Transcription of Harvest #2
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland, Maine and broadcast on 1310AM Portland. Streaming live each week at 11:00AM on wlobradio.com and available via podcast on doctorlisa.org. Today is September 25th, 2011. Thank you for joining us. Here are some highlights from this week’s show.
Speaker 1: Support for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is generously provided by: Akari Salon, Maine Magazine, Robin Hodgskin of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Whole Foods Market, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin from ReMax Heritage, and Tom Shepard from Hersey Gardner Shepard and Eaton Ameriprise.
Dr. Lisa: Hello this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. Today is September 25th, 2011 and our theme today is ‘Harvest’.
My goal as a physician and a mother is to see individuals making healthy personal choices and thriving in the community because their well-being has a ripple effect. Everything is interconnected; one person’s health is my health and yours. If we want a better world that’s where we have to begin, with ourselves.
Joining me in the studio today as always is our cohost Genevieve Morgan, Wellness Director from Maine Magazine. On today’s show we have conversations with Julie Alfred Sullivan the Public Health Director for the City of Portland. We also talk to Dr. Richard Maurer, a naturopathic physician at Coastal Naturopathic Center in Falmouth, Maine, and with Mark Swann the Executive Director of Preble Street in Downtown Portland. We hope you will enjoy our program on harvest as we enter into this autumn season. Thank you for listening.
One of our segments every week is about food and nourishing ourselves, feeding ourselves. When patients come into my office food is a very important topic. It’s not just food from a physical standpoint, it’s food from an emotional, spiritual, intellectual standpoint. We talked about that last week on our Beginnings show on the September 18th show. I have Gen Morgan in the studio with me again. Gen as we keep reminding people is our Wellness Editor from Maine Magazine and does our Maine Magazine minutes. I know food is particularly important to her and she is going to be speaking with Dr. Richard Maurer later on in the show about food. Today we’re going to focus on a few actual food choices.
Genevieve: I see you have some delicious-looking products over there.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, delicious in need and local because they all came from the Whole Foods Market here in Portland, Maine. They sponsor this segment and let us pick through and look at their locally grown foods. What’s interesting to me is we have foods you might not consider to be local. For example, we have these lovely red rocket peppers from the Little River Farm in Buxton. You think of these as Mexican or hot or spicy and really they can be grown anywhere. We’ll talk a little bit more about the peppers and the health benefits of these.
We also have a few other items. We still have blueberries. These are wild Maine blueberries. These came through the Stoneset Farm in Brooklin. We have some tomatoes from Backyard Farms in Madison, Maine. What’s great is these are all things that you can do; you can eat these foods and stay healthier than you would be if you didn’t eat these foods. I guess that’s a silly thing to say, but the world is so busy and fast-paced and we forget that there are simple things that we can do to stay balanced.
I like to think about food as medicine and that’s … I can’t remember which famous person said this but, “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.” This is something that we talk about all the time in my office and on a daily basis almost. We’re getting research coming out that’s showing us about the benefits of eating healthy food. I have in front of me Spirituality and Health magazine-
Genevieve: You write for that magazine, don’t you?
Dr. Lisa: I do write for this magazine. Actually I write for their online blog right now and we’ll connect you through at doctorlisa.org. What’s interesting is that I opened this magazine up and I believe this is the … this was the July and August issue. I guess it takes me a little while to actually read my magazines. Anyway, it was funny because there were three things that I was really interesting in. One of them was a study out of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston that showed that men and women who eat berries on a regular basis may have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.
Genevieve: Wow! That’s fascinating.
Dr. Lisa: It is fascinating, and it’s especially fascinating because actually it’s even more important in men than in women. Men tend to be a little bit more challenging from a health standpoint. Men they don’t … They aren’t necessarily as into their health as women. Studies have shown.
Genevieve: I think that’s true.
Dr. Lisa: The reason why these berries are so important is because they have flavornoids in them, antioxidants which are also found in tea, red wine, chocolate and citrus fruit. The people in the study were followed for 20 to 22 years and the top 20% of flavonoid consumers were 40% less likely to develop Parkinson’s and this is so interesting. We have Maine berries locally grown Whole Foods Market, such an easy way to get there flavonoids into your diet. Sprinkle once in cereal-
Genevieve: They taste delicious.
Dr. Lisa: They taste delicious absolutely. Another thing that tastes delicious are these Backyard Farm’s tomatoes. On the WLOB segment that we’ve done for the past couple of years, we’ve talked about lycopene and prostate cancer that’s just one of the substances that we find in tomatoes. We also are finding that tomatoes are good in addition to preventing a lot of chronic diseases such as cataracts.
These lately have been shown to have lipid-lowering effects; which means that they are counteracting the cholesterol in your blood. They are showing that people who eat more tomatoes are less likely to develop vascular disease. The important thing about vascular disease is that it’s sort of a silent killer.
Genevieve: Isn’t cardiovascular disease one of the top four killers in the country?
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, heart disease is one of the top killers and vascular disease which tends to be people … If you get a heart attack you do have vascular disease. The vascular disease is related to your blood vessels so you can have a buildup of these cholesterols and fats in your blood vessels. We know that if you have a buildup of fat in your heart and you get a heart attack, then that’s obviously you have vascular disease in other parts of your body.
There are people who don’t get to the place where they actually will have a heart attack; they’ll actually just end up having what we call vascular inefficiency. They’ll have pain in their legs or the blood won’t flow back and forth quite as well. They get swelling in their legs. We know that overtime people who have vascular disease are likely to also develop heart attacks and possibly dementia.
Genevieve: In your practice Lisa do you see that you are able to help people control cardiovascular disease with food and acupuncture and more natural methods? Is that something that lifestyle and diet helps fix?
