Sharing our Pandemic Story Podcast
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Kara: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm your host, Dr. Kara Wada, quadruple board certified pediatric and adult allergy immunology and lifestyle medicine, physician Sjogren's patient and life coach. My recipe for success combines, the anti-inflammatory lifestyle, trusting therapeutic relationships, modern medicine, and mindset to harness our body's ability to heal.
Now although I might be a physician I'm not your physician And this podcast is for educational purposes only.
Welcome everyone. I am so excited to welcome everyone back to this episode of the crunchy allergists podcast. Today, we welcome back. Our most listened to guest, my friend, colleague, and partner, Jen. Ronnie and anti-inflammatory dietician. Together, we help those living with auto-immunity. Re-imagine what their lives can look like and redefine anti-inflammatory living, making it a sustainable part of their everyday lives.
We recorded this conversation on Friday, June 10th, [00:01:00] 2022. Reflecting on our experiences during the pandemic.
Jenifer: Happy Friday.
Kara: Happy Friday.
Jenifer: How's the weather over there?
Kara: It's beautiful. A little overcast at the moment, but I am really excited to get outside this weekend.
Jenifer: Amazing. Yeah, I am here. I think it's becoming my spot to sit outside and do these live.
Kara: I may do that this afternoon. I'm giving a lecture to our fellowship program in the department. Yeah. And I may pop outside for that. I think that sounds like a wonderful idea.
Jenifer: Amazing. Amazing. So thank you everyone for joining in. It's going to be a short live, but we have exciting news, but before we make the announcement Kara and I wanted to do a little story time.
So you guys have somewhat of a context of where we are coming from and how that leads into our announcement [00:02:00] today. So I'll go first and you guys can let us know where you're from. We love to connect with you. I know the world is our oyster and, we have people following from all over the world. So let us know where you're joining from, have a conversation with us. That's what we are here for.
So I'm gonna jump into my pandemic story. And if you guys wanna share your pandemic stories in the comments, go for it. My pandemic story is that I was working full time at a endocrinologist clinic. And I also started to have a lot of time on hand. And so I decided that because I have a master's degree in anti-inflammatory nutrition and also another one in gut health.
I thought, okay, I have all this education. And then I started to reflect back, like we all did reflect on our past, reflect on so many things in life because everything became very uncertain. [00:03:00] So I started reflecting and my mom's story came back to me again and again, during that time.
And if you guys don't know us my mom has a chronic illness. She has chronic lower back pain, musculoskeletal pain. And, I was thinking about my childhood and the time spent with my mom. And also my mom got COVID, during the pandemic, which was really critical and severe. So a lot of memory started to come up.
And I started to think about okay, what is my purpose? Who do I wanna serve? I'm a dietician. I can serve anybody and I'm already serving a population. Who has diabetes and other chronic illnesses. But then I started, I came back on Instagram. I connected with a few chronic illness warriors, and I was like, whoa!
There is a huge gap in this space where women with chronic illness are bombarded with the wrong nutrition information, misleading information. And they're [00:04:00] trying to get their information from Google, which is the sending them into the rabbit home. And so my journey of pain, nutrition redefined, which is my previous eight week nutrition coaching program began.
So six women from different countries came together. They, they were moms, they were older women. There were young women who were entrepreneurs busy, had a very busy job and things like that. So they were all wearing different hats and they all came together in this container of eight week group coaching program with one big goal.
So let us know what is your 2022 goal here in the comments if you're watching, because I wanna share you what goal these women had. Their one, one goal was just to have more energy. Do you resonate that if you have chronic illness, you are [00:05:00] always looking for more energy? You're like, "okay, I need more energy to do things."
"I need more energy to be present with my kids, my husband, my partner, my family members go out with friends." Like so many things, right? So they were wanting more overflow of it, of energy. And their main, why for energy was number one, I had women who wanted, who had toddlers, new moms. They had more time now on hand.
