today I would like to talk to you about
reimagining the future of healthcare so
this story begins on March 24 2006 that
was the day after my 19 year old
daughter Emily returned home from her
college spring break road trip and she
was describing to me this wonderful
blueberry Laden breakfast that her
friend’s father had made for them just
the day before she said they were
blueberry pancakes
there were blueberry muffins there was
even and this is her favorite part
homemade blueberry syrup and then in the
next instant without warning Emily was
on the ground experiencing the first of
what would eventually be many grown mal
seizures now it was in that two-minute
period when Emily was without
consciousness that I felt my own
consciousness beginning to shift but it
would take almost a decade for a
complete shift for a complete
transformation for both of us as well as
our entire family that transformation
involved learning what we could do to
help ourselves even in the worst of
situations and the year after Emily was
diagnosed with juvenile myoclonic
epilepsy she and I traversed the country
searching for the neurologist who would
give us the guarantee that she wouldn’t
lose consciousness on the New York City
Subway crossing the street or anywhere
for that matter we didn’t get that
guarantee but what we did get from her
world-famous neurologist dr. D was this
book entitled complementary and
alternative therapies for epilepsy when
she handed over to us by the way on the
very same day that he delivered the news
that there were no prescription meds
left for us to try and that surgery was
not an option after almost a year of
unsuccessful treatments dr. D looked at
us on that day and he said at this point
you need to treat this as a lifestyle
condition and in that moment I realized
that dr. D was suggesting
that perhaps just perhaps this book
contained the answer for us not only the
book but what we would do with the
information in this book dr. Dee was on
Emily’s 15th visit finally telling her
what she could do to help herself so
once we process this information and the
book Emily and I hit the ground running
we treated ourselves as lab rats and we
literally experimented with every
practice therapy diet and supplement in
this book but the truth is not just
Emily our entire family benefited from
these practices our entire family
benefited from learning and practicing
meditation yoga biofeedback guided
imagery cognitive behavioral or CBT
practices and this list goes on and on
now some people call these mind-body or
integrative health practices I prefer
the term self-care self-care practices
essentially for life and our criteria
for experimenting with these practices
was pretty basic we said try the
practice if you enjoy doing it and it
makes you feel even the slightest bit
better then keep on practicing the most
creative experiment that we tried during
this time was something called the raw
vegan diet so if you can imagine a vegan
diet in a household with two meat-eating
men and then make it raw
you can begin to imagine how challenging
this particular experiment was for my
husband and my son but they endured they
made it through and they benefited not
only from the raw vegan diet but also
from many of the other practices many of
the other practices in that particular
situation now what was the final results
of my family’s experiment in these
self-care practices from the time that
Emily began her own practices she did
not experience another seizure for four
and a half years in spite of this when
we return to dr. Dee’s office six months
into our family’s experiment with these
self-care practices to share this what
we thought was amazing news he wasn’t
quite so happy he explained to us that
we were only to have been experimenting
with one practice at a time and instead
in our excitement and overzealousness we
had been experimenting with two three
four sometimes even more practices
concurrently as a result he informed us
that we had created something that
research scientists call effect
modification making it virtually
impossible to determine which of these
concurrent treatments was responsible
for this miraculous outcome that being
said we weren’t turning back now our
family at Emily had already benefited so
much from these practices and in fact
the practices and the benefits continue
today so for example in Emily’s case a
decade later the practices that endure
include yoga and meditation guided
imagery and acupuncture she also does
take several supplements such as
magnesium and zinc and she does eat a
vegan diet which is very rich in greens
and bananas lots of bananas for some
reason I don’t know why but it works for
her and she continues to tweak her
practices on an ongoing basis based upon
how she feels and how her mind and body
are responding now for a family as a
whole the practices that have continued
include the non vegan anti-inflammatory
diet as well as Yoga biofeedback and CBT
practices now with storing this year of
my family’s experimentation with these
self-care practices that I started to
feel and here the small but deep voice
of my own intuition directing me down a
different path in my own professional
life for the 20 years prior to Emily’s
diagnosis I first trained as a health
care attorney and then I served as the
CEO for three different health
information technology firms so
emphasis on the word health here because
