Hello, and welcome to The Own Your Health Podcast.
I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to
help you step into your health power.
Today, we're going to talk about
getting your full health picture.
It's pretty hard to own something if
you don't exactly know what it is.
So we're going to talk about three areas where you may
want to gather your information so that you can start to
get a picture of what's going on with your health.
The first of these is obvious.
It's your medical records.
Now, most medical records today are
available in what are called portals.
So as the patient, you can sign into a website, and you
can see what your test results were for your chem panel or
what your test results were for a chest X ray.
And you can also see reports for some of the more
complex tests that are run, things like CT scans or MRIs.
Now, this information is there on that site, but
I would encourage you to download and, yes, actually
print out copies of your most recent or when
it comes to lab reports, maybe your two or
three most recent test results.
And I recommend this for a couple of reasons.
One, I want you to actually look at them.
Because what I found with clients and what I found with
the healthcare system in the many years that I've been working
in it, is that when you look at your actual values
and we can use cholesterol as an example.
Your numbers, your values of what your body is doing
may not have changed over the years, but your doctor's
recommendations for that same value may be changing.
And what does that mean?
It means it's probably time to ask a question.
So if a particular value for something like cholesterol was
fine for a number of years, and all of a
sudden now the doctor wants to make other recommendations for
things like medication or dietary changes, then you can be
in a good position to ask the question, why?
Now, this isn't about me.
This podcast isn't about me telling you what
to do with your particular medical information.
It's about empowering you to
know when to ask questions.
And if you've looked at your records and I
know a lot of people do this because it
seems like it's very complex to get into.
And you look down the side of lab results and
you see, oh, everything looks normal, or, oh, there's two
of them that they have marked as high, or two
of them that they have marked as low.
Even with that bit of information, you're better
equipped to ask your physician, okay, these lab
results for the last two years were normal.
Now, this says that it's low.
What does that mean?
What does it mean is going on in my body?
What can I do about it?
Do I have to do something about it?
What would be the ideal? You're better prepared to ask
these questions because I'll tell you, physicians look at thousands
of numbers a day in terms of lab results.
You're the one that needs to advocate for
your specific test results, for your body, and
for the outcomes that you want.
So I highly encourage you to get
this information in front of you.
Take more than just a cursory glance at it,
compare what things were to what they are now,
recognize trends, and you can do all of this
without having a super strong medical background.
It's just information that will equip
you much better to ask questions.
Now, the second reason it's a really good
idea to have at least your most recent
medical records printed out is that my clients
have been reporting extremely long lead times in
getting medical records transferred to specialists.
And it's especially true if the specialists are out
of network so they're not in that same portal,
or if you're choosing some other type of healthcare
that is not part of the traditional system.
Sometimes that request for records
simply doesn't get a response.
And we can argue all day about if that's
good or bad or what it should be.
But the fact of the matter is, if you're
seeking help for a particular situation, you're always in
a better position when you have those records and
that information to bring along with you.
So if you were to go into your
portal now, and it seems like an overwhelming
amount, start with just the most recent.
If you're going to go to
another practitioner, pick the most relevant.
So if it's an issue you're having with your knee and you're
going to see somebody new, then go ahead and print out the
results of the MRI on that knee or the CT on that
knee, or X ray or whatever the case may be.
Pick the most relevant ones.
But I encourage you to accumulate a record of
your health as viewed by the medical system, and
you have either directly or indirectly paid for all
of those tests and you are absolutely legally entitled
to all of those results.
So it's a good idea to have some of them in your hands.
Now, the next area that you may not
think of as much is your dental records.
And this doesn't mean that you have to
have an exact outline of every tooth that's
been filled or every crown you've had or
I'm the absolute queen of dental care, unfortunately.
And I don't have all each
and every one of those records.
But I do know what medications I've been
given when I've had things like an infection.
I do know what medications I tolerate when
I've gone to see the dentist and how
my body has handled those things.
So at the very least, make some notes about
your dental history and what you've encountered along the
way, especially if there's been any medications involved.
