Your Medication Isn't Working–Now What? A Dive into Personalized Medicine (Part 2)

Do you struggle with chronic pain? Are you frustrated by medications that don't seem to help or even make you feel worse? In this episode, I continue my conversation with occupational therapist Jessica May-Tang on her break and free from chronic pain podcast, to reveal how understanding your genetics can unlock the root cause of your pain and the personalized solutions to overcome it. If you're ready to make a plan to overcome pain, you need to hear this episode. Welcome to Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. Part of the Pharmacy Podcast Network, a must-have resource for pharmacist entrepreneurs seeking to enhance patient care while enjoying career and life. Join us as we pivot into Nutrigenomics, using pharmacy and nutrition for true patient-focused care. Explore how to improve chronic conditions rather than just manage them. Celebrate entrepreneurial triumphs and receive priceless advice. Align your values with a career that profoundly impacts patients. Together, we'll raise the script on health and pivot into a brighter future. Hello, hello, hello. This is Dr Tamar Lawful, doctor of pharmacy and certified nutritional genomic specialist. Before you listen in to my interview with Jessica May-Tang, I want to thank our listener of the week, who says thank you for letting me know that, even at my age, I can still have hope if I let science and genetics be my starting guide to my journey. You are welcome and so right. It's never too late, no matter your age, to start your health journey and use Nutrigenomics to conquer your health goals. And remember, when you leave us a five-star review, you'll get the chance to be featured as our next listener of the week and I'll give you a shout out right here on this show. Today we're continuing our conversation with Jessica May-Tang on the Break and Free from Chronic Pain Podcast.

Listen in Okay, so let's segue into, like the Nutrigenomics part, since that was a nice little segue there. Explain the Nutrigenomics part the.

Nutrigenomics is my heart. I absolutely love it as using it as a tool to help patients get off medications and improve their health. So, with the Nutrigenomics reports, again going back to that's how your food affects your genes. So, for example, I'll share my personal experience. I am deficient in vitamin D. No matter what I do, my level is at 17 and it stays there. So vitamin D is important for bone health. It can even affect mood, so depression, menstrual cycles, it's involved in so many aspects because it's a hormone it's actually a hormone. So my genetic test gave me the answer as to why I'm always low in vitamin D. So it turns out going back to these enzymes that convert active into inactive or inactive. To active, my enzyme doesn't do it fast enough. It won't convert D3 into the active metabolite and vitamin D that we actually gives us the health benefits that we need. It will convert it, but very small amounts. So as a result of that, I can't take the vitamin D amount that the average person takes. I need significantly higher amounts of vitamin D to get my levels up. So understanding why my vitamin D levels were low helped me work with my physician to say, okay, let's think of what's our regimen going to be. This is what we need to do, and in three months we'll recheck and see how that goes. So it's definitely a useful tool to identify the cause of certain issues that we might have with our health. So when you get this neutrogenomic report, it actually tells you pinpoints, what your main areas of focus need to be with your health. So, for example, it might say blood pressure, potentially a major issue for you. So it's not diagnosing you of any diseases, it's just saying, based on these genetic expression, your body does not regulate blood pressure well as a result. One, you need to focus on eating these type of foods to make sure your blood pressure always stays in check. Two, you need to focus on these type of lifestyle changes. This is the best type of stress management for you, and it will list the yoga, pilates, walking, whatever it is. When it comes to exercise, it will say Avoid this type of exercise because of x, y and z. So for me, I love boot camp training. It gets my adrenaline going, I feel like I've accomplished a lot, you know, and I build my strength. But based on my personal profile, I Should not be doing high intensity interval trainings Maybe, but twice a week. The rest of the time I need to be walking or doing yoga or swimming. That type of a physical activity will help me burn fat and lose weight Better than high intensity workouts Wow. It even gets that specific and then, on top of that, it will tell you the type of supplements you may need. So when I coach my clients through their Nutritional part of things and a huge advocate for the foods that you eat, giving you your nutrients and there are some basic supplements that we may need in general, but I really try to work with them to change your eating habits so they can get a nutrients and vitamins that they really need from foods, versus Having to buy all these supplements, because that defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to do, which is get them off medications, and I don't want to switch out their medications for supplements.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, take out these survive pills, but take these other five Instead. Right, right, right, right, okay. And then can we go back to your example with the vitamin D? Did it tell you what kinds of foods that you needed to focus more on eating? That works for your genomics?

