14 – Interview your Doctor? Why You Just Might Want To
Choosing the right healthcare practitioner doesn’t have to be daunting. By preparing thoughtful questions that reveal a practitioner’s commitment to holistic care, you can find professionals who align with your personal healing goals. I encourage you to evaluate their responses, attentiveness, and willingness to support your journey toward wellness.
This episode is a call to action for listeners to embrace their authority in healthcare, empowering themselves with knowledge and remaining in control of their health decisions.
Transcript
Sharise Parviz: 0:00
Well, this isn’t exactly what I wanted to chat about, but I think it’s an important topic and I’m going to start with some backstory so you understand. I think it’ll make it a little clearer why I say maybe you just might want to interview your doctor, okay. But first just to let you know we’re not walking today. Just let you know we’re not walking today. We’re actually sitting at the Victory Center volunteering to selling yard signs and what am I saying? Canvassing material and election material and all that good stuff. So that is where we are today, which is why it kind of probably the sound is much better without a lot of outside noise. But anyway. So backstory time, okay. Backstory time, okay, backstory.
Sharise Parviz: 0:48
So yesterday I was in a practitioner’s meeting and this is a meeting for professionals in the health and wellness field, in the natural and holistic healing health and wellness field. So chiropractors, naturopaths, homeopaths, acupuncturists, anyone that functional medicine, you get the idea, anybody who is in the natural healing space. Okay, so every week I attend this meeting and these meetings are really about really brainstorming and sharing ideas and we share what’s working in our practice and what’s not. We may discuss the latest research that’s come out and we may discuss, you know, different approaches to treatments or even how to approach treating a patient. How to approach treating a patient, and there is, there’s the kicker right there. Okay, so, in all things, the one thing that all of these practitioners, what we have in common is that we really want to see our patients heal. We want them well, we want to see them well, we want to figure out what the root cause is and help them on the path of healing and wholeness. That is across the board. Where we differ is in how we approach treatment, and so in these meetings that I’m in, there’s a lot of discussion on what is the right quote unquote right approach to treatment for a patient, and I’ve kind of narrowed it down to two camps. Okay, so just go with me here. So think of two camps, I’m just narrowing it down.
Sharise Parviz: 2:44
Here we have Camp 1, and in Camp 1, excuse me, the practitioners in Camp 1,. Well, let’s do it with an example. Okay, a patient comes in and let’s say they have an upset stomach, they have constipation and overall just foggy-headed and not feeling well, and they go in and see a practitioner from Camp 1. So that practitioner would approach their treatment by starting or I don’t say starting, but asking these questions, asking questions about the patient’s emotional life, asking questions about the patient’s psychological life, their thinking, their beliefs, asking about the relationships and their social life, asking about potential trauma or maybe adverse you know, childhood adverse events, things that might have happened to them as children. So what they’re really doing is investigating the internal world of their patient, because the philosophy we’ll just call it a philosophy the belief is that all disease, illness, external, physical are just manifestations of what’s happening internally, emotionally, psychologically, in the person. So if there are unresolved emotions in the patient, that’s going to show up as disease. Okay, so that’s camp one.
Sharise Parviz: 4:16
Camp two, on the other hand, is still looking for the root cause, because they all want to find the root cause. But in camp two their approach is different. So they will ask questions on your environment what are you eating? What are you drinking? What type of water are you drinking? What type of supplementation are you doing? Are you getting out and you’re exercising? How much? What kind? Are you getting out and getting sun? They may do some labs and see if there’s any deficiencies, nutritional deficiencies. So they’re looking at it from the viewpoint of there’s something in the external environment of the patient that is causing illness Could be mold in the house, could be EMF, Wi-Fi. So they’re looking more at the external environment of the patient, whereas in camp one they’re looking at the internal environment. So in camp one we work to restore the emotions, and when we restore the emotions the body will restore as well. Camp two we clean up the external environment, get rid of the toxins in the personal products or the laundry detergent or the cleaning supplies, or in the clothing or the paint or whatever. Clean up the external environment, clean up the nutrition, get to the exercising, getting sun time, sunbathing, all these things, and by doing that the body can do its work and repair and restore itself to health. So camp one, camp two. Now sometimes these camps are very divided and they’re very, very strong in their stance. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to get them to see that well, really, is it an either or or is it a both? And in my thinking it’s both. It’s an and not an either or. So and why I say that is from my own experience, both my personal experience and my experience with my clients. Now you’re going to hear me say clients and patients, and I’m using them interchangeably. It’s just different practitioners use different verbiage. That’s all so in my own life.
