Justin Trosclair 0:02
Episode 77 two residences in a new country. I’m your host, Dr. Justin plus Claire and today, we’re Dr. Kelly would indeed perspective.

2017 podcast Awards Nominated host

Unknown 0:18
Dr. Justin Foursquare, as he gets a rare to see, look into the specialties,

Justin Trosclair 0:21
all types of doctors and guess plus marketing, travel tips, struggles, goals and relationship advice. Let’s hear a doctor’s perspective.

Hey, welcome back. Did you enjoy it? bonus episode, I just sort of snuck in there. Hopefully we’ll be able to do more of those. Like I said before, I’d love to attend more events and do post event wrap ups, interview people guest speakers while we’re at the event and give the host a nice little promotional piece for their next year. Hey, it’s the middle of June. babies do at the end of August. And finally, she kicked y’all felt it. Pope boobs you kick kick back again. Oh, what an amazing feeling. Alright, that’s enough of that. Just want to give you that update. So cool. Well, today’s guest is straight from Barbados, and how she embarked upon coming to America after already going through and residency and medical school there because she want to be extra trained. And in the chronology. She has a big focus on diabetes, thyroid, she has a mind body and spirit approach that I think is interesting. She is finding her voice on her blog. She’s trying to finish up a book soon. And she travels a lot. Also near the end and the relationship. She has a great story about being resilient app door moving to another city for me and so very interesting. All the show notes can be found at a doctor’s perspective, net slash seven, seven. Let’s go hashtag behind the curtain.

Live from China and Barbados slash Atlanta. So excited. Today we have a endocrinologist diabetes specialist. She is a blogger, a speaker a health and wellness expert, board certified in internal medicine loves diabetes and metabolism. Her mission is to help women and men struggling with their weight encouraging one another with chronic illnesses. Please welcome to the show, Dr. Kelly would indeed.

Unknown 2:23
Hello, how are you? so happy to be here? So yes, I did you speak with?

Justin Trosclair 2:29
Yeah, I mean, this show, we try to specialize in doctors, but we just don’t get a lot of medical doctor. So it’s really fun when we have one on because they’ll bring a unique perspective that we don’t always see. And I know one thing we don’t have to deal with too much here is marketing. So we’ll just have to talk more about your specialties. A personal stuff,

Unknown 2:49
we can talk about personal stuff, that’s okay.

Justin Trosclair 2:51
I’ll be fine. I love it. Okay, so you are not American born, you came here, around 12 years ago, you became a doctor of all things that you could do in life. Give us a little bit of your backstory and why you chose, you know, internal medicine and endocrinology.

Unknown 3:06
Great. So that’s a interesting question. So when I was in high school, I always had a love for the sciences. I was fascinated with how the body works, especially how the mind works. And I love to connect with people on a one on one basis. So I thought that I’d become a psychologist. And I think at my core, I’m a healer, I hate to see people in pain or suffering. So I was thinking all along that I become a psychologist. However, when it was about 17, my grandmother got really ill. And I distinctly remember going with her to a doctor. And at that time, my grandmother was my childhood hero. And she was acutely ill at the doctor’s office and the doctor wasn’t the most empathetic, she was more concerned about getting payment than treating my grandmother. And then can imagine for a for a teenager how scary that was things the one that you loved being ill like that I love my grandmother passed a year later, I decided to go into medicine, so that I could provide compassionate care to women like her so that no other family would have text spirits while I while I experienced. And that’s why I became a doctor Initially, I wanted to become a geriatrician, why I chose endocrinology is a whole nother

Justin Trosclair 4:26
story. That would be a tough field, I think every day with like the really old and that really like in the life stages like that would be hard.

Unknown 4:34
It’s a hard field. But I you know, even though I’m not an endocrinologist, a lot of my patient pop

Unknown 4:41
can is over the age of 65. And you still have a special place in my heart for the elderly.

Justin Trosclair 4:47
Yeah, exactly. That’s exciting. So that’s the question I definitely want to come back to is how do you avoid being all about the money when it can become easy to do? Or that you know, maybe we just answered that down and go right back to your specialty if you like, but okay, while it’s fresh? How can you avoid that?

Unknown 5:06
So I was going to talk about that in terms of the one of the common misconceptions that people have about doctors is that most of us are in it for the money. And that’s not true. The the doctors that I have trained with the ones that have mentored and trained me, them a vast majority of us are genuinely concerned about the well being of our patients with you find deep connections with them. You know, I see a diabetic maybe every three months. So you know, over time, I get to know who they are I get to know about their family, their family life, and, you know, I invested in their well being so most of us are in it for money. We’re in it because we truly want to help people.

Justin Trosclair 5:51
Do you happen to have a unique view? The unique angle when you’re treating the diabetic patients are in economic just in general, what makes you you unique or what what drew you to that field?

Unknown 6:02
So that’s a two part. So what what drew me to the field of endocrinology as I mentioned earlier, when I entered medical school, I had all intention of being a geriatrician. But then you know, as we go through med school, we have different rotations, different topics, and I found that I loved everything endocrine, I loved how this really small gland in the base of the brain called the pituitary, how it interacts with the thyroid or with the adrenal glands. And, you know, the ovaries and I could read this material for hours and never get bored or never fall asleep. I was like, okay, maybe this is something that I can do for the rest of my life. But it was only a few years later that it kind of all made sense as to why I love undercurrent so much. So when I was about 16 years or so I was a part of a club called Key Club is a junior arm of Kalani cloud, which is a community organizing that, you know, does outreach program and

Unknown 7:05
their worldwide service project was to erratic childhood hypothyroidism. So in developing countries, women who did not have enough I had any other companies that had gone, the thyroid and how it worked. And it comes in science, and I had to know enough to be able to go and talk about it, the adults and two other other students about it. So even though at that time being a doctor was not on my radar, I think a seed was planted that, you know, produce fruit when I was in medical school. And it kind of always reminds me that me We can never even like are seeming Lee seeming, the meeting less experiences, they all kind of play a part in getting us our is our purpose and why we were created.

