Redefining Medicine: An Empowering Journey

Summary
In this episode of the Catapult Effect podcast, host Katie Wrigley discusses the importance of redefining medicine and understanding the healing power within ourselves. She emphasizes the limitations of traditional medicine, particularly in managing chronic conditions, and encourages listeners to explore alternative healing methods. 

Katie highlights various forms of 'medicine' that can enhance well-being, including diet, music, meditation, and connection with others. She concludes by urging listeners to implement lifestyle changes and track their progress over 30 days to experience the benefits of these alternative approaches.

Takeaways

• Redefining medicine can empower individuals to take charge of their health.
• Traditional medicine often focuses on managing symptoms rather than healing.
• Chronic conditions require a deeper exploration beyond traditional medical approaches.
• Lifestyle changes, such as diet and exercise, can serve as powerful medicine.
• Connection with others is essential for mental and emotional health.
• Sleep is a crucial component of overall health and recovery.
  
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Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:00.866)
Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley. Today I wanted to talk to you about something near and dear to my heart. And this is actually like my fourth shot at this episode because I want to make sure that I'm coming at it from a position of empowerment and not from judgment. And I wasn't sure if I had done that on my previous takes. So here I am again and you're hearing the live episode. So there's a few things I want to go over today and what I really want you

to start to look at is redefining medicine can be one of the most empowering things you can do for yourself and starting to understand how much healing power you already have inside of your body and different ways that you can activate it simply by redefining what medicine is to you. So first, I wanna make sure you understand what is the traditional medical system? What is it actually doing? What are some use cases where this is the best model for you?

And when do you want to start to expand out of that system to achieve a higher level of health and a higher quality of life? And then we're going to talk about different medicines using air quote that you can incorporate into your daily life that you may not have thought of as medicine until you heard this episode. So this is what we're going to talk about today. The first point, what is traditional medicine? So you may hear it referred to as the allopathic model.

Or you may be like, what the hell is allopathic, which was the word I said the first time I heard it. It is the traditional medical model where you have your primary care doctor, and then you may have different specialists that you're assigned to depending on the condition of your health. Like when I was disabled, I had my primary care, and I had a psychologist, and I had a hematologist, and I had a rheumatologist, and an orthopedist, and a physiatrist, and a pain doctor. I had a lot going on.

and none of that was actually getting me to heal. We're go back to that in a moment. But the traditional system, that is what I'm talking about. Where you got your copay, it's covered by insurance, it's regular traditional medical doctors who have gone to some sort of medical school, passed their boards in the state. They may not have a functional or alternative holistic component to them. They are what we would call the traditional medical doctor. The best uses for this,

Katie Wrigley (02:26.754)
This is when you go to the ER. That's part of the traditional medical system. You want this system when you've been in a car accident. You want this system if you have experienced physical trauma. You want this system if you have an acute condition that you need help for immediately. This system is amazing to help get things from acute status down under control very, very quickly. And it's still my go-to for most things.

Body pain, however, I don't go to the traditional medical system. And again, we're going to cover that a little bit later. So that's traditional medicine and just a couple of use cases. And again, my idea here is to expand outside of this, not demonize any part of our health system, but to really look and give you the tools to empower yourself. The other thing I want you to understand, especially if you are someone who has a chronic condition, chronic stress, chronic anxiety, chronic pain,

an autoimmune disease, this is where I really want you to be hearing what I'm talking about. That system is designed to manage your symptoms. It may or may not result in healing, but most of the time when you're talking about a chronic condition, it is not there to actually heal you. It is there to manage your symptoms so that you have a higher quality of life.

and you utilize things like pharmaceuticals to help you manage those symptoms, but it is not getting to the root. So let me give you an analogy of the difference between managing versus healing. So let's look at a plant. Let's say you had this beautiful plant. It's huge and it's just growing in this corner of your room and you love it. But then one day you notice that some of the leaves are starting to wilt and die. So you just pluck them off. You don't think too much about it. You continue on with your day. A couple of weeks later.

happening again. This process continues for a few months and now this beautiful plant you had is looking kind of sparse and scraggly almost maybe like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree and you aren't sure what's going on. Are you going to continue to take the leaves off of the plant or are you going to start to take a look at the roots and what's going on in that plant that's causing all the leaves to fall off? At that point with your beloved plant you're probably going to be looking at the root level.