believe it or not I spent my entire
professional career in the healthcare
industry and I never knew what people
could do for themselves I never knew
what we could do to help ourselves until
now so I figured that most people were
similarly unaware now I knew that I
wanted to teach these practices to
others so that they could help
themselves but I also knew I had a lot
to learn in particular I needed to learn
about the evidence that informed these
practices and so I pretty much decided
write that in there that I was going to
become an expert in evidence informed
self care practices I didn’t actually
know what that was at the time but I
decided to rely upon my lifelong love of
learning to help me figure that out so I
spent the next seven years in school I
spent four years in acupuncture and
Chinese medicine school and another
three years completing a PhD in
mind-body medicine now right out of
acupuncture school I actually started
practicing in three of the hospitals in
New York City while I was there I was
able to see the fabulous results that
patients and their families were
actually getting from these
evidence-informed self-care practices
that we were teaching them it was
fabulous and these practices were very
similar in terms of the results to the
same results that my own family and
Emily had seen but my biggest takeaway
from this time was the fact that I saw
that patients who are most likely to
have access to these practices or either
terminally ill or wealthy enough to be
able to pay for them out of their pocket
because it turns out that these
evidence-informed self-care practices
are rarely if ever covered by health
insurance and this makes absolutely no
sense especially in light of the fact
that there is significant very strong
evidence to support the effectiveness of
these practices for example there is
significant research hundreds of studies
many of them funded by the National
Institutes of Health that have found
that just these six practices of yoga
meditation biofeedback
imagery acupressure and Qigong can be
used to effectively manage the eight
most common chronic conditions that you
see listed across the top here in the in
the blue and these eight conditions by
the way are the source for the
development of all chronic disease so
guess what not only is this significant
research it’s also important information
that we all just need to know now
there’s also recent research from the
Massachusetts General Hospital that has
found that when patients are taught and
continue to practice certain evidence
and form self-care practices such as
meditation mindfulness and CBT practices
they can reduce their healthcare costs
by up to 50% this is huge right so yeah
and in fact what we know about these
evidence-informed practices is that
there are over 50 today and this list
continues to grow as the evidence is
accumulating now what I can’t tell you
today is the detail about each one of
these practices but what I can tell you
is that they are all safe and they all
have some evidence base to support
health something worth thinking about
now why would someone begin and maintain
evidence and form self-care practices
this is a research question that I’ve
been asking for the past several years
and in the process I have had the
opportunity to interview over 100
individuals about their evidence and
form self-care practices and it turns
out that for those individuals that are
most satisfied with their health their
health care and – their self-care
there’s a seven part formula that we all
can use now the first and most
significant finding is the fact that
these individuals the ones who are most
satisfied with their self-care they know
why they want to be healthy they know
why they want to live in other words
these individuals know their life
purpose and they live in everyday these
individuals also care for themselves and
treat themselves as whole human being
the
address their body mind spirit and
emotions and they are active
participants in at least one community
and they feel nurtured in their
environments these individuals are
constantly sharpening these seven
sources of Health and as we’ve seen in
the story
Emily’s path has followed a similar
trajectory to these now I had the
opportunity to actually witness these
seven sources of health being
strengthened at the Lincoln Recovery
Center in the Bronx at the center we
treated patients primarily for their
substance abuse disorders but we also
treated their anxiety depression chronic
pain and other common chronic symptoms
we treated these individuals with ear
acupuncture five tiny needles in each
ear but we also taught them many
evidence-informed self-care practices
such as meditation and guided imagery
and progressive muscle relaxation we
treated these individuals sometimes in
groups of up to a hundred at a time in
this community setting it’s not a palace
but it did the job it brought everyone
together in community patients who were
part of this community were also active
participants in their own health care
now what that meant was that when a
patient showed up at the center the very
first thing they did was they clean
their own ears with an alcohol swab to
prepare for the treatment then once they
did that they found an empty seat in the
center raised their hands when they were
ready for the treatment once the needles
were placed they would then do their
meditation their imagery or muscle