Justin Trosclair 7:49
That’s true. Yeah. At 16. Like that would be pretty wild. Like, what is this thing called? What does all this that’s real,

Unknown 7:58
really small, glad to so powerful.

Justin Trosclair 8:02
That you know what, and that’s the story I think a lot of people need to hear is there’s so much passion, you found something that you’re passionate about, I don’t care if you’re a doctor, or you do digital marketing, or whatever it is that you’re into that passion is like, I don’t even fall asleep studying this, they can’t tell you something, how that become a thing.

Unknown 8:21
That’s the sun. And I think our passion, you know, like communities like a breadcrumb, it kind of leads us to our purpose is going to be so it’s really good to pay attention to all of these things like you know, what makes you happy? What makes you sad? What do you want to fit, that will ultimately tell you where you should be what you should be doing with your life. And I don’t know if you realize this

Justin Trosclair 8:41
when you were younger, when I was pursuing my mind, my doctor career, I didn’t realize like, all the tracks of medicine, so many things that you could specialize on you, I never really realized that that was the way you do. It was always just like, you just become a doctor and you just

you just like, you know, I didn’t know that weird.

Obviously, you see more in diabetes, but it’s such it’s so prevalent

Is there a special approach that you have that makes you the more unique are keeps you excited.

Unknown 9:13
So

Unknown 9:15
um, so uh, I think it was last year, I was doing an assignment up facility, and it was seeing a lot of new patients. And they had an intake form that had all the symptoms, so all my hat when they come to see the doctor. And what I found was that almost sort of every three patients clips are ticked, anxiety or depression. And so I’ve done a little bit more into this. And they found that patients who have chronic medical illnesses are at a higher risk of having mental illness like depression, and anxiety. And sometimes as a specialist, when you might have like 20 minutes, 1520 minutes to patient, you kind of have a directed approach where you ask them about their blood sugar is you might tie trait insulin. But if someone has depression and anxiety, like for example is one who has diabetes with depression, they’re not the one to get out of bed, they’re not going to want to go exercise No matter how much I tell them to go exercise, the one who might be really stressed out, they’re going to turn to food, vendor stress, so their blood sugar’s were all will always be high. And I find that when I take the time to see the patient as an as a whole being mind, body and spirit as why I’m so into this mind, body and spirit medicine is more successful because I can, using my own experience with stress and anxiety and depression, I can give them tools that I myself have used to help them with that because their mood and their anxiety and depression will definitely influenced how they’re going to manage their diabetes. And I have found that that has been more successful, rather than just focusing on someone’s blood sugars. So it’s kind of like a chicken and egg. Maybe I got put a lot of horrible obviously you got diabetes. Yeah, poor life choices for a long time.

Justin Trosclair 11:03
Type ones, but that could feed into being like I’m depressed because I’m, I’m probably overall really overweight. I can’t exercise when I’m supposed to exercise. I hate exercising. But I thought he wants me to do this. But I’m always getting the sugar cravings always want ice cream, I’m not supposed to have it.

And it was great as you’re not just saying here, take a Xanax address these issues,

Unknown 11:24
right? It really fits into underlying I mean, like, you know, some people turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with life. A lot of people a lot of us, probably the most addictive drug is probably food, you know, so unless you tackle those underlying issues, it makes, you know, the diabetes a lot harder to control and to manage.

Justin Trosclair 11:45
Yeah, well, that’s kind of one of the I mean, I wrote a book about that some of that stuff. And I’m actually I’m coming to America and about three or four days and this pattern one, okay, so I had a month where it’s like, Alright, Justin, you need to drop some weight. Because when you go to America, you just don’t care. I can’t go higher than I am right now. So a week goes by, you know, what’s on your mind. I’m thinking I gotta get serious, just, there’s always a reason to cheat. There’s always a reason to cheat like every other day.

Unknown 12:15
It’s hard, even for me, like, you know, but I go in cycles. So like Monday to see so Sunday to maybe Thursday, I’m really good. But on weekends, it’s harder to maintain that. And God forbid if I travel because I travel has become one of my passions. I love to travel. God forbid if I go on vacation somewhere.

Justin Trosclair 12:36
Fast for us, me and my wife, we were like, let’s sample everything we can eat in Thailand for three days. You should see the budget for food. It’s crazy.

It is difficult because you know, my thing is right now I’m like, all right, you’re not going to digest and just don’t eat so much. Just restrict your calories for two weeks. You’ll be happy you did it. But it’s hard. It’s a mental game. You You really have to be psyched to do it. Until your whole life. Come on. That’s hard.

Unknown 13:05
Right? I mean, I tell my patients you know, it’s unrealistic for me to expect you to have perfect blood sugar’s each and every day. Somebody had a birthday, you had an anniversary have that piece of cake. That’s okay. Yeah, but on half take every single night after dinner. You know what I mean? That’s when you’re going to get into get into trouble. So I think having realistic expectations is important. And also knowing that you know, if you fall off the wagon, you go on vacation or bad. You know,

Unknown 13:31
Monday somebody the gym or start start eating healthy did? Yeah,

Justin Trosclair 13:35
I heard somebody had a three day program. We’re super structured and boring. Like, which is like, if you just did that three days a week, I want to say at the end of the month, that’s 60% or 70% of your diet for a month. Right. And they’re like, yeah,

yeah, you mentioned one, I like to say there’s usually a couple of misconceptions that you have to tackle on a regular basis, what’s the one or the other top things that you have to do with?

Unknown 14:00
Hmm, that was the that was the main one that you know, that I have dealt with later financial gain, or if we’re getting kicked back from the pharmaceutical companies, which were, which were definitely not for, for prescribing, prescribing medications. And I mean, a lot of times as a black doctor, you know, my name is Kelly would when I walk into the door before like, Hmm, I didn’t expect you if you’re a man.

