ICU – “I SEE YOU” PODCAST
The Role of Medication in Treating Vestibular Disorders
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In this episode of the ICU – “I See You” podcast, hosts and guests discuss complementary and alternative approaches to supporting your wellness as a person with vestibular dysfunction. If you’re like most people, when you aren’t feeling well you go to see your medical doctor, and hopefully they, in conjunction with other members of your healthcare team, create a treatment plan based on conventional medical practices. What many people don’t know is that when you support your overall wellness using complementary and alternative modalities, you are physically and mentally better able to cope with everyday stressors, and often respond better to conventional treatments.
This podcast is a co-production of the Vestibular Disorders Association (VeDA) and Unfixed Media.
ABOUT THE GUESTS
Emily Englert is a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner in Seattle, WA, an author and a wellness coach. Over six years ago she went through a chaotic health crisis with a vestibular condition that took her on a beautiful, and messy, healing journey, and which inspired her to tap into her healer nature. Emily believes that we should all be in the driver’s seat when it comes to our health and wellness. She is a proponent of supporting healing from the inside out and addressing the root cause of the symptoms that create ill health in the body.
Dr. Kathleen Stross is one of the premier vestibular and neurological physical therapists in the US. Her physical therapy career began in 1989 and quickly focused on the treatment of people with vestibular dysfunction. She developed one of the first Vestibular Rehabilitation programs in the US, developing treatment techniques for those with dizziness and balance disorders. Kathleen’s neurosensory approach to physical dysfunction allows appreciation for the nervous system’s role in processing every stimulus and orchestrating all expression.
Hosts:
Cynthia Ryan, Executive Director of the Vestibular Disorders Association (VeDA) https://vestibular.org/
Kimberly Warner, Founder and Director of Unfixed Media https://unfixedmedia.com/
This podcast is a co-production of the Vestibular Disorders Association (VeDA) and Unfixed Media.
TRANSCRIPT
VeDA uses otter.ai to create machine-generated transcripts. This transcript may contain errors.
Cynthia Ryan
Welcome to the ICU Podcast where we explore the vestibular experience through conversations between patients and the health professionals who care for them.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
During this podcast, we invite patients to share their stories and healthcare professionals to ask questions, so they are equipped to better care for and truly see the invisible challenges faced by their patients. I’m Kimberly Warner.
Cynthia Ryan
And I’m Cynthia Ryan. And we are your hosts on this journey of discovery.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
Welcome, everyone, to the ICU Podcast. Today, we are going to talk about complementary and alternative approaches to supporting your wellness as a person with vestibular dysfunction. This is near and dear to my heart. And probably many of you. If you’re like most people, when you aren’t feeling well, you go to see your medical doctor and hopefully they in conjunction with other members of your healthcare team create a treatment plan based on conventional medical practices. What many people don’t know is that when you support your overall wellness using complementary and alternative modalities, you actually are physically and mentally better able to cope with everyday stressors, and often respond better to conventional treatments. So that’s just a little bit of background, but we’ve got a lot to cover today. So let’s just dive in and see what this means in practice. We have two incredible guests with us today. Emily Englert is a nutritional therapy practitioner in Seattle, Washington, an author and a wellness coach. Over six years ago, she went through a chaotic health crisis with a vestibular condition, but took her on a beautiful and messy healing journey, and which inspired her to tap into her healer nature. Emily believes that we should all be in the driver’s seat when it comes to our health and wellness. She is a proponent of supporting healing from the inside out and addressing the root causes of the symptoms that create ill health in the body. Welcome, Emily. It’s so good to have you here.
Emily Englert
Thank you. I’m so excited to be here.
Cynthia Ryan
Welcome Emily and I would like to introduce Dr. Kathleen Stross, who is one of the premier vestibular and neurological physical therapists in the United States. Her physical therapy career career began back in 1989. And she quickly focused on the treatment of people with vestibular dysfunction, obviously a big passion for her and she’s got years of experience working with with vestibular patients, she developed one of the very first vestibular rehabilitation programs in the US developing treatment techniques for those with dizziness and balance disorders. Kathleen’s neuro sensory approach to physical dysfunction allows appreciation for the nervous system’s role in processing every stimulus and orchestrating every expression. It’s a holistic approach. So welcome, Kathleen.
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
Thank you so much. It’s great to be here.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
Welcome, Kathleen. It’s so good to see you again.
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
And I haven’t gotten to share about this, but this is it. The cibula Disorders Association gave me the first opportunity to really present some of this work at a prior vestibular conference, and I think it was well received. I’m happy that your podcast decided to talk more about it as people are full of questions in the audience. And I think they’ll lean in to this podcast to see what we have to share.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
I agree. So let’s begin. Actually, let’s begin with Emily, I just since you’re the one that had six years ago, this vestibular when you have a similar journey began. Tell us a little bit about that and give us some background on your story as a patient. Yeah, sure.