relaxation and when they were ready to
conclude the treatment they once again
raised their hands these individuals
found purpose and meaning being part of
this process these patients were treated
in community in a nurturing environment
that address their mind body spirit and
emotions self-care is crucial to health
but it’s only part of the equation the
other part of that equation is
technology and the progress that comes
along with it
we need medicine to continue to achieve
great strides even in Emily’s case and
the neurologists who treated her used
24-hour video EEG monitoring technology
in order to diagnose her brain condition
the bottom line is we need both
we need a self care and we need
technology but we need some balance this
cutting-edge progress with some focus on
what we can do to help ourselves how do
we do that where do we start well the
great places with each of us each of us
beginning with knowing and living our
life purpose I just have a quick
question how many of you in this room
right now know what your life purpose is
okay so I just want everybody to notice
that if you don’t know your life purpose
you’re in the majority and that’s okay
but the point is it’s never too early
and it’s never too late to start to
think about it and explore so begin that
exploration and then also tend to your
body mind spirit and emotions within
community–and a nurturing environment
it turns out that evidence informed self
care practices do provide a path to or
we imagine future for health care so no
matter what your situation whether you
are nine or a hundred and nine years old
whether you are perfectly healthy or
chronically ill these evidence and
foreign self-care practices strengthen
your seven sources of health what if we
started a movement right here today at
TEDx KGI so that other families and
individuals could benefit from what my
family has learned so that all health
care providers would be educated in
these evidence informed self-care
practices and they would recommend them
to patients on a first visit not a
fifteenth visit everyone would have
access to these practices along with
continuous encouragement to continue the
practices and most importantly they will
be covered by health insurance the
result of such a movement will be
significantly increased health and
dramatically decrease health care costs
the way to begin it is once again with
each of us identify what are the
evidence informed self-care practices
that work for you identify them and then
use them to determine what you can do to
help yourself and then pass on what
you’ve learned so that others can help
themselves what
say let’s go reimagine healthcare
together thank you
[Applause]
reimagining the future of healthcare so
this story begins on March 24 2006 that
was the day after my 19 year old
daughter Emily returned home from her
college spring break road trip and she
was describing to me this wonderful
blueberry Laden breakfast that her
friend’s father had made for them just
the day before she said they were
blueberry pancakes
there were blueberry muffins there was
even and this is her favorite part
homemade blueberry syrup and then in the
next instant without warning Emily was
on the ground experiencing the first of
what would eventually be many grown mal
seizures now it was in that two-minute
period when Emily was without
consciousness that I felt my own
consciousness beginning to shift but it
would take almost a decade for a
complete shift for a complete
transformation for both of us as well as
our entire family that transformation
involved learning what we could do to
help ourselves even in the worst of
situations and the year after Emily was
diagnosed with juvenile myoclonic
epilepsy she and I traversed the country
searching for the neurologist who would
give us the guarantee that she wouldn’t
lose consciousness on the New York City
Subway crossing the street or anywhere
for that matter we didn’t get that
guarantee but what we did get from her
world-famous neurologist dr. D was this
book entitled complementary and
alternative therapies for epilepsy when
she handed over to us by the way on the
very same day that he delivered the news
that there were no prescription meds
left for us to try and that surgery was
not an option after almost a year of
unsuccessful treatments dr. D looked at
us on that day and he said at this point
you need to treat this as a lifestyle
condition and in that moment I realized
that dr. D was suggesting
that perhaps just perhaps this book
contained the answer for us not only the
book but what we would do with the
information in this book dr. Dee was on
Emily’s 15th visit finally telling her
what she could do to help herself so
once we process this information and the
book Emily and I hit the ground running
we treated ourselves as lab rats and we
literally experimented with every
practice therapy diet and supplement in
this book but the truth is not just
Emily our entire family benefited from
these practices our entire family
benefited from learning and practicing
meditation yoga biofeedback guided
imagery cognitive behavioral or CBT
practices and this list goes on and on
now some people call these mind-body or
integrative health practices I prefer
the term self-care self-care practices
essentially for life and our criteria
for experimenting with these practices
was pretty basic we said try the
practice if you enjoy doing it and it
