Hello and welcome to the Ascend Health show I’m your host Nick Angelis I’m a nurse anesthetist and one of the owners of Ascend Health Center and my guest today is myself so this will be a shorter show than usual since I only can entertain myself for a few minutes at a time but I wanted this to be one of these medical disclaimer shows because every time we do a show I might say something like don’t try this at home kids but every so often it’s important for me to just get on camera and explain why all the valuable medical advice that you might hear or see on the show doesn’t mean that you need to take it all in and immediately start doing all of it without talking to your Healthcare professional–sort of like those warning labels on toasters that say don’t throw it into the tub yeah that’s that’s what I’m talking about but it’s a very interesting topic because there’s health information everywhere every time you look at WebMD it’s, “Yep I’ve got Crohn’s,” so how do we educate ourselves about health how do we know we’re getting the right message while still availing ourselves to all the education that’s out there and obviously there’s huge examples like covid you want a controversies just start researching that and let me know what you find out about boosters and shots and mRNA but I’m already getting off topic so the one thing I want to talk about as we’re talking about health education and the disclaimer that you can’t believe everything that you see on even a prestigious broadcast like WC TV is what about quick fixes so we obviously at Ascent Health Center deal more with mental health and for some patients it’s actually really simple they are sad and then they come in and they talk to a therapist or they get antidepressant and then they feel better and every so often they check in and that’s the end of the story but because we specialize in treatment resistant depression unfortunately much more common theme is that someone comes to us after they’ve been to five Specialists or they’ve tried 20 drugs and at that point there isn’t a quick fix no matter how brilliant Dr Molina is or our psychologist Dan Langer or our nurse practitioners or therapists or even me as a nurse anesthetist we probably won’t have a quick fix and sometimes we do have a quick fix where one ketamine treatment or one round of TMS will instantly make sounds mental health better but is that the end of the story does that mean that for the rest of their life they won’t struggle with depression usually It’s A Hard Road it’s more of a marathon than a Sprint so as you’re looking online for different solutions for mental health or even other physical problems how can you discern this is an actual solution for me or I’m about to waste a lot of money and it’s not going to do anything for me other than the joy of writing a one star review so one way to think of it is uh and again this is Community TV and if it was anywhere else it’ll be censored immediately is uh think of the benefits of illicit drugs heroin relieves pain so does fentanyl cocaine increases brain derived neurotrophic hormone in our brain these are wonderful things but you’ll never hear a medical professional including me to be clear to be a very bad show if you clipped it at the wrong time you’ll never hear someone saying try some cocaine for that I mean past like 1880 no one’s recommending that you go find some narcotics on the streets of Akron so why is it that a lot of times we think well anything that is if I can just get this acute problem solved immediately then everything will be fine in my life the problem is that a lot of quick fixes even though it’s not as Preposterous of an example as trying street drugs it still is the same conclusion where oh you know what my anxiety gets better as long as I have three glasses of wine or you know I’m not nervous about presentations as long as I get a cigarette beforehand so again this sounds Preposterous but what I want to think of today is instead of antidepressants meaning instead of going anti-depression and trying any substance whether illicit or prescribed to alleviate those symptoms why don’t we try more pro-joy type of interventions again an antidepressant you are against the depression you want to defeat the depression and you’ll do anything to do it but what about pro-joy at Ascent Health Center a lot of our patients have revved up nervous systems where everything is louder everything is more intense sometimes we’ll have diagnoses for these borderline personality disorder which happens through trauma or we’ll say oh you’ve got bipolar disorder and it’s immediately like here’s your disorder we must fix this at any cost and of course that’s what we try to do I’m a healthcare professional that’s kind of what I signed up for is fixing things but there’s another side to this coin and that is well why don’t we concentrate on pro-joy instead of anti-depression yes with your borderline personality disorder you can get very depressed almost suicidal sometimes and it’s terrible but sometimes even with that specific disorder there are moments of pure unadulterated joy that most other adults are like you’re way too happy you need to calm down you need to tone down but there’s some wisdom even in the scriptures for example there’s a saying of Jesus where it says come to me like little children now does that mean I color between the lines or outside of the lines and I’m not always potty trained no but it does mean that even as adults we miss out on things if we miss out the joy of being a child so none of this is to tell you take illicit drugs none of this is to tell you to stop taking your psychiatric drugs but sometimes we’re so focused on the relief of our pain at any cost that we don’t slow down and think well I’m not saying that it’s to my advantage that I have this issue but let me at least see what I can do as far as increasing the joy in my life that instead of just a hell-bent I must decrease the pain I must solve this problem I must pour all of my resources into uh because that’s the thing in our country we don’t realize that sometimes it’s not worth the cost to fix something sometimes it’s on a very expensive procedure or a lifetime of coming every month for an appointment and it’s not worth it so how do you make those choices well for one thing talking to a therapist is very helpful we have some Ascent Health Center there’s plenty of great ones throughout the greater Akron area and we can point you to the right direction of what we think would be the better fit but there’s also that and again this might not be that brilliant I thought this like two minutes ago and here I’m talking about it on TV but I do believe that there is something missing that a pro-joy approach a what are the moments that Delight me what are the moments when I feel most alive and how can I get there more often is a very important facet and again we’re not talking about getting that way chemically we’re not talking about drugs we’re not talking about dangerous Behavior we’re not talking about like I feel so alive oops I should have gotten better life insurance what instead I’m saying is that if we can cherish the moments of happiness that we have if we can focus on those not in a grasping way of oh I hope this never ends but just a realization that not everything is perfect but this is a good moment in my life and it’s almost like I’ll put this in my pocket and at some point in the future when I have a dark dreary day I can take out this memory of this great thing that happened um so and obviously this is philosophically and spiritually beyond the context of the ascent Health show but it’s just the a word I wanted to share with you that a lot of times even as we’re seeking for solutions for problems and I don’t want to minimize the agony of mental health issues or even those of neuropathic pain and many of the other issues that we treat we’re a nervous system is so geared toward the sympathetic nervous system that you know you can Rush against this fake foliage here and it causes pain I’m not saying that we should try to fix that but I am saying that even if your nervous system is one um where there’s these great highs and lows that the answer is not to quickly numb it the answer is not okay what drug will help me so that I’m not really living a life but I’m at least stable and to be clear Psychiatry has amazing drugs and many of them will numb The Human Experience and that’s important for a short amount of time so that you’re not suicidal so that you can function in society but then we start talking about quality of life and that’s when you have to make decisions with obviously your doctor healthcare provider of what is our goal here what is it that I would be happy with is it something where I really need some of these dark days to leave but I’m not willing to give up perhaps some Joy or um even some Mania of okay for this day here’s what I’m feeling how do I stabilize this and many times it is a case where it’s like okay this is the best we can do for now and I’m fine with this and I’ll try out you know in a few months at our Clinic we have many patients who will do transcranial magnetic stimulation and then we don’t hear from them and then two years later they’ll come back and say okay I’m ready for ketamine and in many cases that’s the right approach that I’m trying something for my health we’ll see what it does and then I’ll give it a break and then I’ll come back so this is just a reminder that as we’re trying to cure depression over trying to be anti-depression it’s similar with cancer and many other diseases where if all of your focus is on let’s get this terrible thing out of my system sometimes you miss out on the joy that can be like well let me hone in on these moments that I have of joy and how can I expand these farther so thanks for watching this has been the Ascend Health show [Music]