Ep. 137: Exploring the Intersectionality of Mental and Physical Health with Dr. Lucy Martin McBride, a healthcare educator and disruptor.

Dr. Lucy M. McBride.jpg

We are so pleased to have Dr. Lucy Martin McBride, a practicing internist and a Bloomberg New Voices fellow, join us on Health Gig. Dr. McBride is a longtime health educator and advocate, emphasizing the importance of exploring the relationship between mental and physical health in patient care. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she began writing a newsletter focused on accessible patient information, which has become a trusted source for real-time, fact-based guidance on managing physical and mental health in tandem. Lucy is a recognized voice in the medical community and an incredibly compassionate practitioner, who believes in letting her patients’ voices be heard.

More on Lucy Martin McBride:

Website: https://www.lucymcbride.com/

Medium: https://medium.com/@drlucymcbride

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drlucymcbride/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drlucymcbride/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/drlucymcbride


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Show Notes:

  • [01:00] The reason I'm in primary care is because I love thinking about the intersection between mental and physical health, because after all, people are more than just a set of boxes to check. Health is more than just seeing your doctor once a year. Health is about your lived experiences. It's about your past. It's about your present. It's about your biases.

    [02:30] Our thoughts and our feelings largely drive our behaviors, and our behaviors drive our health outcomes and our medical conditions. But the point is, you cannot opt out of having mental health like you can opt out of a feature on your iPhone. You have it. It's whether or not you're addressing it, whether or not you're connecting your mental health to your physical health. 

    [04:00] Anxiety is part of the human condition, and anxiety is the way we run from danger and escape threats. Anxiety is part of how we survive.

    [04:30]  The question is really, what, if any, are the triggers for having the good day or the bad day? How can you identify the parts of your life that make you feel healthy or make you behave more healthy?

    [06:00] And we've learned that in the public health landscape, in the last 15 months, that when we shame people, we blame people, we call people COV-idiots for not getting vaccinated, you know, that doesn't actually motivate people to go get the vaccine. 

    [07:00] You know, anyone who goes into primary care medicine is interested in the whole person. They're interested in the relationship with the patient, and they want to help people from the ground up. The problem is in this country our system is really broken.

    [08:00] One, we need people individually to realize what it means to be healthy. It's not just not getting COVID, it's not just the number on the scale. It's about our everyday experience of health and well-being. 

    [11:00] I'm not attached to a political ideology. It's really about facts, science, and the kind of universality of the human condition.

    [11:30] Because I think of this pandemic as a crisis of a virus and a parallel pandemic of mental health and crisis. But, diseases of despair were rampant before the pandemic  - depression, anxiety, suicide, opiate epidemic. Then you put COVID-19 on top of that, you put lighter fluid on the grill, so to speak, of despair. Kids have been isolated, families have been under siege. We've all been exhausted and wired and tired from being vigilant about this one threat. 

    [12:00] Now, it's time to take a hard right turn in our internal narratives about what we need to be thinking about to be healthy.

    [12:30] You know, what's interesting is some of the people who have done the best, so to speak, in the pandemic in my patient population are people who've done trauma therapy already, or they had a kid with cancer, or they have been dealing with chronic illness, you know, for years and years and years. It's going to be with us for a long, long time. It's impossible to eradicate it, eliminate it. So we have to learn to be comfortable, all of us now, with threats, and there are threats to our existence everywhere we look, we just haven't always looked at them as carefully as we have this particular threat.

    [17:30] I try to practice evidence-based medicine rooted in science, but there are a lot of parts of the human condition we can't measure in blood. So my job isn't to say, let's put you on Lipitor, it's to say, let's work on thinking about how to reduce your cholesterol by carving out more brain space to the extent that's possible.

    [19:30] And again, like, I think, in the United States, we have so much data on people and not enough care.

    [20:00] Validation is huge, right? Medicine should be the place where people are fully seen and heard. I'm not going to put you on a diet. I'm not going to tell you to do Keto. I'm not going to tell you to do intermittent fasting. We're going to talk about your life, and we're going to talk about how to make realistic, sustainable changes for the long term.

    [20:00] I have some medical knowledge and experience that my patients may not have, but I've never lived in the shoes that my patients have lived in, and I don't assume anything about anybody.

    [23:00] I mean, I think it takes a village to raise a child. I also think it takes a village to be human in general. 

    [27:00] So we need to be careful not to overload ourselves and bring your locus of control to an internal place where you feel like you are in the driver's seat of your health and wellbeing.

    [28:00] People take care of their cars and their teeth more than they take care of their mental health. 

    [30:00] Ultimately, you spend a lot of time fretting about the past and worrying about the future. And we aren't living in the moment. And that is the birthplace of anxiety, depression, and just malaise when we are not present.


    Thank you for joining us on Health Gig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com

Quotes:

"I think it takes a village to raise a child. I also think it takes a village to be human in general." - Dr. Lucy McBride

 

"COVID isn't going away, and it's going to be with us for a long, long time... So now, we have to learn to be comfortable with threats to our existence everywhere we look." - Dr. Lucy McBride

 

"In general, kids' natural habitat is school, and masking kids when it's not rooted in science does more harm than good." - Dr. Lucy McBride

"Gratitude causes a healthy chemical reaction in our bodies -  it helps us release adrenaline, be in the present, and drill down into the things that give us meaning and purpose, which ultimately is healthy." - Dr. Lucy McBride

Keywords:

#DrLucyMcBride #LucyMcBride #HolisticMedicine #HolisticHealing #Holistic #PrimaryCare #Anxiety #WeightLoss #MentalHealth #Intersectionality #PhysicalHealth #Depression #Health #Wellness #HealthGig #Pandemic #COVID19 #TriciaReillyKoch #DoroBushKoch



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