yeah, so I had an issue with oxidative stress, and Oxidative stress really stuck out to me because it made so much sense with everything that was going on with me. So with oxidative stress you want to do. Healthy fats I have a lot of food allergies as well, which plays a role in that as well. My body is constantly in a state of inflammation and that, by the way, leads into pain as well. Right, so I notice when I'm eating better, I don't have my joint pain in my knees when I'm eating the healthy fats and the carbs that are low glycemic, so they're not going to spike my blood sugar really high after I eat them. I saw like sweet potatoes or good squash, and so vegetables pretty much you know our car vegetables or carbs, and a lot of people don't realize that they don't see veggies as Carbohydrates and they are so healthy fats the vegetables, the broccoli, the spinach, the asparagus onions now, I don't like onions lesser cooked, so that's fine, there's still onions and I cook them. Fish. And then when it comes to meats, you want to do the like the pastures, organic, grass-fed or pastures meats because they're a healthier source and you get a lot more vitamins and nutrients from them. Then you would the other sources of meat if you are a meat eater. So those were some of the things that were recommended for me when it came to the oxidative stress part of things.

Just right there in your results. It's all part of the results that you get, all right there.

Just written out for you, and then, with my clients, I take it a step further. So once I get their nutrient-dermant test results, I set them up with a meal plan that actually matches their genetic test results. So the test tells me the top three things they need to really focus on towards health improvement, and the one that's the highest priority. There's a company that is associated with the genetic testing company. They do meal plans. It will link their meal plan to that top priority based on a genetic test, and it has all the foods in there that they need to eat and Delicious recipes. So then my clients get that meal plan and whether they use it or not, it's up to them. They don't have to do the exact recipes if they don't want to, but it's there and it gives them an idea of All the types of foods that they can eat. That's better than McDonald's or Burger King.

And all the different kinds of recipes available to them, to using those specific food items. What about your top one to three tips for someone with chronic pain?

Oh, my top one to three tips would be a Well, definitely you need to have a pain management plan, so that's gonna involve working with your doctor to make sure that they can get to the root cause of your pain, and that might involve different treatment options like physical therapy, medications, acupuncture and a lot of people use a massage and, as we mentioned earlier, stress. Stress can bring on a lot of pain, so stress reduction should definitely be part of that pain management plan and it might seem counterintuitive. My second tip, but it's to stay active. I know it can be difficult when you're in pain to be active, but every little bit counts and the more you do it, the more endurance you'll build and the easier it will be, and there are activities that can be low-impact. Like I mentioned earlier, I had bad knees, so swimming. You know swimming is a low-impact activity and be great for For people with bad knees, and yoga is a good option as well, and part of that staying active and maintaining your healthy lifestyle definitely involves what you eat, your nutrition, because if you're not having a well-balanced diet or nutrition, you're going to be lacking in certain vitamins and the deficiency in those vitamins can also lead to pain. So that's something important to consider. It all ties in together and also, along with the healthy lifestyle, sleep. A lot falls under the healthy lifestyle, part of things. But you take one step at a time, a little bit each day, add on something else the next day and before you know it, it's going to be part of your lifestyle regularly. You're not going to think twice about it, it's just going to be what you do. And my third tip would be to get a support group. Get a support group. I'm sure there is pain groups out there, support groups out there, so it's good to be able to connect to other people that can relate to you, to know that you're not alone in what you're feeling, what you're experiencing. And if you're one of those people that took the pharmacogenomic test and you can share that with your support group, but then you're helping everybody. You get that support, emotional support, the mental support, and learn ways to cope with the challenges of pain management.