Sharise Parviz: 6:36
If you have been listening to this podcast, you might remember me telling you that I was very sick about 20 some years ago, both with physical issues and with mental issues. And mentally I suffered from OCD behavior, intrusive thinking, depression, anxiety, physically, ibs I had to have my gallbladder removed a plethora of problems both mentally and physically. And in the mental health world. I went to therapists, I tried antidepressants at that time Nothing helped, nothing helped. And my husband and I had done research and this was kind of really the dive deep into healing, into natural healing. And we did research and we looked at diet. So out of that research I won’t go into depth on that, but out of that research I had changed my diet. And when I changed my diet I could say that my world changed and I’m not exaggerating here. It was just like 180 degrees right Change.
Sharise Parviz: 7:37
And I realized, the more I delved into what was going on, why was this happening? Why was I feeling better Now? It wasn’t healing my trauma, that was still there. But what it was helping me do is regulate my moods. See, I had no regulation over my moods, over my thinking. I couldn’t control my thoughts. I couldn’t control my moods. I was completely just. It was just uncontrollable. I could not manage. I didn’t have any regulation or modulation at all over my emotions or my moods or my thoughts. Because of that, I couldn’t do the work that maybe the therapist wanted me to do. I couldn’t do the work to heal my trauma Because what was happening is my brain was malnourished, and when your brain is malnourished and your brain can’t function, you can’t really think straight. So when I changed my diet just that simple act of changing my diet and removing certain foods and including, you know, foods that are nourishing to the brain I was able to start regulating my moods, stabilizing my emotions and able to do the work to heal internally. So I saw that with myself, the importance of nutrition and mental health. So my clients also.
Sharise Parviz: 9:02
So when I first started my practice, I started not in any way in the health and wellness space. I started in the life coaching space. I had gone through all my training, but I really my goal in going through my training was to help my husband and to be a resource for my family. It wasn’t to use it in practice. So but as you say, and when had clients, I had quite a few clients that would come to me, and they came to me because they could relate to me, relate to me, excuse me, relate to me about my story Because they also suffered from anxiety or depression, you know, or OCD, or intrusive thoughts, ocd behaviors.
Sharise Parviz: 9:44
They suffered from these conditions as well. Intrusive thoughts, ocd behaviors they suffered from these conditions as well. And when I would work with them as a life coach, I would give directives or things they could do in the following week that were to help them, and then we’d meet the next week and discuss it. Well, they weren’t really able to follow through with what we’d agreed upon that they would do that week. And I remember thinking to myself excuse me, my mouth is dry, my throat is dry that this is a nutritional issue. I don’t mean all of it, but I think we should look at the nutrition and again, going back and remembering what I had gone through, and I thought, okay, let’s do this.
Sharise Parviz: 10:25
So I asked my clients to go ahead, if they could, if they would do like a three-day food diary Nothing fancy, just whenever they ate something, just jot it down on a piece of paper and then bring it in the following week. They looked at me a little strangely, but they did it. And then the following week they came in with their food journal and I looked at it and what I noticed was really one of two things. I noticed that either they ate a very highly processed diet, lots of packaged foods, fast food restaurants going out to eat at restaurants you know fast food joints and restaurants, you get the idea and lots and lots of packaged food, lots of microwaved foods. Either that or they were vegan and that might upset some folks, but that’s the truth.
Sharise Parviz: 11:09
So either way I looked at it, these clients were malnourished. They weren’t giving their brain or their body the nourishment needed to be healthy and when I talked to them about that, I said you know, let’s just try and experiment, because that’s what we were doing. I said let’s experiment and let’s make some adjustments. And I made some very, very small adjustments to their diets. You know, I looked at what was appropriate for them individually and made very small adjustments. Well, they would make those adjustments and come the following week they would come in and they would be like super excited because they felt better in some way. Either they could sleep they were able to sleep through the night or they felt less anxiety or they actually woke up feeling good and not so depressed. And even if they were very small improvements, when you’re in that deep, deep, deep emotional dark space, any small improvement feels huge and I was so happy for them and I knew that we were on the right track. I knew that, while I know we had to deal with some emotional issues, I knew that we also let’s follow the track of this nutritional and get the body nourished. So we worked through some nutritional protocols and I implemented some things. They followed through and they were getting feeling better and better and better. And as they were feeling better, they were able to do more work in working into the inner world of their pain and their suffering and they healed so much faster. They recovered faster. They recovered. They were able to work through the emotional pain, any past trauma, whatever we were dealing with, to get them mentally well and functioning and physically they were healthier too. So again, I understand how important that nutrition is to mental health.
