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Confused by All The Health News Headlines? My 3-Step Approach to Sanity · Doctor Turned Health Coach

• 0:22
  In today's podcast episode, I wanted to discuss medical headlines,
• 0:26
  specifically all of the content that are flashed before our eyes.
• 0:31
  And it's everywhere, right?
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  I mean, these days, the way we communicate with each other is through social media.
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  And many different entities or groups or political parties are going to use
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  social media to talk about a certain topic, to advance a certain opinion,
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  to push for a certain idea.
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  And it can feel very overwhelming as somebody who is trying their best to stay
• 1:00
  healthy, to make good health decisions. So how do you navigate this?
• 1:04
  How do you compartmentalize this headline news that you are constantly seeing?
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  And how do you still make good health decisions for yourself?
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  I would approach this in three ways. Number one, the most important thing is
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  to make sure that you're not consuming too much information.
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  Social media, news outlets, text messages that somebody forwards you, emails.
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  All of these are ways that you can get really sucked in to all of the content that's out there.
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  So number one is maybe just turning down the noise.
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  Number two would be to try to decide and figure out and actually formalize a
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  real concept, a real system in which you actually get your health information.
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  How do you get your health information? How do you get your financial information?
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  How do you get your raising your child information, parenting information?
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  That's the word I was looking for.
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  There should be a way, a process in which you do it.
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  And for example, it might be going to your doctor. for me, my health coaching
• 2:11
  clients and my patients come to me and they say, hey, Dr.
• 2:14
  Ashori, you know, I did find out about this. My wife was talking about this.
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  My partner was talking about this. What do you think?
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  Could you explain this concept to me? So that's number two.
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  And number three is to try to understand that health is very nuanced,
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  that there probably will not be any game-changing, life-changing health decisions
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  that you're going to make today.
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  There's not going to be that one medicine that will change it all.
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  There's not going to be that one medicine that is going to cause major disasters either.
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  By now, we have really good systems in place. The FDA does a pretty good job
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  of making sure that at least the medications that are coming on are not very
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  dangerous or, you know, they're passing the medications through their processes
• 3:02
  that are really good for us.
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  I'm not saying medications are the way in or out, but.
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  Understanding this concept for yourself that, hey, it's actually not that clear
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  cut. And if I do hear something in the news that seems very clear cut,
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  maybe somebody is trying to simplify it too much.
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  So those are the three ways that I would use as a heuristic,
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  as a model, to try to find some peace during all of this.
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  The hardest part is probably going to be tuning down or turning down the volume,
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  on all of the content that's out there.
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  While other people are probably going to get sucked in, one strategy you can
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  use is to just say, okay, well, yeah, I know they're going to be talking about
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  this and everyone's going to be talking about it.
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  And just nod your head, listen, absorb it passively without having to take any
• 3:53
  action, without having to get emotionally sucked in.
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  Yes, there's frustration when, let's say, somebody in the public comes out and
• 4:02
  makes a certain claim and then everybody starts picking up that news and reporting
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  it, it is frustrating because you're trying to keep your peace.
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  But sometimes we have no control over our environment and just sort of staying
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  in the moment can be very helpful.
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  And second, you can go to your trusted health experts.
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  You can go to your trusted health sources and see what commentary they wrote about this topic.
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  Chances are it's going to be very nuanced if one of my patients comes to me
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  and asks about, for example, what's trending right now the news,
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  I would say, I don't think there is always that easy of a correlation between
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  this medication and a certain condition.
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  I don't think we have to make any quick decisions about this.
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  And if it is affecting you individually, for example, if it's a medication you're
• 4:49
  taking and somebody comes out and says, this medicine is very dangerous,
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  you could always say, well, Dr.
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  Ashuri, is it truly that dangerous? Well, no, probably not.
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  Is it possible for me to stop it and use an alternative? Absolutely.
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  I mean, fortunately, we have a lot of redundancy in medication selection and treatment selections.
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  And finally, you go back to the art of nuance, that it's probably not that simple to explain things.
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  And if somebody's creating a headline out of a topic, you know that it's worth
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  at least shelving and coming back to it many different times.
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  Fortunately, there's also a lot of data that we have on topics from many decades
• 5:31
  before, and we can review that.
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  So again, going back to what you believe, understanding that health is nuanced
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  and are many different factors that we have to consider.