Ooh, that is so good. You mentioned sleep, which a lot of people actually forget to think about. I mean, with pain it's hard right, sleep, not great sleep and pain. And then I love that you talked about the connection piece, feeling connected and belonging with other people. That has a huge impact on pain and depression and anxiety, which also tend to go hand in hand with chronic pain. And then your fourth tip, obviously, is to get tested with you to understand what is going on, especially for those of you guys who are taking so many different kinds of medications and having side effects that are not great, like work with Tamara. Please, I beg of you. And then, in terms of your, I think you said that you had a freebie that you wanted to share with everybody listening. That would be helpful for them in terms of healthy lifestyle. I think it was.

Yes, when I began my business, I found that the root cause of a lot of the problems that they were having was the fact that they were not putting themselves first, they weren't doing a lot of self care and taking care of themselves. So I have a workbook that I created for those who recognize that they do need the self care, healthy habits. It's a self care workbook. So within that workbook I'm giving you it's kind of homework, because self care is different for everyone, like what is self care to me is different with self care to you, right, jessica? And for the next person. So this workbook is designed to help you find, discover what you need for self care, because sometimes we don't know. For example, one of my clients. You know what she needed for self care. It was a shower at the beginning of her day. So she worked from home. So she would just get up, have breakfast, get on her computer and start working. But she felt horrible the whole day. So in our group coaching I worked with her to figure out what it is. What can you start with? What do you feel you need? That shower changed her whole day. It set her routine, it set her mood for the entire day and from there she had a huge transformation in her train of thought and her motivation to even get healthy. Just taking a shower something that we do, we all do every day, but for her, doing that at the beginning of the day made a huge difference, and that was part of her self care routine. So the workbook is designed to help you discover what it is that you need in your self care routine so that you can get on the track. So it's called Healthy Habits Happy Life for Women on the Path to Wellness.

Ooh, I love it. I love all the water references too. I'm a water baby, I grew up in the water, so swimming is my jam and taking showers is definitely one of my favorite parts of the day. So, yeah, so that water can be so cleansing, right, it's almost like she needed just that cleanse to get a fresh start. It's like, okay, this is my home life and then I take a shower and then I start my work day. Like it's like that was the thing that differentiated the two parts of her life, right? So many people needed that differentiation during COVID and the pandemic, right? Having that separation has been really important. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge. You shared so much with us today and I think there's so many bits of information that lay people like we don't understand. We're not pharmacists, right? So we really didn't know these things, right. So I hope the listeners today can get a lot of insight in terms of what's happening actually in the pharmacist's office downstairs at your doctor's office you know CVS and Walgreens and to understand how your medications and the way that you eat and the self-care activities that you participate in can really affect your pain levels, can really affect your well-being, your psycho-emotional health, all the things Right. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you. Welcome, Jessica, it's been a pleasure.

Thanks for having me. Thank you for joining us on this episode. If you would like to hear the full episode, visit Jessica at the Break and Free from Chronic Pain Podcast and take advantage of her free guide on managing pain. If you love what you've heard, I have a favor to ask Picture a fellow pharmacist or friend who could benefit from this episode. Share this episode with them. By doing so, you're not only adding value to their journey and fostering nurturing connections in your community, but also joining in an exciting communal endeavor, raising the bar in health care. It starts small. Just by sharing this episode, and if you've appreciated the time spent together on the show, let the world know. Leave a review. It's simple as that. Open your Apple Podcast app, scroll down and give it a five-star rating. Maybe share a sentence or two about what you enjoyed. That action, as tiny as it might seem, would mean the universe to me. Plus, it also lets other kindred souls know that our show is worth a listen in their precious time Together. We can make a difference in the world of health care. Are you up for it? Coming up next week on the show, we have part one of a part two series for pharmacists, where we'll be diving deep into the landscape of promoting positivity and cohesion within your pharmacy team so you can navigate through the challenges with grace, adopt a we mindset and effectively address concerns without the constant feeling of being on a battlefield. See you back here next time and until then, always remember in your journey as a health care professional, always raise the script on health, because together we can bring health care to higher levels.