You are what you eat. It’s so true and now Tulsa Spine and Rehab has added a new dimension to its integrated care that takes you down that path. We’re joined by Dr. Sean O’Reilly. Hi, Sean.
I am doing well, and we’re joined by Lisa Bracken, the newest member of the Tulsa Spine and Rehab team. Hello, Lisa.
Hi, Charlie. It’s great to be here.
Great. Now Sean, explained to me how Lisa came to be on the team and what she brings to the team.
Integrated care here at the clinic. We continue to talk about that comprehensive care, adding providers, adding technology. We’re trying to provide that comprehensive approach to the patient.
Nutrition has been one of those things where I think has been a bit of a void for us in the past. We haven’t had the right provider or person in that role. Patients are always asking about nutrition, diet, different things of that nature and I just really didn’t come across the right person, and like most providers here, it needs to be the right fit. They need to fit in with the team, but also kind of buy into what we’re trying to do. And through Derek Jones, one of our clinical massage therapists, he engaged me related to Lisa. I was very excited. He made an introduction and I think within three or four weeks we brought her on board. So I’ve been really, really excited about the addition of Lisa this past year.
Now, Lisa, you bring Ayurveda medicine to Tulsa Spine and Rehab. Let’s, first of all, let’s break that down and explain what is that.
What is Ayurveda?
Sure. So Ayurvedic medicine is, it’s a holistic medicine or you might want to refer to it as a multidimensional approach to whole body wellness. Ayurvedic medicine looks at the entire individual that’s in front of me. So I’m going to assess body, mind, and spirit all as one rather than breaking out components and having more of a fractured or fragmented approach to a whole body care.
Ayurvedic medicine takes it all on board at once simultaneously. Ayurveda uses food first and foremost. We believe that food is the mother of all medicine. So that’s always the first line of defense or maybe offense if need be. So nutrition is vitally important to us and Ayurveda’s not necessarily putting much emphasis on carbs, fats, and proteins. Now, does that play a role? Sure. In a lot of instances it does, nor do we put a lot of emphasis on counting calories. There’s a time and a place for that.
But overall Ayurvedic medicine is primarily concerned with taste, taste of food. So we’re looking at the six tastes on the tongue and we’re looking at the six tastes of food and those are bitter, pungent, astringent, sweet, salty and sour. And what excites me so much right now is that there’s a new field of nutritional psychology it’s called, that’s really beginning to gain some traction here in the West.
And nutritional psychology looks at how food makes us feel. And a lot of the research is now being surrounded around food and dementia. And this is Ayurveda one 101. Food has a physiological effect on the human body, has a physiological effect on the human brain, has a physiological effect on human emotions. So I’m really excited that Western medicine is validating, maybe catching on, you might say to something that is four or 5,000 years old, but at the very least it’s incredibly validating for those of us that are in complimentary and alternative medicines.
It makes perfect sense. If you put bad gasoline in your car, it’s not going to run well. And if you put bad food in your body, you’re going to have all kinds of effects coming back off that.
Yep. You just nailed it.
So tell me what I can expect when I come to visit you.
What does an Ayurveda consultation look like?
So an initial consultation with me lasts about 90 minutes, 75 to 90 minutes. And as I said earlier, it’s a whole body approach. So our questions are, the conversation we’re going to have will definitely revolve around what’s on your plate. Not only what you’re eating, but how you’re eating.
So are you the proverbial dashboard diner where you’re eating in the car or do you eat at the table? Do you actually eat on china? Do you eat without the TV on those sorts of things.? So we look at food, we look at daily routine and ritual. What is your exercise regimen look like? Oh, we’re going to look at your medical history as well as your family history and then Ayurveda is also going to dive into some emotional and mental patterns such as how do you respond to stress? What’s your approach to decisions? What’s your approach to projects? All of these questions actually give us some indication of the individual’s constitution.
Another couple of things that an individual can expect in their consultation with me is I’ll take their pulse from both a Western perspective as well as an Ayurvedic perspective and lots of fun is I’m going to look at your tongue and do a tongue analysis and that’s always a good time.
What do you expect to find when you look at a tongue?
What can your tongue tell you?
