority as an individual And in the Bay, with Silicon Valley, how do you help people manage that and sort of creating barriers or boundaries for themselves such a good point.
Ellen: I love how gentle you are with saying there's almost pride with it. Yeah, people really pride themselves on it, they drive on it, they think they're thriving on it. It's that feeling that kind of hypomanic feeling of thriving on it. if I know that someone is so conditioned to think that productivity is the only thing that matters, and that rest is valueless, it's a waste of time. It's a weakness. Then I talk about burnout. And I talk about the fact that rest is the new productivity, that getting enough sleep makes you more efficient during the day, or that meditating actually makes you more creative, more productive. But if you think about it, all of these things are framing rest only in the name of let's get back to productivity. It's not what I truly deeply believe I actually think that we are human beings and not just human doings. And so the more that someone can actually embrace the idea that rest has value and has merit in and of itself, even if it's not creating more productivity, that just being sitting without any technology without any distraction without any productivity is a very worthwhile endeavor. So if someone's ready to go there, we'll talk about the merits again. And if they're not, I'll say you need yen to get more young, just to kind of trick them nice.
Chris: Ellen, I'm so sensitive to privacy and I know you handle this really well. So maybe I'll just ask the question, and you can tell me if it won't work. But is it possible to anonymize a story for us that shares someone going from crisis to thriving in this way, you just define a healthy life?
Ellen: Yeah, I think that it fits in a few categories. And it is hard to know what vertex of the triangle somebody needs the most. And I'll have some people that think that the problem is that that triangle is mind body spirit. So there are people who think it's my psychological patterns, or it's my history of trauma, or it's not feeling aligned with my job. And that's why I'm unhappy. And in fact, sometimes those are the people that have a really inflamed gut, and they're just really systemically inflamed. And that's actually the 80% of why they're not feeling good. So sometimes just getting someone to feel their gut, clean up their diet, get off of the things they don't tolerate, and get a little bit more sleep, and then they're not unhappy. And we didn't really have to go through the whole jungle of psychological patterns and trauma and all that it's important. And it's such a beautiful thing to kind of work through that in a therapeutic setting. But it's not always necessary to get someone back on their feet and feeling well. So sometimes it's really that it's just focusing on physical health. And then I'll see a lot of patients where either they're already maxed out on the physical health stuff, and they're doing everything "right" and they're still not feeling well. And then that's harder, I think, and it's really a careful listening to where they are stuck? Why are they not in balance, not in alignment, it is really hard. But I think I'm learning that a lot of times people need to just feel really heard and understood and talk. And I think as doctors, we really want to feel like we're doing something and we're offering a service or providing something. I think it comes from a fear that we otherwise would be impotent or useless, and someone would stop seeing us. But I think that there is a service and just holding space for that, or encouraging along that conversation. Because a lot of us don't feel like we have the right to tell our story in that way. Nobody wants to listen. So oftentimes, you know, even if it's these patients that I've kind of been coaching, and we've been saying, okay, gluten-free, did you have gluten? Oh, well, that's the reason you're still not feeling well. And sometimes it really, it's hard for me, but really important to kind of just completely scrapped the physical health peace and say, wait a second, you know, where you feel like in your life, like, you don't have a voice or you're you know, you have a boss that has really wack energy, and you're in that energy all day long every day. And it's starting to kind of seep into you. Or, you know, what's breaking your heart in your life right now or how's your community, or how are your relationships? Or are you actually just really kind of urban-fried, and there are just technology and artificial light all day long, and you're not feeling recharged? I have a patient right now who we've been coaching and I think that I missed a cue or two, like for a year probably where he was doing everything perfectly. And I think that I was barking up the wrong tree with that. And what we really need to do is figure out why is he not in alignment? And I think in his case, it's sort of a chronic stress situation.
Chris: Why do you think if eating well and avoiding stimulants I could see where that's a downward spiral, I don't feel well therefore I can grab a stimulant and some sugar and feel a little bit better. Why is it that people get into so much trouble there? if these are the very things that make us feel great and thrive?