And then the final category is one that you probably don't
think of very often, but in terms of getting a complete
picture of how we are taking care of our health, we
really need to look at what our home practices are.
And your first response might be, well, I don't
have any home practices, or I don't take anything.
But I'm guessing if you've tuned into this podcast and
you're interested in owning your health, that you do have
some practices you're doing, even if you've been doing them
so long you don't even think about it.
I encourage you to capture these
in your home health record.
So, for example, if you take supplements,
I encourage you to record them.
You can use a spreadsheet, you can use
graph paper, you can use regular paper.
You can type it out in the word doc.
But take a look and actually formalize the
list of what you're taking, how much you're
taking, and why you're taking it.
And this is good for a couple of reasons.
This is a good list to have.
If you need to go seek medical care at a facility
or from a healthcare provider, it's very easy then to show
them the list of these are the things that I'm taking.
It's also a very good practice for
you to recognize why you're taking some
of the supplements you've been taking.
If you're like me, some of them you've
been taking for a very long time.
And it's a good idea to have not only the
amounts to make sure that you're continuing to take the
amounts, or if you've changed the amounts, the dosages of
supplements that you're taking that you keep track of that,
but also the reason why you're taking them.
And that's because we can get time lost.
We can see something that looks new
and looks good and start taking that.
And without this inventory, we may be doubling up on
supplements, or we may be able to rotate things out.
We may be able to make changes.
It's always easier to make smart choices when
we have information in front of us.
So besides things like supplements that you may
be taking, what are your health practices?
Do you do oil pulling?
Do you do toe scraping?
Do you drink hot lemon water in the morning?
Do you have a nighttime ritual of what
you do before you go to bed?
Do you take Epsom salt baths?
Are you a sauna person?
These are all health practices that we want to capture so
that as we look at how our health changes over time,
we have the opportunity to see, oh, you know what?
When I started doing the sauna three
times a week, I felt different.
It really seemed to make a difference, okay, let's see what
four days a week does, or if three days a week
doesn't feel any different than two days a week, maybe that's
not how you want to spend that time.
I'm kind of almost the more sauna a better person.
But everybody is unique and individual.
And part of the reason, and this is something that
we talk about in The Heal Your Life Circle.
The Community that I've established for women
who have gone through a diagnosis and
kind of lost themselves in that diagnosis.
One of the reasons that we collect this information and
that we become aware of this and bring it to
the forefront of our mind is that very often we
are doing so many things to take care of ourselves.
We're doing so many things for our
health, and we don't take credit.
We just always have this message in our mind that I
should be doing more or I should be doing something else.
So I'm a huge advocate for taking
credit for what you're already doing.
Another type of practice that many of
us are engaged in is monitoring.
Do you monitor your blood pressure on a regular basis?
That can be super helpful if you're on blood pressure
medication, or, for example, if you've gone to the
doctor and they say, you know, your blood pressure is
kind of high, why don't you come back in a
couple of weeks and have it checked again?
Now, it's extremely easy to get inexpensive medical equipment at
home where you can check your blood pressure when you're
calm, when you're at home, and you can actually get
sort of the real reading that reflects what your body
is doing throughout the course of the day.
And I say the real reading.
Not that the doctor's office reading is less accurate or
less real, but if you've been in a rush to
get to the doctor, there's traffic on the way there.
You're stuck in the waiting room.
You're put in the room in a gown.
You're waiting for the PA or the nurse
to come in and take your blood pressure.
Those can be anxiety producing situations,
or it can be frustrating.
You're late, you're running behind.
The service seems to be terrible.
You're going to feel frustrated, and
you know what's going to happen.
Your blood pressure is going to go up.
So when they finally come in and they
take it, it's going to seem high.
So if you have been requested to come back in a
few weeks to get another blood pressure taken, it will be
much more valid if you come in with two weeks of
daily blood pressures that you've taken at home,
when you're comfortable, when you're not angry, when you
haven't been through traffic, and when nobody's been making
you wait. You'll have a much better picture of
what your blood pressure is throughout the day.
Now, if you take that blood pressure every day,
say at the same time, 10:00 in the morning
for those two weeks, record all of that.