Justin Trosclair 14:30
Well, that’s true. That’s true. You got definitely have a

Unknown 14:34
name, right. Yeah. So a lot of times the stereotype of a doctor looks like, you know, something that I as, you know, minority female position, you know, have have to deal with, and I’ve had, you know, overall have had a good experience. But there are some patient encounters where there was some tension, I think, because of because of that you kind of have to learn how to maneuver and I also look young, so that’s it another strike against me, but you’re

Justin Trosclair 15:02
always gonna look young, till your own, will you? The melanin is a wonderful thing.

Unknown 15:09
So when I mean, I probably get asked once a week, for sure you’re old enough to do this. But as you graduate, I’m like, thank you for the compliment. But I’ve been a doctor for 14 years now. Thank you.

Justin Trosclair 15:20
Yeah, I’m not 20. Come on.

Okay, when we’re, so I’ve got to follow up questions, but I think I’ll go with this one first. Okay. What are some of the common concerns that patients are asking you with their conditions with? What do I do now? I’ve got a condition I didn’t know I have. It felt like especially like a hyperthyroid hyperthyroid. Just like in my undefeated, I don’t know what else to do. Like, it sounds like it’s something I have to I didn’t cause on my own. There’s nothing I can do about it. What are some of the things you hear? So you know,

Unknown 15:53
as you mentioned, bread and butter, endocrinology is diabetes, but I was immediately third of my practices, thyroid disease, and mainly hypothyroidism. And other questions that I, you know, I get asked, you know, what, what caused this, you know, Did I do anything to cause this? And what can I do to prevent this, are to stop this from progressing. And you know, we lot of as human beings, we love control, we love to know that we can, you know, make changes and get a good old common with thyroid disease. Unfortunately, the health of pathophysiology is, you know, genetic can happen at birth. But then, once you have it, it’s typically a progressive disease. Patients asked me, you know, what do I What do I eat? Are they sort of food that I

Unknown 16:43
can eat or foods that I should avoid? That will make it better or food that I should have lights to make it worse? On a patient’s asked, you know, can I have a normal life with thyroid disease, and it it can become complicated disorder to treat, you know, I tell my patients, sometimes we’re giving you synthetic thyroid hormone, and it’s the best thing that we have to replace what your own fire right is making. But is it doing exactly what your natural thyroid

Unknown 17:14
is doing? Probably not. You know, some patients go on thyroid medication, they feel totally fine and back to normal. And there are others that tell me, you know, I’ve never felt the same. So, you know, what do you do? You know, there’s so many different thought, oh, there about diets that you you can eat to help the thyroid. I’ve done research on this, I haven’t really seen anything to prove that they have. But what I tell my patients is that if you feel better doing something, once your levels are normal, and we’re not, you’re not hurting yourself, I am okay with that. One. One thing that I have found anecdotally is that some of my patients who have thyroid disease who don’t have celiac disease, per se, when they cut gluten out, they do feel a whole lot better. So I have been recommending that, perhaps it’s to do with the antibodies that are higher when you do have gluten. Maybe there’s some cross reactivity. I don’t know. But some patients do feel a lot better when they cut gluten out. So I have been recommending that.

Justin Trosclair 18:17
No, wild. I mean, Hey, now, I applaud you because some a lot of medical doctors tend to, they don’t really look at some of these unproven diet type things.

For work, because if it works, you feel better. Wow. Works for me, you

Unknown 18:33
feel better. And your thyroid levels are where they’re supposed to be a culprit?

Justin Trosclair 18:40
Do you subscribe to a certain diet plan for diabetics, like, you know, there’s all those name brand, anything particular that you prefer, or what

Unknown 18:48
I mean, the American Diabetes Association has has the car controlled diet, most patients have diabetes, don’t usually count their cards, but they really should be at a recommendation is according to how many grams of carbohydrates they should be having. So normally say try to keep it you know, you’re allowed three, three main meals, you know, around 45, at most 60 grams of carbs. And then your snacks, you’re supposed to have about 15 grams of carbs for your staff. Most of the diabetic patients also have coronary artery disease and hypercholesterolemia, hypertension. So a Mediterranean diet, you know, low fat, high vegetables, high fruit would also be good for them as well. Okay.

Justin Trosclair 19:30
Very good. All right. So this is the fun question. We have doctors, with people in college, maybe they listen to this podcast, maybe there’s they’re in medical school, or they just graduated or whatever. I like to know. Is there any advice for someone who’s just starting out struggles and make a choice? And being that, you know, a minority and black double? Is there any advice that you have for other people in similar

Unknown 19:55
and a woman? No, yeah,

Justin Trosclair 19:57
double, that’s the double part. Okay.

To encourage these people to you can do it, I did it, you can do it. Once you got for us.

Unknown 20:06
Yeah, I would say, you know, with how medicine is going right now is how it’s become, you know, a lot more of a business, it’s still a very noble profession, being able to influence the life, you’re patient who’s sitting in front of you and your community, as a whole, is nothing more rewarding than that. So if you have an interest in medicine, I would definitely say, you know, pursue that, make sure that you are getting into it for the right reason. If you’re not getting into it, because of a genuine desire to serve people you’re going to get burnt out really, really quickly is achievable is doable, you know, he talks about me being a minority woman in medicine. And the higher I got united residency and fellowship, I became a an attending, the higher I got in my car, the less minority women I saw. And that’s kind of sad, you know, it’s good to see someone that looks like you took for for you to know that, you know, if she could do it, I could do it, too. So um, one thing I’d recommend is to get good mentorship. You know, find someone that you can relate to that you can share your who shares, similar experience with you, who can kind of guide you through some of the processes and guide you through some of the challenges that might occur as a minority position. Because I noticed anytime I’ve asked people

Justin Trosclair 21:28
Hey, can I shadow you? Can I talk to you? They’re usually very, like, Yes, let’s go, let’s, I’d love to get back. And mentoring is a way a lot of people do.