Dr. Lisa: If you can do it from a preventive standpoint you’re even better off, primary prevention. We talk about secondary prevention and tertiary prevention is sort of getting there after the fact. Yes, diet, lifestyle we teach qigong, I do acupuncture with people which helps with stress and all of these things can contribute to lowering one’s risk of vascular disease, heart disease.
Genevieve: In the article I just published in Maine Magazine with Dr. Maurer who we’re going to be talking to later, I actually saw in the CDC reports about our state that cardiovascular disease is one of the top problems for the State of Maine. For everyone listening out there it’s really interesting that what you are saying it’s in your own power to help alleviate symptoms of cardiovascular disease through diet, through people like you.
Dr. Lisa: Right, it is. It’s absolutely in your own power. I think sometimes this is one of the things that we worry about with healthcare is we feel powerless; we feel like we’re at the whim of our local clinic. We can’t get in to see our doctors, we need a pill. We need a quick fix. It really … it starts far beyond … far before you get to the doors of your doctors.
Genevieve: It starts with a tomato.
Dr. Lisa: Starts with a tomato, starts with some berries. Also an interesting thing that came out of Spirituality and Health this month is talks about coffee preventing against diabetes. Again we know diabetes, obesity those are both risk factors for heart disease. We in the Portland area like to go over to Bard Coffee and that’s another local establishment. We love the people at Bard, hi Jeremy. If you’re having your daily cup of coffee maybe not more than that, then you’re going to have protective effects against diabetes and also prevent heart disease.
Genevieve: That’s great. I actually have a nice coffee from Bard behind me right now.
Dr. Lisa: Well, there you go so again locally grown. We have the berries; we have the Backyard Farm tomatoes, a little bit of coffee. Actually there are a lot of things that we talk about on the website that give you the ground floor entry into health. I spend a lot of time exploring health over the last few years on my blog. I write more about spiritual health now but this is really where I started when I was coming into Chinese medicine and integrative medicine was talking about how we feed ourselves and how we feed ourselves from a physical standpoint.
This is one of the reasons why we focused on health so early on, and in fact when we go on WLOB every week on our Thursday segments at 6:50 in the morning, we bring in our basket of fun, we bring in our locally-grown foods. We talk about how we prepare them and we give people tools they can use which is-
Genevieve: You can find some of your recipes on our website, am I right?
Dr. Lisa: Yes, absolutely. You can find them on our website; you can find them on the E-News. We talk about food and eating in the Farmers Almanac Online, which is another publication that we write for. We’re out there, we’re spreading the message of health and nourishment and eating and foods.
Genevieve: Planting the seeds for harvest.
Dr. Lisa: Exactly, it’s all about harvest. Gen thanks so much for having this great conversation with me today. Thanks for joining us on this segment and we’ll be back again in a minute.
Speaker 1: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour has been brought to you by Whole Foods Market of Portland, Maine. Whole Foods Market where you will find the highest quality natural and organic products available. Follow them on Facebook and go to wholefoodsmarket.com to learn more about their whole foods, whole people, whole planet vision.
Dr. Lisa: Our featured guest today is Julie Sullivan the Public Health Director for the city of Portland. Today we’re talking … for our theme we’re talking about harvest and about reaping what you sow. That has multiple connotations, which we’ve discussed in our earlier introduction. I’m sitting here with Genevieve Morgan Wellness Editor for Maine Magazine. Good morning Gen, hello.
Julie Sullivan: Good morning everybody.
Dr. Lisa: I’m going to tell you a little bit about Julie and then we’re going to get started. Julie is a dear friend of mine; I’ve known her for a while. She is the Public Health Director for the City of Portland overseeing a nearly $6 million budget with more than 100 staff and five program areas. Under her leadership, the health department doubled grant revenues while decreasing general fund reliance by 15%. Previously Julie was the Health Promotion Program Manager and started the city’s first minority health and community health outreach worker initiatives.
Before moving to Maine, Ms. Sullivan served as Project Director for a $3.3 million department of justice, demonstration grant for children exposed to violence at the Chicago Department Of Public Health. Ms. Sullivan earned MBA and MPH degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a BA in History from Northwestern University. I’m impressed.
Genevieve: So am I.
Dr. Lisa: Lots of things that you’ve done in your life, lots of degrees that you have. You know that I have a Master’s in Public Health myself so this is very dear to my heart. I know that Gen is wondering and the rest of us as well, what is public health? What does this have to do with wellness? What does it have to do with medicine? What’s the intersection? Tell us Julie.
Julie Sullivan: Public health I think is something that’s very hard for people to define. I think most often people think of public health as perhaps healthcare for poor folks, maybe immunizations, a flu shot is something that’s often connected with public health. The field, what’s always been interesting to me about it, the field of public health is so broad. We look at the health of a population and what makes people healthy, what keeps people healthy.
We look at income and education and jobs and community supports and there are so many things that go into the making and keeping people healthy and public health looks at all of those things. Whereas medicine is very focused on individuals and the needs that they present to an individual practitioner in an individual moment in time. We look at the prevention factors and the assets that are in place in communities to making keep people healthy.
Dr. Lisa: We are talking about wellness on a much bigger scope. We’re talking about the wellness of the family, the wellness of the community and really the wellness of the country and the world honestly. If you look at the world Health Organization, that’s public health on a global scale.
Julie Sullivan: Absolutely.
Dr. Lisa: I know that one of your projects recently has been Portland Defending Childhood, and I’d like you to speak a little bit more about that.