Yeah. Kara, was one of them too. They have, so they wanted to spend more time with their kids pick up their kids. One of the ladies in my group said she couldn't even like, unbuckle the car seat in the car. So some of the women's why was to spend more time with their kids with less pain have more energy.
So they are able to go around, play around with their kids. Women wanted to cook more meals at home and not rely on processed foods go, to restaurants because during [00:06:00] pandemic, anyway, everybody had more time. Everybody was baking and cooking and doing all sorts of things in the kitchen, but these women wanted to learn the anti-inflammatory eating pattern and cook more anti-inflammatory meals. So the ripple effect could be in their family members as well in their kids partner, all of that. These women also wanted to sleep better and overall just, not go into the rabbit hole of. Food eliminations. Some of these women were newly diagnosed, so they didn't want to do any food eliminations because they've already seen all the nightmares that go around food eliminations and the anxiety.
And then, one particular woman, she loved hiking, but she felt like an elephant on her back, because of her psoriatic arthritis and she couldn't even walk, a few blocks from her house. And her main goal was to be able to go hike, be adventurous enjoy travel without food restrictions.
So let me [00:07:00] know in the comments if any of these are your goals. If any of these sound like why you wanna have more energy, if that's one of your goals. And so we came together, I was like, nervous but excited and at the time I worked with an intern, her name is Kia. She had rheumatoid arthritis.
We came together and we designed a program together and we celebrated. So many wins with these women and the pandemic turn into more like the silver lining in this whole situation. And it gave me purpose because during pandemic, I was like, I need to live my purpose. And I found my purpose in serving women with autoimmune chronic illness and leading them in a more strategic, more non-restrictive way of eating anti-inflammatory meals, enjoying meals with them.
And so [00:08:00] that's my pandemic story. That's the context of where everything started. And now we're two years into pandemic where the fog is lifting. We are all having all these like desires, to... We just wanna live freely. We wanna experience more freedom, live life on our own terms. And so before we talk about the present situation, I want Kara to share her pandemic story.
So then we can tie everything together.
Kara: Yeah. So it's interesting. I wonder if without the pandemic if, or when we, our paths would've crossed. Yeah. Because I was in this similar situation, I had this, busy clinical practice. So for those of you don't know me, my name is Kara Wada. I am a practicing pediatric and adult allergy immunology physician. I work in a busy academic practice at a Midwestern university [00:09:00] and I have systemic Sjogren's.
At the beginning of the pandemic, my clinic shut down. I had a lot of time on my hands. I was worrying a lot and in my previous life before I, I learned some tools to help with that. My way of coping was very much let's take control of everything, especially control over my eating.
That was, that's a way that I buffer or avoid feeling my feelings and is taking control over what I'm eating. And I was one of those folks who really was searching for in particular Sjogren's fatigue is huge. And I, at the time had two young girls really busy and I needed more energy and wanted less pain less stiffness.
I went down the rabbit hole of really pretty extreme elimination, developed a lot of fear around food, especially gluten. And I know the one that we [00:10:00] talked about a lot were oats of all things and legumes, all these foods that I had been taught in my medical training were healthy foods. My, my husband's a cardiologist and I had us on this like pretty neat, heavy diet.
He was horrified, but also wanted to be very supportive. So like he's torn, and I stumbled upon your and Kia's information. And this, you came from this place of abundance that I didn't recognize as that at the time, but this, that really intrigued me and I really appreciated your basis in scientific evidence.
And so on a whim I made I took that leap. It felt like I was taking a step off of the high dive, like at the pool to set up that call. I was really nervous too. And now we fast forward two years later, life is totally [00:11:00] different. I really have considerable like improvement in my energy, my pain.
