Wondering what the hell is wrong with you? Dr Gillian Deakin is a GP with more than 30 years experience and discusses how to recover from fatigue, tiredness, pain and other undiagnosed symptoms.
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Well, Hello, they're extra healthy listeners. Yes, I hope you are feeling that extra today. Thank you tuning into this big sister podcast to a healthy shan by Insult. I am your host of Felicity Harley. Now I'm joined today by doctor Gillian Deacons. She's been a GP for more than thirty years and has treated hundreds of patients for symptoms that are not explained by western medicine. And it has left many of her patients and I'm sure it's left you wondering what the hell is wrong with you? Or Today she provides some guidance. She's written a book because she felt we all needed to have some answers, and she is going to help us make sense of functional illnesses, what the symptoms are, the signs, and how we perhaps can recover from things like fatigue, tiredness, pain, and other undiagnosed symptoms. Jillian, nice to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you very much for having me for listening.
Now, before we get into your fabulous book, I need to ask you how do you stay extra healthy ish in your life?
That's a good question. Look, I've I was very lucky. I grew up with a father who was a macquari strict physician, but he was actually a hippie at heart, and we grew up with organic vegetables grow on ourselves. We had free range chickens, We did ten BX Canadian aerobics exercise this is the sixties. Yeah, and cold showers. So we were way ahead of wim Hoff. We had cold showers. And so I've done I've practiced health for all my life. I currently still do yoga, you know, regularly. I take plenty of time to kind of stop and smell the daisies. And I have a very loving family and that's enormously helpful for your health.
Now, tell me when you were doing cold showers back then? Was that for better health? Was that to help with the physiology of your body?
Yes, yes, my father was. My father was very scientific, and I think he's right. I think it gives you that little stress that your body should be out of cope with, and you do a little bit every day and it makes your body stronger, builds your immune system, helps the brown fat, as you probably know, the better fat in the body, and many many other benefits. So yes, if those of who are brave enough to continue it. I think it's a jolly good idea.
Do you still do it?
Sometimes? I had a cold swim on the weekend, so in the ocean, so that was the equivalent.
Yeah, nothing more healing than a cold.
I love that exactly.
Now your book, What the hell is wrong with Me? I feel like this is a question that so many of us have lamented over the years. Why have you written this book?
Well, I hope that title speaks to all those people who have been frustrated with having symptoms that no one can tell them what's due to. And I've done my very best in the book to really answer that question. So I'd be the first to say I don't have all the answers, and it's the beginning of a journey. But I do say that we've come a long way, and in the research centers there's quite a lot of good information. It's just not getting out to the general public, and I thought I should do my best to bring it to you.
It's actually I found this book, your book very refreshing, because I mean, I think there's a title in there that says, why, you know, Western medicine is failing you and so many of us, you know, trust a Western medicine, but there are times when we are questioning, well, where's the answer to all of this? What's going on with me?
That's right. Look, I'm at first to save West medicine is absolutely brilliant and what we've been able to cure in the last you know, even just in my career time has been amazing HIV. Who would have thought cancers like melanoma amazing stuff? You know. But there's a big butt and these quite common symptoms that we've mentioned, the fatigue, the pains that people get, nausea, upset, stomach, tingling, These symptoms that people can have can be extremely frustrating to live with when the doctors don't produce the diagnosis, because no diagnosis means no treatment quite often, and that's a shame. And I've wanted to address a better approach.
Bible, Can you explain the whole concept of functional illness exactly? What is it?
Yeah? Listen, Look, I've used that word functional simply because there really isn't a better word. But it is a lows the word. I'd be the first to say it. One of the better ways to talk about it, perhaps is to say persistent symptoms, but no medical diagnosis, anything that's still troubling you. Anything that's troubling you, and the doctors don't your diagnosis, stop barking up that tree. Once your doctor's done proper investigation of your symptom, and your symptom's gone on and nothing more has developed. These two things that are quite reassuring. It's time to turn away from the medical approach to things and look at your life from what we might call the biopsychosocial and that there are many many causes listed in that and we can go into them if you want, felicity.
Yeah, let's go on to the bio psychosocial in a minute. Just can you talk a bit more about the causes of functional illness.
