Speaker 1: Well, hello there. Thank you for joining us on this
Speaker 1: daily podcast from Body and Soul called Healthish. Of course,
Speaker 1: in fact, I hope you are feeling really healthy ish today.
Speaker 1: I am your host of Felicity Hawley. I'm joined today
Speaker 1: by doctor Gillian Deacon. She is a GP with more
Speaker 1: than thirty years experience. Now she has treated hundreds of
Speaker 1: patients for symptoms that are pretty much unexplained by Western medicine.
Speaker 1: So she decided to write a book to help us
Speaker 1: all out, to help us make sense of undiagnosed ailments,
Speaker 1: and she's going to talk to us about all of
Speaker 1: that today. If you do like what you hear from Jillian,
Speaker 1: and I know you will make sure you're listening to
Speaker 1: our full chat on extra healthy Ish, where she talks
Speaker 1: more about symptoms of functional illnesses. You can catch that
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Jillian, thank you for joining
Speaker 1: us today.
Speaker 2: On healthy It My pleasure, Felicity.
Speaker 1: And well done on your new book, No easy Feet
Speaker 1: writing a book.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're right, or a thesis or a doctorate, you
Speaker 1: know you've done them all. Anyway. So many of us,
Speaker 1: you know, walk around with symptoms of illness. And I
Speaker 1: know many of our listeners and colleagues and friends of
Speaker 1: mine struggle to get that medical diagnosis. What can you
Speaker 1: share your experience, what you've seen over the years with
Speaker 1: people feeling this way.
Speaker 2: So every day for the last forty years I've been
Speaker 2: working as a GP, I've seen people, some of whom
Speaker 2: have very clear medical diagnoses, and that's my first job.
Speaker 2: Is this something that is needing medical treatment? Now, you know?
Speaker 2: And that's the first thing that every doctor wants to
Speaker 2: address when someone walks in. But I'm telling you that
Speaker 2: every single day of my life, I see at least
Speaker 2: two to three people who have symptoms but there is
Speaker 2: no medical diagnosis. And I've done the due diligence, I
Speaker 2: promise you, And so then what do we do? That's
Speaker 2: the question. A lot of the times, patients are left
Speaker 2: without any answers. And I've written my book for this
Speaker 2: very group of people who have been to the doctor.
Speaker 2: The tests have all been done, they've been told of
Speaker 2: things normal, but they're still unwell. So that's where that's
Speaker 2: where I like to start the conversation.
Speaker 1: I feel like so many of us been in this situation,
Speaker 1: whether it's you know, with a long term illness or
Speaker 1: something you know that's just risen and passes, it's functional illness.
Speaker 1: You refer to this term as how do you describe that?
Speaker 2: Look? Functional illness. It's a lousy term, but there isn't
Speaker 2: really any better. They get caught, these symptoms get caught
Speaker 2: all sorts of things. One thing, the nicest term is
Speaker 2: actually just simply persistent symptoms, brackets, no diagnosis, persistent symptoms.
Speaker 2: That's actually a really simple way of explaining it. I'm
Speaker 2: using the word functional just to differentiate it from symptoms
Speaker 2: connected to a proven disease. That's the way I am
Speaker 2: using the term functional symptoms. That can be any symptom.
Speaker 2: But you've mentioned some of the common ones, you know,
Speaker 2: fatigue or nausea, headache, pains, dizziness, tingling. People get many,
Speaker 2: many symptoms and all the tests come back normal. So
Speaker 2: I'd like to say that I've done the research. I've
Speaker 2: gone all around the world, studying research in a lot
Speaker 2: of the centers who treat functional conditions, and I've put
Speaker 2: together a simplified version of where the research is at.
Speaker 2: Now that's what my book's about. I think I can
Speaker 2: pretty well translate where the sophisticated research is what it says,
Speaker 2: and I've put it in language I think is pretty
Speaker 2: understandable by the averageree.
Speaker 1: Test that I'm halfway through the book, and yes it is.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to understand. It can be incredibly frustrating
Speaker 1: as a patient and you come up against it. You
Speaker 1: know you want that diagnosis, but then there isn't one.
Speaker 1: I mean, what sort of words of wisdom do you
Speaker 1: have to people who are struggling with something like this.
Speaker 2: Well, the first thing I shouldn't let people know about
Speaker 2: all the medical diagnosis. There is not actually any training
Speaker 2: except in Germany. There are guidelines, formal guidelines, so GPS
Speaker 2: doctors all of the world work to guidelines, proven methods
Speaker 2: that have been shown to work. Again again, when it
Speaker 2: comes to functional things, it goes good, Oh, you haven't
Speaker 2: got any diagnosis, Off you go take it easy. See
Speaker 2: me again. If you've got any problems, it's very unsatisfactory.
Speaker 2: So there aren't any guidelines, but I've done my very
Speaker 2: best to put together what is happening within the specialist
Speaker 2: centers where there are strategies that have been proven to work,
Speaker 2: and that's what I've done, so I understand people's frustration.
