Discover how to transform your medical practice and personal health with Dr. Raquel Harrison, an emergency and certified lifestyle medicine physician. Join us as Dr. Harrison draws from her extensive experience and delves into the transformative power of lifestyle medicine. She highlights how her Acute 2 Root platform has allowed her to share her expertise with a broad spectrum of individuals who can enroll in the Foundations Course. Tune in as Dr. Harrison discusses how she has traversed the landscape of telehealth webinars, consulting, workshops, and the online class she offers, all designed to help individuals take control of their well-being and prevent chronic disease.
"Lifestyle medicine is this evidence-based approach... uses the same language we typically do within medicine, looking at six different pillars of health. Nutrition, sleep, exercise, social connection, avoiding risky behaviors, and stress reduction, and it is how all of those intertwine, interact with each other, and how through habits and lifestyle changes we can potentially reverse and prevent chronic disease."
My special guest is Dr. Raquel Harrison.
Dr. Raquel Harrison is an emergency medicine physician and certified lifestyle medicine specialist whose Acute 2 Root platform offers a course geared for individuals who are interested in reframing their perspective on the six pillars of health. Grounded in evidence, Dr. Harrison walks alongside individuals, offering a practical and sustainable approach to making the changes that can place individuals on a healthier trajectory. Dr. Harrison also sheds light on the importance of enhanced patient education. In offering her course, Dr. Harrison aims to provide individuals the opportunity to feel empowered and become active participants in their own well-being.
In this episode you will be able to:
Gain a deeper understanding of the lifestyle factors that significantly influence your overall health and well-being.
Learn about preventative strategies and interventions to prevent the risk of chronic disease.
Feel empowered to take charge of your own health.
The resources mentioned in this episode are:
Visit Dr. Raquel Harrison's website, Acute 2 Root to sign up for the Foundations Course to find balance and establish a healthy lifestyle.
Use code: Rev15 for 15% off of the Foundations Course
Check out the Food as Medicine Course offered by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine for CME/CE credit.
Connect with Dr. Raquel Harrison, visit Acute 2 Root, and check out the Food as Medicine course:
Sign up for her newsletter, “Revitalizing Healthcare.” It is your go-to source for insightful content on transforming the healthcare landscape and staying well while changemaking.
Join this list to keep up to date on the launch of her forthcoming book, Revitalized: A guidebook to rediscovering your heartline. This book provides a beacon for channeling emotional intelligence not only to survive but thrive in medicine.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Revitalizing Doctor podcast. We interview trailblazers in medicine that embody the Revitalize Women vision to empower women to innovate and influence medicine to value authenticity, respect and work-life harmony. We recognize the challenges in medicine and we're committed to providing coaching-informed strategies to help you go from surviving to thriving. So we're back with part two with Dr Raquel Harrison, and she is giving us updates since our first podcast recording about her journey as both an emergency physician and also certified lifestyle medicine specialist. And now I want to spend some time talking about lifestyle medicine and for the listeners, if you don't know what that is, she'll give a short synopsis of it, but then go back and listen to her first episode because she really gets into it there. So tell us a short bit about lifestyle medicine and then let's get into some updates.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, thank you for having me. Lifestyle medicine is really this evidence-based approach, which is great. It uses the same language we typically do within medicine, right, but really looking at six different pillars of health, so nutrition, sleep, exercise, social connection, avoiding risky behaviors and stress reduction and it's really how all of those intertwine, interact with each other until through habits and lifestyle changes, we can potentially reverse and prevent chronic disease. So that's kind of the crux of it and prevent chronic disease.
Speaker 1:
So that's kind of the crux of it and describe your lifestyle medicine practice. What is Acute to Root.
Speaker 2:
Acute to Root was a little bit of my way of like how do I differentiate what I do from the emergency medicine and the lifestyle medicine piece, and Acute to Root's kind of been this umbrella for me as a consultant within telehealth, doing webinars, but also kind of this venture within public health. You know, I run workshops at libraries and I have different speaking engagements with different employers and also have built out an online class. So it's a fun kind of way to do medicine a little differently.