Yeah, well that's a good question to ask. So not everyone gets some functional symptoms. You can have them anytime, say a child runs in front of your car and your whole body tingles, you know, with the response to that, a great turning on of your stress response. That's a that's a functional symptom. If you examined or did an MRI of your body tested at the time, there'd be nothing wrong with your body, but you definitely experience a very unpleasant symptom. Luckily that one can pass. But some of these symptoms persist. So some of the causes would that be a long list of what we call stressors, and they can come in many many forms. I believe people are genetically prone to it. Epigenetics is a very interesting area, and people's genes might change when there's been particularly when there's been a lot of adverse situations in their childhood. There's possibility of genetic changes in them. Nutrition, poor sleep, habits, a lot, far too much on on your plate, huge demands on your body. Some people with competitive stress sports get physical symptoms suddenly can't manage. There are many many things. Illnesses and operations are well known to cause a strain on the body beyond just the illness itself, and people can get other symptoms which the doctors can't diagnose by testing, and they would be included in the list of functional symptoms.
And sometimes I mean there's a few things there that you said that would no doubt apply to our listeners.
You know.
Exhaustion, I think is a big one. Many of our listeners are in a constant state of exhaustion, and you just have to keep on going and deal with whatever is going on. In your body as a result of that. And also the overtraining, I think is a really interesting one because often, especially at the moment, we're seeing this rise in people doing half marathons and marathons, all these crazy events, you know, trying to be professional athletes, but also manage a life outside of that, and all these other things that are going on that perhaps we don't even in value or attribute to that.
Certainly, and I can understand people trying to suck the most out of the marrow of life, you know, try to really really engage in life. But when your body starts to produce symptoms. For myself, I always see that as a hint that I'm living beyond my own physical means, not my mental means. I can do amazing things with you know, if my brain let me, if my body let me. But my body is often say honey, you've done enough. It's time to quit. You know, when you start to get any symptoms, it should be a time to listen to your body. Your body doesn't lie. I always say, your mind, certainly can it can say come on, you should do this, you can do that, you must do this. You know, it's not very reliable. Witness the body the mind. But the body will tell you a bit more of the truth of things, won't it say? You know, you are feeling really worn out. It is a time to reassess or your your values and decide what really is important. You're healthful, something else.
You talk about, you know when west and medicine doesn't have the answers. It's about shifting your focus well to the cause. And then obviously the biopsychosocial area. Can you talk at a bit about this.
Yeah, sure, So when when a symptom develops and people have checked it all out and the doctors say or you're testifying. The biopsychosocial approach was developed about fifty years ago by doctor George Ingalls, and it's really looking at health all the factors that can affect your health. So the bio is actually the medical ones we've mentioned already. The psychosocial is like what world do you live in and what do you expect from yourself? So what's going on in your life before your symptom developed? All the things And if you've got a piece of paper just quietly wrote down every single demand upon you, I think that would be quite amazing for a lot of people. And then it's not just the demand, but what's your reaction to those demands? You know, so you might be able to cope extremely well with your puppy going off to the vet, but it might be really really stressful and upsetting for you because the last time, you know, something bad happened, for example. So you see what I'm saying, it's not just the event, but your reaction to it is really important. And then what's the thing that really troubles you the most about what's going on in your life? And that can be a very revealing question. People need to ask these questions. Often they never do. They're so fixated on the symptom that they're not spending enough time stepping back and having a look at what life they're living that led up to this symptom.
And how do we go about that? What do you say to patients who come into you and unload I suppose, look, I'd like every other GP.
I'm very time poor. I get that fifteen minutes. And it's sometimes very hard to get to the base of things. But often now I say, you read my book, which is why I wrote the book. But before that, you know, I would try and get people to ask those questions of themselves or go to a trusted friend and sometimes it might be a counselor you know, a support person. I'm quite a fan of some of my alternate health practitioner colleagues. You know, people who do yoga, who teach meditation, who help with people just to regain a sense of their own self. You know, they regain get in touch with themselves. Anyone who helps you do that, I'm a great fan of and I'll give them full endorsement because they do a lot of healing.
We'll be back after this shortbreak with it more from doctor Gillian Deacon. When you feel a symptom coming up or what do you do? What's your kind of process of rebalancing? What's the word you use? Great yourself down?
Yeah, it's a really good question. I use many many methods. Some music is really wonderful if you're deep listening to music, because that takes you out of your kind of quotidian daily stress, you know, and and really focus in on something very beautiful. So art galleries are another place I go. I find art a very healing space. You can't spend long in an art gallery with that really going into a deep calm state. I still meditate regularly, and I find meditation really wonderful. Yoga is a fantastic way to get in touch with your body and really spend time. Makes your body stronger, more flexible, as well as karma. So it's a very I think everyone should to many Yoga should be taught, should be taught in the primary schools really because I think.
It's called cosmic yoga. My daughter does on YouTube. I think they have a YouTube.
That's so cool.
You've been you know, you've been a GP for many years. Have you in your do you feel like you're seeing more and more of your patients coming in with stress related symptoms.