Speaker 1: So when it comes to these functional conditions. A lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, put it on stress, because I
Speaker 1: suppose stress is hard to pinpoint as well. Body's response
Speaker 1: to you know, our stress aws as you call them,
Speaker 1: is this true?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Felicity. You've read in my book that
Speaker 2: I don't use the word stress. I find it very unhelpful.
Speaker 2: It's not a term that helps to get people better. Right.
Speaker 2: So ah, look, sometimes you can say some people can say, look,
Speaker 2: I was really stressed just before my exam and I
Speaker 2: felt my tummy, you know, upset, and I nearly vomited
Speaker 2: or something like that. Okay, there's a stress relation. Everyone
Speaker 2: can understand that. One an exam finishes, the tummy settles down. Okay,
Speaker 2: But what if you wake up and you've got chest
Speaker 2: pain and you've suddenly got tingling in your left hand
Speaker 2: or something, you know, and you're not at all convinced
Speaker 2: there's any new things in your life like stress, and
Speaker 2: the doctors are saying it's stress. That's really problematic. So
Speaker 2: what I've tried to do my book is to explain
Speaker 2: the word using the word stress or which is quite different.
Speaker 2: I've tried to say that the body has to deal
Speaker 2: with whatever is happening to it. So it can be
Speaker 2: an illness, it can be an operation. It can be
Speaker 2: worry about you know, your sick, ranny or something. It
Speaker 2: can be a vaccination. It can be poor sleep habits.
Speaker 2: It can be competitive sports pushing the body beyond its
Speaker 2: natural limits. It can be nearly anything. So anything that
Speaker 2: puts the body under strain and stress is what I
Speaker 2: call stress or And when we look back at people's
Speaker 2: lives and look at what was happening before they got
Speaker 2: their symptom, we often find a whole list of quite
Speaker 2: commonplace events in their life. You know, long hours of work,
Speaker 2: not being able to eat properly, eating on the run.
Speaker 2: You know, a lot of factors that come into play,
Speaker 2: and sure enough, if you stack them all up, you
Speaker 2: get sick. You may notice in the book there's stories
Speaker 2: of people who've had silk illnesses, and many of them
Speaker 2: you can see there's a kind of coming together of
Speaker 2: a number of pretty commonplace events that they would not
Speaker 2: necessarily call stress, and I wouldn't either. That's why I
Speaker 2: sort of using this other term. Yeah, and that's some
Speaker 2: co It's sometimes helped for people to really step back
Speaker 2: a little bit and see, well, yes, things are happening.
Speaker 1: So the big question for you to answer in a
Speaker 1: few short sentences is where do we start? How do
Speaker 1: we start to heal?
Speaker 2: Right? Well, the first thing is to have done your
Speaker 2: due diligence, gone to the doctor and they've said good
Speaker 2: news or your tests are normal. What a lot of
Speaker 2: people are upset about that. I think that's great. I
Speaker 2: think that means your body is actually healthy. I use
Speaker 2: the term that you've got not a hardware problem, which
Speaker 2: is a disease, which is a worry. You've got a
Speaker 2: software problem that means you need a little reprogramming, a reboot,
Speaker 2: a restart, and how to do that is sometimes extremely simple.
Speaker 2: Simply hearing that it's only a functional symptom helps people
Speaker 2: to recover and give themselves a bit of time. Some
Speaker 2: people need a whole multidisabriline, new teams, psychologists, physiotherapists, speech therapists,
Speaker 2: a whole team of people. There are places where people
Speaker 2: are admitted. Those units are quite rare, unfortunately, but so
Speaker 2: it is complicated, so every single person needs their own
Speaker 2: very unique treatment. I want to put a big plug
Speaker 2: in for my alternate practitioner colleagues because I think they
Speaker 2: have a lot to offer in this space. And I
Speaker 2: think if you go to someone to say the doctors say,
Speaker 2: there's quote nothing wrong with me, but I have this
Speaker 2: symptom a lot of times. A good yoga practitioner, someone
Speaker 2: who can take you out to help you learn to
Speaker 2: settle your or settle your physiology down by learning massage
Speaker 2: or having a massage or having doing some Shei gung
Speaker 2: many any many strategies can help to begin the healing process.
Speaker 2: And I say begin it because it does take time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, Gillian, well done on your book, and thank
Speaker 1: you for coming unhealthy it.
Speaker 2: It's a pleasure for listening.
Speaker 1: I am sure many of you could appreciate what Gillian
Speaker 1: was talking about and have probably felt those symptoms and
Speaker 1: not had any answers from western medicine. If you do
Speaker 1: want to read more about well how to recover from paying, fatigue, weakness,
Speaker 1: and all those other symptoms, grab it Jillian's new book.
Speaker 1: It is out now. It is called What the Hell
Speaker 1: Is Wrong with Me? If you did enjoy this chat,
Speaker 1: tell us rate and review it, or of course you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to this podcast, share is It with a friend,
Speaker 1: someone who needs to hear Jillian's wisdom. Anything else head
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Speaker 1: your local Sunday paper and until tomorrow. Stay healthy it