Emily Englert
I’d be happy to. So back in 2016, is when my vestibular something hit and I’ll I’ll go into deeper why I call it that. I was a few months postpartum after the birth of my second child. I was back to work. Yeah, relatively stressed out. I got sick with what I thought was just a head cold or a sinus infection did not think anything of it. And a few days into that I was sitting at my desk and my world went sideways. I went from feeling quote unquote, normal to completely off balance. My eyes immediately did not focus. I felt disconnected from my body. I felt like I was floating. I had no labels for any of this. So it’s just a matter of describing what it felt like. And it sent me on a wild ride. And these symptoms continued for the better part of two years constantly no breaks in between there was progress. Switch I’ll talk about. And I immediately went on this journey of trying to figure out what was happening with me. I didn’t have a label for close to two years. So that’s why I call it my vestibular something because I didn’t have I didn’t know what was going on. So I would later be diagnosed with Vestibular neuritis, vestibular migraines, probably triple PD. There were other things thrown at me. But I say vestibular something because I was just dealing with a storm of symptoms and trying to figure out well, why am I feeling this way?
Cynthia Ryan
Yeah, I
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
really liked that you call it a vestibular something because so many of us have these overlapping symptoms and to pinpoint it is just almost maddening. So I appreciate that. You call it a vestibular something, and I’m sure many of our audience members would appreciate that as well.
Cynthia Ryan
I think, press
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
Go ahead. Sorry. No, go ahead. Kathleen, has been say I’m impressed. You call it a vestibular something that’s so hard to say I’d probably stop with something like Viktor.
Cynthia Ryan
I think it brings the you know, we always talk about how there’s this. You know, there are lots of different vestibular conditions. And we do feel like we have to put a label on them. And there is, you know, in validity and importance to getting an accurate diagnosis. But it also there’s a common experience of everyone who has a vestibular something. And and I think that that kind of brings it down to that common level, it is of the singular something that we’re all experiencing. So Kathleen, why don’t you would you mind starting out just telling us about your professional background, before you started integrating complementary therapies into your practice? Well,
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
yes, and it’s, it’s, I like your questions, because it causes me to pause and think about, was this already a part of me? Or did my practice necessitate my exploration of this? And I would say it’s the latter, because I was absolutely 100%, white lab coat scientist, you know, looking for evidence, actually, you know, double blind studies only before I would speak about anything, and was extremely interested in the truth, and the facts and only the facts. And that’s the way I built my practice. In the early days, there wasn’t even really a word vestibular rehabilitation. But we were beginning to synthesize information as we understood the vestibular system and what its role was in posture and balance. So I positioned myself in Houston, Texas, where the largest Texas where the large Texas Medical Center is, and I had a variety of patients from all over the world who were seeking what they considered the best care they could. And they asked a lot of hard questions, and they brought cultural experiences from all over the globe. And it was really an answer to their questions that I felt a responsibility to explore the things they were asking me about. Not that I was trying to think I knew everything, but nobody else knew the answers either. And, you know, in the 90s, there wasn’t a readily available online world to just go to and look things up the way we do now. I mean, my goodness, so take that for granted. But you know, who are you going to call to talk about these things? So in the beginning, it was ginger or ginkgo biloba, certainly acupuncture, the simple, simple things like that, that people would ask about. So I just as a lifelong learner, considered it my responsibility to my clients to find out what occurred and seek truth. So it wasn’t a part of anything I grew up with. I had parents who were far from hippies, but I love that, that you had hippie parents, and I can see that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Right? It’s, it’s how we’re grownups. So my parents were, you know, black and white analytical thinkers. And so it was I so it was, it was patients who brought me knowledge and an interest in having an open mind. You know, I tell my journey, my story of my journey as that I came into vestibular rehabilitation and the physical therapy, feeling that I understood the science of it. From school, lots and lots of school and many good grades, right? You go to the top of your class and you understand the science but it only through years of practice and experience, do you learn the art of something? And I think that my life journey and my practice and the privilege I’ve had of working with people has taught me the most important things about it. And that is the art of healing and the art of caring, and that is an openness to understand and respond to patients from where they are. Yeah.