I'd say that's definitely the case. Felicity. Yes, I think you're absolutely right. I think modern life is become extremely demanding, and people expect a huge amount from themselves. But I think if they compare themselves to the lives of some of their parents, and I want to make a very clear stipulation here, some people's families struggled with poverty, and that's always a huge stress, and these people often have to work under incredible demands irregardless of how they feel, because of the demands to put food on the table, and that's sadly increasingly happening these days that people are working several jobs just to pay the bills and so these things, it's a lovely luxury. If you've got time to do the yoga and spend some time with yourself, it's a lovely luxury. But I say appeel to all your listeners that anyone who can do it, they really should because it's very important for their balancing of their health.
Yeah. Absolutely so. If you've got one takeaway tip that if someone's listening to these thinking I've got these symptoms, I can feel the tingling, I feel the nauseous, or where do we start? Where can we start when it comes to healing.
Well, given that two out of three people have a medical diagnosis when they get a symptom, it's very important you first make sure you haven't got a medical diagnosis. But for that one in three that that's been done, the best place is to listen, not just that one symplet that's worrying about all your symptoms. Surprise. I'm always surprised sometimes how many symptoms people are putting up with, you know, and they just sort of start thinking fatigue as normal and they need an alarm clock to weigh. That's a very bad sign. I think you know you should wake up without an alarm clock. That means you're getting enough sleep. So just doing the basics, well, you see, I'm sure you talk about this in your programs. Getting enough sleep, getting those eight hours of good RESTful sleep, a balanced diet, exercise, and a supportive psychosocial situation. So your mind. If you've got anxiety depression, get treatment, go and see someone. Get it treated, because that's going to always costs you some of your physical health. But assuming you've done all that and you've still got symptoms, we need to dig a little bit deeper. I just had someone who gets a weird tick in their voice and their voice goes. The speech pathologists are very good on this. The physiotherapist. If you've got a disturbance in the way your body works, something's wrong with it, either pain or a disturbance in the movement of the body. That some of the physios are very skilled in helping that. So you don't have to go off to endless neurologists. You go and work with a physiotherapist and they can help you regain normal movements. So you see what I'm saying. There's very many, many different ways that we can approach your symptom. It really depends on the symptom. But I think you should work very systematically, ideally with a supportive doctor who knows you, where you can go back and be re evaluated if you have concerns or more developments in your symptoms. If you go into your doctor and say I think it's possible I may have a functional condition, that doctor will often be very relieved because often it's a subject that we don't know how to raise with our patients because people don't believe that such severe symptoms could simply be functional. They always feel there must be a medical diagnosis. And that's very sad because we found that the symptoms that are functional can be much more severe than the ones associated with medical conditions. And I'll give you an example of that. People who get functional seizures that's means actually fit and shake on the ground or lose consciousness. Sometimes their seizures are much harder to control than people with proven epilepsy. That's just one example. So it's easy to understand why people might think they're very, very sick, but in fact it's actually quite possible that they have a functional condition. So just spreading the word that functional conditions are common where you all get them. Sometimes they're brief and annoying. Sometimes they last days, sometimes they last weeks and months, even years, and sometimes they can be severely disabling. So I just want to normalize them, make sure everyone understands that they can happen in that range mild, modern or severe short term, long term on the left side of the body, rights other body. They can swap and change. You treat the headache and then you find you've got an upset gut. It's a very frustrating area till until people start to look at the causes. So the more you focus on the symptom, the worse they get. The more you allow some of the causes to be addressed, often the symptoms abait. I'm not saying they go all together. I've got patients who live with their symptoms, but they have learnt to say, I know it's functional. I know they come and go and they no longer worry about them, and that in itself is a big relief for people.
Yeah. Absolutely, it's just the acknowledgement, yes, yes, there is something we might not be able to put a label on it in the Western sense, but there is something going.
On that's right, that's right, So Deilian, it was.
Lovely having you an extra healthy Thank you for joining us today.
Thank you very much for listener. I enjoyed it very much. For the best.
Come Oh, I hope you got a lot out of that chat as much as I did. I love the term stressors, not just stress, because there are many other things going around, aren't there in your head, in your life, that can lead to well, all these undiagnosed symptoms. If you want more wisdom from Jillian, I recommend her book What the Hell Is Wrong with Me? I am actually reading it now and the thoroughly enjoying it. If you do enjoy this chat, make sure you rate and review it. We would love that share it with a friend someone who perhaps is going through something that they can't pinpoint what it is, or well Western medicine can't. Anyway. You can subscribe to this podcast headbodyansoul dot com dot you for more info. Follow us on socials grub our print edition which is out in your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow stext You Healthies,