Julie Sullivan: It’s a new award from the Department of Justice and looking at the impact of children’s exposure to violence. It’s something that most people really aren’t aware of especially when you look at very young children maybe ages zero to five who might be witnessing some domestic violence in the home. Many folks might assume that a baby is too young to really get it, to really have any sort of negative impact from that. Or that a toddler or a pre-schooler is sleeping and didn’t hear it.
Unfortunately what we find most often is that, especially with domestic violence which is most often chronic and not just a onetime thing, that there is a pretty severe impact or there can be on a developing brain. That often when these children come to school, it’s the first time anybody is noticing that there might some challenges for that kid. They have a hard time sitting still and paying attention in school and things begin to snowball from there.
We want folks to know that there is an impact when children are witnessing violence. That there are signs to look for when a kid is struggling and that there are supports in the community available to children and families to seek services when they need them.
Dr. Lisa: What are those signs if I am a teacher or a social worker or a community member or even a parent? Perhaps a co-parent in a situation where I don’t have my child full-time what signs am I looking for?
Julie Sullivan: With little kids it’s a short list of symptoms because they only have limited ways of expressing themselves. Often it’s regression in toilet training, problem sleeping and maybe odd complaints about a headache or a stomachache. There are nonspecific signs but it’s certainly violence in the home or violence in the community is one thing to look for.
As you know we have a growing number of refugees who have been through unbelievable trauma in their country of origin and so they are coming here. Those kids have seen things and witnessed things and been directly affected by things that we can’t, that thankfully we can’t even really understand. We’re building capacity as well to deal with that kind of trauma too.
Dr. Lisa: I read the percentage is 15% of our city’s population is a minority?
Julie Sullivan: Yes, Maine is still of course, one of the widest states in the country but Portland is not at the same rate as the state at all. We have increasing numbers certainly from all sorts of different countries in Africa. Also from Afghanistan and Iran and very large families that have been through very serious trauma coming here.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve been talking about the negative aspects of violence whether it’s violence coming from a different country, violence in the home if you’re from the United States, and that’s all about reaping what you sow. Something happens early on and then later on you see an impact. Tell me about the things that the city has to offer that actually can change things for the better. We’re talking about harvest and abundance and I know that you spent so much money right now to try to get people healthier. Tell me what types of things you’re doing.
Julie Sullivan: I would start with our maternal-child health nurse home visitors which is part of the Maine Families Program. Home visiting, a series of home visits are offered to every first-time parent in the State of Maine and our nurses visit families in Portland. They’re able to help new parents adjust to having a new baby and anyone who’s had a new baby knows that there is little that can really prepare you for that. There’s lots of assistance in that transition and also in breastfeeding and making sure the baby is developing appropriately.
We also do some parenting support groups and infant and toddler playgroups which are a great ways for parents to get support from one another as well as from our nurses. For the kids to play together which is always a good thing. We also have six school-based health centers. We’re in most of the schools in Portland, all three high schools and King Middle and across some of elementary schools as well.
That’s a great way to provide additional medical services for kids who need them in the school. Some of the assistance is managing chronic disease but also with the older kids there’s reproductive support and mental health and dental services.
Dr. Lisa: You do work with immunizations? Tell me about the immunizations.
Julie Sullivan: We do. Our India Street clinic provides every immunization you need at a very low cost or no cost. We also connect with our school-based partners to be providing flu clinics for kids as well to make that as accessible as possible. We allow younger siblings to come into the school and get their shots as well when we do our flu clinics.
Dr. Lisa: You told me there is a travel clinic as well?
Julie Sullivan: There is a travel clinic. We want to support people being healthy no matter where they go. We know that getting the required shots to travel different parts of the world can be prohibitively expensive. We are able to provide I believe everything that is needed at a much more reasonable cost. That helps us to be able to provide services for those who can’t pay as well.
(Music)
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our interview with Julie Sullivan in just a moment.
This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is brought to you by the following generous sponsors: Akari Salon, an urban sanctuary of beauty, wellness and style. Located on Middle Street in Portland, Maine’s old port. Follow them on Facebook or go to akaribeauty.com to learn more about their new boutique and medispa.
And by Robin Hodgskin, Senior Vice President and Financial Advisor at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Portland, Maine. For all your investment needs, call Robin Hodgskin at 207-771-0888. Investments in services are offered through Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, LLC member, SIPC. Now back to our interview with Director of Public Health for Portland, Julie Sullivan.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve talked about immunization, we’ve talked about school-based health and preventing violence in the home. I know that eating and food choices have been pretty important. There was a recent campaign that you did we regard to sugar beverages. Is that right?
Julie Sullivan: Yes, we just did a campaign that’s wrapping up to raise people’s awareness on exactly how much sugar there is in soda, in these sports drinks, some of the vitamin drinks that are marketed as being very healthy are loaded with sugar. Some can have 16, 20 packets of sugar in them. Some surveys show that two thirds of high school kids are drinking at least one of these beverages a day. They’re empty calories; they don’t fill people up so therefore, they’re not adjusting how much they eat otherwise. The pounds just pack on. Folks aren’t even aware of that happening.
We’ve been really pleasantly surprised by the reaction to that campaign. In fact in the rotunda of City Hall we have an exhibit with a liter of soda and the amount of sugar in it so that people can actually see. There’s other sort of different bottles showing how much sugar is usually in these drinks. I’m always amazed, every time I walk by there is somebody in there fondling the drinks and looking pretty disgusted by what they see. It’s been great to see that awareness.
Genevieve: Lisa and Julie, my son came home yesterday from lunch and said that he’s had a chocolate milk. He goes to King Middle School, but he said there was high fructose corn syrup in the milk. Have you heard of that?
Julie Sullivan: No, I will certainly share that-
Dr. Lisa: That’s something we need to work on now, isn’t it?