Speaker 1:
And your online class? Is it for patients? Who's your ideal participant?
Speaker 2:
The online class is really geared towards lay people and probably mostly adults. Probably someone as young as 15 or 16 would probably benefit, but it's really just someone in a space that they want to reframe the way they look at it, grounding it in evidence, but then also a very practical and sustainable approach to making some of these changes that will hopefully put them on a healthier trajectory. You know, really there's been so much increase in conversation in medicine and where the focus has been on life expectancy and people's lifespan, where really we should be shifting more to a healthspan perspective and living with more quality for more years, and so that's really the hope. You know someone, certainly with chronic diseases or who's older, would benefit from the course I have, but it's really probably most beneficial for people who are still fairly active and young, you know, who really want to set their aging on a more positive trajectory.
Speaker 1:
Do you see any patients individually?
Speaker 2:
I do through a telehealth company called Sumus. But I've kind of deliberately and this is very much a revitalized boundary, but I've kind of deliberately contained that so that I'm able to focus on the other priorities that I have Building a lifestyle medicine practice or any kind of medical practice is incredibly daunting and takes a ton of energy and time and willingness to be available, and so I've found that seeing patients kind of in this contained environment allows me to still get that clinical-ish experience right, that clinical focus, but allows me the flexibility. So with the rest of my time, really take more of that public health kind of mindset, more of a group teaching, education kind of perspective.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I love that and I think it's a really important message to get out there, because a lot of people think the only thing they can do you know, limiting belief, to pull in the coaching terminology is I'm a doctor, I see patients. That's not what you're doing. It's a novel model of creating your career. So you do public speaking, so groups could pull you in, whether that's employers or, like you said, libraries, nonprofits, and the idea, from what I can see, is that it's actually making potentially a bigger impact because you're able to hit a lot of people at once instead of only the one-on-one interaction of people.
Speaker 2:
They're bringing up questions that are often, you know, maybe I'm leaving out in the discussion and so it's fairly interactive, and then you know having a place to point them, which is, you know, the online course is really nice because then, if they want to dive in deeper or get a better sense of whatever I've spoken about, it's there for them in a shareable way. You know the number of times people have come up to me and been like oh, my sister or brother would love this. What inside the online courses? Just to be able to give people an opportunity to share. It is really what drove that.
Speaker 1:
I also wonder if you've noticed this. What was really interesting when I did more telemedicine is I'll use an example very concrete it was during one of the COVID surges. The vaccine was out. I was seeing a younger woman that still lived with her family Maybe she was 18 or something and she didn't have the COVID vaccine. Symptoms were pretty suggestive of it and she had asthma.
Speaker 1:
And because it was a telemedicine encounter, I was seeing her in her house and then her mom and dad started getting involved in the visit and her mom was like I work at a grocery store and we actually do have the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine and they went from being like the vaccine is crap to being very open to listening about my perspective on it, like thinking about maybe we should go get this, I can go, I could go get it at the grocery store I work at, and what I noticed from that is the dynamic was I think they were more receptive to listening to me because they were in their house and it wasn't the overlay of the clinical context.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I recently went to the doctor and I tried to be a good patient. I spent maybe 15 or 20 minutes doing the online portal and then it was like I had never even done it, from the nurse to the doctor, whatever. So I was kind of annoyed by the time she even got in the room and so I feel like the overlay of the medical as one of our past guests have called it, the medical industrial complex creates such a divide and such an irritation by the time that they see us in our clinical roles that to have some of the conversations about food and sleep and risky behaviors, I wonder if you're noticing like the receptiveness in a way is different outside of that clinical context.
