mental Archives - Dr. Monica Aggarwal

Building Resilience & Steps to Overcoming Anxious Feelings

Blog, Podcast, Seeking Voices: Exploring the Science of Health and Healing / October 19, 2023

Anxiety affects 31% of the American population and this number is increasing. People are noticing more and more anxious feelings, nervousness, depression and inability to cope with day to day activities. Understanding your anxiety is an important first step to building resilience.

Join me as I speak to Dr. Carol Lewis who speaks to us about our emotional health and tools we can use to keep ourselves strong and more capable of dealing with life’s surprises.

Key Areas We Discuss

Anxiety versus calm: the concept of managing anxiety, not battling it
Anxiety’s relation to menopause
The physiology of anxiety: the misfire of the fight or flight response
4 tools to help you with your anxiety
- Sleep allows for a sense of well being. Optimal amount of sleep, blue light’s impact on desire to sleep, sense of well-being
- Nutrition to reduce anxiety; importance of regular meals
- Movement: the role of movement, physical activity to help with sense of well-being.
- Doing something joyful and/or playful every day: finding joy again despite angst

About Carol Lewis, PhD MPH CPH:

Dr. Lewis is a clinical psychologist with more than 30 years of experience. She supervises trainees across all level of training. Dr. Lewis’ expertise includes the treatment of chronically suicidal, self-injurious individuals, using skills-based methods, as well as the treatment of trauma with EMDR. She is trained in several mindfulness-based treatment protocols and runs an adult Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) group. She is very involved in the community and, for many years, has worked with the University of Florida’s Mobile Outreach Clinic, a bus-based clinic providing no-cost healthcare to underserved populations in Gainesville, Florida.

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Learning How to Learn (and Some Uncommon Sense Teaching)

Blog, Podcast, Seeking Voices: Exploring the Science of Health and Healing / October 3, 2023

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Barbara Oakley, a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan.

Her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior. Dr. Oakley’s research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal. She is a New York Times best-selling author who has published in outlets as varied as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Her book A Mind for Numbers, on effective learning in STEM disciplines, has sold over a million copies worldwide; Uncommon Sense Teaching is a critically praised guide to teaching based on insights from neuroscience.

About Dr. Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE:

Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan; Michigan’s Distinguished Professor of the Year; and Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor.” Dr. Oakley has won numerous teaching awards, including the American Society of Engineering Education’s Chester F. Carlson Award for technical innovation in engineering education and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers William E. Sayle II Award for Achievement in Education. Together with Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, she co-teaches Coursera’s “Learning How to Learn,” one of the world’s most popular massive open online courses with some four million registered students, along with a number of other leading online courses.

Dr. Oakley has adventured widely through her lifetime. She rose from the ranks of Private to Captain in the U.S. Army, during which time she was recognized as a Distinguished Military Scholar. She also worked as a communications expert at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, and has served as a Russian translator on board Soviet trawlers on the Bering Sea. Dr. Oakley is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

For more information, about her courses, clink on the links below!

• Learning How to Learn
• Learning How to Learn for Youth
• Uncommon Sense Teaching
• Mindshift

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Choose YOU Now with Julieanna Hever

Blog, Podcast, Seeking Voices: Exploring the Science of Health and Healing / April 29, 2023

Julieanna Hever speaks about her struggles with her weight and eating and how that helps her when she works with patients. I was most intrigued by her “Choose You Now Diet” book. I love the title and what that stands for. Choose you now. Very important to choose you.

Have a question about your health? Feel free to message me or schedule an appointment (click-here).

Big 4 Episode Takeaways

How to manage the misinformation in nutrition. What is the perfect diet? What are the pros and cons of getting too much protein?
How is the best way to lose weight? How do I shut your body off to eat less and create a calorie deficit? How do you know when you are hungry?
Food addiction journey: how do you change your relationship with food.
What does it mean to “Choose you Now” how did I choose myself? Julieanna describes three points that she focuses on in her “Choose You Now” Book. Those three focus points are eating plant based diet, intermittent fasting and mindfulness. Julieanna talks about how mindfulness and changing your relationship with food is most important.

About Dietitian Julieanna Hever:

Ms. Hever is a registered dietitian with a Masters of Science degree in Nutrition. She has authored seven books including Choose You Now Diet, The Healthspan Solution, Plant-Based Nutrition (Idiots Guide) and Vegiterranean Diet. She is a regular columnist on Veg News, has given a TEDx talk and been on many television shows talking about healthy eating.

She works with clients individually who come to her to work on weight loss, food addiction and reducing chronic illness. She develops a detailed plan with her clients to affect change. Her results are amazing.

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Episode 5: Finding Joy with Dean Ornish

Podcast, Seeking Voices: Exploring the Science of Health and Healing / May 16, 2022

In this episode of “Seeking Voices of Health, Healing and Hope” I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Dean Ornish

We talked about purpose, joy, happiness and social connection. It was a wonderful talk. I thought a lot about what he said. He tells his story of how he struggled with depression and how he overcame. We talked a lot about how people are lacking connection, joy and love and how important those components are to healthy living. We talk about education and how one needs to understand peoples’ suffering in order to really change. We talked about plant based eating, healthy lifestyle and how that can have impact on illnesses. We talked about how we all need an “undo it” button. This is one I thought about for a long time and you may have to listen to twice.

