- Don’t drink liquids 15-20 minutes before or after meals (liquid dilutes your digestive enzymes)
- Chew your food 31 times before swallowing (forces you to slow down and allows your brain to tell you when you are full)
- Don’t do anything stimulating while you eat (like watching tv, arguing, making big decisions - these activities will activate your sympathetic nervous system)
- Use apple cider vinegar to stimulate your GI unless you are cooking for yourself
- Eat more or less at the same time of day (consistency!)
- Say grace before you eat (activates your parasympathetic system)
Medical students sure can come up with fun (and hilarious) ways to remember things.
I love my school! I arrived at my work study job today in the library and found a Full-Spectrum “Happy Light” next to my workstation. This is fantastic!
Light therapy has been found to be great for:
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (winter depression)
- Bipolar Disorder
- Sleep Disorders
- Others - see link
And here is my disclaimer - I am only a student, so before you decide to get one for yourself, you will want to check with your doctor to see if this is right for you. There are limits to how long you should use it during one sitting and in its placement and intensity. Also, there are possible side-effects with overuse.
Check out the following link to Mayo Clinic for more information on light therapy, including its definition, why you would use it, risks, how to prepare, what to expect, and the results.
Fantastic website with tons of information about plants. Which ones are edible, which ones do you want to avoid, where do you find them, etc.
Ditto.
I love this quote. I refer back to it often when I feel insignificant and discouraged, for encouragement and strength to keep on being myself.
November is self-care month at my school. A variety of activities have been set up - including free 10-minute massages, a weekly recess at the park, and even a rock-paper-scissors tournament. I chose to participate in the weekly salsa lesson - a dance I have not learned yet - and it was fantastic!
Naturopathic medicine is all about taking care of the whole person, not just the physical body. This includes taking care of your emotional, mental, and spiritual self! Medical school is filled with extreme stress, so taking care of these parts of life are even more important. During my ungrad years, I focused all my time on my classes, spending all my free time studying and no time on anything extracurricular. My freshman year I received the 7th floor dorm award for being the most studious. Funny yes, but also quite sad. Fortunately, I learned that was not the way to live and proceeded to add quite a few activities to my life. Now that I am in medical school and preparing for one of the most high-stress careers there is, I find that I am much more prepared for dealing with the stress by taking care of all of myself.
My Self-Care Activities
- Salsa dancing - my newest!
- Road trip - went to the coast with a friend this weekend - yay ocean!!
- Swing dancing - once a week if I can!
- Playing piano
- Reading fun books -not textbooks
- Calling my family
- Going on a walk with a friend
- Going to the gym
- Going to the gym just to use the hot tub and/or sauna
- Watching a funny show
- Rock wall climbing
- Meeting a friend for coffee or lunch
- Taking a bubble bath
- Cooking a new recipe
- Puzzles - Sudoku, Calcudoku, Kakuro, crosswords, etc
- Going to church
- Going to a church home group
- Cultivating mindfulness in my every day life
- Taking mindfulness breaks - breathing exercises
- Listening to music
- Going outside to sit in the sun
- Walking the labyrinth in the school’s garden
- Going to bed early
- Drinking a cup of tea
- Knitting
- Journaling
What have you done to take care of yourself this week? What activities can you add to your life that will help cultivate parts of yourself that need to be nourished?
Today at my eye doc, I had pictures taken of my retina instead of having my eyes dilated. Pretty neat since we just learned how to use an opthalmoscope yesterday in CPD lab. It was cool to be able to see what my own (healthy!) optic disk looks like.
WANTED: 21st Century Physician - Altruistic, compassionate, courageous, intellectually curious, frugal scholar, gifted in history, philosophy, politics, economics, sociology, and psychology. Must have working knowledge of biology, chemistry, physics, and medicine. Physical endurance, emotional maturity, and technical-manual skills sufficient to take apart and reassemble the human body and mind at levels ranging from the micromolecular to the gross are required; must have flexibility to master all knowledge, sift and discard that no longer applicable, while discovering new data at the bench, in clinical practice, in both general and subspecialty medicine. Teaching, counseling, administrative, computer, and budgetary expertise essential, as is commitment to the disenfranchised. A working knowledge of the law; literary, artistic, and musical talent; and multilingualism highly desirable. Should be able to prevent and cure disease, including the depredations of advancing age; physical disarray; and spiritual, mental, emotional, and economic illnesses. Will need to function effectively in both intensive care units and urban slums.
Salary ideally should be no issue, though heavy initial investment by the candidate is required. Benefits variable, depending om the individual’s principle source of gratification. This is a 24 hour per day commitment.
Should make house calls.
Faith T. Fitzgerald, MD
Taken from: On Being a Doctor 2: Voices of Physicians and Patients
