From A+E to Ayahuasca

Welcome back to the doctor body mind soul podcast. My name is Dr. Jude. And this is a podcast which explores how we can integrate modern medicine and alternative therapies to help you get the holistic health care that you deserve. I will be speaking to healers and seekers, researchers and authors who will share their experiences and the evidence to help guide us all to Holistic Health. Let's do this. Oh, hello, how are you buddy mind soul seekers. It's me. Jude, recording this from Bali, my very first solo episode. And today, I just really wanted to connect with you personally from here to share with you why I'm here. And the work I hope to be doing while I'm here. And I guess I want to share some context as to what's inspired this for me. So I'm naming this episode from a&e to Ayahuasca. Because it really has been my experience in A+E and Ayahu, that has inspired me to create the wit to women, holistic health care platform that I'm designing to help you navigate around the world and alternative therapies. So we can all truly enjoy integrative health care. And it's this that I'm going to be working on for the next three months. So let's, let's start at the beginning, shall we? I'm this is for anyone who hasn't listened to. So let me start with my story. I am the proud daughter to to Dr. Parents, a double doctor's daughter. They used to call me at school. And I was then therefore I was therefore really brought up with a very strong belief in the importance of the scientific methods. And I had been taught to investigate and question everything. And that stood me in good stead. I've been afforded a really exciting career in any medicine, which I've enjoyed for the last 18 years, which has allowed me to work all over the world. And the find doctors in Africa to indigenous communities in Australia, I studied part of a master's in rural India, and delivered delivered health care during the Amazon on a mercy ship. But it hasn't always been an easy path, as many of you can maybe imagine. There are high expectations, relentless rotors, exhausting exams, and I started to feel quite disillusioned and frustrated and conflicted and constrained really. And when I came back to the UK, in 2014 Make amidst the junior doctors strikes. For the sake of my own health and sanity, I went on a bit of a search. And I started going to workshops and retreats. I tried talking tried silence, coaching and crafting, sound baths and soulful psychology, dancing and downward dogging, acupuncture and iOS. I tried it all. And it really opened me up to new people, new practices, new paradigms, things I had never been taught, never, never even considered. And it got me really thinking, you know why? As a doctor, did I not know of any of these healing modalities, especially when they helped me so much on my own? And why am I not able to offer these to my patients, patients I see every day who are struggling, waiting months to see specialists and I'm unable to empower them with anything other than pharmaceutical solutions which are not available for Every condition or don't work particularly well in every case. And it got me wondering about how our narrow medical education is really limiting, limiting our ability to help our patients in the best possible way. Because we have to understand that doctors study medicine, we study pharmaceuticals, it's the approach we are taught. And we are led to believe that it's the only solution. That's what I believed for a long time. And I certainly believed it was the best solution because it's what doctors are being taught, right. And we're all a product of our education. But one of the biggest problems I see is that it's really difficult, therefore, because our education is so limited, for doctors to be able to give advice for anything other than a pharmaceutical. So we're not able to give any advice about alternative approaches, because we were never taught about this in medical school. I think I was given about a half day in medical school on alternative practices, which just gives you a flavor of the perspective of our current Western medical education. And yet, you know, we don't see doctors, as pharmaceutical experts, do we we see them as the authority on all things health. There is a hierarchy in the health and healing space, for which doctors reside at the top, which I think is really damaging, and quite derogatory to anyone else in the health and healing space. And I just need to shine a light that, you know, this current system, as I'm sure you're all aware, is not working for patients, or for doctors. We have really long waiting lists, sometimes for years, which were mental health assessments, or gastroenterologists, or gynecologist or orthopedic surgeons, we can't see your GPS, we don't even have GPS anymore. And it's not working for patient productive. And it's not working for doctors, either. We have a GP crisis with a third of GPS intending to quit within the next five years. Because when we take the spirit out of my system, it becomes a disparate system. And I think that is what we have right now. I mean, can you imagine a world where doctors were trained in a more integrative way, able to refer their patients outside of the medical system to healers in our communities, when the Western medical approach no longer works for that patient or isn't the ideal approach for that patient. This would not only benefit the patient and their overall well being, but also the doctors themselves, allowing them to reduce their caseload only focusing on patients that respond optimally to a pharmaceutical approach. I think what also limits doctors abilities, to be able to refer patients on to holistic healers is the lack of evidence. Now, doctors are trained in evidence based medicine, and I think this is really important. But we have to be aware of the constraints within that approach as well. And I see two main problems here. One is the circulation of the research that is available. Because as I've, you know, delved into