Unknown 21:37
It sure is shirts, and even even what I do on social media now like talking about my, my, my journey, as a doctor, a lot of that is to show someone behind me because I’m an international medical, medical grad, and it is harder for us. So it’s another thing I thought that was against me as well to, you know, to get to get into the residency and fellowship here. So when I post on social media, talking about my journey, and Madison away became a doctor and even how excited I am when I see an interesting case. That’s to encourage someone behind me, you know what she has done it, I can do it. To me the journey to become a doctor is not easy. I look back at you know, I went to medical school, then I did residency for three years in a fellowship another two years, most of my high school friends were already working, you know,

Unknown 22:25
you kind of had to catch up. But not only that I sacrificed in my mind some of my personal life. Your I mean, I’m sure we’ll talk about that later. Yeah. So it’s not an easy road at all. But it’s very rewarding. I cannot imagine myself doing anything else. What would be a couple, even just one, one of the struggles you may have had, having to overcome, like not being American and trying to come to our schools is not easy, is they don’t worry, that’s a tough thing to do. And

Justin Trosclair 22:58
if you had any, any struggles that you want to talk about that you’ve had to overcome that, very proud of, in a sense,

Unknown 23:03
I think so I did medical school and in Barbados, and I did two years of residency there. So starting old, I mean, come into the states, I had to do all the boards and everything and then I had to turn. And luckily for me, I kind of did it early in my career. But I have some colleagues who were attendings in Barbados for like, you know, five, six years and had to come back and you know, start all over again, as an intern. And just adjusting to you know, we didn’t have the time, you know, have EMR and American Barbados and just adjusting to even come to work using a computer

Unknown 23:38
by seeing a special kitchen. I know, right?

Unknown 23:43
So it was just an adjustment. You know, I remember my first my first month as an intern in my residency in Philadelphia. That was, even though I was a doctor for two years before, it was still a very steep learning curve.

Justin Trosclair 23:57
Really, what made you want to come here,

Unknown 23:59
so at the time, there was no avenue for me to specialize. So I knew like always, I wanted to become an endocrinologist. Guess why I’m here. And the plan was to eventually go back and I my heart, heart of hearts, I still do want to go back to Barbados, for bridges

Justin Trosclair 24:14
is like a paradise, isn’t it?

Unknown 24:16
It’s absolutely beautiful. Like you go to the beach, down in the water is

Unknown 24:23
crystal clear water

Justin Trosclair 24:24
from Louisiana. We don’t know.

Unknown 24:27
Underneath, you don’t want to know. It’s funny.

Justin Trosclair 24:32
It was the shellfish know, that was probably a beer bottle. Just fine. Just being

when you’re working in a hospital setting, the nice thing is you don’t really have to market yourself. But do you have to like deal with staff in? There’s always staff issues and stuff, good things, there’s good things do we like to harp on bad things is just easier, but what role do you play as a doctor or the staff and any tips for us?

Unknown 25:03
Oh, so it depends on your role in the practice, you know, some some some physicians have medical directorship role. So they obviously play a bigger part in the hiring process. For us physicians be are involved sometimes in interviewing candidates and making are giving our input, you know, in, in the decision making for who they bring on, and it might just be in another physician joining or even medical assistance, we work really closely with medical assistance. So even though I’m not all the time directly involved in the hiring process, you know, I usually look for individuals that, as I said, Have that heart of serving others, those that have the potential and the capability for growth, you know, I’ve worked with different medical assistance, and the ones that can take initiative, you know, are the ones that are more most helpful to me, as well as employees that you know, that are just keeping with the culture of the office, or the power of the organization. Those are the ones that a huge dies. Yeah,

Justin Trosclair 26:08
the organization. I mean, you can get somebody that’s really great. But you just don’t fit in here, and you’re really ruining it.

Just Just don’t let you do you turn your your image up as even your nurses a very special way just for like you and your office? Or can you just have them like attend to class somewhere, and they come back and you’re like, Yay, so I know,

Unknown 26:30
there’s like there’s medical assistant, as medical assistance school, they have a course that they do. And the organizations also do their own specific training. But you know, each doctor is different. We have our own styles of what we want things done the order that we want the things. So sometimes, there’s still that tweaking and that personalization, that happens. And as part of my practice, I remember, I also do thyroid biopsies. So that’s the only procedure that I do as an endocrinologist, but I love doing them. And you kind of have to train your assistant. Okay, I like this on this side. And that, you know, you had me this at this time. So there’s still something to individualization that happens beyond the medical assistance school, my

Justin Trosclair 27:16
good friend, yes. What he says is like, you’re trained, but you’re not trained from my specialty, especially in a train from my office flow.

Unknown 27:24
For me,

Justin Trosclair 27:25
yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Are there programs out there that you can run them through to like, reduce the curve, the learning curve, or you just gonna have to get in there and just do it?

Unknown 27:39
I’m sure they are, but no different and other online courses, medical assistance, as well. And I’m sure they’re there, you know, brick and mortar schools that do that, but I think a lot of the learning even as a physician out of the learning that you do is it’s with patients and in a hospital and, and shadow doctors who are doing it, you know, a medical school would last never years is spent just being in doing rotations, stretch, seeing and touching patients a lot of medicine is this hands on learning. Because I was thinking like if I’m an MA or pa and I’m like, I really enjoy

Justin Trosclair 28:13
ortho. What What can I do besides just getting a job at the ortho to make myself the best forth? Okay, that I can’t I’m

Unknown 28:21
not sure. If I don’t think there’s any specialized like me. I’m a school for for endocrinology. You kind of got me certification, and he goes to the office, and someone trains you on the job.

Justin Trosclair 28:36
Okay. Just thinking out there. Just thinking out there. Like there’s got that you would think they would have something Continuing Ed?