Ellen: If I understand it, right, like a cup of coffee makes us feel good. So why isn't it just a good thing?
Chris: There's that I think it's all of it, right? Like if you start to extract the physical bodies, that it's very common to not eat or act in the way that you're describing from a physical self standpoint. So if we take those things out and feel great, why is it that people are naturally drawn to them as a default, right versus eating in the way that you're describing as a natural form? Because we know it makes us feel better? I'm curious why they get stuck in that loop then?
Ellen: I love that question. Yeah, so I think that a lot of places around the world actually do have a food culture with wisdom kind of handed down generation to generation, where there was a bit of an understanding of, maybe it's not fun, but you gotta eat this way to feel good. If you think about and like one of the Blue Zones and Okinawa, they have an appreciation of you got to kind of eat to forget what they said, like 80%, full, and maybe sometimes even they want to eat more, but they have been passed down this wisdom of this is what you got to do to feel good. The United States for all of its lovely qualities, we don't have a food culture with wisdom that's been passed down. And that's part of what's great about us, we're a melting pot, everyone seemed to kind of start fresh here, you know, not everyone we've been overlooking, who was here to begin with, we've kind of defaulted our food culture, it's been bought, it's basically been bought by big food and big agriculture. And that's who's handing down our food wisdom now. And it's not food wisdom, with our best interests in mind. It's with the corporate shareholder's best interests in mind. And so what's happened is they're really smart, they have great, brilliant scientists, and they figured out what humans can get addicted to with food. And so I think that many different choices along the way have created a mainstream food culture. That's kind of a collision course of various addictive foods, things like gluten and dairy, which can have an opiate effect in the brain, things like sugar, which people equate to cocaine. And I've also heard interesting stories, that is really not an accurate presentation of the way it behaves like a drug but we'll kind of say that it's good enough for this discussion. And then I think that for some people, some of the food additives, like MSG can have an addictive quality. So, I think that it trumps our body's wisdom. And so if your body's thinking, on any given day, oh, you know, what I really need are some omega 3s and some iron, and I need, you know, fully, maybe we'd be drawn to eating a piece of salmon or chicken liver pate, or some, like stewed beef, but what's happening instead is we're walking through the day, and we're seeing, it's kind of like, we're crack addicts, and we're seeing our dealer on every corner or dealer saying, Do you want this muffin? Do you want this pizza? Do you want this Chinese food? And we're kind of like, Well, okay, you know, and maybe somewhere buried in there was our body's wisdom, saying, like, I need a little bit of iron. But instead, we're just distracted by our drug dealer that's saying, come get ahead of what you're really craving. And once you're on the roller coaster of any kind of addictive relationship to food, it's its own self-perpetuating system, because we'll be crashing. And then really the best antidote for opiate withdrawal is an opiate. So, pizza begets pizza. So I think that that's part of what kind of steers us in that way, even though it's not what's best for us. I think that's for some people, not for everyone, certainly, but for some people who really struggle with food addiction, I like to get them abstinent from the addictive foods for a period of time. So they've really healed their relationship to those foods. And they start to hear their own body's wisdom, their own intuitive appetites, you know, I'm hungry, I'm full, those voices start to reemerge. And then they can make choices kind of with more freedom, and start to listen to what their body really needs. Not everybody needs it to be that extreme. But some people actually do think it's kind of like with alcohol, you can't really have just one glass, and you can't really just have like one bite of pizza sometimes.
Tracy: No, you definitely can't just have one. I mean, what's so unfortunate about that, and you're referencing the big food and big agriculture is that while you're trying to be abstinent, you have your drug dealer in your face all day, every day. It's just so hard to find the chicken liver pate or the fresh salmon when you're living this busy lifestyle of productivity and pride of not sleeping, you're running through airports or sitting through conference meetings where you're not even in charge of what food is being served to you.
Ellen: Yeah, airports. There's no real food. There are only drug dealers.
Tracy: Good luck.
Chris: Just a totally, totally different tact here, different category question altogether. But what do you most commonly ask at a dinner party, when someone figures out what you do for a living?
