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!

The Three Rs To Boost Thyroid-Related Energy Levels

This is Dr. Izabella Wentz. She’s a doctor of pharmacology, and after her own diagnosis with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, she has taken it up as her personal goal to educate others on managing hypothyroidism.

Dr. Wentz is also trained in functional medicine through The Institute for Functional Medicine, Kalish Functional Medicine, and the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, and holds certifications in Medication Therapy Management as well as Advanced Diabetes Care through the American Pharmacists Association. In 2013, she received the Excellence in Innovation Award from the Illinois Pharmacists Association.

Dr. Wentz’s mission

Dr. Wentz was disenchanted by the general medical response to hypothyroidism in three main ways. She tells us:

• Thyroid patients are not diagnosed appropriately.
  • For this, she criticises over-reliance on TSH tests that aren’t a reliable marker of thyroid function, especially if you have Hashimoto’s.
• Patients should be better optimized on their medications.
  • For this, she criticizes many prescribed drugs that are actually pro-drugs*, that don’t get converted adequately if you have an underactive thyroid.
• Lifestyle interventions are often ignored by mainstream medicine.
  • Medicines are great; they truly are. But medicating without adjusting lifestyle can be like painting over the cracks in a crumbling building.

*a “pro-drug” is what it’s called when the drug we take is not the actual drug the body needs, but is a precursor that will get converted to that actual drug we need, inside our body—usually by the liver, but not always. An example in this case is T4, which by definition is a pro-drug and won’t always get correctly converted to the T3 that a thyroid patient needs.

Well that does indeed sound worthy of criticism. But what does she advise instead?

First, she recommends a different diagnostic tool

Instead of (or at least, in addition to) TSH tests, she advises to ask for TPO tests (thyroid peroxidase), and a test for Tg antibodies (thyroglobulin). She says these are elevated for many years before a change in TSH is seen.

Next, identify the root cause and triggers

These can differ from person to person, but in countries that add iodine to salt, that’s often a big factor. And while gluten may or may not be a factor, there’s a strong correlation between celiac disease and Hashimoto’s disease, so it is worth checking too. Same goes for lactose.

By “checking”, here we mean testing eliminating it and seeing whether it makes a difference to energy levels—this can be slow, though, so give it time! It is best to do this under the guidance of a specialist if you can, of course.

Next, get to work on repairing your insides.

Remember we said “this can be slow”? It’s because your insides won’t necessarily bounce back immediately from whatever they’ve been suffering from for what’s likely many years. But, better late than never, and the time will pass anyway, so might as well get going on it.

For this, she recommends a gut-healthy diet with specific dietary interventions for hypothyroidism. Rather than repeat ourselves unduly here, we’ll link to a couple of previous articles of ours, as her recommendations match these:

• Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)
• Foods for Managing Hypothyroidism

She also recommends regular blood testing to see if you need supplementary TSH, TPO antibodies, and T3 and T4 hormones—as well as vitamin B12.

Short version

After diagnosis, she recommends the three Rs:

• Remove the causes and triggers of your hypothyroidism, so far as possible
• Repair the damage caused to your body, especially your gut
• Replace the thyroid hormones and related things in which your body has become deficient

Learn more

If you’d like to learn more about this, she offers a resource page, with resources ranging from on-screen information, to books you can get, to links to hook you up with blood tests if you need them, as well as recommended supplements to consider.

She also has a blog, which has an interesting relevant article added weekly.

Enjoy, and take care of yourself!