Julie Sullivan: Yeah, yeah. We’ve had a great partnership with the Portland Public schools and Ron Adams who is charge of the foods service there has been a terrific partner in bringing local Maine foods into the schools and increasing how much healthy food is available. We’ve used a large federal grant that we go in obesity prevention to buy salad bar equipment for each school. The schools are doing much better than they ever have before. I will share that with our guys.
Dr. Lisa: How do you network with the entire state as far as public health is concerned? I know that in the last few years we’ve now become a CDC, a Center for Disease Control. We’ve been linked in nationally. How does that the City of Portland link actually link in with what’s going on in the State of Maine?
Julie Sullivan: I’d say the largest source of our funding is through state contracts. We are accountable to the state through … Let’s see, we’ve probably got about 50 different funding sources or 50 different contracts. At least a third and probably close to a half are those from the state. We work very closely in implementing often mutually agreed objectives to further their work.
Dr. Lisa: Can you give me some example of projects that people might be familiar with?
Julie Sullivan: Oh sure. Our school-based health centers are a state grant. The reason why I paused is that so many of the state grants are federal pass-through. The state of Maine does not allocate, the legislature has not – at least in my tenure – does not allocate very much money to public health at all. Most of the money that is available to us through contracts from the state is via the Fund for Healthy Maine. Which is tobacco settlement money, which is going to be once again severely at risk going into the state legislative session – It’s been cut back.
If that continues to be cut back, that will affect immunizations. That will affect maternal-child home visiting. These were things that were on the block last year but survived, but the governor is intending to cut at that fund again. I certainly want to point that Maine is one of the lowest states in the country along with Arkansas and Mississippi in state funding provided for public health.
Dr. Lisa: Most of the money is coming through-
Julie Sullivan: It’s Federal pass-through.
Dr. Lisa: That’s the United States government.
Julie Sullivan: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: The tobacco funding, just address that briefly.
Julie Sullivan: That is the tobacco settlement from a number of years ago in which, oh gosh, 20 to 30 attorneys general from around the country sued all the major tobacco companies. As part of that settlement the companies have to give billions into this national fund, which is then allocated out with some formula to the states. Again that’s really the source of funding for public health in Maine. It does support home visiting, school-based healthcare I believe, certainly immunizations.
We do a lot of work around substance abuse prevention as well. It comes from the office of substance abuse. A big topic right now of course is bath salts. We’re trying to get some education out there for folks on bath salts.
Dr. Lisa: Wait, bath salts is a big topic and yet I have not heard of this. We just have a few more minutes left, just briefly bath salts.
Julie Sullivan: Bath salts is some odd name for a new drug that’s out there that is a chemical synthetic drug that reminds me of what I used to hear about PCP or Angel Dust. It has horrible effects on people. What we’re seeing we’ve seen unfortunately in a case or two our own clinics. We know the ER, the Poison Control Center are seeing significant cases Bangor has had a huge number of cases. Folks are violent and paranoid. They are very harmful to self, dangerous to others. They’re very delusional, they have no idea what’s going on.
They’re ripping their clothes off. They’ve found a naked woman in a pipe somewhere, in a drainage pipe. We had someone come in out of his tree, out of his tree. The police have to take them down to the ER. It’s a dangerous situation, so it’s really something that we want people to be aware of. There’s more and more information coming out.
Dr. Lisa: How can we access this information? What’s the best way to get information on all these programmes you’ve just described?
Julie Sullivan: Well, most of it is available on our website which is portlandmaine.gov all spelt out in one word-
Dr. Lisa: We’ll have that also on the Dr. Lisa website for people who would like it. I know that you’ve done so much work. I have to say that the people who do public health work and wellness are perhaps the least recognized. It’s a very difficult job. Along with social workers I’m just going to make a shout-out to the social workers and the teachers of the world.
Julie we so appreciate your coming in and talking to us about what you’re doing with public health. It’s an amazing resource available to the city of Portland, to the State of Maine and we wish you all the best.
Julie Sullivan: Thank you very much.
(Music)
Dr. Lisa: I’m here with Genevieve Morgan, Wellness Editor for Maine Magazine. She’s going to talk a little bit with Richard Maurer, Dr. Richard Maurer and I’ll let her introduce Dr. Maurer.
Genevieve: Thank you Lisa. Those of you who read the magazine know that I interviewed Dr. Maurer this month for an article called ‘What’s for Dinner?’ Dr. Maurer earned the Doctorate of Naturopathic Medicine from the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in 1994. He supervises medical residents for the Maine Medical Center CAM Residency Fellowship. He’s adjunct faculty at the University of Southern Maine. Dr. Maurer is a member of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, the Maine Association of Naturopathic Doctors, and is an active member of Slow Food and the Western Price Foundation.
He lectures regularly, has authored numerous health-related articles, compiles a quarterly newsletter and is in the process of writing a book on the FatBack Diet. Dr. Maurer specializes in physiologic bases of disease for effective diagnosis and treatment. He addresses weight issues, thyroid problems, anemia, pre-diabetes, digestive diseases and allergies. He applies the FatBack diet principles for many conditions including ADD and autism.
Dr. Maurer is available for teaching and lecturing on natural therapies. He has practiced naturopathic medicine in Maine since 1994 and practices at Coastal Naturopathic Center in Falmouth, Maine, which he also owns. Am I right?
Dr. Richard: Yes.
Genevieve: Oh great. Welcome Richard-
Dr. Richard: Thank you Genevieve.
Genevieve: So nice to have you here.
Dr. Richard: It’s a pleasure.
Genevieve: We had such a good time talking the other day about what people should be eating for dinner. Today Lisa and I have been talking about so many things, but our last segment was about local food. There are so many reasons why we should be eating locally from an economic perspective, but I’m interested in what you have to say about why people should eat local from a health perspective and a scientific perspective.