Ellen: And I'll say, for the most part, I love this aspect of what I do. I think that the commonality is not what I'm asked, but that I'm asked something so as soon as it becomes apparent that I'm a psychiatrist, somebody will at some point that night, pull me aside and tell me their life story or tell me what's going on in their family. And I have to say, for the most part, I do not resent this. I love what I do. And I consider it a privilege to have that role in people's lives. So I am a bit of a living room psychiatrist to a lot of my friends and that's like a huge violation in terms of how you really practice mental health. And I don't actually think of it as being someone's psychiatrist, but in the world of what I do, and the holistic nature of what I do, you can actually do a lot of work without messing up with the boundaries with people. So I think every time, I love it, but it's everywhere I go, this is something that's wonderful about psychiatry. You know, if this were nephrology, I guess, one in five dinner parties, someone would be like, I have like a second cousin once removed on dialysis, and psychiatry, mental health, it affects everybody. Even if someone doesn't feel like they've met a DSM diagnosis, this is about the human experience. So we've really all can identify with a lot of the mental health, even if someone doesn't go full, true blue depression, anxiety, bipolar, a lot of us have at least dabbled in what it feels like to be down or to feel a little panicked about something. So this affects everybody. And I love that aspect of it, it feels very, very relevant. And I like being able to have that unique relationship with my friends, where I have my regular relationship that's public and out in the open, and we're all hanging out, and then I'll get pulled to the side by somebody. And I can really, sometimes play a pretty profound role in someone's life. And it's a total honor.
Chris: You've got a gift. I know, Tracy probably has more questions as well. I just want to make sure we have a moment here. Are there books or references that you recommend to people? Or can we send them to your website, just for all our listeners that have been very intrigued by the conversation, including Tracy and me? Where can we send them?
Ellen: Sure. So there's a growing number of Ellen's and the exciting thing is, is that med students, so not my colleagues, not people that are kind of like more mid-career like I am, but the younger generation, there's a tidal wave of interest in this. So it's coming. I mentor so many different med students and residents, they're interested. So we all have to be a little bit patient. Basically, my book recommendation list is very long and growing, but some of the ones that I'll often recommend, in the realm of mind and spirit, I really love to direct people towards Jon Kabat Zinn to read books like Full Catastrophe Living or wherever you go, there you are. I love for people to pick up Thích Nhất Hạnh that Peace is Every Step and then in the realm of physical health, my bible is Chris Kresser. His book, The Paleo Cure, used to be published under the name, Your Personal Paleo Code. And I like the New Health Rules by Frank Lipman. I like the Autoimmune Solution by Amy Myers. And then there's just so many good books like this website. And so I work at a place called the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center, which has a great philosophy on health, and that's on the website. And then I have a little dormant, very unimpressive website that I maintain just as kind of a place to keep my handouts and resources that's called Meridian Psychiatry. Meridian like the acupuncture term. And then there are people around the country doing this in New York City. There's a psychiatrist named Kelly Brogan who has a practice very similar to mine. In the Bay Area, there's a woman named Kat Toups, who I believe is a functional psychiatrist. And then every time I kind of go to these networking events, I meet more and more kindred spirits. So it's a growing movement.
Tracy: Is there anyone that you know, in Ohio?
Ellen: Let me get back to you on that. I actually did have a patient who had a consultation with a functional medicine doctor in Ohio, to where in Ohio, I can't remember what the name of the doctor was, I can't remember but it's findable. So yes, I think in a way, rather you go right now there's somebody some crazy rebel doc, practicing this root cause resolution approach to health as opposed to the conventional approach, which is more like symptom suppression. It just makes so much sense. And so I think that more and more people are kind of seeing the light and you know it when you're in the presence of a functional doc, like the ones who are really willing to spend more time to ask more questions about your whole story, and really take the whole holistic picture into account and want to figure out not just like, okay, you're having heartburn, we'll take this into acid, but the ones who want to say like, well, why are you having heartburn? There are only a few possible reasons and let's figure out which one it is and why is that happening? The kind of doctors who keep asking why. I think that's for me, that's my compass when I want to entrust my health with somebody I want them to really be getting at the why question.