Cynthia Ryan
That’s a really interesting point, Kathleen, that you made It’s not something that you grew up with, like, like I did. I, my mother was very interested in exploring complementary and alternative therapies and modalities early on. And so that was part of my health care. You know, I didn’t I never even thought I mean, we went to, we went to a chiropractor once a week, you know, wow. Yeah, for a long time. And so and, you know, herbal remedies. It wasn’t, it was never a question in my mind that that was something that I could use to support my wellness, but, but for some people, it’s, it’s quote out there. So
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
I admit, I came as a cynic. But I like to approach problems that way, because I then am looking for evidence, and I am reasonably unbiased, to try to see how I can advise people and what’s out there. So I came from from there. So you have it is a different a different approach. That’s why it’ll be great to have this variety of approaches in this conversation. Or,
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
well, like you, Cynthia, I grew up well in Wisconsin, but we wouldn’t we’d had tofu delivered to our front doorstep. I mean, my mom was totally into it, even though my dad was a heart surgeon, and, you know, very western medicine. But I’ve opposite of you, Kathleen. And because of my vestibular disorder, I actually became more cynical. Not that I don’t, I’m not holistically cynical of alternative medicine. But I, because I instantly went down the complementary path, because I had to wait four months for my neurology appointment. I was instantly pursuing cranial sacral, and hormone therapy, and chiropractic medicine, all of which was making me worse. So I had to actually step back and kind of go, okay, there was room for everything here. Because I had put all my faith in alternative medicine. And I was like, Why isn’t anybody helping me? So Emily, that’s sort of a long winded way of saying, I want to hear a little bit from you about, at what point in your treatment? Did you decide to explore complementary therapies?
Emily Englert
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s important you say what you just said, because I think a lot of people might think like, there’s a right or wrong with this, of how you go about this kind of, you know, alternative medicine and there’s not a right or wrong, it’s really what works for you. And I think that’s something that really needs to be focused on. For me, I went it was probably three or four months, I saw a few general practitioners, I saw a neurologist, I had them run every test under the sun. And I was told that I was the picture of health as I stood there, barely able to stand their focus, move around. And I was like, This is not what health feels like, there’s no way this is what health feels like. So I had been exposed to chiropractic work as a teenager, we had a family friend. So that was kind of like my door opening experience. He also did nutrition. So I did find somebody in my area that was a chiropractor, but she also specialized in Reiki and cranial sacral work and she was knowledgeable about nutrition and gave me some general guidance, along with me going for some treatments. And I felt like she really understood me, she wasn’t questioning my symptoms, or telling me that I was totally fine. She very much believed me and I think that’s a part of the process to have someone believing you and understanding that might not even matter if you have a label or not, but then they believe that you can heal and there’s things you can do. So I also felt like it was the first person that looked at me and she was actually there for me, and I think that’s a part of it. So I did start going to see her weekly and I do credit her to making it so that I was functioning during a time when I very well felt like I might not have left the house. It wasn’t the whole picture. It wasn’t everything I wasn’t magically all better it was a piece of the picture that led me down to then going into holistic nutrition and looking how food could support my body and healing and then looking at root cause of how so much of chronic illness is nutritional deficiencies and toxicity and immune challenges and then finding a holistic doctor that was going to look at what was going on in my body. Regardless, you know, even if I had at that point, the vestibular migraine label that doesn’t mean what was underneath is the same as somebody else. So he was looking at okay, well this is what your body needs and that kind of took me down that path but it was a few it was a few months and and then the door just kept on opening of like oh wow
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
you were feeling some success with the early traditional medicines that a complementary alternative medicines that you were practicing good
Emily Englert
Yeah, but success felt like not drowning. It didn’t feel like I was feeling good or I was anywhere where I wanted to be it was that I was up and continuing to go to those appointments and seeing like a dim light of like okay, I’m just want to know things I can do to support home You know, stasis and self healing in my body, it wasn’t the full picture. Maybe it was like the belief that she had also that the body is meant to heal, you know, there wasn’t just like one thing. So success is like, not always actually meaning you’re feeling how you want to feel yet, you’re just moving forward and that you’re not stuck.
Cynthia Ryan
So, you know, most people have to seek out traditional medicine, from certain traditional medicine practitioners, like medical doctors, and I think we can refer to physical therapy, traditional physical therapy as as a type of traditional medicine and then seek out complementary and alternative type therapies separately. And very often, we don’t even the traditional some, I don’t, I don’t even know. Can we say all but some traditional medicine, doctors don’t even talk about complementary therapies, you know, very often, you know, I go to my traditional medicine doctors, and they don’t say, hey, you know, have you tried? You know, have you tried acupuncture or something like that, but some do. So, Kathleen, I think you’re in a unique position in that you integrate both into your practice. And you you kind of talked a little bit about how your patients opened you up to that. But can you talk about how you integrate that into your practice and how you balance the traditional with the complimentary?