Dr. Richard: That’s a good question. There tends to be a division between what is healthful and what is local. Local we think of farmers, we think of farmers’ markets. Historically though, if we go back to say my great grandmother, there was only local. Local foods created the community cuisine and culture that we look at now when we’re studying what is so healthy about the Mediterranean diet for example.
There’s a great article if we go back a few years to 1972. The Scientific American did an article called Lactose and Lactase. This is studying the enzyme that helps one digest milk sugar. If you were from Sweden or European countries, there was only about a 2% to 10% chance that you would not have enough lactase to digest milk sugar, so you were not lactose intolerant. Whereas they studied people from Thailand and China and the rates where about 98% lactose intolerant.
I use this as a way of comparing, not because lactose intolerance condition I see in my practice, but it’s one many people have heard of. That is just one enzyme that has shown preference to a local regional way of eating. There are probably thousands upon thousands of other enzymes in our body that help us digest and be healthy eating a local cuisine.
Dr. Lisa: Let me just ask you, do you think that it is the environment influences genetics over a long period of time or that your genetics start to play a role in your preferences or you allergies or the way that your body metabolizes?
Dr. Richard: In that particular study and numerous subsequent studies, the environment really changes the genetic preference.
Dr. Lisa: What we’re really talking about then is you need to understand where you come from and what your culture is in order to figure out what the healthiest foods are for you to eat. If you move to a region, eating locally is also important. Is that correct? You need to choose … You need to look at your own personal background and then where you live.
Dr. Richard: Yes, and there’s both genetic reasons for that. Furthermore I’m reminded of patients I’ve seen over the years who are trying to do a raw foods cleansing diet. They’re quite gone and they’re very sick all winter, because they’re trying to do this based upon a book that was written by some self-proclaimed medical authority living in southern California. They’re trying to do this diet in March in Maine, with perhaps two young children at home and a demanding life schedule. When I tell them they need chicken soup and perhaps Mariwan toast, the surprise in the room is palpable.
Dr. Lisa: This is important. When we talk about locally-grown foods and whole foods market does sponsor our locally-grown food segment. In Chinese medicine, which is the type of medicine that I’ve integrated into my western medical practice, there is a very seasonal element to all of this. When people come in and it’s October, they really should be eating winter squash. They shouldn’t be eating watermelon grown in Belize or something like that. Do you have the same sense from your own practice?
Dr. Richard: I do. There is a … I do recognize that the human body is extraordinarily adaptable, but those adaptations over time have always responded to the seasonal change. We change our enzyme output from our pancreas based upon what foods are locally available. That’s been working that way for thousands and thousands of years.
Dr. Lisa: Richard do you have a specific example of a patient that you can tell me more about that exemplifies what we’re talking about?
Dr. Richard: I do. We could … Frequent themes I see are related to someone’s metabolism. Either that pre-diabetes metabolism or the thyroid metabolism. There was a woman who I saw just recently who she was very discouraged. She started training for a triathlon and while training she was gaining weight despite keeping her diet the same, and no small amount of weight. Obviously her frustration was warranted and we ran tests. She does have hyperthyroid and she has the kind that is most popular, common in women and that is the autoimmune hyperthyroid. It slows the metabolism down whenever there is an event that is stressful to the body like decreased caloric intake or increased activity.
Dr. Lisa: So interesting.
Dr. Richard: This is a wonderful trade. Of course this is terrific to help a woman survive the potato blight famine in Ireland. I don’t think this particular patient was very excited about her ability to survive a difficult time.
Dr. Lisa: I know many women who would not like the idea of training for a triathlon and gaining weight.
Dr. Richard: Understand it meant that we had to watch her thyroid numbers much more frequently and adjust medications more aggressively. It worked fine and she has a better understanding that she can’t feast or famine her exercise. She has to stay very consistent with it so her body doesn’t perceive it as a stressful one-time event which is what she’s ultimately wired for from her long past genetic survival.
Dr. Lisa: There we go; it is nature and nurture.
Dr. Richard: Absolutely.
Dr. Lisa: What I think is interesting about what you’re saying is the how people get their information about food. We spoke a little bit about that in the interview, but I’d like you to speak more to that to our listeners today.
Dr. Richard: Thank you. I think the dilemma we all have is trying to answer that question, thank you to author Michael Pollan ‘What to Eat’. As we wrote, as you titled the article ‘What’s for Dinner?’ This question has been asked forever. The answer has traditionally come from a local community culture family, that cuisine aspect of what to eat. The other one is what’s unique about ourselves as individuals.
The problem is since about 1970 in the United States, we’ve been getting our information from some centralized authority. Whether that’s a government authority or some medical authority. That centralized authority is trying to come up with one way of treating everybody – one diet for 240 million people. I tend to treat people in my naturopathic medical practice on a one-on-one basis.
To help someone understand themselves as individuals requires interpretation of their past history, their family history. Proper interpretation of their blood tests. I’m ordering blood tests that help me evaluate for what happens when they eat something. Their thyroid tests, their insulin tests, their glucose. They’re not getting diabetes perhaps in their 30s, 40s and 50s, but they’re getting migraines and cholesterol problems and high uric acid and conditions that precede diabetes.
It means that they inherited the diabetes gene, or that slight hypothyroid gene – the gene that slows your metabolism down every time you decrease your caloric intake. To help people understand themselves is extremely useful in helping them gauge what a healthy diet is.
Dr. Lisa: What I like about what you just said was that you do treat the individual when it’s one-on-one, but you’re talking also about their family history, their cultural history-
Dr. Richard: That’s right.