Katie Wrigley (04:47.776)
In this way, this is what humans need to do as well. If you're just managing those symptoms and the problem is not going away and you're only getting temporary relief and you feel trapped, you're probably just doing the equivalent of trimming the leaves. And now it's time for you to look at the roots because the roots are where you are going to find lasting healing. And those roots can be different emotions that are part of it. And just look at emotions as an electrical charge.

in your nervous system. Heavy emotions like shame, like guilt, like anger, those are going to take away your charge, your energy. You need energy to heal, period. Emotions like joy, love, bliss, peace, those are going to charge your batteries and they are going to raise your energy and give you more energy. But when you have a lot of pain and a lot of things around that,

it's going to be really difficult to stay in those higher energy levels because the battery is constantly getting drained. That is when your body is acting like that plant, it's shot out about half of its leaves and it's like, can you please look at my roots and see what's going on here so we can feel healthy again, please. So that's the difference between managing and healing. And what happened in my own story, in 2018, I did a routine knee replacement. I had not really...

gone outside the traditional medical system yet other than for massage, chiropractic, a little bit of acupuncture. I hadn't done too much outside of it yet. And I wasn't healing after that knee surgery and that's what led me to several months of disability after years of debilitating pain. This caused me to take a very hard look at my life. And what was going on was that I had drained my energy so much through toxic lifestyle,

through toxic eating, through a lot of toxicity, including the environment that I had created in my own house, it was toxic. So I didn't have the energy to heal, so I didn't heal. This is when I started to look outside the traditional medical system and I started to let go. And this took a while, and I started to let go of all those specialists and the reliance on them.

Katie Wrigley (07:06.346)
One of the coaches that I worked with early on planted the most important seed and this is a seed that I plant in my own clients. And that seed, and I want to plant it in you today too, you already have everything within you that you need to heal. You may be calling bullshit on me hearing that and that's okay, call bullshit on me. I called bullshit on my coach when she said that too and she proved me wrong. Yay! Call bullshit on me if that makes you feel better right now.

This isn't about trying to convince you. I would just like you to consider this episode and see where you may be able to change things in your life so that you have a higher level of healing and wellness. And what I really want you to understand is you already have so much more power than you realize. You just have not been taught how to look inward to unleash that power and benefit from it. So this is what I want to start to get you looking at today. So when you start to look at yourself,

and realize that you have healing ability within you and it is a matter of raising your energy to really stimulate that level of healing, it becomes a different matter entirely. So what are some of the things that we can include as medicine? Now, I pulled up the dictionary definition of medicine to be very clear. And so what it says, and this is the Oxford Dictionary, the science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention

disease. The other definition is a compound or preparation used for the treatment or prevention of disease. It can be a drug or drugs taken by mouth, but it does not have to be. So when we're talking about prevention and treatment, we aren't just talking about pharmaceuticals. We're actually talking about lifestyle medicine, holistic medicine.

alternative medicine, functional medicine, depending on what you're looking at. So what are some things that can be medicine? Music can be medicine. There's a whole bunch of science around what different music will bring out in us and the power of going back to like your flagship song at some of the best times in your life and calling that up again. Music can be medicine. Taking a walk can be medicine.