And certainly that's through a combination of factors. I'm not stressing about what I'm eating. I'm not wasting mental energy worrying about, all the different things. I have some really simple tools I can follow. I've learned in the meantime, I've gone ahead and advanced my own education and lifestyle medicine and got certified in life coaching because I really found being able to harness kind of tools to manage my mind and understand how my thoughts really do influence my results in life. All those tools have really helped fuel my ongoing success and our ongoing endeavor. Yes. So yes, the fog is lifting.
Jenifer: And one thing in particular, I remember from our conversation was also how you were in a place of motherhood, where [00:12:00] you had experienced, you had seen some diet culture in your own life and you wanted to not role model that for your kids.
Also, you have a different perspective on the diets because every time I post about some kind of elimination diet and that you shouldn't do that. I get so many comments where people like echo the message and say " Yeah, I went into the rabbit hole of elimination diets, and it led me to more stress and it didn't make me any better, and it wouldn't because of the stress associated with all the eliminations."
Kara: Yeah. And I think, clinically where I come at this now too, is I think about how I approach things with my both personally and professionally. I really caution folks to sometimes you do need to do a little trial away from certain terms to see cause and effect.
Of course. Yeah. But I really strongly encourage folks to do that with with some supervision or in partnership with a dietician, a physician, [00:13:00] someone so that you at you really can have a diet that is, is the least restricted as possible.
Jenifer: Yeah. I also find that, if they, if clients, patients don't do food eliminations under supervision, then there is a high chance that they do never reintroduce foods back because they're so like worried and scared and stressed about, reintroducing foods.
And oftentimes I find it's probably just one or two ingredients, even sometimes not even the whole food group that is like the culprit or the cause or the trigger, and that's something that I'm super excited about.
Kara: And so often it's more of a dose effect too. Yeah. I can, personally I can get away with, certain amounts of refined carbohydrates or dairy, but too much. And it, that's when I run into difficulties.
Jenifer: Right. Yeah, exactly. And so the triggers are so unique to everyone [00:14:00] and how their lifestyle is even and what phase of womanhood they are in, it's so many factors play a role.
Kara: Yeah, absolutely.
Jenifer: Yeah. So do you want to talk about our endeavors now.
Kara: Yes.
Jenifer: We are now collaborating.
Kara: Yeah. Jennifer and I have come together and we are debuting our new program. It is an eight week program for busy professional women who are struggling with chronic illness invisible illness, really looking for more energy improved mood and really letting go of all of that mind, chatter that, just weighs you down.
And so we have a we are just really excited to bring this approach that is science-based and sustainable and we really wanna bring sustainable and science and make it sexy again. So it is it's called the air squared program. And what that means is it's for [00:15:00] Anti-inflammatory Redefined and living with Autoimmunity Reimagined.
So really taking those key principles, helping you reimagine and reformulate that in your own day to day life, personalizing it to you. And really breaking through those preconceived notions that we get in our subconscious of what living with autoimmunity means and really blowing that out of the water so that we can rediscover the purpose we're here on this earth. Live, live in alignment with that. .
Jenifer: Yeah. And I think like it's such a double dose of women practitioners coming together in a space where it's much needed. We do need to make sure that we are focusing on building that anti-inflammatory lifestyle, not just eating, but also the whole lifestyle so that it serves you. And you are in your power versus like the food and the environment and the [00:16:00] triggers. Everything are controlling your life and you are like feeling super lost. My role in this program is going to really help you identify your unique trigger food. So you are not going into the rabbit hole of unwarranted non-scientific based eliminations.
And also provide you with detailed feedback and recommendations. So you can start implementing the, add the additive approach, the addition approach versus elimination. So if someone comes to me and says, "Hey, Jen, what should I eliminate?" I'm like, "Let's talk about what can you add first, before we start talking about elimination."
So we come from a place where it's a more like inclusive evidence based anti-inflammatory eating pattern and the tools, right? Kara said, like the tools that we have are so simple that it can just help you in whatever situation you are in.