Dr. Lisa: … and I know that you’re part of the Slow Food Movement. Getting back to things that are more important about cooking and eating than just the nutrients that are ingested. The family aspect of things, how much do you do with that in your practice?
Dr. Richard: I do a great deal. In a general medical practice, I am the true family doctors in a way-
Dr. Lisa: Right, which I love because I’m also trained in family medicine so I just have to give you a big sort of verbal hug for that Richard, for focusing on the family.
Dr. Richard: Thank you. I think we all appreciate when we see a child and an adult and a grandparent all in one family. We are better doctors, we’re better diagnosticians and I think the family benefits by having a better understanding of what they need to do to be at their optimum; to be the healthiest.
Genevieve: What I love about being in the room with the two of you is I feel like I’m in the presence of the new future of medicine. Which is expansive, which includes many different aspects of healthcare and is not specialty-based. That you both are so expansive in your treatment of people first and disease second. I just wanted to give you a chance Richard to talk about naturopathic medicine for maybe a minute or two. What it is actually, because I think there is a misperception about naturopathic medicine that it’s not real medicine. From what you’ve just told me, those tests sound very clinical, they sound absolutely what a regular traditionally-trained medical doctor would do.
Dr. Richard: Yes. As a naturopathic doctor I went to an undergraduate premedical programme and then a four-year residency-based naturopathic medical college. In my own practice here since, well, for the past 18 years, I have seen a number of people. I use a great deal of blood tests. The clinical labs probably know me very well. I interpret them as I think the traditional general practitioner would have. I do a bit more physiologic-based medicine. I’m always trying to understand what makes somebody work. What’s happening when they exercise? What’s happening when they eat? What is their response to that? That’s my specialty or my basis.
I think naturopathic doctors as a rule tend to be more physiologically-based. It’s a big word but basically means that they’re studying the way people work. What makes them healthiest? Through that we treat disease by using more natural therapies: diet, nutrition, herbal medicine, and physical medicine.
Genevieve: How can people learn more about your practice and how to get in touch with you and if they want to become a patient, make an appointment?
Dr. Richard: They can certainly visit our website, coastalnaturalhealth.com. They can call the office. We are Coastal Naturopathic Center in Falmouth, Maine.
Genevieve: Are you accepting new patients?
Dr. Richard: We are.
Genevieve: Great.
Dr. Lisa: Now this will be available on the Dr. Lisa website, doctorlisa.org.
Genevieve: Thank you so much Richard for coming. Been very insightful.
Dr. Richard: Thank you Lisa. Thank you Genevieve.
Genevieve: To read more about Dr. Richard Maurer’s approach to health, lifestyle and diet, pick up the September edition of Maine Magazine at your local newsstand or visit us at mainemag.com.
Speaker 1: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour has been brought to you by the following generous sponsors: Thomas Shepard of Hersey, Gardner, Shepard and Eaton, and AmeriPrise Platinum Financial Services Practice in Yarmouth, Maine. Dreams can come true when you take the time to invest in yourself. Learn more at ameripriseadvisors.com and by Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of ReMax Heritage Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home. With ReMax Heritage is your move. Learn more at ourheritage.com.
Dr. Lisa: Each week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour we feature a segment we call Give Back. Give Back is in recognition of the fact that wellness goes far beyond the individual into the family, the community and the world at large. Each week we also read a quote from our daily tread ‘Thoughts for an Inspired Life’, a book that was written to raise money for the organization Safe Passage. An organization founded by my late Bowdoin College classmate, Hanley Denning.
This week’s quote from our daily tread is from John Muir ‘When we try to pick out anything by itself we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.’ Indeed this goes back to our ‘Harvest’ theme and the idea that we always reap what we sow.
` On today’s Give Back segment we are interviewing Mark Swann. Mark Swann has been the Executive Director at Preble Street in downtown Portland since 1991. Preble Street is a non-profit social service agency offering a wide variety of programmes including a Resource Center, Teen Center, Florence House, soup kitchens, housing, employment, advocacy and social work services. Mark is a graduate of Bowdoin College and has a Master of Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts. Welcome Mark.
Mark Swann:Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: I have sitting next to me, Genevieve Morgan, and what I love is the fact that we have a room full of Bowdoin graduates. Go you bears!
Mark Swann:The Bowdoin Mafia.
Dr. Lisa: Wait a minute! I don’t know about this mafia thing. We need to be a little bit more careful about that. I’m really interested in hearing what you’ve been doing for the last 20-something years. What years is this that you’re celebrating as the Executive Director?
Mark Swann:It’s 20 years. They just surprised me with a little party last week.
Dr. Lisa: Are you originally from Maine Mark?
Mark Swann:No, I’m from the Boston area.
Dr. Lisa: What made you get into this business?
Mark Swann:After I graduated from Bowdoin, I moved back to Boston. I was driving a truck. I was trying to figure out next steps, and I got involved through volunteering in a couple of different programmes including a shelter and a refugee resettlement programme. I went to work at the refugee resettlement programme for several years while I got my masters, but was still doing some volunteering at this homeless shelter.
Some Bowdoin friends of mine who had settled in Portland said there’s a job opening up here in Portland at this very cool little agency called Preble Street. They knew the mission, knew the work, knew some board members and said, “You should look into it.” It was perfect timing for me. I was 20 years old, I was looking for a move and a change, and 20 years later I’m still there.
Dr. Lisa: 20 years later we know there’s a lot of programs that have been put in place since then. I know that you have a few that you’re really interested in talking about. One of them is Lighthouse.