Speaker 2:
It's definitely different. I think the other piece of it, too, is the audience you're getting are people who want to be in front of you and want to hear it and listen. There's an element of, at some point the hope is you reach people. That's growth over time and ultimately you can start to reach the people who do want to listen and empower them to make some changes, such that other people are seeing the changes in their life and you know, kind of asking the questions of wow, you look like you have more energy, or wow, you look like you have lost some weight, or whatever it might be, and in some ways, you're giving them the tools to share information as well, and that's the broader impact.
Speaker 2:
It's that ripple effect, right, a little bit of it too. Is that idea of like, can you create for better interactions within medicine? Because currently, right, the education piece is so lacking, and so you're empowering people to ask their doctors different questions, right? Or giving them some baseline knowledge to then have richer conversations with their physician. And you know, maybe in the ideal world, as this course gets going, physicians can use it as something that they can give to their patients and then say and then come back to me with questions right, or what worked, what didn't work, or kind of that idea of allowing people to really get the first of what they need to do to be healthier and not just feel rushed or confused at their doctor's appointments.
Speaker 1:
From that perspective, I guess, yeah, I want your course to be accessible in our hospital on the TV. I think we talked about this in our last episode that there's this missed opportunity. There's so much waiting involved in medicine and I don't understand why we don't leverage some of that, because sometimes people are in a very you know, sometimes they're shut down and too scared to access that education, but sometimes they are receptive or the family member, like you know. Thinking about my mom right now sitting next to my dad, you know this blew my mind. This absolutely blew my mind.
Speaker 1:
Before we started recording, I shared that he was hospitalized with congestive heart failure, exacerbation of 50 pounds, 50 pounds of fluid. I come the very last day, like last two days of hospitalization, and I asked what his diet was and they said a regular diet, no sodium restriction, diet, no sodium restriction, and he's type two diabetic, like nothing. And I just was like nobody taught him to weigh himself at home. I was so finding it hard to even communicate how infuriating this was and my mom was like, well, if somebody would have told us she was sitting there all the time, what's your reaction to that? How is that even possible?
Speaker 2:
It's infuriating is definitely the word. I mean, there's so much we could do better within medicine and, yes, we are strapped, we're being pulled in a million directions and it doesn't feel doable, sometimes Absolutely and on an individual basis. That's probably the case, but the thing that stands out is a systems perspective. We could be doing so much better. In some ways, what looks like a regular diet in the hospital shouldn't be a regular diet. That the like american diet. Right, there's nothing healthy about that. And so systems issue I don't know about.
Speaker 2:
In your emergency department, in my emergency department, I can hand out white bread in a plastic bag.
Speaker 2:
I mean, everything about that is just 100 terrible.
Speaker 2:
You know, I can riff about white bread, I can riff about plastic, but you know, regardless it's one of those things where it's like those are the things that are that underline frustration, right, but the issue is no one's told our patients this, and so that's kind of my hope, with acute to root and kind of just this dissemination of information.
Speaker 2:
The number of times I'll talk to people, you know, like a simple concept, like cholesterol, you know, when my doctor said I need to lower my cholesterol and their recommendation was I should not eat fried foods. They don't really go into the origin of cholesterol in the diet and where it comes from and what foods contain it, and ultimately it's one of those things where it's as simple as cholesterol as an animal products, fiber as an implant products, and fiber helps get rid of cholesterol, and so you need to increase the number of plants you eat and increase the number of animal things you eat. And so no one's ever been communicated that. I'm not sure I ever fully internalized that when I was a medical student. We're able to communicate that until a few years ago. But it's really that idea of how you break things down in a simple way so that our patients understand and then can make practical changes with it and just feel like they actually know what to do next.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think it's absolutely brilliant and actually I want my parents to take this course. I mean I probably need to take it. I mean I think we've talked about it before. I think at least, when I went to medical school, the average amount of time devoted to nutrition was like one hour in a medical school curriculum. So I think we as physicians many physicians have gaps in this area and it's something, like you know, we need to fill in as well. Yeah, I love what you're creating with Acute to Root, and I'm guessing there's some people that may want to take the course themselves. They want to be able to share it with their parents, their family members, with their patients. How can they connect with you?