makes you feel even the slightest bit
better then keep on practicing the most
creative experiment that we tried during
this time was something called the raw
vegan diet so if you can imagine a vegan
diet in a household with two meat-eating
men and then make it raw
you can begin to imagine how challenging
this particular experiment was for my
husband and my son but they endured they
made it through and they benefited not
only from the raw vegan diet but also
from many of the other practices many of
the other practices in that particular
situation now what was the final results
of my family’s experiment in these
self-care practices from the time that
Emily began her own practices she did
not experience another seizure for four
and a half years in spite of this when
we return to dr. Dee’s office six months
into our family’s experiment with these
self-care practices to share this what
we thought was amazing news he wasn’t
quite so happy he explained to us that
we were only to have been experimenting
with one practice at a time and instead
in our excitement and overzealousness we
had been experimenting with two three
four sometimes even more practices
concurrently as a result he informed us
that we had created something that
research scientists call effect
modification making it virtually
impossible to determine which of these
concurrent treatments was responsible
for this miraculous outcome that being
said we weren’t turning back now our
family at Emily had already benefited so
much from these practices and in fact
the practices and the benefits continue
today so for example in Emily’s case a
decade later the practices that endure
include yoga and meditation guided
imagery and acupuncture she also does
take several supplements such as
magnesium and zinc and she does eat a
vegan diet which is very rich in greens
and bananas lots of bananas for some
reason I don’t know why but it works for
her and she continues to tweak her
practices on an ongoing basis based upon
how she feels and how her mind and body
are responding now for a family as a
whole the practices that have continued
include the non vegan anti-inflammatory
diet as well as Yoga biofeedback and CBT
practices now with storing this year of
my family’s experimentation with these
self-care practices that I started to
feel and here the small but deep voice
of my own intuition directing me down a
different path in my own professional
life for the 20 years prior to Emily’s
diagnosis I first trained as a health
care attorney and then I served as the
CEO for three different health
information technology firms so
emphasis on the word health here because
believe it or not I spent my entire
professional career in the healthcare
industry and I never knew what people
could do for themselves I never knew
what we could do to help ourselves until
now so I figured that most people were
similarly unaware now I knew that I
wanted to teach these practices to
others so that they could help
themselves but I also knew I had a lot
to learn in particular I needed to learn
about the evidence that informed these
practices and so I pretty much decided
write that in there that I was going to
become an expert in evidence informed
self care practices I didn’t actually
know what that was at the time but I
decided to rely upon my lifelong love of
learning to help me figure that out so I
spent the next seven years in school I
spent four years in acupuncture and
Chinese medicine school and another
three years completing a PhD in
mind-body medicine now right out of
acupuncture school I actually started
practicing in three of the hospitals in
New York City while I was there I was
able to see the fabulous results that
patients and their families were
actually getting from these
evidence-informed self-care practices
that we were teaching them it was
fabulous and these practices were very
similar in terms of the results to the
same results that my own family and
Emily had seen but my biggest takeaway
from this time was the fact that I saw
that patients who are most likely to
have access to these practices or either
terminally ill or wealthy enough to be
able to pay for them out of their pocket
because it turns out that these
evidence-informed self-care practices
are rarely if ever covered by health
insurance and this makes absolutely no
sense especially in light of the fact
that there is significant very strong
evidence to support the effectiveness of
these practices for example there is
significant research hundreds of studies
many of them funded by the National
Institutes of Health that have found
that just these six practices of yoga
meditation biofeedback
imagery acupressure and Qigong can be
used to effectively manage the eight
most common chronic conditions that you
see listed across the top here in the in
the blue and these eight conditions by
the way are the source for the
development of all chronic disease so
guess what not only is this significant
research it’s also important information
that we all just need to know now
there’s also recent research from the
Massachusetts General Hospital that has
found that when patients are taught and
continue to practice certain evidence
and form self-care practices such as
meditation mindfulness and CBT practices
they can reduce their healthcare costs
by up to 50% this is huge right so yeah
and in fact what we know about these