Oh, man. Hello, a good idea. Yeah, hello, out there. What do you see yourself in five years, maybe even 10 years. I mean, you sound like you’ve already done so much. You’re already fellowship trained your training other people. My goodness, that’s, that’s impressive.

Unknown 28:57
So yeah. So I and as you can tell them passionate will enter endocrinology and enjoy seeing patients interact with them on a day to day basis. But I know that within my heart, I’m created to do more. You know, over the past year, I’ve been trying to develop some other skills that I think can be used in conjunction with my medical degree, to serve others to serve my community. So as these you know, I’ve been blogging, I’ve been writing more, I’ve been speaking more. So in the next fight, fight, no 12345 years, I want to see that side of my career, develop more.

Justin Trosclair 29:38
And her blog is, is good. Like, she’ll talk about all kinds, I’ll go I was kind of browsing through this, like, what, my goodness that the topics in here very so MUCH, which is a good thing, is not just step one of diabetes management. Step two is not like that at all. Like they got relationship. There’s some faith stuff, like there’s so much good stuff, and I found you obviously, the groom.

Unknown 30:01
As I mentioned, you know, we are all mind, body, and spirit. So my aim is to bring to promote wellness and healing and all of these areas. So the topics that I write, some of it is about, you know, how to make good decisions. Some of it is about how to deal with the daisy and the difficulty with dating.

Justin Trosclair 30:21
Question later,

Unknown 30:21
some of it is about you know, why you should get enough sleep, you know, for me, like I’ll you know, we talked about going to the gym and working out and becoming strong, cardiovascular early, and I’m muscles and everything. But we don’t talk about how do you build emotional health? How do you promote resilience, because sometimes life throws things at at us, that knocks knocks us off our feet. And if you don’t, the people that have the tools to get up are the ones that that are more successful, you know, so I choose topics that talk about a variety of things.

Justin Trosclair 30:55
When we say like, the spiritual part, how do you address that? You know,

Unknown 30:58
me, myself, patients are just in general. Oh,

Justin Trosclair 31:04
that’s a good?

Well, if you’re able to answer both, that’d be great. But maybe just more like, guess? I’m like, oh, man, that’s a great question. Because it doesn’t have to be Julie. It’s not like, just follow Jesus. But there’s a different aspect to like spirituality and how you can bring it up with let’s go with patients. Because bringing that up with patients, sometimes as a land mind, and everybody gets offended these days. So how do you incorporate that? So you know, I?

Unknown 31:31
Well, I’m Christian. And I tell them that ask them, you know, do you believe in prayer, you know, what would you What? I said, What do you do to feed your spirit? You know, you’re going through all of this stuff, like, what do you do? Like I pray? I, you know, my read scriptures or I Journal of those those things that feed my spirit, someone else might not do those at that same thing. But I think we all need to do something to feed our spirit.

Justin Trosclair 31:56
Yeah, that’s a good answer.

Because it’s, you know, that is a tough topic that a lot of people try to just avoid altogether. And I don’t know, I don’t know what people I guess.

Unknown 32:07
I mean, to be honest, I have had times where I’ve been able to pray with patients, if they say, Can you can you pray with me? And I do that, you know, I don’t push it on anyone. But if someone asked me I do right by them, I might say, you know, I’ll pray for you later. And then my second you pray with me. Now, I’ll make sure

Justin Trosclair 32:25
for someone who’s like not religious, that they have their own way. I know, how they feel connected with whatever with whatever it is that they believe there’s a way that they they know, they know they can do it. And then we might be going outdoors and going hiking. Okay, well, have you tried to recently know it’s been about a year,

Unknown 32:42
or you can do yoga, you can do meditation, whatever it is, whatever it is that kind of calms you and centers you, you know, I say go for it.

Justin Trosclair 32:51
Cool. All right, you ready to get a little more of the personal side?

Sure. Okay,

first, vacations, don’t think you’re probably gonna have this issue. Y’all are like issued, boom, three weeks, four weeks extended vacation. But a lot of people in America don’t even take the time they have off and they’re given. So are you one of those people or you maximize,

Unknown 33:13
I maximize my vacation.

Unknown 33:17
Want to the passion that I have is for travel. I absolutely love going overseas. And over the past two years, I was actually working as a local doctor. So it was a traveling doctor. So I had the flexibility of if I wanted to get a week off here and there to go somewhere. I could say over the past two years have gone to Korea gone to Singapore gone to Africa three times I’ve gone to London most recently. Yes. And travel. Travel has been proven to make you happier it can we just getting away from the hustle and bustle of your life reduces your stress, there’s nothing

Unknown 34:01
more enlightening them being in a new culture being an immersive the new culture, trying new foods walking around in the place where no one knows you. And you are just enjoying, you know, enjoying seeing someplace different. So and I also think it’s important to take vacation just to maintain that work life balance. We all talk about work, life balance, and something that’s, you know, hard, hard to achieve. It was about perhaps four years into my practice where I came to a place of burnout. You know, I was in 22 or more, some has 22 patients a day. We’re just in and out, in and out, in and out in and out. And after that just to keep up with patient phone calls and labs and notes. I was taking home my computer and putting in an additional three hours every single night, even on a Friday night I was working. You know, it led to me being extremely stressed out. anxiety levels were high not being able to sleep. And I had to make a decision you know if I really want to, you know I’m going to the gym and really trying to work on my physical about the What about my emotional and let my mental help me. So I think taking that time away from from work is crucial to set overall health and overall well being. You’re going to realize

Justin Trosclair 35:23
that if you go to the gym, go to work, and you still got three hours of more work to do. And it doesn’t leave you much time for anything.

Unknown 35:31
Know your brain is that you bring up a turns off.

Justin Trosclair 35:34
Yeah. And you’re like that and you’re stressed out like that I get all the notes or I didn’t get to finish I just quit now I’m behind now tomorrow. Tomorrow’s another day of 20 do you just have to like cut down your patient load sometimes. It’s like I just can’t see more than 15 otherwise I don’t have a life. Sometimes we

Unknown 35:49
don’t have a choice at how many patients we see.