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
Yes, and I want to do a little bit of vocabulary lesson if I can to help lay a groundwork and standardize some of these terms. But thank you, Emily, for your story. What I wanted, what I took home from your story was the fact that being seen and heard, and receiving some hope, was in an integral part of your connection to that practitioner. And as a practitioner, I hear that I’m just saying report, is everything report is everything. Okay? It is. And you even acknowledged that that person’s belief in what they were going to do for you impacted your experience, the acknowledgement of belief is important here in this conversation. So the scientist in me looks for proof. And let me just say, I am not sold out on complementary and alternative approaches, I want to define some terms and tell you how I use it and the words we would use and maybe why doctors don’t ever suggested here’s why. So traditional medicine, as you said, is what is practiced in the Western world, what’s called Western medicine or standard medical care. It’s what we have in the United States and Canada, and certainly, where most of our vestibular patients come from, and experience complementary medicine is treatments that are used along with standard treatments. Let’s say that the doctor says, you know, you need to go take this medicine and complement what I’m giving you in this medic medicine for your vestibular migraine with physical therapy, or exercise or massage or bodywork. Okay, that complements that. So you have two different kinds of things working together. Alternative Medicine is when someone chooses an approach instead of standard medical treatment, okay, so and they take an alternative route, away from Western medicine to an alternative that is not widely accepted in the traditional Western philosophy of treatment, the word integrative medicine and you said this with me, you said how do you integrate it and that’s the key word there. Integrative Medicine is a total approach. And I use the word Holistic Health in my practice to say this is a total approach to medical care that combines standard medicine with complementary or alternative medicine practices, the ones that have been shown safe and effective. Okay, so they may not be mainstream medicine or the use of pharmaceutical and surgical approaches to remedy disease and symptoms. But it’s an integrative approach of traditional and less traditional practices that are coming to be proven effective and safe. That also means regulated in most cases, because in this country, we have the FDA who looks to regulate and control anything that tries to make its way into traditional Western medicine, right? So, but the integrative approach is gaining popularity as the world and people take control of their own health care. And they say yes, I do think that I want to have that. Let’s say 30 years ago it was I’m going to take folic acid for this dizziness, I’m going to add some B vitamins to my regimen. I’m going to take some of these vitamins because I think that they will help helped me. And it’s true. doctors weren’t and many still aren’t recommending any supplements at all, or even vitamin therapy, except for maybe a vitamin C when you have a flu or zinc nowadays when you’re fighting some virus, but it was the meant that physicians and practitioners integrating and being open to saying, let’s look at the research and see what things that are out there a little bit. The ones that have been researched based and have some potential for hurt for helping, and some a very low to no risk of hurting, those are going to be the ones that I would welcome into my practice and will integrate into my practice. So if you asked me about a particular area of complementary and alternative medicine, like, Hey, do you know anything about essential oils? I’ll say, Well, sure, but I’m not sold out on all of them necessarily, because I don’t have the knowledge, skills or experience to tell you any thing except anecdotal evidence from patients or friends about the use of them. Except where the literature provides rich information to support the use of certain essential oils for certain conditions. An example would be lavender for sleep, and relaxation, very well researched peppermint for its antimicrobial properties. These are things that are no brainers. Yes, absolutely right. And Emily touched on that when she said, you know, for me, they helped calm me down. For me, they helped me get to a space where I could stand up, and think and function. And that is a very essential role for complementary alternative approaches, in my opinion, to ready the nervous system to move through and navigate the very tough journey back to balance through the Western medical system, which is a nightmare. It’s not easy for anyone. And the more doctors experience going through it with their loved ones, like I am now say, it doesn’t matter. There’s no pole and no influence, there’s no front of a line, there’s no Fast Pass it I think
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
the key there, what you just said is about the nervous system. It’s like, Wait, that’s the front line that needs to be addressed. And often, alternative medicine and complementary medicine are really equipped at addressing the nervous system in a subtle, gentle way, which is often what vestibular patients need, sometimes just to throw in a dyads, a pan at them does not do the trick. So I really appreciate you saying that, Kathleen. And so let’s I actually want to circle this back to Emily. Along those lines. You said you tried cranial sacral, chiropractic medicine diet. And this clearly has become a passion for you. Because now you’re a holistic practitioner, what tell us a little bit about that journey to becoming a holistic practitioner. And specifically I want to know about tying it back to what Kathleen just said, how your nervous system was addressed with some of this alternative journey that you took. Yeah.