Speaker 2:
to go on our website acute2rootcom. You can subscribe. Their newsletter is really practical it's all about. Here's the evidence, here's what you should do, and then the links to the course itself are there as well. You can always shoot us an email. We're happy to kind of field any questions or help think through some things. The hope is really to give people some underlying knowledge right. As a physician, some of the concepts will be higher order. I do dive into every pillar, and so it's nice to kind of reframe and rethink about it, you know, for yourself in that way. The other thing I would point out too is the American College of Lifestyle Medicine actually has a free food as medicine course for physicians, and so it's a little bit more geared towards that technical aspect but really just focused on nutrition, you know, whereas the course I have is really this higher kind of like looking at the interactions and really focusing in on habits and how we can make sustainable changes. But I think from a physician side of things, the food as medicine course is also really valuable through ACLM.
Speaker 1:
I love that. We'll make sure it's in the show notes. You referenced a few times through our recording that Revitalize helped you get to where you are now and I'm just wondering, you know we've probably got some listeners that are still kind of on the fence about if they want to come to the retreat that's April 5th through 7th, or if they want to, you know, become a member. What's your advice to them?
Speaker 2:
I think if you are in a place where you're feeling like something's just unsettled, it's not necessarily you're burned out or things just don't feel clear cut or you don't have the words to articulate what's going.
Speaker 2:
I think that's the power of revitalize. It's a group of women who understand where you've been and I really think this is powerful. Group of women who understand where you've been and I really think this is powerful. It's that creation of space to say it's okay to think about this stuff, it's okay to be frustrated, it's okay to take a step back and take the time to really think through it. In some ways it's about creating that grace right, that piece that we don't typically allow for ourselves, that grace right, that piece that we don't typically allow for ourselves. And that's where the power in it and where the value has been for me is articulating what I was hoping to get kind of professionally, and realizing that professional piece wasn't the full me right, like I've been able to do so many other things and really kind of refocus on my family and feel empowered to do that, that's made all the difference. It's been great.
Speaker 1:
That's so beautiful to hear. You know, I think we're all going to have challenges in our lives and our careers. The reason we started Revitalize is I found it unacceptable how long most of us suffer and go at it alone and have to learn these lessons the hard way. So it's really about shortening that learning curve. For people, it's the fast pass to self-discovery and connection with other people, and that's what keeps me going and excited every day to connect people, that people sometimes think I'm crazy when I say that even despite the challenges right now it really is possible to be fulfilled, which doesn't mean being happy all the time. Happiness is different than being fulfilled, but it is possible.
Speaker 2:
I also think it's okay to understand that we have different seasons too, right. There are seasons where we grind more and there are seasons where we need to pull back a little bit, and that's okay. To actually feel okay. Not grinding all the time is important, especially, I think, as a professional woman, it's one of those things where it's okay to just be with the people you love and take that time. It doesn't mean that everything else isn't obtainable at some other season, right?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's a beautiful way to wrap up today's episode. Beautiful way to wrap up today's episode. Raquel, thank you so much and thank you for the difference that you are making and really changing and improving the health of the population, you know, beyond just the individual patient, and it's really beautiful.
Speaker 2:
And that's the hope it keeps going in that direction, so it will.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to the Revitalizing Doctor, a project of Revitalize Women Physician Circle. Our mission is to connect women physicians and allies through innovative, value-based coaching methods to ignite the courage and clarity necessary to create change and thrive. If you're interested in working with us, check out our website peoplealwayshcccom. Slash revitalize. This podcast represents the views of our hosts and guests. It does not reflect the views of any institution we work for or with. Podcast production assistance is provided by Caitlin Dinh and Allie Dingus. Sound editing for this podcast is brought to you by Better Podcasting Services. You can find them at betterpodcastingservicescom.