Justin Trosclair 35:53
This was a season as we say sometimes.

Unknown 35:55
Yes.

Justin Trosclair 35:58
He did you enjoy and I’m assuming this happened to you when you’re like Korea pictures and the obvious selfies with drones.

Unknown 36:08
Actually, I had I had something like this. So one of my girlfriends from residency she’s actually Korean and my best friend so she happened to be at home at the same time I was there. So how my purse about my own personal tour guide and interpreter and they were saying can we touch me

Unknown 36:27
but I had a really really good time I would I want to go back I want to go back to Korea is awesome.

Justin Trosclair 36:32
Because you have a unique hairstyle which is a double need to touch another country.

Oh it these those cities and like Korean Singapore, isn’t that just out of control?

You get off the subway and it just blocks and blocks of like Singapore. How do you fill up this many buildings?

My mind I’m like this one building

Unknown 37:02
for like 20 stores? I know.

Justin Trosclair 37:08
Taking them all the conversation.

Well, so pre chat, you gave me a little low down. You got to Atlanta.

So spouses and significant others, we know we got a single lady here. So what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned? What’s going on what brought you to Atlanta, and this new newfound singleness?

Unknown 37:31
Give us the story? Hey, so I moved to Atlanta last year because I was engaged to be married. And my fiance at the time lived in Atlanta. And I think about maybe five or 24 or five months after I moved here, things started to take a turn for the worse in terms of the relationship. And the relationship ended sometime in the fall of last year. So you could imagine I just moved my entire life to Atlanta, and I’ve been looking forward to starting my family and getting married. So this was a big loss and a big disappointment for me, not only for the relationship, but also for a dream that I had for where I saw my life being you know, I had to kind of look for a while I was like, lost, like, what do I do now I had imagined my life with this person who’s no longer here? What do I do? So it has been a journey. We talked about resilience, and I think that it is an innate human attribute that we kind of all have to varying degrees. And let me tell you that it’s very it did help me to grow my resilience. You know, looking back the relationship wasn’t the wasn’t the healthiest of relationships. And I think that I had to do work myself, work on rebuilding my self esteem, you know, even though I was a physician, and you know, being Dr. Kelly didn’t help me

Justin Trosclair 39:10
know,

Unknown 39:12
I was just the girl galley, you know. But even though I was a physician and successful, I still had issues with self esteem of not being good enough, not being smart enough, pretty enough, all of that stuff. And even though that was the horrible thing that happened to me, the person I am now the strength that I have, the confidence that I have, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do this podcast with you so freely, you know, I have just become a woman that I love so much now.

Unknown 39:42
That’s why when, quote unquote bad things happen to us. Sometimes that pain propels us to our purpose and know that one of the things that I’m called to do is to help other women like myself might be successful on the outside, but struggle with issues of self esteem and self worth.

Unknown 40:01
To help them love themselves more. So even though it was painful, and I’m thankful that it happened, because of what I am now. I love her so much more.

Justin Trosclair 40:10
Yeah, was it? Do you find this and it’s intimidating for guys to like, go on a date, like things out co she’s cool, she’s pretty. Then you find out, boom, boom, boom. So yeah, I’m probably quote more successful, you know, potentially, like, on the outward appearance, and all of a sudden, they’re like, all right, I just have to leave now.

Do you find that or what

Unknown 40:32
i think i think dating is tougher for the professional woman. But I do believe that there’s someone out there for us. And the point is not to settle out of loneliness not to let your you know, you want to have a baby or 35. Now, you know not to let that cause you to be with someone that’s not healthy with to be in a space where you’re not being treated the way that that you deserve. You know, I think right person will not be intimidated by my success, the right person will have their own things going on to they will also be pursuing their own purpose and their own passions. So they will have no time to be jealous of mine. So I’m waiting for that person to come along. Do you know anyone, Justin? You know,

Justin Trosclair 41:21
keep it in the back of my mind. I know this lady.

Looking back, and a lot of people in the medical career they sort of, especially for a woman, it’s like all your buddies are getting married, they’re having kids you like no, no, that’s going to come from me later. It’s not 1935 I can have kids when I’m older. But kind of where you’re at now looking back, would you recommend people to put a little bit more effort like into finding a spouse, and that I mean, starting to like getting a spouse is really the first step, maybe after residency, then have a kid because that would just be so much harder to have a kid going through this whole part. But it’s doable, people do it. What’s your opinion,

Unknown 42:02
so I could actually wrote about this on my blog around Mother’s Day, because mothers days, you know, it’s tough for women who might have lost a mother or, you know, lost lost a child and even for those like myself, who want to be mothers, but it just hasn’t happened yet. And you know, there’s no formula can’t say if you waited, waited to get married was was worse than having getting married first. But for me, I my blog, I did write that, you know, I do think that I should have put a lot more effort into having more of a balanced life. You know, I was single single minded was focused, I wanted to become a doctor, I wanted to become an endocrinologist. So I didn’t put much attention or effort anywhere else. And then when it was in my 30s, and I had come on attending, I’m like, Wait a second, I’m by myself.

Unknown 42:58
Because sometimes think that it will just happen. But sometimes it doesn’t. And one of my friends, she she always says, you know, like, we know we know what it is to to go through long nights of studying and putting all this effort. And medicine got tough, we didn’t quit. We don’t put as much effort into our dating life and into our social life. So now even though dating is hard for a single woman here in Atlanta, when it gets stuff, I hear her voice and I need, you know, you didn’t quit with medicine, you can’t put it this either. If it’s important to you, you’re going to put the effort into it.

Justin Trosclair 43:33
Do you find that it’s hard, like if you’re if you’re a woman, there’s I have to stay focused, my relationships can suffer, I’ll get that will later I need to work on my career. But if you’re a woman who’s like, I’m trying to have both you get married, do you find that their careers tend to like drift off the path that they originally wanted?