Emily Englert
So I mean, it started out just out of necessity for myself of I’ve got to get empowered, I’ve got to learn, you know, what can I do for myself and my home, so I don’t feel like I’m just reliant on the outside world to try to feel better. So I went back to school for holistic nutrition, just to get a general guidance of I want to look at food as medicine, I want to see what I can do, you know, with food to bring my body into that parasympathetic state when I take that moment of gratitude, and with each meal and with each bite, okay, if I start to, you know, preparing a meal became my therapy and became, you know, a form of therapy and became sort of meditative, so that I could relax enough because, you know, I felt like, my nervous system was on fire I described going through the vestibular something like even if mentally, I felt sort of, okay, I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack at every moment. So I had to start moving through life in a different way. So going back for holistic nutrition was simply just to learn about the basics and then for wellness coaching, and then I thought, Okay, well this is making it so I can move through my vestibular something. So I started working, you know, coaching people around the world and realizing, well, they just want support and they just want not necessarily be told it has to be this path, but that there is a path and that they can create it and that they can get support along it. And so that led me down that but then realizing, okay, but I want to help people on a deeper level. I want to help you know, look at root cause why you know why I’m experiencing these symptoms. And on a personal note, for me, it was a lot of immune challenges. There were toxicity issues. I was coming off postpartum. There were nutritional deficiencies. This is like my I backstory did just happen, then this is over, you know, 30 years of lifetime of stuff that had happened that needed to be addressed. And I thought, Okay, well, I want to be able to help that bio individual, if somebody’s dealing with digestion issues, or blood sugar regulation, or hydration, or fatty acid, mineral balance, all of these things are the foundations in the body. And can really like you mentioned in the beginning, when we like, address the whole person that makes it so you can move through life easier, it wasn’t that this was going to be the magic cure it was, what can I do to support the foundations, so that I feel more grounded so that I feel more safe, so that I can start to take steps to retrain my body, you know, to address the root cause of what was going on. So going back through to school for nutritional therapy, and then to specialize also in helping people with nutrition with autoimmune conditions, because a lot of people are also dealing with that that became my focus, just wanting out of necessity, that like Kathleen said, it was like looking at the people I was working with, oh, well, they want deeper help. They want to know, can you help me just because I have this vestibular migraine label, like, how can you help me underneath that. And so that became the necessity in my life. And then the nervous system factor I want to address. Yeah, that’s just if you can bring your body into that parasympathetic state. And this is where I say, there’s not one way to do it. Some people meditation is their jam, and they rock it out, and they can make it happen. There were days I couldn’t sit still for three minutes. And that just wasn’t going to be the thing. But I could stand and maybe make a meal, do some stretching, you know, what can I do to start to bring myself out of the fight or flight. So it wasn’t, that’s where I say it’s not one size fits all, it really needs to be what works for you, and maybe just weren’t walking in that practitioners office, for me feeling heard was enough to bring my body into that state, where I was more receptive to the treatment, or whatever they were offering me, I work with people that you know, they talk about how maybe they’ve gone into somebody’s office, and they felt like they got their anxiety went up, and they felt worse, and you’re like, well, even if it is a really good practitioner, that might not be the right fit for you. Because it doesn’t sound like it’s helping bring your nervous system into the right state. So and I just I also want to say I love Kathleen, what you said about the complementary and alternative, I’m yet to work with someone just going one way or that it’s like all Western or it’s all alternative, I think it’s a beautiful synergistic, you know, has that impact together. And so us having this conversation about how it can and how it’s really a necessity in today’s world, it can’t be ignored, it’s really important.
Cynthia Ryan
Emily, there’s something that you said about, you know, was really a 30 year journey, because, you know, all of these things had been happening in your body, over your lifetime, they had been building up and you hadn’t been paying attention to them, because you hadn’t had an event that triggered a response that you were you had to pay attention to. And I think we all do that to some extent. You know, we all just go and, and, and we indulge and we we live our lives, doing things and eating things, and, you know, drinking, drinking, or drinking, do many things that, you know, might not be really good for our body, but we don’t pay attention to it. Until there is an event that makes us look at ourselves and our body. And then sometimes it’s transformative, where we we, you know, we explore these alternative, or complementary treatments, whatever we want to call them. We explore these life style changes in some ways, and we make them part of our lives. And I think that’s part of this topic and healthcare in general is how do we integrate these into our lives so that we are we are healthier and happier overall? Kathleen, I wonder if you could take maybe an example of a patient that you’ve helped who did not see how they could, you know, integrate these lifestyle changes and introduce them to that maybe maybe somebody who was very, you know, very western medicine to help them open up to that there are other things that they need to do to integrate into, into their life to realize, you know, whole health.