Mark Swann:Yeah, we’ve grown a lot and changed a lot. When I started in 1991 it was just me and Florence – a wonderful social worker and-
Dr. Lisa: Is Florence what the Florence House is named for?-
Mark Swann:Yes, we named Florence House after Florence, Florence Young who’s a social worker here in Portland. Had many roles at Preble Street as a staff person, a board member and a supervisor for students. It was just Florence and I in the chapel at the corner of Preble Street and Cumberland Ave. and we had a small soup kitchen. We had a great mission and wonderful vision and great board members. We have just taken on new responsibilities and tried some new programmes and picked up some programmes when other agencies have closed them.
We currently … It’s really hard for me to believe 20 years later, but we’ve got about 170 employees. We run several different facilities and programmes. We have all kinds of interesting partnerships with other organizations. We’ve come a long way.
Dr. Lisa: You have. You’ve come a long way. I was reading on your website that you serve 900 meals daily in eight soup kitchens across the city which is a total of 480,000 meals/year.
Mark Swann:Yeah, and that website’s a little bit outdated. We’re now very sadly breaking records every month and we’re now serving more like 1,100 meals/day in Portland just in our soup kitchens. That’s not our food pantries but just in the prepared meals. We are unfortunately very very busy.
Dr. Lisa: That leads into talking about the Maine Hunger Initiative. Is that related?
Mark Swann:Yeah. We started that a couple of years ago as a result of just increasing numbers and also our sense that there really wasn’t a state-wide voice in terms of advocacy and policy issues related to hunger. We raised the bar for ourselves a little bit and said let’s work on that as advocates and doing research and offering policy solutions to hunger because we’re the largest emergency food provider in Maine, but that’s not the solution. Pantries and soup kitchens are not the solutions. We need to do much more than that and much better than that.
That’s where public policy comes in whether that’s related to the economy, jobs, housing policy and also benefits like food stamps and school lunch programmes and school breakfasts. There’s a lot of very compelling anti-hunger programmes out there offered through the Federal Government, but Maine needs to do better at accessing those and making those available to people who are experiencing hunger.
Dr. Lisa: Early on in the show we had Julie Alfred Sullivan from the City of Portland’s Public Health division. She talked a little bit about the work that’s being done with adverse childhood events and the ending domestic violence in order that we can have healthier families and healthier people as time goes on. What sort of an impact do you see in your line of work with Preble Street as far as early childhood events impacting later on… later lives?
Mark Swann:Well we’re certainly seeing in the last couple of years with the recession the economic stress in families has added just another component and level of tragedy for families. We’re seeing many many more parents with small children coming in for services. We’re seeing a lot more teens coming in to our Teen Center or the Lighthouse Shelter. Part of it is because of the result of family issues, family violence, neglect issues, and just the economic stressors that have trickled down to kids in their lives.
The work we’re doing at the Teen Center including with public health, the City of Portland Public Health Department is a big partner with us. We’re really trying to embrace and surround young people when they do end up on the streets. Everybody talks about runaways. An awful lot of these kids were serving … They’re not runaways, they’re kind of throwaways. They’re coming from really dysfunctional families with abuse and violence. As hard as it is to say this, sometimes leaving the home was maybe one of their smartest decisions to get out of that environment.
They’re coming in, they’re on the street, they’re coming into the Teen Center or staying at the Lighthouse Shelter. We need to treat those kids as if they’re in crisis because they are. It’s an emergency. We’re not just feeding people. We don’t want to maintain their lives on the streets. We have a school program at the Teen Center run by the school department. We have the health clinic, Day One is there doing substance abuse and mental health counseling. We provide meals and drop-in services.
The whole effort is really to again embrace that young person with opportunity, with caring adults, with consistent advice and adults and professional social work. It’s a big effort on our part working with the young people.
Dr. Lisa: I read on your website that you have more than 5,000 volunteers. I’m hoping that that’s also old information; that you have a lot more volunteers now. I know that there are a lot of people in the community who want to be able to help in some way. What do you usually suggest for people who are interested in giving back to their own community?
Mark Swann:The volunteer piece is a critical part of getting our work done. The majority of the volunteer jobs are in the soup kitchen or the food pantry. It’s helping prepare meals, serve meals, clean up after meals. We’re doing three meals/day at the resource center, two meals/day at the Teen Center although we want to expand that to three. Three meals/day at Florence House. We have a food pantry so in terms of scheduling for potential volunteers there’s all kinds of opportunities.
It’s 365 days/year we have groups come in, we have corporations, we have churches and temples who come in at a regular basis. Because the sheer volume in number of meals in these different facilities means we’re always looking for volunteers. We really are. There’s a seasonality to that. This is the time of year people are paying a little more attention I think to these issues than in the summer in their school groups, in rotary clubs and that kind of thing, contacting us. We’re very much looking for volunteers right now. The best way to do that is to go on our website, preblestreet.org and get in touch with the Volunteer Manager.
Dr. Lisa: We’ll also link that through the doctorlisa.org website so if people who are interested in being in touch that should be easy to do. Do you have-
Mark Swann:The other piece for the community as well is food drives. We are absolutely very concerned about coming winter and our ability to really meet the demand. As I said in May we had the busiest month ever in 35 years of Preble Street. Then we surpassed that in June, we surpassed that in July and we surpassed that in … Numbers are going up and it’s harder and harder for us to find sources for food where … We work very closely with Hannaford and Shaws and Whole Foods. All those places are very generous but we still are dependent on churches to do food drives, school groups, companies, you name it. We need the help.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve named the theme of this show ‘Harvest’, and harvest is very important for you as well. It’s not just about harvesting for people who have plenty, it’s harvesting so that you might be able to give it back to others who don’t have quite as much. At least not right now. Maybe if you can give it back to them and get them started you can change their lives in some way.
