This is Dr. Saray Stancic. She’s another from the ranks of “doctors who got a serious illness and it completely changed how they view the treatment of serious illness”.

In her case, Stancic was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and wasn’t impressed with the results from the treatments offered, so (after 8 years of pain, suffering, and many medications, only for her condition to worsen) she set about doing better with an evidence-based lifestyle medicine approach.

After 7 years of her new approach, she would go on to successfully run a marathon and live symptom-free.

All this to say: her approach isn’t a magic quick fix, but it is a serious method for serious results, and after all, while it’d be nice to be magically in perfect health tomorrow, what’s important is being in good health for life, right?

If you’re interested in her impressive story, check out:

Doctor With Multiple Sclerosis On The Collapse Of US Healthcare

If you want to know what she did, then read on…

Six key lifestyle changes

Dr. Stancic credits her recovery to focus on the following evidence-based approaches:

The plant-centered plate

This is critical, and is the one she places most emphasis on. Most chronic diseases are exacerbated, if not outright caused, by chronic inflammation, and one cannot fix that without an anti-inflammatory diet.

An anti-inflammatory diet doesn’t have to be 100% plant-based, but broadly speaking, plants are almost always anti-inflammatory to a greater or lesser degree, while animal products are often pro-inflammatory—especially red meat and unfermented dairy.

For more details, see:

Anti-Inflammatory Diet 101 (What to Eat to Fight Inflammation)

Movement every day

While “exercise is good for you” is in principle not a shocker, remember that her starting point was being in terrible condition with badly flared-up MS.

Important to understand here is that excessive exercise can weaken the immune system and sometimes cause flare-ups of various chronic diseases.

Moving thoroughly and moving often, however, is best. So walking yes, absolutely, but also don’t neglect the rest of your body, do some gentle bodyweight squats (if you can; if you can’t, work up to them), stretch your arms as well as your legs, take all your joints through a full range of motion.

See also:

The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less, & Move More

Mindful stress management

Stress in life is unavoidable, but how we manage it is up to us. Bad things will continue to happen, great and small, but we can take a deep breath, remember that those things aren’t the boss of us, and deal with it calmly and conscientiously.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is of course the evidence-based “gold standard” for this, but whatever (not substance-based) method works for you, works for you!

About MBSR:

No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

Good sleeping habits

Getting good sleep can be hard for anyone, let alone if you have chronic pain. However, Dr. Stancic advocates for doing whatever we can to get good sleep—which means not just duration (the famous “7–9 hours”), but also quality.

Learn more:

The 6 Dimensions Of Sleep (And Why They Matter)

Substance intake awareness

This one’s not so much of a “don’t do drugs, kids” as the heading makes it look. Dr. Stancic assumes we already know, for example, that smoking is bad for us in a long list of ways, and alcohol isn’t much better.

However, she also advises us that in our eagerness to do that plant-based diet, we would do better to go for whole foods plant-based, rather than the latest processed meat substitutes, for example.

And supplements? She bids us exercise caution, and to make sure to get good quality, as poor quality supplements can be worse than taking nothing (looking at you, cheap turmeric supplements that contain heavy metals).

And of course, that nutrients gained from diet will almost always be better than nutrients gained from supplements, as our body can usually use them better.

And see also, some commonly-made supplements mistakes:

Do You Know Which Supplements You Shouldn’t Take Together? (10 Pairs!)

Human connection

Lastly, we humans are a social species by evolution; as individuals, we may enjoy relatively more or less social contact, but having access to such is important not just for our mental health, but our physical health too—we will tend to deteriorate much more quickly when we have to deal with everything alone, all other things being equal.

It doesn’t mean you need a busy social life if that’s not in your nature, but it does mean it’s incredibly beneficial to have at least a small number of people that you trust and whose company you enjoy, at least relatively accessible to you (i.e., their life need not revolve around you, but they are the kind of people who will generally happily spend time with you and provide support when needed if they can).

As for how:

How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

Want to know more from Dr. Stancic?

We recently reviewed this very good book of hers, which goes over each of these six things in much more detail than we have room for here:

What’s Missing from Medicine – by Dr. Saray Stancic

Enjoy!