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
That’s a good question. I think going back to the nervous system, and the two phases in our autonomic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system, the fight flight or freeze response that occurs with the sympathetic, adrenaline driven reaction in our body is driven by Fear and it causes the heart to race, it causes fear and anxiety and stress. And it sends all the blood to our muscles so that we can run away or stand and then run and take cover. Patients come in sometimes in that elevated or heightened state of nervousness and anxiety. Even if they’re not outwardly expressing fear or anxiety, you can tell when you’re in the presence of someone who is wound up tightly like that. Those patients which are half a good half of my clientele, because I’ve got half that come in rested and relaxed and half that come in anxious and scared. And it’s independent of diagnosis. I routinely and early identify those who, whose nervous system isn’t even ready to hear what I’m going to say. And they can barely tell their story. Without pot, but yeah, they can barely tell their story without sort of rambling and fear. It just comes through the fear and helplessness comes through. So I begin very, very early, even in the first interaction with somebody to bring the vibration down. You can tell in my voice in my pacing, in the words that I choose. And I begin echoing the words that they use back to them to speak to their brain. I was explaining this to somebody who said, How do you do what you do? I said, I’m talking directly to your brain with your words. And asking open ended questions. So when the I think this is the art of it. And I think this is the art of it. So let me tell you what I mean by that. We talked about fight flight or freeze with sympathetic nervous system. But the ARS like ours and Robert, is the rest, restore, repair, regenerate, rebalance, recover, those ours are the art of the parasympathetic nervous system, when I can get a person to tap into this lower vibrational calmer sense of self, only then, and I mean, only then are they ready to begin their journey back to balance. And I think that it is now just a part of my engagement early on to identify, if you’re coming in a hurry, and you want to get treatment, I hope you have BPPV, because I can fix you today and send you home tomorrow, and you can go back to work. But anything short of that is going to require some reflection. Another are there are so many. And digestion that occurs in the parasympathetic state. And I think it’s extremely powerful. So it is a good 50% of my patients, that I shift my approach immediately, there’s no hurting, there’s no ni model that pacing. And if if I can bring a person down, we can comfort and bring the person down, just like Emily says that first practitioner did with her that gave her breath. I don’t have to say, now take a breath, let’s take a minute to meditate, or these great words that many doctors will say, and I can attest to this having just been in hospitals with my 91 year old mother in law, calm down, calm down, calm down. Now, don’t be anxious. Don’t doesn’t work. People hear this demand from someone standing over their bed or over the exam table telling you how to be when you’re saying can you just tell me what’s wrong with me? And there’s desperation there. And I think that, I mean, that’s the art of healing and engagement with clients almost immediately to get them to a place of rest restoring and relaxing, and it’s almost hypnotic in. And I don’t mean that, literally because I don’t know how to do that. And I don’t even know much about it. But it is certainly a report that you can build with people to get them to slow down. And then they just, I already feel better. And I haven’t done yet. Right?
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
The very nature. Go ahead, go ahead. I don’t know
Emily Englert
the difference between feeling stuck and feeling like you can move forward but your symptoms might not have changed. You might actually not feel any better with the symptoms that you’re experiencing. But you feel like you can move forward. You’re like I don’t know the door just opened I’m still where I was but the door just opened and I can go it’s it’s the most groundbreaking thing I feel like and what you said I had a beautiful mentor who said I want you to know that the energy you bring to the table to the people that you You work with is one of the most important things. And that just, you know, I think of that all the time of like, if someone can feel heard if they can feel their nervous system calm down around you, you’ve already given them a gift. You know, they already they’ve heard, they’re already changed. They’re already wherever they go in the world and whatever treatment they choose, they’re going to be different about it.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
The very nature of pursuing a cure. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with Dan Bugliosi work. And he’s a little controversial, but he talks about pain and he works with dizziness. And also patients have chronic pain. But when we pursue a cure, we’re telling our brain he says we’re telling our brains that we’re not safe, because we’re essentially saying, hey, brain, we gotta fix something, we’re in danger. So Kathleen, when a patient comes to you, by you, first, helping create that sense of safety, even like you said, Emily, if their symptoms don’t change, you’re already getting to that place where the brain goes, I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe. And it’s so hard to find that safe that which is what we need to heal. I truly believe that’s the first step to healing of vestibular disorders that we need our brains to feel that we’re safe. But if we’re out there for me, like I did for six years pursuing treatments, my brain the whole time is going, I’m in danger. Something’s wrong, something must be wrong, because the girls keep going to appointments. You know, so I just love that you embrace your patients that way, Kathleen, and help create safety?
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
Well, thank you. And I think Emily and I think alike, and so many of them probably do the same thing. And it is an essential thing. It relates so well to the vestibular system and the feeling of dizziness. In this way. When you when I think of the image. And I do a lot of this with patients, I’ll say I see yourself running around looking for a diagnosis. What do you what do you see and you’re like I’m zipping around from one place to another and you see yourself as going to appointments are your feet on the ground? No, they haven’t even touched the ground. You are floating from place to place zipping and spinning and never really stopping to be where your feet are right now at this moment. And that first connection is to get someone to land somewhere right where you are right now. And that is to feel the surface you’re sitting on. To have your feet on the floor. to exhale, exhale and let yourself feel heavy where you are right now. And stack your head over your shoulders over your hips. I know on you people have heard me say this all the time. It’s sort of my signature thing, which is a an orientation and awareness of where your body is right now. stacking it up in alignment, very vestibular and critical for maintaining postural control in the vertical, which the stimulator patients lose sight of. And breathing there and finding ease there. That’s where the ease is, which is the opposite of dis ease. This eases off balance tilting and falling and maintaining upright postures with great effort, right, it takes a lot of strength to hold myself off vertical. But when you find that alignment in the vestibular system, that’s where the rest can occur. And that’s the beauty of the vestibular system being such a primitive and integral part of our nervous system. It’s at the center of your brain for a reason. Because it’s protected there. Mostly, it’s deep inside, you know, your vestibular system, we think it’s in your ear. So you think it’s out here, but it’s actually like this far inside your skull. It’s not far from your brainstem, it’s highly protected. And that little end organ is not out here in your ear canal like you can touch it with your finger. But then there’s all this bone to go through a tunnel of bone to get to it. It’s very protected because it’s very important.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
So Emily, since we can’t clone Kathleen, or you since and you’re both are magnificent practitioners. I’m sure there are listeners that are like I want to start exploring this because even listening to both of you I’m I can feel my nervous system is combing. How what would you say Emily, to someone who wants to start exploring this, but isn’t sure where to start?