Mark Swann:Yeah, I think to me the word ‘harvest’ also has a connotation of community and people working together. That’s what we’re all about at Preble Street as well. I think the motivation for me, well, just this morning a client who I’ve known for a long time and he’s not homeless, he’s not in the shelter. He’s poor, he moves in and out of different apartments. He comes to us for support and some services and occasionally food. He came up to me this morning with a huge smile on his face to show me his new teeth. He’s been working for a long time to be able to afford a whole new set of dentures. He was so happy. He had such a great smile, and those are … There are little things like that that keep us going.
We also have recently have had a couple, what I call alumni of the Lighthouse Shelter, who’ve gotten in touch with us and wanted … have heard about our trying to move and have got in touch to us to tell their story and how much Lighthouse meant to them. We have an emergency room doctor in Baltimore who’s telling his story about the Lighthouse Shelter through a screenplay. I had an unsolicited phone call from a young man just about two weeks ago just calling to say, “I’m just checking in, just wanted to say hi. I heard about Lighthouse. You guys were great to me a few years ago. I have a house, I have two kids, I got a job.”
We get wonderful feedback and gratitude. That’s not why we do the work, but it does help. It does keep you motivated. I’ve been involved in this work for a long time because I inherently believed that we’re all equal and the value of one person is equal to the value of another person. I think people living in poverty are often dismissed, dehumanized, forgotten, stereotyped. I actually think those biases in that environment right now is getting harsher for people who are poor.
I think my intention and that of the agency I work for is to break down some of those barriers, provide some education, be advocates, allow for people to have a voice, to counter some of that dialogue that’s out there right now that I think is pretty unhealthy and at times mean-spirited. It’s not good for a community. It’s the opposite for harvesting. It’s dismissing. That’s what we’re trying to work towards.
Dr. Lisa: Do you have any events upcoming in the next year or so that might be good fundraising opportunities for people to contribute?
Mark Swann:The major initiative we’re working on right now is to relocate the Lighthouse Shelter. We’ve been running that shelter … It’s the only shelter for teenagers in southern Maine, and we’ve been running it since 2004. It is in a building that is falling apart. We rent it, it’s in rough shape, but more importantly it is full every night. We’re literally turning people away two out of three nights. Their options are to go to a very crowded adult shelter or sell their body for a place to sleep for a night – neither very healthy good choices.
We really need to move the Lighthouse Shelter and expand it and have better space and be able to provide more services there. We are up to our eyeballs right now in finding a building and securing the funds. It’s going to be all private fundraising. We’re out there knocking on doors and asking for help. We need to raise $3.5 million, so it’s a big effort on our part.
Dr. Lisa: People can go to your website and they can find out more information about the fundraising initiatives and what’s going on with the Lighthouse Shelter then?
Mark Swann:Absolutely yeah. We’re happy to talk to people or meet with people or give tours or any of that.
Dr. Lisa: Great. Well Mark thank you so much for coming in today. You’re going great work. Congratulations on 20 years! Keep it up, and we’ll see how things are going with the Lighthouse Shelter and your initiatives in the future.
Mark Swann:Great. Thanks very much for having me.
Dr. Lisa: Thank you. Today on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour we explored the idea of health, wellness, and community connection. This is a frequent topic on our bountiful. Here is one of our recent posts available on bountiful-blog.com.
The sunrise has shifted to its late September position. My well-loved great cart again has come out of storage. The kids are back in the autumn routine and this morning we taped the second Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. Our theme was ‘Harvest’. We decided upon the ‘Harvest’ theme because that is what we’re doing here in Maine, reaping what was earlier this spring sown in our farmers’ fields. We are gathering apples and pumpkins readying ourselves for a new season, and we are contemplating what it means to see the benefit of something that has spent a period of time gestating. Something that has spent a period of time in quiet, or not so quiet growth.
Earlier this week I gave a talk on mindful parenting at our local Whole Foods Market in Portland. Having helped to raise nine younger siblings before embarking on the mothering journey with three children of my own, I have a sense of what parenting requires. By no means do I call myself an expert. I have thoughts to share, and that earlier this week is what I did. These thoughts that are an ongoing conversation began when is started writing for Parent and Family newspaper in 1999.
As most of us who helped raised children realize, parenting is the ultimate long-term investment. It is the ultimate example of reaping what we sow. My son who left this week for a long-term volunteer opportunity in Guatemala represents one of my life’s most rewarding investments. I wish him well on his journey.
Wellness too is a perfect example of reaping what we sow. If we eat apples and pumpkins we will feel one way. If we make not-so-healthy food choices, we will feel differently. This applies both in the long and the short-term. Food as discussed in last week’s beginning show is but one way of nourishing ourselves. Wellness goes beyond the physical. It is emotional, social, intellectual, and spiritual.
As I discussed in a farmers’ online article recently, feeding ourselves requires more than simply ingesting nutrients. Which is why each week we are offering the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We want to help our listeners and ourselves be fed. We are more than willing to sow the seeds and see what grows. We anticipate a bountiful harvest.
Thank you for being a part of my world, and I’d like to welcome this week another little individual to my world, the baby of my friend Sarah. Congratulations Sarah and Park on your new baby girl.
I hope you will all join us again next week on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. May you have a bountiful life.
(Music)
Speaker 1: Support for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is generously provided by Akari Salon, Maine Magazine, Robin Hodgskin of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Whole Foods Market, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin from ReMax Heritage and Tom Shepard from Hersey Gardner Shepard and Eaton Ameriprise.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Editorial content produced by Chris Kast and Genevieve Morgan. Audio production and original music provided by John C. McCain.
For more information on our host’s production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, visit us at doctorlisa.org. Tune in every Sunday at 11:00AM for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour on WLOB Portland Maine 1310AM or streaming wlobradio.com. Podcasts are available at doctorlisa.org.