So let's say if you are following a very strict [00:17:00] elimination protocol and you travel, what happens if you're enjoying a social event, what happens if your kids eat differently, your husband eats differently and you are following a restrictive diet? Then what happens? You're spending so much money, energy, overwhelmed spoons in the kitchen.
If you know anything about spoon theory . Chronic illness warriors need to really save their spoons. And so this is our goal also to help you conserve your spoons. Use those spoons where you wanna be able to live your life fully, be present with your husband partner in your job of kids, whatever that looks like for you.
Travel, attend social events with confidence and without any stress and anxiety associated with food and eating at restaurants and things like that, because this is so simple. That it's a no brainer, and again, it's all rooted in science evidence. It's not [00:18:00] anecdotal evidence or anything like that.
It's more from the research studies. Someone is asking anti diet, IBS dietician. Do you screen for eating disorders? Because this is a group coaching program. We do make sure that we have an assessment form and we do some screeners that we make sure that we are a good fit and definitely eating disorders is something that I don't personally work with.
I do work with women who have disordered eating and we take the approach of mindful eating and intuitive eating. That is like a big thing in the program as well. But if someone has bulimia or any of the eating disorders diagnosed, then definitely they are not a good fit for our program.
So thank you for that question.
Kara: Ah and what I bring to the table. So not only are you getting all of this amazing nutrition information, practical resources. I'm also [00:19:00] bringing to the table, that physician and patient role pick my brain. How could we manage this crazy medical system we live within?
How can we really work well and communicate well with our care team? So you have that aspect. I bring the life coaching to it as well. So how can we use the power of our thoughts? Knowing our thoughts about particular circumstances really influence our feelings and then create our results in our lives.
How can we use that model of thought and rewire kind of those neural pathways to help. And I really love coming from this place of self-compassion. There are so much evidence it's building and surrounding the role of coaching. But also the role of self-compassion and improving mood, improving physical and clinical health as well.
So again, we're, this is a little bit of the woo of medicine, but there's science behind it. And I'm not, this is, I'm not [00:20:00] working in the role of your physician. I'm working in the role of your coach in this position. Yeah. So I really do have to clarify that. But I think come things from this really powerful position of being the bridge between those two environments and those two roles.
Jenifer: Yeah. And we both come from the approach of definitely. I, my mom has chronic illness. I have seen firsthand how absent she was from my life. And now she's thriving. I haven't said this to anybody, but last year she got critically ill because of COVID. And again, she has COVID, she's thriving.
And I'm like inside, I'm like holding this duality of where I am little heartbroken that my parents have COVID again. But I also know, and trust the fact that, they're better equipped this time around to be able to overcome this COVID situation and the symptoms are mild, touch word and thank God.
I'm I feel [00:21:00] blessed. But the thing of it is, like when you have chronic illness, a lot of things come at you. And when that happens, having that support, like Kara said, like being able to overcome barriers and challenges like me talking to my mom, like trying to guide her through this whole situation, not just COVID, the other things that come with chronic illness, depressive symptoms issues with gut health, brain fog, not feeling like just don't know where the flare will come from.
All of these uncertainties and having a support system who understands. We are going to be your cheerleaders, your support system during this time and beyond even, because we wanna be there for you. We've seen it firsthand and we know what, how valuable the support system can be.
And you will be, a lot of times we feel lost. If we don't have someone to help us answer our questions, overcome barriers, [00:22:00] challenges, like sometimes. You're experiencing a hard day at work, you're busy, then you have to pick up your kids. And yet at the end of the day, you're like, okay, I'm standing in front of the fridge and I don't know what to cook, so I'm just gonna order out.
But if you have tools, it's going to be so much better to stop that mind chatter of okay, I'm gonna order out because you have the tools, your pantries filled your fridge is ready to go. You know how to do grocery shopping, you know how to read labels. You're well equipped and it's very inclusive.
So it's not your eating differently than your kids and your partner or anybody else in your family, but it's more everybody enjoying the meals together. That's my, that just makes me so happy when I see like moms enjoying meals with their family members. And the other thing is if you're alone or if you're single, or if you live by yourself, you don't have the motivation to cook.