Unknown 43:52
I think societal pressures on women and the role of the woman in the family makes it a lot easier for men to balance that work, you know, work and work and family. Life is so much pressure on us to be everything for everybody. At all times, we’re supposed to go to work and put it in a stellar job and come home and still have the vast majority of have most of the responsibilities of taking care of the family taking care taking care of our of our homes. You know, I do you know, I have some, some mentors who I see do both, and they are excelling at doing both. I think at some point in time, one probably has to suffer, you have to put effort into one more than the other at some point in time. I’m not sure if it’s realistic to expect that you will get

Justin Trosclair 44:47
it right. And, of course, at the

Unknown 44:50
same time,

Justin Trosclair 44:52
we was nice as when you’re 35 verses when you’re 24. realize how important it is that to have a spouse that’s going to be exposed for like a man, I’m not going to just put 70 hours a week, I’m not going to neglect my kids, you’re not going to be responsible for 75 to 80% of the household work as well as a 40 hour job like trying to find someone who’s willing to

Unknown 45:13
I think I think our generation is probably a lot eight or the men a lot more flexible and willing to perhaps past previous generations. You know, man, I think a lot more men are taking a bigger role in their lives in raring and raising their children.

Justin Trosclair 45:30
It’s popular these days. Do you ever have any kind of morning routine or lunch routine that ground you for the rest of the day?

Unknown 45:37
So for me in the morning, I use prayer prayer prayer meditation just to get my mind right. Are they the same thing? Doesn’t have to be the same thing

Justin Trosclair 45:49
at all, but for you know, yeah,

Unknown 45:52
lol going.

Unknown 45:54
For me, when I talk about prayer, I connect to God connect to that my you know, higher spiritual source meditation, you know, I could use an app and listen to somebody do a guided meditation, you know. So for some people, it is the same, but for me, it’s a little bit different. I also like journaling as well writing my writing my, my thoughts down. It’s been proven to help with mood and to reduce reduce stress. And I also like to read my journal like months later to see where I’ve come

Unknown 46:24
what it was going through then and it kind of keeps me thankful. As you can imagine, I had a really rough year, when I look back to see where I was then and where I am now. I can’t help but feel thankful. You know. So those are the things that I do in the morning just to get my day, my day going. Sometimes you get up in a bad mood for no reason. You know, emotions come and go. And it’s good to have things in your toolkit. Bank us to get

Justin Trosclair 46:53
yourself all of that from the reason why I was asking you about that was because I think there’s some Christians they’re like, can’t meditate, that’s to mu it’s not enough. And it’s like, you know, they’re they’re actually two different things. And you can have both without compromising your faith.

Unknown 47:09
Natalie, actually one of my next question, one of my favorite apps is an app is called Simple habit. And I was beginning to meditation last year, but I thought it help to reduce anxiety, I would you stress and just, you know what your mind is going going going like this simple habit app says meditation is like a location for your mind. And it really it really is. And it’s a free app, you can also pay for an upgrade and get like more access to more of them meditations. But if you only have five minutes, you can choose a topic like help me sleep or feeling down today or feeling anxious today or have an interview coming up anything you can think about. After those five minutes, someone sits down and you do the deep breathing techniques. And they take you through a guided meditation and I have found that that mindfulness has been helpful for me on my hip healing journey as well.

Justin Trosclair 48:03
I didn’t realize how they were categorized. Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Unknown 48:07
Be cool, right?

Justin Trosclair 48:08
Yeah, that makes me like she wants you I keep hearing about it. And I’m like, Well, I don’t want like, I don’t spend the time to do what I want to do anything much more that

Unknown 48:15
all you need is five minutes. Yeah.

Justin Trosclair 48:17
That’s pretty cool. I didn’t realize they were so I just thought I was listening to some other common and

now breed.

Unknown 48:31
Sometimes they make you do that ya Baba types is just thinking about bringing memories that you might, you know, yeah, just different topics. So I really

Justin Trosclair 48:40
kind of breathing techniques that like there’s people that they’ve written books on the breathing that so there’s obviously there’s there’s something there whether science has proven or not.

Unknown 48:49
It is I mean, even when I myself, but you feel a little bit anxious is taking a deep breath, it immediately calms me. You know, I was I was having some wine. I think I pulled some somewhere that, you know, we all are experts at breathing. You do it all the time. Yeah, but we don’t take advantage of part of the breath. You know, just when you’re feeling stressed out, just taking a moment to take a few deep breaths, it really works. You know,

Justin Trosclair 49:17
it was doing a Australian football for one summer, and you get tired from running and you kind of put your hands on your knees and over. And you do that that’ll get you another lap. It was like No, do you put your hands over your head, you’re going to stand erect. So when the team members sees that everybody else is tired. They were like how these guys not tired? So you know, it’s a mental game. I don’t know why that but it was it was really it was forcing you to exercise and control like you’re reading. Everybody’s tired. All just ran for the last 10 minutes. Like make it work. Well continued on for the last question continuing on any other apps, books, or podcasts that you find that you secretly love, and you just have to share with other people, you’ve already done one,

Unknown 50:03
right, so one of my. So this year, for the first time, I have a vision board.

Unknown 50:08
And it’s been amazing. You know, I’ve been someone that might have a new year’s resolution, and I kind of write them down and forget about the end of the year comes around, nothing I said I wanted to do is ever done. But this year, I think, you know, like Kelly, you have so many goals you want to achieve this year, we got to be strategic about doing what I wanted to do. So I have a vision board of health department goals down and I reassess my goals from time to time to see if I’m actually sticking to them. And it kind of allows me to see, you know, I have to tweak this or tweak that, to get my to achieve my goals. One of my goals this year was to read two books a month, I think on average about one and a half so far, but it’s still pretty better to none that I read recently was by john my school is called sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. And it’s talking about life’s greatest lessons are gained from our losses. And it kind of all tied into what I went through last year, and how failure or loss, you know, the people that succeed are the ones that have the right perspective from it, the ones that don’t allow a loss or a failure to defeat them, but to really learn and to become better from it. So, you know, as I said, before a life, everyone is going to go through life with its ups and downs. And as being able to manage and deal with the down period that will really determine if you have a good life for now.