Show that to the physician.
That data that you've collected is actually going to
carry a lot more weight than the one single
pressure that they'll take in the office.
And that may mean the difference between you
having a drug prescribed for you and the
doctor's office, just recognizing, oh, yeah, this person
was under stress when they were here.
Now, whether they recognize it's because of all of
the things they put you through when you get
to the office and all the things that happen
leading up, I can't comment on that.
But I do know that even two weeks worth
of daily regular blood pressure values will be a
better set of data and a highly utilized set
of data for doctors to make their decisions about
medications, about prescriptions, about any recommendations that they make.
And a lot of people have shifted to this model.
A lot of people have been
put on blood pressure medications.
They want to make other changes in their lives.
And it's a way for them to monitor on a daily basis.
It's non invasive, it's very low cost.
And as the person who's owning their
health, you get real time data.
Another area where this is very commonly done
now, very easy to do, is monitoring your
blood glucose levels or blood sugars.
Historically and typically, you would be fasted in a
fasted state, meaning that you have an appointment for
labs to be drawn, so you don't eat anything
after midnight or whatever the prescribed time is.
You go in, you have the blood drawn, and
that gives the physician a fasting blood glucose.
And now you get another value, which is HBA1C,
which is the cumulative value of two to three
months of what your blood sugar levels are doing.
And that data can be helpful over the long
run, but it can also be helpful if you
choose to monitor your blood glucose levels yourself, to
see what specific things affect it on a more
day to day, even moment to moment basis.
Now, people do this with continuous blood glucose monitors
that they wear, or they do it with simple
finger stick devices that are also very inexpensive.
And this is a super good way to tell you
about how exercise affects your body, about how fruit affects
your body, about how ice cream affects your body, all
of these other kinds of things, even stress.
Again, this is information that you can gather, that
you can easily get information about in order to
see what in your life is affecting your blood
sugar levels, because it may not be the same
for you as it is for someone else.
And when that blood level, when the fasting blood glucose,
or when the HBA1C is drawn, that's one
single data point over a two or three month period.
And that doesn't direct any new behavior.
And a big piece of owning your health is being
able to look at information pertaining to what you're doing,
make changes, and then gather the information yourself, again.
Let me think, what else is there?
Heart rate monitoring.
That's another thing that's very easy to do.
There's a lot of devices now, be it a watch rings
chest band to monitor your heart rate as you exercise, to
give you a picture of how your body responds to exercise.
Now, I know one of the thoughts that
come along with this, just like with printing
out your medical records and looking at them,
is, I don't know about all this stuff.
But you know what? You can learn!
It's very easy in small bites to look at your blood pressure
on a day to day basis and say, you know what?
It's pretty much the same all the time and it's
nowhere near what it was in my doctor's office.
So I believe I was probably just nervous
and upset when I was in the office.
That's not a tremendous amount of
learning that goes into that, right?
That's just looking at information over a period
of time and comparing it to other information.
And you may also find when you're monitoring blood
pressure at home, if you've been on a very
contentious phone call or you've had an argument with
someone you love, or you've been stuck in traffic
before, you have your blood pressure taken.
Those readings may show that
your blood pressure is higher after those events.
Given that simple piece of
information, then you can ask yourself the question,
how can I remain more calm?
How can I be less stressed?
How can I make changes that make these numbers change?
And when you realize, especially with points like
these, with blood sugars, with blood pressures, with
heart rates, these change moment to moment.
So you can get absolutely direct ideas
about what causes and effects are.
And to be able to own that at that level of
detail is always going to be more specific and more actionable
than having blood work drawn once or twice a year.
So I highly encourage you to capture not only
the actual information and data, but also capture the
practices that you're doing for your health.
Look at if they're doing what you wanted them to
do, and if not, maybe you need to make some
adjustments and then look at what you're monitoring and maybe
ask yourself what you like to monitor.
If you've gotten abnormal values from your physician and
their test results in the past, would being able
to monitor it or get more data allow you
to make better choices and own your health?
So that's all for this episode.
Absolutely send in any questions you have.
And until we're together again, let's own it!