Sharise Parviz: 13:03
And just to go back for a second when I say that both camp one and camp two are correct, they really are. You know, in camp one just just to kind of just to just to do a little. You know little discussion about that in camp one that the emotions affect our bodies. They absolutely do, and you may have read a book or heard of a book called the Body Keeps the Score. If you haven’t, I really recommend reading that. It really is about that our emotions, how they affect us physically, and they absolutely do. If we have unresolved emotions like grief, anger or regret or shame or unforgiveness, it can definitely give us ill effects in our health. In fact, there are organs in our body that are associated with different emotions and if those emotions are unresolved, then those organs can become diseased, can become ill. So that is what I mean, that camp one definitely there is. You know both camps are equally correct in their approach. What I’m saying is it’s not an either, or it’s not looking through the narrow lens of looking only into the inner world or the narrow lens of looking into the outer world. It is integrating both worlds in treating patients. So, that being said, I’m just going to go back to my own experiences On the flip side.
Sharise Parviz: 14:28
When I started introducing the health and wellness, the holistic healing, the naturopath, the herbalism into my practice with my clients, then I would get other clients that came in for physical health issues and I would see, you know, there’s an emotional problem here too. This isn’t just a physical issue, this is an emotional one too. We would start, maybe, with the physical and get the diet on board. And I’m thinking particularly about a client of mine that’s most recent who had to go to the emergency room because they were thinking he had a heart attack and the doctors were trying to get all this invasive procedures done to see what was really going on. And he and his wife he was the patient and the wife they were both very concerned about these procedures. They didn’t want it and they had contacted me because I know the wife and contacted me to ask me my opinion. Well, that’s not my place to give my opinion. Well, that’s not my place to give my opinion. But what I could do is I could walk them through the thinking process with all the information that we knew from the doctors what would work out best for them, what is the right decision that they felt comfortable with. So they made the decision after we went through the process and they decided that they didn’t want to do these invasive procedures and they left the hospital. When they left the hospital. They came to me to help and I started them on.
Sharise Parviz: 15:53
I started him excuse me, not them started him, although it is same like a them. Especially when you’re married, you know you’re working together to get your spouse well. So I started him on a protocol the GAPS nutritional protocol and other protocols on a protocol the GAPS nutritional protocol and other protocols detoxification and herbs and so forth and so on to help support his physical health. Well, he lost like 30 pounds, like in I don’t know. I think it was like two weeks. I mean that is how much inflammation and excess water and toxins he was holding in his body. But he was flushing all that out and he also was starting to lose weight. We could tell it was fat and not muscle, so that was great. He had more energy, he was able to breathe better. He overall felt so much better.
Sharise Parviz: 16:39
So we kept going down that avenue and kept working the nutritional and lifestyle and supplementation protocols that I had introduced into it. We kept proceeding with that. Yet I knew that there was something going on emotionally from discussions that we had and I didn’t delve deep because I just knew that that wasn’t the place that we were starting. That wasn’t quite the right place for him right now in the place that we were starting. That wasn’t quite the right place for him right now, and so, basically, what I’m saying, though, is that in both cases, whether my client came in for mental health issues or physical health issues, I had to implement both practices, treating them both, in order for the healness to occur in my clients.
Sharise Parviz: 17:30
So that’s why I’m saying it’s not an either, or it’s an, and this either or thinking is really what holistic health practitioners, what we blame or point our finger at in the allopathic medicine world, as being called reductionist thinking. Meaning, when you go to a regular doctor, a regular MD, how many doctors does a person have? They have one doctor for every condition, right, because every doctor specializes in a particular field of medicine, and they look at the patient through that lens, right, that very narrow lens of their expertise. Well, that’s what’s called reductionist thinking. We’re not looking at the whole person, we’re just looking at pieces and parts, and treating those pieces and parts, as opposed to the whole person, systemically. Well, that’s what we call reductionist thinking.