Well, the tongue gives us a great indication of what’s happening in the gut. The tongue, a couple of things that I would suggest to our listeners is when they wake up in the morning before they do anything, before they have their first sip of coffee or brush their teeth, look in a mirror, stick out your tongue and see if there’s not a coating on your tongue. That’s totally normal to have a coating on the tongue. But what I’m interested in is, A, what color is it? It might be white, it might be kind of yellowish, it might be, it may be brown and, B, how thick is it on a scale of one to three? So three is, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got shag carpet in my mouth.”
And so, but these are indicative of, not to get too far down the rabbit hole, but these two factors tell me if there’s toxicity buildup in the body.
After this first initial meeting with you that you say run 75 to 90 minutes. Are all meetings with you going to be a marathon like that or are future consultations shorter?
No. All other follow up visits will last approximately 50 minutes and the followup visits are designed really to allow me to monitor any changes. Say if the individual I’m seeing is on pharmaceuticals and we also want to explore some herbal remedies. I have the opportunity then to have a closer monitoring ability as to how their body’s responding to what I’m giving them so I can make fast changes if need be.
The followup visits also give us an opportunity to celebrate successes as well as identify challenges and then get some creative support off the ground to see how we can get the client adhering and compliant to protocols that are just right for their individual constitution.
So, and there’s always homework. I always give my clients homework one or maybe two, potentially three recommendations to implement either into how they cook and how they eat or maybe implement just into their morning ritual or evening ritual. I see a lot of people with disrupted sleep and so good sleep hygiene is very important.
I think honestly, Charlie, if I could get people to set up a routine around three areas in their lives, I’d probably go out of business. And these three areas are when you go to bed, when you wake up and when you eat. By developing a ritual or a routine around these three areas, we see a lot of disruptions actually starting to simmer down.
I imagine that’s because most people don’t live with intentionality around those areas.
I think that’s correct.
How do you feel that you’re going to fit in? What would you bring to the team, you’ve been there long enough to know, I mean, to look around? How do you feel your Ayurvedic medicine is going to contribute to Tulsa Spine and Rehab?
Well, so far it’s been really terrific and it’s been a huge honor for me to be part of the team. The providers here are all exceptionally educated and incredibly smart, diverse, and really wonderfully friendly. I’ve been so welcomed here and I think I’m fitting in well just because, well gosh darn, Charlie, people like me.
But you, and it sounds like you certainly have that same kind of gate to your thinking I imagine. Have you found particular ways that this integrates with some of the specific modalities that are being done at Tulsa Spine and Rehab?
Yes, for sure. I have and each of the providers, I’ve had an opportunity to spend some time one-on-one with everybody here and get to know how they operate and who their demographic is. And I think we share that commonality. My demographic is their demographic and if I can be of service helping someone with digestive drama or digestive distress or maybe elimination issues, I’m happy to do that because it’s going to be difficult to be on your A game if you’re an athlete, if you’re having some digestive drama. So that’s where I can really help be a key player.
Well, Sean, that sounds like a great addition to the team. How do we get involved with Lisa?
So our model kind of lends itself to that teamwork approach. And we feed off of one another, we collaborate. Collaboration’s very important here. Many times the providers, just like with referrals to chiro or massage, we recognize the value of an additional service line and we can have that conversation with the patients. So I think first and foremost, many times the provider will evaluate a patient and determine, Hey, they’re a good candidate for Lisa.
Secondary to that, I mean Lisa has done a fantastic job of marketing herself. She’s been around in Tulsa for a bit. She’s very smart. So a lot of her patients just come in and see her. They’re not really involved with any other practitioners in the clinic. And then that may feed into some of us, but it’s kind of a twofold approach here, Charlie. The providers may make recommendation. Lisa is a direct access provider as well, meaning you can pick up the phone and just call her. We don’t need to worry about insurance with her and those types of things.
So, but like I said, I mean she’s very accessible. That’s one of the things that I’ve really appreciated about Lisa thus far is that she’s present, she’s easy to talk to, she’s very well educated and she’s smart, and she’s very approachable and she’s always willing to visit with patients about options they may need to have. And so that’s something that we’ve talked about, Charlie, in the past, about the providers and the makeup of who we are here. You’ve got to be accessible to the patient. You’ve got to be able to sit down, look at a patient in the eye and have a conversation. You need to be a good listener. And man, she checks all of those boxes thus far.
You are what you eat and you can find out how to learn more about eating right and making better choices. And as we said with Lisa, living with intentionality. You can either talk to people, you’re seeing at Tulsa Spine and Rehab or contact Lisa directly to get involved with it. Sean and Lisa, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you, Charlie.
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you.
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