And the easy thing is okay, I'm just gonna eat leftovers or I'm just gonna eat. Some meal delivery, [00:23:00] service opt for meal delivery service, or I'm just gonna take supplements, like the easy things, because sometimes we just don't have the straight path and the step by step approach and whatever feels easy in the situation is what we go for.
And I am the same too. Like it's just human nature, and because we understand that, we wanna help and support you with all of these challenges.
Kara: We're helping you use, so to get into a little, the science, little sprinkle of science, we're helping you use your prefrontal cortex, your planning part of your brain, when and how to have those plans in place for when your lizard brain wants to kick in that, that lizard limbic brain when you're stressed and you're craving the sweets.
And, rather than doing that, you have this plan in place. And for me, part of that plan is knowing locally, okay, these are the three different restaurants where I know I can get something that's super anti-inflammatory and is easy, on those super stressful nights or the nights we do need, that, that easy button.[00:24:00]
Jenifer: Yeah. And when you're stressed and emotional it's easy to just grab a bag of chips or, also stress eat because you wanna comfort your feelings. And we are gonna talk a lot about like emotional eating and how to rewire your brain around this whole thing.
Because again, that leads to more inflammation and it's the two sides of the same point, like on one hand, definitely. We want you to enjoy and be more inclusive in your favorite foods and add them and make sure you enjoy them. But on the other side, you also will enjoy a lot of anti-inflammatory foods and crave more it's like the sugar you crave.
You eat more sugar, you crave more sugar, you feel guilty, you feel stressed and you eat more sugar . And then on the other hand, if you're eating more anti-inflammatory foods, you're you have that mental clarity, better mood, more energy. You're not gonna crave sugars and then no guilt and no not going into that vicious cycle.
Kara: And when you approach that also [00:25:00] with this feeling and this new mindset of warmth and seeing yourself and treating yourself like your own best friend, as opposed to being your worst critic. Yeah. That is like incredibly powerful. We know that increases motivation. It increases your ability to follow through and and really hit those goals.
Jenifer: Yeah, for sure. So we are excited and just to summarize air squared, amazing. It's out. It's world class , we've come up with that in many days. So we wanted to feel like, light, like air is invisible, just like invisible illness. Yeah.
Kara: Take deep breath, a deep breath cleansing breath.
Yeah.
Jenifer: Detoxing naturally instead of, taking a lot of supplements and then it's an eight week experience. You get weekly Q and A calls with Kara and I. You're gonna get self-paced nutrition, education, and [00:26:00] self-compassion modules. You're gonna get community of other women who are struggling and have similar struggles.
And what else? Kara, there's so many things.
Kara: Yes. We also are going to be having a private podcast. So if you are missing any of these sessions, you're going to be able to easily tune into them either through the portal or through the private podcast so that you don't miss any of these great conversations that we all can learn from.
And you'll have lifetime access to all of this information. So it really is we both come from this philosophy of really wanting to teach someone how to fish so that you have this information to guide you not only today, tomorrow or next week, but years down the road.
Jenifer: Exactly. Yeah, for sure.
And then everyone always asks me for meal plans and you're gonna get lots of like anti-inflammatory meal plans, snack ideas. Again, the ultimate goal is for you to come up with your [00:27:00] own meal plan, but you're gonna have lots of recipes, ideas, inspiration through different resources that I have.
And I'll put together more during the program so that you never feel lost or feel like you don't have recipes or you have to go to the rabbit hole of Pinterest or Google finding new recipes and trying to figure out how to tweak them to make them more anti-inflammatory. So that's also going to be huge.
Yeah. And we really stand by what we offer and you're not gonna lose anything. So we welcome you again, you, you have to take a deep breath. You have to feel in all these transformations, close your eyes, dream dream. Think about what your dream life is gonna look like, because you can.