Sharise Parviz: 18:21
And, in the same vein, if we’re looking at a patient through only that everything is emotional, or that it’s only physical, that’s also reductionist thinking, and so what we want to do is integrate, integrate as practitioners, both what’s happening in the inner world, what’s happening in the external world, and taking the whole being, this whole being, this physical being, this spiritual being, this creative being, this thinking being, the whole being of our patient, taking that whole being into consideration. Okay, so that’s the back story, a lot of back story, I know, but it’s really important that if you’re not aware, aware what practitioners may be thinking Now in the allopathic world, your regular medical doctor who prescribes drugs and you go in and labs and does all the things right, they really aren’t looking at the root cause. Not that they don’t necessarily want you to be well, but the establishment, the medical establishment establishment as it is today, is really all about, you know, getting you to solve your symptoms and not the root problem and having you take medications. Ok, so that, all being said, so why do I say you just might want to interview your doctor? As ill as I had been, as ill as my husband had been, as ill as the people that I know and have worked with have been, as ill as my own clients have been, I know it’s really important to be seen as a whole person and to know that no stone has been unturned right, that all the parts of me as a patient will be looked at and will be considered, and that working with a practitioner is a collaboration, not a one-up, one-down. It is a working together. And, yes, the practitioner may have the knowledge and is there to guide and is able there to inform and to educate, and also is there to respect your decisions as well. So the reason why I say you might just want to interview your doctor is because I want you to have control over your own care, and I know that difficult is when we don’t. When we go into, sometimes we go into a practitioner’s office and the practitioner has their white coat on and you know they’re, they’re, they’re the hero, they look like the hero, they have their white coat on, they, they rode on their white horse with their white coat, and you know we are the victim, white coat, and you know we are the victim, the damsel in distress. You know if you would and they’re here to you know take care of us. Well, unfortunately, when we give them that kind of power, then our decisions, our autonomy, kind of goes out the window, and I can.
Sharise Parviz: 21:32
That happened, for instance, with my sister. She had cancer two years ago and the doctors were really, really pushing radiation and chemotherapy and she was really you know, of course she’s not in a state of mind to figure this out, right, she’s very scared, very worried. Of course she is. And I helped her. I said, you know, let’s look at it together. And we looked at the research together because I wanted her to see it for herself, not just take my word for it. So we looked at it together and, based on the information right that we worked on, looked at and information that was given to her, she decided that she would do the radiation but she wouldn’t do the chemotherapy. And that was what she was comfortable with. And you know, I supported her because I want her to do what she’s comfortable with, and so.
Sharise Parviz: 22:18
But the doctors were dead set against her not doing chemotherapy and they pushed and pushed and pushed and she pushed back and they kept pushing and they kept pushing to the point where they, you know, threatened to not take care of her anymore, threatened to not, you know, not to help her, that she would have to find another doctor. Well, eventually I, you know, told my sister, it’s okay, you know we can find someone else, because if a doctor can’t respect your what you want, then is that really a doctor that you want? It’s okay, we’ll find someone else. Well, they ended up backpedaling and not pushing on the chemotherapy. They just said you, you know, maybe we can discuss this after radiation. And my sister was like that’s fine. So she went through the radiation and all that and right now she’s doing very well
Sharise Parviz: 23:05
But the point is is that why should she have to be pushed back on? Why can’t she make a decision as the patient? She did the research. This is what she’s comfortable with. Should that not be respected by the doctors? And my thinking is yes, it should. So why would? You might want to interview your doctor Because you want to know that your doctor is looking at every aspect of your well-being, of your health. So this is what I would do if I were you, because I would want my own autonomy as a patient. I do want my own autonomy as a patient. I did with my husband, you know. I want to have the information and be able to make my decisions, and I want a doctor that’s going to see me as a whole person. So what I would do is.
Sharise Parviz: 23:52
I would come up with four or five questions, asking them you know, asking them whatever you think is important in your situation, but asking you know how would they approach if you’re having, if your problem is, you know, something that you’re, something, a pain or an emotion that you’re holding, put it in your own words, I’m just giving you ideas. You know how would you, if it’s something that’s in your relationships, would they address that kind of thing? Would they, you know, would you address my diet? Would you address, you know, how do you treat? Or just ask, very simply, how do you approach treatment with a patient? And if they just kind of go in one direction you know only the physical side or the emotional side and they don’t kind of talk about both then ask them about the other side. Well, would you also consider, you know, that I might have trauma in my life. Would you also consider that?
