Do you have some health questions? Well Dr. Mo is here! She’ll answer your questions on everything from Bunions to Botox. Plus, you’ll learn the Cancer Connection between various health conditions.
Question: You break down health and wellness into eight areas. What are those eight areas?
Dr. Mo: When we talk about wellness, I need everybody to understand that there are eight different components even though we focus so much on the physical component. The body feeling good, making sure our blood pressure’s right, our blood sugars are where they’re supposed to be, making sure that we exercise. These are some of the physical components of health, but there’s also a social component to health. Are we being healthy socially? And this is a tough one right now, because you know, right now it’s the era of COVID, and we’re socially distancing. We’re not able to get out and be around each other. Social wellness is important. We’ve got occupational wellness. Are we satisfied with our jobs? Are we feeling fulfilled in our occupations? How about financial wellness? Financial wellness is a thing because when we are financially not well, finances affect our health. Overall environment and environmental wellness is a component. The food that we eat, the things that grow from the ground, the water that we drink, I mean, we learn during COVID that the very air we breathe in the east makes its way to the west. And what happens in the north happens in the south. The environment has an effect on our wellness. There’s also mental and spirit wellness. When we are unwell mentally, when we are not aligned spiritually, we are not well. I tell my patients the mind, the body and the spirit are connected. Eight components: Physical, emotional, environmental, intellectual, spiritual, financial, occupational, social.
Question: Why is it hard to diagnose pancreatic?
Dr. Mo: Pancreatic cancer is difficult to diagnose because there aren’t a ton of symptoms for it. And by the time there are symptoms, it’s usually pretty late in the disease process. The pancreas helps to make enzymes, which are the worker bees that break down our foods that we eat. The pancreas helps us to process our sugars. It produces insulin. It does a lot of things for the body, but when cancerous cells grow there, we don’t really recognize it until those cells get so big that it causes blockage of the duct that squirts out the enzymes. When that duct gets blocked, all that bile starts backing up and now we end up yellow or jaundiced. And this is why they tell you to look at your tongue. Look at your nails, look at your eyes. In certain people, your skin will begin to look a little bit yellow, but by that time your jaundice is a little bit further than you would like. If your stools are turning colors, having light stool, your bowel movement should be brown because of the breakdown of the products. But if your bowel movements are white or getting gray and lighter, that’s a sign that you need to talk to your doctor. Having pain that can radiate to your back might be a sign more of pancreatitis or inflammation of the pancreas, than pancreatic cancer. And the most important thing is you can talk to your family because pancreatic cancer is rare.
Question: How do we get through and address those eight components when we have multiple conditions, how do we get through?. Some of that is the mental part. How do we get through it effectively and still forge on each day?
Dr. Mo: The answer is that it really does take a village. And so one of the things you gotta do is when you’re picking your doctor, or if you go to your appointment and you’re just dissatisfied with the care, they’re not addressing as many of those components as they can. You have the right to really interview your doctor to say, you know, doc, these are the things that I have. What does wellness look like for me? What, what should I be expecting? How can I get to whatever better is, for me? I may not get the best, but I wanna be on the road to wellness. And wait and pause and let that doctor answer. And they may say, okay, wellness for you looks like getting your hemoglobin A1C, your marker for diabetes. Let’s get that down below 5.7, let’s get your cholesterol to here. Let’s do this. And let’s do that. And here are some of the ways that you can get more bang for your buck by doing X, Y, Z,. They’re gonna talk to you about exercise. The things that prevent chronic and preventable illnesses also prevent cancer. And it’s getting up and moving at least 30 minutes a day.
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