Katie Wrigley (09:29.504)
Supplements can be medicine. Diet, my gosh, diet is one of the best medicines you can have. And again, if you look at yourself and start to think of your body like a battery and think things are either gonna recharge your energy or it's gonna drain your energy, it gets much more simple to decide what you wanna do and what you wanna eat. If you're putting a whole bunch of processed stuff and sugary substances into your body,

That's going to be draining your energy because your body is going to be getting those toxins out of there. Those are things that your body was not meant to eat. It's not going to be able to heal while it's getting all that stuff out. So you're going to slow the healing process. Whereas if you eat to fuel your body, now you're empowering yourself. Now you're actually giving yourself wellness through diet. And I have heard countless stories of people who have healed, fully healed all symptoms, reversed symptoms of diabetes.

Hashimoto's disease of multiple sclerosis through diet Meditation that is another form of medicine and again I've heard equally compelling stories about people who have healed simply through meditation Dr. Joe Dispenza is one of the most famous cases that a lot of people have heard of hundreds of thousands I think millions of people now follow him with good reason his story is incredible

He was hit by a full-sized Ford Bronco in the middle of a triathlon when he was on his bike and he was dragged for a block. And they were told, he was told that he was gonna need a cage. I forget what the procedure was called, but he was told he was gonna need a cage around his spine to be able to walk again. And he knew, because he was a chiropractor and he knew he had the medical training, he knew what that impact was gonna be on his life long term and he wasn't interested in that. So then he had the idea, well, wait a second, I know the human body really well.

What if I just visualize the healing that I want to have happen? And so that's what he did. Is he was in traction, so he took that time and he meditated and meditated and meditated. And if he lost track, he started again. And he visualized his entire spine repairing the way that he knew it could. And nine weeks after that, he walked out of the hospital without a cage around his spine. And now he's dedicating his life to finding the science to back up.

Katie Wrigley (11:49.272)
how he was able to achieve this for himself. I mean, what a cool story. And it's absolutely incredible. And that is something that is available to all of us once we have learned how to empower ourselves and utilize our own minds and different fuel for our body as medicine to be able to elicit this level of healing. Cognitive movement.

is one of my favorite forms of medicine. That's gonna help take that charge out of those heavy emotions that are draining the battery, and it's gonna allow more of those positive emotions that are fueling your battery and recharging your battery to take place. Red light therapy. Just a few weeks ago, I interviewed the CEO to Lumaflex. Amazing man. Highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode. It was fantastic. And basically what red light therapy is doing,

is it is energizing you down at the mitochondria, which is one of the energy levels that fills into cells. I may not be saying that right, but it gets right down at the mitochondria level with the ATP, which is the energy of the cells. It boosts that energy. And so the body just knows to heal in the areas that are getting hit or treated. Treated is better than hit, are getting treated with red light therapy. It is absolutely fascinating to see. And it's really cool.

I bought one of my own devices. Again, highly recommend you check out that episode. I will link that episode in the show notes so that you can just check it out directly from here. Hanging out with your friends, that can be medicine. Connecting with your kids, putting the devices to the side. And I mean, take it out of the room. There is so much science that even just having a device in the room totally takes some of our attention from the people that we want to be around the most. Connection.

is so healing. When we have true connection with people, we really fuel our souls. We fuel our mental health. You want to have your phone nowhere in sight in order to have that connection. Connect to your kids. That is a way that you can have medicine. Connect to your friends. That is a form of medicine. Having a random dance party can be medicine. Taking a nap in the middle of the day to refuel your batteries, that can be medicine.

Katie Wrigley (14:06.424)
What else do we have so much? Playing, my gosh. Playing and laughter, some of my favorite medicine. And there's elements of play within cognitive movement, which is one of the reasons that I enjoy it so much. Getting down on the ground and playing with kids, if your body still lets you do that, it's gonna feel really, really good. You're going to be boosting so much happiness in your head. When you are taking a walk in nature, you're getting serotonin from the sun, you're getting dopamine, you're getting...