Sharise Parviz: 24:42
So come up with four or five questions that you feel comfortable asking that would help you to know that they would see you as a whole person, a full person that would be looked at as an emotional side and the physical side, that kind of that would look at you wholly as a person and that is what you would want to do, because, in order to have complete and full healing, all aspects of you have to be looked at your relationships, your social environment, everything about your life, everything about your life, everything about your thinking, everything about the way you live your lifestyle. All of that is important. There’s not one aspect that is not important and an influence on your health. So, again, come up with four or five questions, whatever you feel you want to know that they would see you as a whole person, thinking about your inner world and thinking about your outer world, and ask them how they would approach it. And put it in your own words the other thing is listen to them. Not just listen to them for the answers of these questions, but listen to them when they’re answering you. Are they looking at you? Are they hearing you? Are they giving you eye contact? Are they present with you? Listen to the words they use. Are they using words like we want to get to the root cause or are they just, you know, want to work the symptoms? The other thing is are they denying your symptoms altogether?
Sharise Parviz: 26:18
Because many practitioners will say, well, we need to work on your emotional life and if a client comes in suffering from a physical symptom, many practitioners I know you know this has happened, I’ve seen this happen won’t do anything to help comfort their client because they feel that’s interfering with the body’s process, healing process. And so they figure we’ll work off the emotions and the emotions will restore the body. We won’t interfere by treating the body at all and I’m not sure that’s always the right way to go. For some people they can, you know, push through the symptoms and get through the root problem and then the symptoms. Way to go. For some people they can, you know, push through the symptoms and get through the root problem and then the symptoms will go away. For others that’s too difficult. The pain, the symptoms are too difficult to handle. They can’t do the inner work to get well. So it may not be an option for some people to push through it and some natural, you know, healing remedies that would work on the symptoms while working on the root cause.
Sharise Parviz: 27:23
There’s nothing wrong In my opinion as in my practice. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t want my clients to suffer. I’m not going to have them suffer if I can help it. So if someone comes in with a symptom that I can give, say, an herbal remedy or a natural remedy, not something that’s going to interfere with their body, but support their body while we’re also doing the deeper healing. Why wouldn’t I want to do that? So that’s something.
Sharise Parviz: 27:48
Again, you might want to ask your practitioner and again I would say you could interview your practitioner, whether it’s in the holistic health field or it’s in the allopathic field. Why not? Why not? Remember, you are an independent human being. You know they’re not the boss of you. They are working for you. Just like our politicians work for us, so do our doctors, so do our practitioners. They work for us. So why wouldn’t we want to interview them? If we were hiring practitioners? They work for us, so why wouldn’t we want to interview them? If we were hiring anybody else to work for us, we’d interview them. Well, don’t give any practitioner a higher status than what they deserve. Yes, they may have done the education, yes, they may know the practice, and yet they’re not.
Sharise Parviz: 28:34
As I’ve always said, I’m going to say again and again and again they’re not the expert of you. You are hiring them, so interview them. Make sure that they’re people you want to work with, make sure that their approach is something you’re comfortable with and make sure they see you as a whole person and if you’re in pain and if you’re suffering, make sure they don’t ignore that. These would be the things that I would do. So again, come up four to five questions okay, think of them, take some time of how you want to be seen. You want your emotional life seen. You want your physical life seen. How you want to be seen in your healing journey and how that treatment would look. What it would look like. What would that treatment look like? And listen and observe and feel comfortable with them. And if you don’t feel comfortable with them, find someone else. So I hope I’ve made it clear as why you might want to interview your doctor.
Sharise Parviz: 29:32
Remember you have all the power. The patient has all the power here because you are the one hiring. They’re working for you. Keep that in mind. Remember your power always and forever. All right, that’s it. I’m out of here. I’ve got to go pass out some literature. Have a great rest of the day. Start thinking of your sentences, you know, and even if you don’t need it now, you might want to start thinking about this because at some point you might Maybe not, but at some point you might need to seek out a practitioner and if that happens, you have your questions in hand. All right, be well In health, God bless. Goodbye.