Emily Englert
Well, first, I would say that’s awesome. This is just a door of opportunity that you don’t have to worry about doing this right or wrong, that it’s just going to be a path that you get to design and make for you. I do personally feel like nutrition is a beautiful place to start if you haven’t explored it because it’s a way to reconnect with your body. So many of us going through a vestibular something feel so disconnected from our body. I know I looked in the mirror and I was like I don’t even recognize that woman. I don’t feel like I’m in that body. So I do feel like taking a bio individual approach with nutrition and finding out what your body is a way just that at home and all the moments you can start to read connect to that. And also, if you support your digestion, if that’s a priority for you your blood sugar regulation, this is just going to make it so you can move through your vestibular something easier, and then decide what the next step is. If that doesn’t interest you, you know, find out what protect practitioners are in your area, reach out to me or Kathleen, you know, ask questions of them. What do you do? What can you do to help me? Have you worked with people that have experienced my symptoms, really advocate for yourself. And if you work with someone, and it ends up not being a good fit, that doesn’t mean that the door needs to shut, it just means you take a turn. And then maybe you find a different practitioner or you try a different healing modality. I think it’s like an endless road, I always tell the clients that I’m coaching, this is not like you’re ever going to hit a stop sign, you’re just going to turn or you’re going to try something different. You’re going to see what works for you. And maybe you stop at some point, you know, and take a pause and really think I know, Kimberly, you said, you know, you had to really think on what your path was, when you were Go, go go. But yeah, connect with Veda and find out the practitioners in your area or working with someone remotely, and find out what resonates with your soul and feels good for you. Because again, when it comes back to the nervous system, you’ve just opened the door more than maybe even someone’s going to do for you. You’re already just started the healing. Yeah,
Cynthia Ryan
yeah, nutrition is a good place to start. Because it’s, oh, excuse me, it’s it’s attainable. You know, it’s something that that everybody can do. And it doesn’t seem like it’s, you know, this way out there thing. And also listening to your body. And, and what what you need definitely is, is important. Kathleen, I’m, I’m interested, you know, we, we’ve talked about how this is a mind body thing. And, and there is. So I’ve been thinking as we’ve been talking, there’s this mental health component to this, and we have, you know, mental health practitioners, and they play a certain role. But it almost seemed like, you know, when you were talking about what you do with patients and you to Emily, where you start out by just kind of modeling the behavior that you you want them to, to see that that calming, you know, initially calming down bringing the nervous system down, that there’s a part of, you know, even as a traditional health care practitioner, a part of almost, you know, mental health that that you need to be aware of in order to engage with the patient. What would you say to other traditional health care practitioners are professionals who think that complementary alternative or integrative approaches are not valid treatment approaches.
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
does that for me?
Cynthia Ryan
Yes. Kathleen? Sorry.
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
i That’s okay. We’re both of you. Yeah, um, I think that that is understandable. In that, sadly, harm has been done by some of these alternative approaches, there is no doubt that the efficacy of many of these alternative approaches is not there. And there, there is harm. And so certainly, the traditional health care practitioners are aware of the potential harms and thus should be protecting their patients from moving toward anything that can be harmful. But the integrative approach is to say, Hmm, let me take a look at what my client is asking for or inquiring about. It’s impossible for anyone to keep up with the research. So I would say if you say no to something, next time, someone asks you, instead of saying no, say, let me check that out, and go right to your resources and see what’s out there. Because I think that while I know that traditional medical practice has come to embrace the idea that digestion and Nutrition has something to do with inflammation and recovery of many diseases. We’re talking today about metabolic syndrome and that lifestyle medicine and the awareness that this is the whole reason for the explosion of chronic debilitating diseases in our country. People walk around with them with diabetes and heart disease wondering why and how they got there. And it has nothing to do with chemistry or physiology. It has to do with lifestyle choices, stress management, sleep, hygiene, exercise, and mental health. So that is, I would say that, where have you been if you’re not paying attention to the fact that you need to start looking at this, but mindfulness for example, let’s say that is definitely demonstrating strong support. In the literature that has been talked about, giving the patient a power to feel they can advocate for themselves is also demonstrated in the rise of Narrative Medicine. And the conversations that healthcare professionals are learning in their training about listening to the client, asking them what they believe is going on with them. And what do they think needs to happen for there to be a change, and then determining their readiness to change. I’m a big fan of motivational interviewing, which is a style of coaching, where we want to determine the readiness to change. If a patient is not ready to make a change, then they may not be ready to receive healing, but you have for them today, or at least a path that might lead to that healing. So we have to think outside of the box of the cookbook approach to disease and remedy. It’s just not that cut and dry. Because we’ve learned that what’s killing people is not microbes, it’s lifestyle and choices and mental mental conditions and how we see ourselves in the body. So I would just say, you know, where have you been? I think that the it’s creeping into every single discipline. And it shows definitely some overlap between where we practice, I don’t need to refer a client out for psychotherapy, who knows nothing about vestibular resources, when I can certainly talk to their nervous system, get them mindful and connected to their body, and help determine their readiness for change, and help them identify the barriers for their recovery. So I think there’s there’s a lot of overlap. And right now, perhaps people are struggling to find their turf in their territory. But until that’s all settled out, there’s a lot of people who benefit from an open minded approach to the whole person who sits in their exam chair.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