Endorphin rushes depending on how fast you're going when you're exercising you can get those endorphins going and get that running high But that serotonin you're getting from the Sun and that's something else you can do as medicine 20 minutes of sunlight in the morning can actually boost your serotonin and your mood for the day and serotonin actually translates into melatonin as We go into the nighttime. So one of the things that you could do to help yourself have a good night's sleep

is to get some sunlight early in the morning. Some sleep experts say you want to do that within 30 minutes of waking. If you wake with the sun like me, you're getting it right away, especially if a dog has to go outside first thing in the morning like I do. I immediately get a hit of sunshine right into my day just by the nature of being a dog mom. It's one of the ways that I'm starting to empower and fuel my body in the morning. There are so many things I'm not even touching the whole list.

of what you can use as medicine. So I want to encourage you to look in your life, what can you do as medicine? And I'm not talking about alcohol or drugs that are gonna numb. Numbing is not medication. That is a brief respite from what is bothering you. It is not gonna be a permanent fix. So I wanna stay away from those mind-altering substances because that's not what I'm talking about as medicine. The only exception would be psychedelic medicine when administered in a formal setting.

with intention, with very skilled practitioners and facilitators who are leading you. That can be medicine and has a hugely healing effect deep down at that root level that we were talking about. Psychedelics are not managing your symptoms. They are actually going into the root to help clear out some of these issues and help find the reasons that they are there in the first place. So that is absolutely...

Katie Wrigley (16:31.258)
medication when again it is it is a formal setting with someone who is skilled and very much understands and has the skills to know when to come into your ceremony because you are in trouble and when you need to work through it on your own and Sort it out of the body on your own without any additional assistance You absolutely want to make sure you've got highly skilled people to do that Psychedelics are also not for everybody. Everything I'm saying is not

for everybody. So I want you to pick and choose what feels best for you. One of the best things that I can give you as a takeaway from the episode is there's three things you can do for free, which are going to immediately have a positive benefit on you. And you can dial them all in at the same time and you're gonna have the most effect if you do. And that is eating, moving, sleeping.

Sleep again is medicine and we tend to avoid it as a culture and a species. We're actually the only animal that tries to get all of our sleep in one fell swoop. If you look at your animals, notice they nap many times during the day and they sleep at night. Humans try to do it all at one. The other thing is we don't give ourselves enough time. We think, I need eight hours of sleep. If I want to get up at six, I'll go to bed at 10. You actually want to go to bed at nine if you want to get up at six. Because even with 90 % sleep efficiency,

you are not gonna be asleep for that entire eight hours. It's gonna take you a few minutes to fall asleep. You may wake up a couple times during the night, it's normal. And then there's the waking up in the morning. So you wanna actually give yourself an extra hour around that sleep so that you have enough time to get the sleep that you want. And it is absolutely medicine. And sleep is gonna help you be more on target with your diet the next day, fueling the body rather than draining it.

And it's also going to make you more likely to want to move. And movement and fitness, fitness is directly correlated to longevity and for a longer health span. Fitness is one of the best things that you can do. And no matter where you may be, there is something that you can start to do to move your body more. Even if you are disabled right now, I encourage you to reach out to your physical therapist and say, hey, I want to start moving more. What is a way that I can start to do that now?

Katie Wrigley (18:49.676)
that is safe for me. So reach out to your team and ask for help to start to move more. But just dialing in sleep, diet and movement, you're going to do a world of goodness without even anything else that we've talked about in this episode. So my call to action for you. I want you to take one of the ideas that I listed in here or something else. You probably came up with another idea outside of what I listed and start to utilize that as medicine into your life.

Give it about 30 days and notice what changes in those 30 days. So that means you're also gonna want to journal today. How is your state of being? What is your stress level? What is your anxiety level? What is your pain level? How fulfilling does life feel on a scale of one to 10? And then look at that again after a month of using that new medicine, whether it's lifestyle, holistic, whatever it may be. Maybe it's a supplement. Maybe it's taking a daily walk.

but notice what changes in those 30 days and go back to your journal again after those 30 days and see what's changed. Thank you so much for joining me again today. I will be back again next week with a new episode and until then, please be well.