Chris: Are virtual visits effective and is that a growing trend as well?
Ellen: That's a great question. I think that it fits squarely in the better-than-nothing can. But certainly like what I do practicing mental health and well, acupuncture are really still in their infancy.
Chris: Don't be a test driver.
Ellen: 3D computer robot practitioner. It probably will, like hold up to, you know, like those studies real acupuncture, sham acupuncture, robot acupuncture, getting needles in you, it can be beneficial no matter what. But better to do that with a really skilled practitioner who cares about you in the room. With mental health, I think there, it's definitely better than nothing, especially if you're in an area where you don't have access to somebody who's really good, that you really trust. But I must say, the way I like to practice ideally is very much being in the room with somebody, I think there's a lot of energetic stuff that's going on between me and the patients. And that there's something kind of physical or it's, it's in the air, it's happening physically in the room with somebody, so I need to see them. But it's more even than just seeing them on screen. I need to really feel what it feels like to be in the room with them to know how to help them best.
Tracy: You are so wise and lovely. And I'm so glad that you had the courage to pursue what was really deep inside of your heart instead of just going the default path.
Ellen: Thanks, Tracy. Like I said, it came from being the wrong person in med school and just trying to figure out what I enjoy doing. And it's really an honor to be proud of this podcast, which I listened to. And I love and I think it is becoming a global phenomenon. So these are really thought-provoking questions. And I think we all need to be intentionally designing our life. So thanks for including me in this conversation.
Chris: Thanks, this has been amazing. Appreciate it. This goes without words, this has been such an impressive conversation, and thanks for everything that you're doing.
Tracy: So Ellen, I just thought was so wise. And what I loved about her story is that she could have completely said, this isn't for me and stopped doing what she's doing and did something else. But she actually went through it with this different point of view about how psychiatry and medicine, in general, could work for people. And I think so many people think I'm not in the right profession, and they leave when that rabble-rousing perspective that's a little bit of a troublemaker, could make such a difference in organizations, industries that are more traditional. So I'm so grateful to her for sticking with it. But doing it differently.
Chris: One of the things I've loved is that she doesn't lock away. I think people in that profession find things that do work well. And then they keep going back to that portfolio of things that they've seen work. And Elon has such an amazing way of finding the appropriate tool for the specific challenge. The term holistic is being hijacked. So I'm not going to even use that one. But sort of all-encompassing is, as she talked about, from gut health to it could be social, it could be something totally unrelated to what you think the problem is, and just getting up the root of it. The one thing that keeps playing in my mind is this. I can't get the image out of the sort of crack dealers on every corner mindset. It's just so true, it causes a lot of problems. It's just interesting that ultimately, I think one of the takeaways for me is if you're not taking control, and sort of designing the life that you want to live, then it's all being done for you, whether you like it or not, that's what I really like about what she's saying is you're either going to do this, or you're just gonna fall by the wayside and have somebody else design it for you. Which is I don't think what anybody wants.
Tracy: You're right. It's like the food industry, we've worked in that space. It's like, they spend millions, billions of dollars to design the exact outcomes that they want. And I know a lot of times people say, oh, well, it's your fault for eating the Doritos. It's your fault for drinking that coke or, you know, engaging in the bad habits that are being designed for you to take advantage of your natural human proclivities. And it does make it difficult. So recognizing the role that big food plays in our life, I think, goes a really long way to helping people understand how to take control of their own lives.
Chris: Right, and it's even bigger than that. If you think about the way, you know, most of us have to work for a living. And those structures are designed the way that we work the way that we're marketed to, all the systems are, for the most part in place. And they are questioned often but they aren't always questioned for us as individuals. It's like what's the right thing? For me? What's the right set of condition? And I think what we've seen is that it's a harder thing to do to step back and really be thoughtful and take an approach that is the right one for you. But Wow, is it worth it, as we've heard through several of our guests, including Elon, when you start to see that there is a new and unique way through that sort of, you know, uniquely your own by your own design.