Dean Ornish, M.D., is the founder and president of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCSF. For over 44 years, Dr. Ornish has directed randomized trials demonstrating, for the first time, that comprehensive lifestyle changes may begin to reverse even severe coronary heart disease, without drugs or surgery. Medicare created a new benefit category to provide coverage for this program. He directed the first randomized controlled trial demonstrating that lifestyle changes may slow, stop, or reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer. In other research, he has shown that comprehensive lifestyle changes affect gene expression, “turning on” disease-preventing genes and “turning off” genes that promote cancer and heart disease. And in collaboration with Nobel Prize winner Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, he has shown that these lifestyle changes may begin to reverse aging on a cellular level by lengthening telomeres. He is a #1 New York Times bestselling author of seven national bestsellers, including his most recent book, UnDo It! He received many awards, including the University of California, Berkeley, “National Public Health Hero” award; the inaugural “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine; was recognized as “one of the 125 most extraordinary University of Texas alumni in the past 125 years;” by TIME magazine as a “TIME 100 Innovator;” by LIFE magazine as “one of the fifty most influential members of his generation;” by People magazine as “one of the most interesting people of the year;” and by Forbes magazine as “one of the world’s seven most powerful teachers.”

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Episode 4: Food Addiction with Chuck Carroll

Podcast, Seeking Voices: Exploring the Science of Health and Healing / April 21, 2022

In this episode of “Seeking Voices of Health, Healing and Hope” I had the pleasure of speaking with the brilliant Mr. Chuck Carroll from PCRM’s, The Exam Room. He is an incredible host: inquisitive, insightful and kind.

What many of you might not know is that Chuck struggled with food addiction and once weighed over 300 lbs. Every person is an onion. So much of the time we just see the outside layers. It takes time to peel back the layers though and see the colors and character inside. Everyone has a story. I know you will enjoy hearing Chuck’s story and his message of hope.

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Episode 3: Driving Change with Jane Esselstyn and Brian Hart

Podcast, Seeking Voices: Exploring the Science of Health and Healing / April 8, 2022

In this episode of “Seeking Voices of Health, Healing and Hope“, my guests are a dynamic duo: Jane Esselstyn and Brian Hart.

Jane Esselstyn RN is a lovely human being who I am lucky enough to call my friend. She is a skilled nurse, a researcher, mother, and teacher on the forefront of the plant-based movement. She and her mom, Anne, have been actively bringing the world energy and love through food. She is the host of the annual conference, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease for Women, which is focused on the power of plants that I have been honored to speak at. Jane is an avid and inventive designer of plant-strong recipes and the co-author of The Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook. She created the recipe sections of #1 NYTimes bestseller, Plant-Strong and The Engine 2 Seven Day Rescue, by Rip Esselstyn. And she has a new cookbook coming out that focuses on plant based warriors—so exciting!

Brian Hart, Jane’s husband, is founder and executive director of The Esselstyn Foundation, a non-profit with the mission to “Eradicate lifestyle related diseases through whole food, plant-based nutrition.” Brian is a highly experienced educator with over twenty-five years in the field as a teacher, administrator, and advocate for school change in both the public and private sectors. Brian specializes in collaborating with educators to help them create immersive, hands-on, experiential programs designed to transform thinking and build problem-solving skills. He is a has worn so many cool hats– wilderness EMT, plant-based chef, teacher, middle school principal, and carpenter—if you haven’t seen his cutting boards, they are amazing

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New Year’s Resolutions, Illness and Anxiety

Blog / January 27, 2022

I have been reflecting a lot this month about life and I want to share that. January marks one year since my family had COVID. We were so lucky not to have significant symptoms and I believe it is our clean living that got us through it well. My husband was doing his MBA last year and working full time plus helping manage our 3 kids, and with all that stress and lack of sleep, my husband developed Shingles in his eye. It was horrible. He was in constant pain. He would describe electric shocks going through his eye every other second. There was so much anxiety and worry about him losing his eye. I would wake up every hour to check on him and you feel helpless.

There has been some correlation between COVID and Shingles likely to the immune suppression. But I am always reminded about the impact of stress on the body. Even if you eat a plant-based very healthy diet, but then you don’t take care of your stress, you are still at risk for illness. My husband learned this last year the same way that I learned it 10 years ago. He is better now. He takes more time to breathe, walk and relax. His eye is better and we are okay. Lessons are important but sometimes back-breaking.

Since that time, I have developed a bit of an anxiety problem. Anxiety is not something we like to talk about, especially not as physicians. It is a sign of weakness, isn’t it. Amazing how pride pops in there without realizing it. The anxiety was significant. I am a great sleeper and all the sudden, I wasn’t. I couldn’t go to sleep at night, thinking that someone I loved was going to get sick and die. Or each cough that I heard was COVID and each headache was a brain tumor. Amazing, how our minds work, how anxiety works. This went on for about one year and now I am thankful to feel much better. How did I change? I wrote in my journal daily, thinking of all of the things that are good in my life. I thought about joy. I reflected on how my kids are sturdy and that they would be okay. I thought a lot about my own death and how, my family would be okay. I meditated a lot.

Every day, I learn something new about myself and about life. Each day, there is a new lesson. I have been reading books by Thich Nhat Hanh like Being Peace and Mindful Movements, both of which I recommend. I felt saddened by his recent death but remember Mitch Albom’s Stranger in the Boat and remember to think of death as an extension of life. Hard but important. I take from these books, this mantra, (breathe in), “I calm my mind and body.” (Breathe out and smile), “I smile at myself.” I was at the dentist this week and while I had scrapers and suction and spit everywhere, I did this meditation and my anxiety went down and I was o-k. Dr. Richard Edlich, my mentor in college, used to say, that it is not about finding peace on a mountain but finding it in daily life, in the here and now.

Some of my 2022 resolutions:

Get a job on my terms. I get to choose.

Work on my anxiety.

Make more connections.

Build more muscle.

Heal my inflammation, work at it every day.

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