I think I would say to Western doctors as well, but there’s real data for them to work with these days. I mean, I love what you just shared there, Kathleen, and I, you come from that background, and like you want double blind studies, you want data? Well, physicians now have genomes to work with, they have, I actually, just this morning, got my microbiome tests back, which was so comprehensive, I could not believe that it’s and I’m not we’re not like sponsored by Thorin or anything, but this is the easiest microbiome test, they mail it to you. It’s just this easy little wipe. And it was like they had inflammation markers, they show all the bacteria, the good and the bad, all the funguses good in the bad. And it’s like, very, and then of course, they don’t like sell you 20 products at the end, they just make suggestions. And so it’s, I feel like even a Western physician could look at that data and go, oh, this person, this is why they have an autoimmune disease. You know, and it’s real data that they’re working with instead of just these anecdotal like my stomach hurts, or you know, I have leaky gut syndrome, which most doctors don’t even know what that is. I don’t
Emily Englert
ya and the power that gives you Kimberly because you can change your microbiome in 24 hours. I’m not saying drastically but I’m saying start to make shifts if I just focus on digestion and if I didn’t talk about anything else and I didn’t know anything about someone and I just focused on that that person can be a changed person you know, the brain gut connection, it can that is a beautiful focus for someone to start with even if they’ve no idea what’s going on in their health that they just want a starting point. Let’s nurture your gut because that the compounding effects that that has on the body it can’t be ignored you can change your mind this is all scientific you know you can change your microbiome we can see it change like it’s this is not this is not woowoo right
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
I think I think one of the important things for health care providers to to feel calm to make them feel comfortable is that we want to direct our patients to rule out all the medic medical reasons why they might feel this way but we the the client who comes or the patient who comes having negative tests results negative MRI negative bloodwork negative this negative that and the doctor says I don’t know what’s wrong with you is is that’s actually very very valuable information. So when a person comes discourage saying they don’t know what’s wrong with me I don’t have a diagnosis I said oh but we know a lot about what you don’t have. So I want to really embrace the patient who has gone through the formal diagnostic platform or battery of testing to rule out serious things that I have no business messing with and complement or no alternative medicine will not touch okay those are the clients we must make sure and the practitioner and has to has a responsibility to those clients as well we must look for and identify those red flags. We must know differential diagnoses we must know very, very well. That it what is within our power and what is not and we don’t have any business dealing with things that require or an immediate referral. So I think a lot of people are afraid of treading water over here. And particularly with patients who don’t want to see traditional Western medical doctors, that’s risky. That’s a huge risk. And most therapists won’t bring that into their practice because of the risk involved. So once we rule out what you don’t have, you don’t have all these things. Now let’s look at the gut always the great first place to start,
Cynthia Ryan
I think that brings us kind of full circle and in in this discussion about complementary alternative and integrative medicine, it does not mean that we are ruling out the use of traditional or Western medicine that every every practice has its place, and we should be integrating them all to achieve, you know, our ultimate goal of wellness or, you know, as we say, with vestibular patients, bringing bringing them back to balance. So I think that’s a perfect way to wrap up our conversation. Thank you so much, both of you for I, I just I loved hearing your story, Emily. And Kathleen, you have so much knowledge and experience with with traditional and complementary and alternative, integrative, I have to keep using that term integrate, yes,
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
you’re gonna get me in trouble out there.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
And for all of our listeners, if you want to learn more from Kathleen or Emily will include length on the YouTube channel so people can use use them as resources. I’m sure you guys even do tell him at appointments and things like that. So I think you’d be a great place to start for anybody that’s looking to begin this journey.
Cynthia Ryan
Yeah. And feel free to for our listeners, feel free to ask questions and share your story in the comments of where our podcast is posted. We’d love to. We’d love to engage with you.
Dr. Kathleen Stoss, DPT
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. And I feel like we just scratched the surface.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
I know.
Cynthia Ryan
I know. Let’s have a part two. Okay. Thank you everyone. Thanks for tuning in to ICU this month.
Kimberly Warner – Unfixed Media
We hope this conversation sparked new understanding of the vestibular journey. And for all of our patients out there leaves you feeling just a little more heard. And a little more seen. I see