Cynthia Li, MD

Brave New World

Aired on: October 11, 2019

Episode Description
Sally Fallon Morell discusses the Weston A Price Foundation which is a nonprofit, tax-exempt charity founded in 1999 to disseminate the research of nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston Price, whose studies of isolated non-industrialized peoples established the parameters of human health and determined the optimum characteristics of human diets. Dr. Price’s research demonstrated that humans achieve perfect physical form and perfect health generation after generation only when they consume nutrient-dense whole foods and the vital fat-soluble activators found exclusively in animal fats. The Foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism. It supports a number of movements that contribute to this objective including accurate nutrition instruction, organic and biodynamic farming, pasture-feeding of livestock, community-supported farms, honest and informative labeling, prepared parenting and nurturing therapies.

Her Story

  • Healing can happen and happens all around us
  • Don’t give up. If we are trying hard without success we have to try different, not harder.
  • Her book is about belief which can either expand us or limit us
  • As a young doctor she thought that disease and illness are separated by a line determined by a lab test, etc
    • This paradigm worked for her until she became ill with a mysterious condition
      • This paradigm depends on a diagnosis
      • If there is no diagnosis, there is not treatment as treatments target the diagnosis
  • She became ill , and could not leave her flat
    • She was ‘healthy’ until her first child was born when she developed autoimmune thyroiditis
      • Weight loss, insomnia, heart fluttering, arrhythmias
      • She was relieved to get a diagnosis
      • Her symptoms were treated
        • For example medications to lower her heart rate
        • She took thyroid replacement and felt she was in very good hands
        • Her numbers normalized, but her symptoms did not clear
        • She thought she was cured because “her numbers “ were normal
      • With her second pregnancy, when had an acute illness which led to chronic fatigue and dysautonomia
        • Dysautonomia is where the autonomic nervous system which controls temperature, blood pressure, heart rate and digestion – this system was in complete disarray.
        • As a doctor she believed such conditions were not real
          • There were no ways in medicine to measure these conditions
      • It took her two years to let go of the classical medical training and rebuild her knowledge from the bottom up
        • This involved letting go of her old beliefs and being open to new beliefs
        • She learned that the body was a dynamic ecosystem not parts to be fixed
        • She learned that the disease process is a continuum not delineated by a line that separated disease from wellness
          • One can have normal lab values and still be heading towards a disease
          • Doctors are trained as interventionists
        • For example, in diabetes, rather than aiming to lower blood sugar, one should look for underlying contributing causes such as
          • Infection, toxins, gluten
            • Gluten is sprayed with chemicals
            • Many have antibodies to gluten
      • The key learning was that chronic inflammation underlay many chronic conditions
        • She searched for conditions that led to inflammation
        • She learned from acupuncturists, intuitive friends, a qi gong master

Brave New Medicine

  • With her illness, she felt she entered the no man land where Western medicine does not go, she felt she entered the  dystopian landscape as described by Adlous Huxleys’ model of the same name
    • She, however, embraces the qualities of “Brave” and “New” for discovery
  • This is about venturing into new territories going beyond what she was taught and how she was taught how to think
  • This is a call to us (both doctors and laymen) as a culture to participate in a new form of health care that supports healing
  • This looks at concepts such as embraced by functional medicine including
    • The microbiome in the gut, skin and other areas
    • Neuroplasticity – the capacity of neurons to change the patterns to connect depending on what we feel, think or eat. 
    • Epigenetics the capacity to turn certain genes on and off by what we feel, think and eat
    • Looking at root causes as in functional medicine
    • Inflammation
    • Understanding our bodies as ecosystems
      • It was not only a thyroid problem, it was an imbalance in the entire hormone system and its connection to the immune system, nervous system, and digestive system
      • All of these systems are linked
  • Ideal type of medicine
    • Healing vs treating
      • Treating is an intervention one direction from the doctor to the patient
      • Healing is any activity that restores balance
        • Can happen with people, physicians or nature
      • These are no mutually exclusive

The “difficult patient”

  • Is someone who makes the doctor feel uncomfortable
    • Aggressive patient,
    • Demanding patient with an agenda
    • Or like Dr. Li. Who was a “very good patient
      • She kept coming back without symptoms improving
    • Is a lonely place
      • Are left alone
      • She was afraid to go to another doctor due to the stigma of being labeled as a “difficult patient”
        • Why go back if she creates difficulties for everyone
    • He tension arose because she did not fit into the paradigm which weighs heavily on objective data
    • This adds stress to the patient and created a sense of “learned helplessness”
  • This gave her profound empathy for her patients and sympathy for doctors who have 15 minutes scheduled per patient.
    • As a doctor she felt let down when she had nothing to offer
    • Now she offers her attention (“generous listening” being fully present and acknowledging the patient’s story)

Her path in healing

  • She approached it as a mystery
  • She came to functional medicine later in her journey
    • Functional medicine is a movement of looking at the underlying causes of disease with five contributing components
      • Allergens
      • Infections she looked at triggers of infections
      • Stress
      • Toxins or Pollutants
      • Diet
  • Seven ingredients for optimal health
    •  Diet – healthy food
      • Connect to where food came from and appreciating the richness of the earth
    • Balancing hormones
    • Healthy environment
    • Relaxing
    • Practicing pleasure
    • Adequate sleep
    • Adequate-  movement and exercise
      • Hard to doing some conditions
      • She practiced qi gong which she could do from her couch
      • It led to a deeper consciousness and a sense of connection to the universe in an integral way.
    • Community love and purpose
  • She learned how to release grief and shave
    • The shame of being a difficult patient and the shame of being a doctor that could not heal herself

Connection to spiritual guidance

  • The mind and the body are not separate.
  • She experiences spiritual in a more profound and different way
  • This healed her deep trauma and the negative messages her childhood religion gave her about death
  • If a person is not in a religion, nature can be spiritual
  • Spirituality is connecting with the living world, the living universe whatever that means to the person
    • For her connecting and going into the ocean is spiritual and healing for her
    • The patients are going to find this source of meaning themselves
  • The sacred is all around us
  • A lot of this is perception ability to sense it and reawaken

The Effects of Beliefs

  • An idea or framework that our analytical mind understands or formulates
  • This is different that faith or trust which come from a deeper place such as spirit or her heart
  • The mind has conditioned disease that are thrown around and become the Truth
    • These truths can be limiting or expanding
  • With chronic illnesses, we lose hope when we see no helpful remedies
  • The simplest step in healing is the hardest – belief that one can heal
    • The first step is visualizing good health
    • Visualization and imagining before realizing it
    • Belief is analytical left brain
    • Visualizing and imagining is the right brain
    • Can use the right brain, intuitive side to bypass the analytical side
    • Imagine what it looks like to be health
    • This became a form of play which to her became a journey
  • She had to learn to navigate the infinite choices
    • Constant trial and error

Intuition

  • A word that means a lot of different things to different people
  • The definition of intuition from the heartmath group – “a process where information that is normally outside our mental and cognitive process that is perceived in our bodies and mind as a certainty of knowledge”
    • Heartmath has studied how brain waves and heart waves synchronize – the intersection of body, mind and spirit.
  • How to develop intuition
    • Intuition can be like any other craft such as music , singing
    • Some are born with a lot, but most of us are under the bell curve
    • Wherever we are on that spectrum, we can develop our intuition
    • There is a theory and method to developing intuition
    • She learned how to tune into knowing that is perceived in the body and mind
      • She began to pay attention to body sensations
      • She began a daily meditation practice
      • First step is learning how to silence the analytical left-brain mind
      • She clears herself after each patient and clears her mind to see if she can pick up information on the next patient