Justin Trosclair 51:45
I wouldn’t be the man I am today, if it wasn’t because of the divorce that I went through, and the copious amounts of books that I read in dealing with, you know, a whole range of topics, exactly what you’re talking about. Because Maxwell’s great. He’s ready.

Unknown 52:00
Yes, good. He’s got a lot of books. And they’re so easy to read. Like I read this a few days, you know, so easy to read. Have you heard about audible yet?

Unknown 52:09
I will fashion I’d like to turn the

Justin Trosclair 52:14
book in two and a half hours the other day.

Unknown 52:17
I like to underline and make my own notes in the pages. So yeah, I will eventually get there. But right now I want to turn pages.

Justin Trosclair 52:26
Is there anything that we can do? From a podcast from people listening any goals that you could potentially accomplish by having an audience know what one of your big goals are that you can’t really do on your own? Hmm, that’s an interesting question.

Unknown 52:41
I think right? Right now, I am still building building my voice and what I what I want to say and I know that as I said, I’m here to reach women, like myself would be successful, but still are struggling with all these at self esteem and self self worth issues. A lot of women who might be only focusing on physical health, but are forgetting that they’re also emotional, mental and spiritual beings as well. So I would say follow me on Instagram. Follow me on Facebook, Dr. Kelly would MD You can also follow my blog over the next over the course of you know, the next year I’ll be rolling out, you know, other products hope to be able to writing a book soon. So you can buy that one that’s out as well.

Justin Trosclair 53:27
What’s the website?

Unknown 53:29
Dr. Kelly would MD doctor? Yes. Dr. Kelly would md.com

Justin Trosclair 53:34
Very good. You know, you don’t have to listen to my past episodes. But when you scroll through and November, December, I had probably, I don’t know, it was a minority. It was a it was an African American spotlight series. Okay. Almost all of them were women. And they were like, just like you just I wrote a book. I’m so passionate women router on there, like PhDs and everything I would I would recommend like them on Instagram because oh my goodness, there’s so follow him obviously on Instagram right now. They’re always so into it. There’s, there’s just, you know, they’re promoting, you know, they’re promoting themselves, but they’re, they’re calling is like, is powerful. And I know, they’re involved with some things that are probably like me to some speaking gigs. And, you know, it’s really cool stuff that they’re doing, to have

Unknown 54:18
something to say to people. So those are, why why I’m looking forward to for for this coming year to speak more, like on podcasts or other you know, other interviews, I want to get that book out. A lot of the thought of the tools that I learned a lot of things that I learned over this past year, I think other women can benefit from them as well to a lot of us go through things, but we never have the guts to be open about it. And when I when I share my story, so once it’s happened to me too, I didn’t move somewhere for someone and it fell apart. Like we just don’t talk about our struggles enough. And I think that why game can help someone going through this thing. So I’m going to be using my advice and it all comes back to being a doctor and being a healer to use my advice to bring healing to others. Yeah, you know,

Justin Trosclair 55:09
I almost moved and it didn’t work out. I can’t imagine like, you know, just preparing yourself to move ended up not working out and then actually doing and then now you’re like, Do I go back? Wow.

Unknown 55:20
So I know I’m supposed to be in Atlanta.

Justin Trosclair 55:22
So awesome. Crazy how that works out.

Dr. Kelly, thank you so much for being on the podcast

Unknown 55:29
having me I really enjoyed our time together.

Justin Trosclair 55:35
Did you know I am offering a copy and one on one online class. You know I’ve been in China for a while I’ve got a class set up with some TCM docs who do cupping will show you the glass kind and the suction kind. You can find more information at a doctor’s perspective, net slash cupping. Right now we have a pre sale price. So you’re going to save a good chunk of cash. By signing up early just put your email You’ll get notified when the class goes live. Also, as always, the no needle acupuncture book, you get four chapters anxiety, low back, insomnia, and headaches, got pictures, how to find the points. And of course all with no needles just go to a doctor’s perspective net slash in a protocol as in needless acupuncture. We have great results the other day from lady who couldn’t do a lunch because her knee pain. Now knee pain is not an issue. So excited to hear that. Also the first book today’s choices, tomorrow’s health, a lot of people are looking for a magic bullet the same it this is saying hey look, if you can do small things daily, you will see results. And I’ll give you the blueprints that I use to create an exercise routine cardio routine, get my nutrition in order and actually get your finances in order to because that’s a big stress in life. And of course talks about chiropractic. So I hope you check that out on the website under the Resources tab. These are my affiliate links that helps out support the show blueberry hosting. set for said they’ve got the power bands, and the really really resistant, really good to stretch those joints mentor box and get subscription to watch the author talk about the book so that you don’t have to spend the time reading it. snows a verb books and things like that. It’s really quite cool. primal health and nutrition. You can save 10% by going through my link using the code primal doc it’s bone broth. Here’s to the autoimmune protocols and specific carbohydrate diet. Gluten Free non GMO, no sugar, dairy free, all those types of cool things. As well as Click Funnels if you sign up to that, or pick up a book from him do my links helps out a little bit. And then of course everybody’s favorite Amazon. You can sign up for different things like prime fresh our music through our links. And of course any the show notes we have books mentioned a few follow the link through my site. That’ll help out as well. Well that is it. Go on ahead and leave us a five star review. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you next week.

We just went hashtag behind the curtain can this episode has come to an end. I hope you got the right dose for your optimal life. Please spread the word about this podcast by telling to friends, share it on social media and visit the show notes on a doctor’s perspective. net to see all the references from today’s guest. A sincere thank you in advance. You’ve been listening to Dr. Justin trust Claire giving you a doctor’s perspective.

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