A full life despite of your chronic illness, like Kara is a mom of three, a practicing physician, running her business, oh my God, and a wife. Yeah. And she, when I look at her, I'm like, dude, like, how are you doing all [00:28:00] these things?
Kara: Sometimes, I don't know. And the quick little story about the self-compassion piece real quick.
Yeah. One of the, so I helped teach future allergy, immunology doctors, and one of the fellows, one of the trainees I work with came to me two days ago and was like, Hey, Dr. Wada, I saw you given the lecture this week. On Friday, I was like, I am. Okay, and yeah, sure enough. I scheduled myself to give the lecture about a year ago.
This was before I really got good about keeping my calendar up to date. Yeah. And we have not had an administrative person in role in a role for a while. So I didn't have someone to remind me, a year or two ago, I would've beat myself up about that, totally. I would've stressed out. I would've like totally had that fight or flight.
And instead, I was like, oh yeah, no big deal. You know what we're gonna talk about self-compassion this week because yeah, it's incredibly powerful. We know it helps with physicians and we're just rolling with it.
Jenifer: Yeah. And I feel like these things we've lost [00:29:00] along the way. I feel like we, we experience this big shifts in humanity where I feel like, they our, our moms and our grandmoms they lived a very simple life, ate like local foods and, walked wherever they wanted to, they weren't living sedentary life. And then suddenly, like industrial revolution happened and we all like women became more working and like equal to men.
And we started going out to work and juggling all these different roles and then became more sedentary and stuck to our desk and started eating more processed foods. And it's just like that whole spiel happened. And then pandemic happened where it's you're stuck in the house.
Restaurant meals. You're scared to eat them because you're not sure what you're getting. So everybody started to either bake a lot of goodies or started to eat more meals at home and, be together again. And I feel like we had disconnected from each other, [00:30:00] personally, like we were so like phone and zoom and video call, but we weren't like experiencing those in person connections.
And then when pandemic happened, we all were like, okay, we are human beings and we are really not liking this isolation.
Kara: Yeah. We're social beings..
Jenifer: Exactly and everything shifted. I feel like I felt the shift to the core of my being and, like I evolved so much during pandemic.
Like it wasn't great. Like I said, I've experienced some traumatic experiences in pandemic. Me now have gone through a lot of self work and self care situation to really overcome those things. But we are on the other side, hopefully the world has opened up and we are craving more in person connections.
And we want, when we are wanting to socialize. What we want is to not worry about the flares, to not worry about the food and just overall live our best life [00:31:00] possible. So we are here for you to enjoy the shift and, experience womanhood in a different at a different level, as well as.
While having chronic illness because there's no cure to it. So all we can do is best manage it and then, live our best life possible.
Kara: Before I say goodbye this week, I wanted to share how Jen and I are making sustainable the new sexy we're launching our new air squared programs, including our signature eight week program named air squared intensive. Anti-inflammatory living redefined an auto-immunity re-imagined. Is the program I dreamed of finding when I was scouring the internet for help, after my diagnosis with Sjogren's.
Imagine the amazing feeling of comfort in your own skin. More mental space to enjoy your life. Thinking about what you'll achieve when the constant brain chatter around your health and food is gone. It's time for our program [00:32:00] that skips the long line of supplements and focuses on your long-term success.
So, if you're struggling to stay afloat amid the unrelenting fatigue, you've finally reached a point where you refuse to continue struggling with your immune system for the rest of your life. Or you don't have all the answers yet, but you're determined to figure this out once. And for all. Hop over to success with Sjogren's dot com to learn more and enroll.
If you're keen to learn more about how to manage your misbehaving immune system with a naturally minded and scientifically grounded approach you can head over to www.crunchyallergist.com. There you can find my five foods you don't need to fear if you have sjogren's, join our email newsletter list, as well as checking out links and resources available in the show notes.
That's all for this episode folks See you again this time next week take care