evidence-informed practices is that
there are over 50 today and this list
continues to grow as the evidence is
accumulating now what I can’t tell you
today is the detail about each one of
these practices but what I can tell you
is that they are all safe and they all
have some evidence base to support
health something worth thinking about
now why would someone begin and maintain
evidence and form self-care practices
this is a research question that I’ve
been asking for the past several years
and in the process I have had the
opportunity to interview over 100
individuals about their evidence and
form self-care practices and it turns
out that for those individuals that are
most satisfied with their health their
health care and – their self-care
there’s a seven part formula that we all
can use now the first and most
significant finding is the fact that
these individuals the ones who are most
satisfied with their self-care they know
why they want to be healthy they know
why they want to live in other words
these individuals know their life
purpose and they live in everyday these
individuals also care for themselves and
treat themselves as whole human being
the
address their body mind spirit and
emotions and they are active
participants in at least one community
and they feel nurtured in their
environments these individuals are
constantly sharpening these seven
sources of Health and as we’ve seen in
the story
Emily’s path has followed a similar
trajectory to these now I had the
opportunity to actually witness these
seven sources of health being
strengthened at the Lincoln Recovery
Center in the Bronx at the center we
treated patients primarily for their
substance abuse disorders but we also
treated their anxiety depression chronic
pain and other common chronic symptoms
we treated these individuals with ear
acupuncture five tiny needles in each
ear but we also taught them many
evidence-informed self-care practices
such as meditation and guided imagery
and progressive muscle relaxation we
treated these individuals sometimes in
groups of up to a hundred at a time in
this community setting it’s not a palace
but it did the job it brought everyone
together in community patients who were
part of this community were also active
participants in their own health care
now what that meant was that when a
patient showed up at the center the very
first thing they did was they clean
their own ears with an alcohol swab to
prepare for the treatment then once they
did that they found an empty seat in the
center raised their hands when they were
ready for the treatment once the needles
were placed they would then do their
meditation their imagery or muscle
relaxation and when they were ready to
conclude the treatment they once again
raised their hands these individuals
found purpose and meaning being part of
this process these patients were treated
in community in a nurturing environment
that address their mind body spirit and
emotions self-care is crucial to health
but it’s only part of the equation the
other part of that equation is
technology and the progress that comes
along with it
we need medicine to continue to achieve
great strides even in Emily’s case and
the neurologists who treated her used
24-hour video EEG monitoring technology
in order to diagnose her brain condition
the bottom line is we need both
we need a self care and we need
technology but we need some balance this
cutting-edge progress with some focus on
what we can do to help ourselves how do
we do that where do we start well the
great places with each of us each of us
beginning with knowing and living our
life purpose I just have a quick
question how many of you in this room
right now know what your life purpose is
okay so I just want everybody to notice
that if you don’t know your life purpose
you’re in the majority and that’s okay
but the point is it’s never too early
and it’s never too late to start to
think about it and explore so begin that
exploration and then also tend to your
body mind spirit and emotions within
community–and a nurturing environment
it turns out that evidence informed self
care practices do provide a path to or
we imagine future for health care so no
matter what your situation whether you
are nine or a hundred and nine years old
whether you are perfectly healthy or
chronically ill these evidence and
foreign self-care practices strengthen
your seven sources of health what if we
started a movement right here today at
TEDx KGI so that other families and
individuals could benefit from what my
family has learned so that all health
care providers would be educated in
these evidence informed self-care
practices and they would recommend them
to patients on a first visit not a
fifteenth visit everyone would have
access to these practices along with
continuous encouragement to continue the
practices and most importantly they will
be covered by health insurance the
result of such a movement will be
significantly increased health and
dramatically decrease health care costs
the way to begin it is once again with
each of us identify what are the
evidence informed self-care practices
that work for you identify them and then
use them to determine what you can do to
help yourself and then pass on what
you’ve learned so that others can help
themselves what
say let’s go reimagine healthcare
together thank you
[Applause]
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