Tracy: I mean, we talked about this offline, but designing work and thinking about all of the different ways that people prefer to work. And I thought it was interesting that we just had a discussion about whether you really like to wake up early in the morning, and you go to bed at 9:30 at night, and I'm up until 1:30. And I sleep until nine in the morning. But work doesn't allow for that work if you're in a traditional workplace as you wake up and come to work by 8 am or 9 am, whatever it is. And we all habituate ourselves to do that, but what we're seeing is that so many people are fleeing the traditional model of work, and trying to create systems that work for themselves as individuals, it'll be interesting to see where that goes in the future, as more and more people recognize that they have agency in how they design their lives, and how they design their work lives.
Chris: Right? That speaks to another one of Ellen's great points, which is there were some very simple takeaways, I think the whole conversation is so in-depth and so inspiring on so many levels. And then there's just these really simple takeaways. And I think one of them for me was to always choose the social default if you can do something that involves other people taking that path do that, and the social nature of who we are as human beings. And even those of us that are more introverted or extroverted just to choose the social path can be the most rewarding path. And I think that's a nice takeaway, at least for me from the whole interview is always find yourself in doing things with other people. And ultimately, it'll be more rewarding.
Tracy: Yeah, I think throughout the time, we've been doing these interviews, the idea of community the importance of interacting with others. And you're right, even as an introvert, I mean, there are times when connecting with others can be nourishing to you. But I found that that sense of community just permeates every conversation that we've been having. I also, I mean, the work that she's doing is so important. And you know, it makes me kind of sad that we don't have better access to minds like a curse. There are so many people suffering needlessly, who don't even realize that this other way of looking at health and mental health, in particular, is available, and their drugs have been touted as great saviors. And they have been in and that's wonderful. But it's not the only solution. And I hope that as time goes on that more people like Ellen like she was saying, there are more young people getting into the profession who are looking at it from a different perspective. And she was asking us to have patience. And I mean, I wish we didn't have to have patience, I wish that we could have more people who are current practitioners, open their minds to the potential of some of the work that she's doing.
Chris: Absolutely. And as some of our audience knows, my role in healthcare, I've seen quite a bit of this. And I find that inherently in so many other providers, this is what they want. And very few of them have had the ambition, the charge to go into this kind of unknown spaces. Not many people have heard of a psychiatrist that prefers not to prescribe drugs and second sick. That's not how it works. And so just the confidence to address the fear around a construct that doesn't naturally exist is what Ellen's gift has been. But I find that for many of the providers, that is what they want, that ultimately they know there's a deeper truth to the treatment. And it just the constructs don't exist to bring them in and to make that in a path that's more default path than a pioneering path. And so I do look forward to the day but I totally agree with your point. It seems like Ellen should be the first point of contact rather than someone that's kind of hard to access just by the fact that there aren't very many.
Tracy: Yeah, I know, I was even I mean, selfishly, I was like, can you move to San Francisco? Why are you in New York?
Chris: Exactly. We've had so many great people on our show. I do have to say this is one of the most inspiring conversations we've had. And it just made me so proud of the work of the podcast and the great work of folks like Ellen and the opportunity that we have to talk to people like Ellen.
Tracy: Well, thank you so much for bringing her to us. I know that you guys have a great friendship for the work that you'd been doing. I'm just so grateful to have her voice on the show and I hope that it helps many other people. All of our listeners who are dealing with some of the issues that she is an expert in. Alright, that's a wrap. Thanks so much for listening. Our dream is to build a community of people who can create and take advantage of any opportunity that interests them. To do this really well, your participation is key. If you want to try out and share back your own life design experiments, or if you've already got a great story of how you design your life, we'd love to hear from you on our Facebook page, Twitter, or at resultsmayvarypodcast.com. Our website is also where you'll find show notes and links to all the things we mentioned in the episode. And if you would be so kind, subscribe to the show and rate us and write a review on iTunes or Stitcher that'll let even more people start designing their lives. Special thanks to composer and filmmaker H.P. Mendoza for the Results May Vary theme music, graphic designer Annessa Braymer for logo and David Glazier for audio mixing, and of course, thank you so much for listening to Results May Vary.