Dr. Andrew’s Stroke Survival Guide

This is Dr. Nadine Andrew. She’s a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine at Monash University. She’s the Research Data Lead for the National Center of Healthy Aging. She is lead investigator on the NHMRC-funded PRECISE project… The most comprehensive stroke data linkage study to date! In short, she knows her stuff.

We’ve talked before about how sample size is important when it comes to scientific studies. It’s frustrating; sometimes we see what looks like a great study until we notice it has a sample size of 17 or something.

Dr. Andrew didn’t mess around in this regard, and the 12,386 participants in her Australian study of stroke patients provided a huge amount of data!

With a 95% confidence interval because of the huge dataset, she found that there was one factor that reduced mortality by 26%.

And the difference was…

Whether or not patients had a chronic disease management plan set up with their GP (General Practitioner, or “family doctor”, in US terms), after their initial stroke treatment.

45% of patients had this; the other 55% did not, so again the sample size was big for both groups.

Why this is important:

After a stroke, often a patient is discharged as early as it seems safe to do so, and there’s a common view that “it just takes time” and “now we wait”. After all, no medical technology we currently have can outright repair that damage—the body must repair itself! Medications—while critical*—can only support that and help avoid recurrence.

*How critical? VERY critical. Critical critical. Dr. Andrew found, some years previously, that greater levels of medication adherence (ie, taking the correct dose on time and not missing any) significantly improved survival outcomes. No surprise, right? But what may surprise is that this held true even for patients with near-perfect adherence. In other words: miss a dose at your peril. It’s that important.

But, as Dr. Andrew’s critical research shows, that’s no reason to simply prescribe ongoing meds and otherwise cut a patient loose… or, if you or a loved one are the patient, to allow yourself/them to be left without a doctor’s ongoing active support in the form of a chronic disease management plan.

What does a chronic disease management plan look like?

First, what it’s not:

• “Yes yes, I’m here if you need me, just make an appointment if something changes”
• “Let’s pencil in a check-up in three months”
• Etc

What it actually looks like:

It looks like a plan. A personal care plan, built around that person’s individual needs, risks, liabilities… and potential complications.

Because who amongst us, especially at the age where strokes are more likely, has an uncomplicated medical record? There will always be comorbidities and confounding factors, so a one-size-fits-all plan will not do.

Dr. Andrew’s work took place in Australia, so she had the Australian healthcare system in mind… We know many of our subscribers are from North America and other places. But read this, and you’ll see how this could go just as much for the US or Canada:

❝The evidence shows the importance of Medicare financially supporting primary care physicians to provide structured chronic disease management after a stroke.

We also provide a strong case for the ongoing provision of these plans within a universal healthcare system. Strategies to improve uptake at the GP level could include greater financial incentives and mandates, education for patients and healthcare professionals.❞

See her groundbreaking study for yourself here!

The Bottom Line:

If you or a loved one has a stroke, be prepared to make sure you get a chronic health management plan in place. Note that if it’s you who has the stroke, you might forget this or be unable to advocate for yourself. So, we recommend to discuss this with a partner or close friend sooner rather than later!

“But I’m quite young and healthy and a stroke is very unlikely for me”

Good for you! And the median age of Dr. Andrew’s gargantuan study was 70 years. But:

• do you have older relatives? Be aware for them, too.
• strokes can happen earlier in life too! You don’t want to be an interesting statistic.

Some stroke-related quick facts:

Stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of disability in the U.S.

Stroke can happen to anyone—any age, any time—and everyone needs to know the warning signs.

On average, 1.9 million brain cells die every minute that a stroke goes untreated.

Stroke is an EMERGENCY. Call 911 immediately.

Early treatment leads to higher survival rates and lower disability rates. Calling 911 lets first responders start treatment on someone experiencing stroke symptoms before arriving at the hospital.

Source: https://www.stroke.org/en/about-stroke

What are the warning signs for stroke?

Use the letters F.A.S.T. to spot a stroke and act quickly:

• F = Face Drooping—does one side of the face droop or is it numb? Ask the person to smile. Is the person’s smile uneven?
• A = Arm Weakness—is one arm weak or numb? Ask the person to raise both arms. Does one arm drift downward?
• S = Speech Difficulty—is speech slurred?
• T = Time to call 911

Source: https://www.stroke.org/en/about-stroke/stroke-symptoms

Last but not least, while we’re sharing resources:

Download the PDF Checklist: 8 Ways To Help Prevent a Second Stroke