Easy ways to protect your brain from anesthesia and ways to recover.

Over 80% of adults experience “high” stress these days, feeling more intense or poorly regulated emotions than when they are not so stressed. While some stress is good, long-term stress or short bursts of high levels are not and have significant health impacts such as a poorly functioning immune system and heart attack. Stress can cause poor health, but poor health or changes in health can cause worsening stress. Surgery itself is stressful! For the patient AND family members

The Sleep Struggle Up to 70% of Americans struggle with sleep once a week. 1/3 struggle on a nightly basis. This is a lot, but I would say that closer to 100% of my surgical patients have trouble sleeping at some point they are under my care. Either their pre-operative condition interrupts their sleep, or the pain and recovery from the trauma of surgery is enough to disturb their sleep, or there are long term effects from the operations that I as a surgeon can’t do much about

I recently met up with a friend who is also a physician and a mom. She had hip replacement surgery a few weeks ago, and while that wasn’t the main topic of conversation, I was struck by a difficulty she had after surgery that could have easily been prevented or improved upon. She said that the effect of surgery- anesthesia and postoperative pain and immobility- affected her sleep significantly and “that made everything worse.” Amazing how important sleep is to our systems esp

BLENDING HOLISTIC MEDICINE AND SURGERY FOR BETTER RECOVERY Vitamin C is easier than other vitamins to obtain in foods, yet up to 70% of American adults are not getting enough on a daily basis. This is a vitamin that is not stored in the body so we need to replenish it all the time. Our food sources are over utilized and have less nutrition in them than ever, making supplementation an important adjunct to improve our health. High dose vitamin C supplements are not that helpful

EXPLORE ESSENTIAL RECOVERY ADVICE AFTER KNEE REPLACEMENT SURGERY INCLUDING SLEEP POSITIONING, PAIN RELIEF STRATEGIES, AND REGAINING MOBILITY. Research says that it takes 3-6 months to return to your usual sleep or quality sleep after surgery. Yikes! That sounds brutal. There are some basic sleep positioning techniques that are all over the web but if someone tells me that I’m going to have to sleep on my back or wait weeks to sleep on my side, I’d be beside myself and grumpy

BENEFIT FROM CANCER SURGERY PERFORMED BY AN EXPERIENCED CANCER SURGEON DEDICATED TO PROVIDING ACCURATE STAGING AND CHOOSING EFFECTIVE TREATMENT. “Radical” is referring to cancer operations where the entire “packet” of lymph nodes is removed in addition to removing the organ with the cancer and sometimes more than one organ. This is not necessary for all cancers or stages and is done selectively. This is a more aggressive approach for cancer that has spread or has a higher cha

So, a robot is NOT actually doing the surgery. Sorry to disappoint anyone!!! Robotics refers to a machine that is made to do human functions. In the case of surgery, robotics and computer technology is used to enhance surgical vision and precision in minimally invasive surgery, and there are times when it really is very cool. Let me tell you about how I use it as a general surgeon. Much of this applies to urology and gynecology as well. The Set Up We start the case much like

Surgical progress is measured by incision size, time of surgery, and minimizing complications. To that end, patients recover better when the incisions are smaller, they just do. That’s the first role of minimally invasive surgery. But smaller is not always better, and if the incision is too small then we can’t see well enough or have room to do our surgical work. Role number two for minimally invasive surgery is seeing well with a small incision. We try to make the smallest s

BLENDING PRINCPLES OF HOLISTIC MEDICINE WITH SURGICAL HEALING Vitamin A is essential to all phases of wound healing, from the day of surgery to the final phase 1-2 years later. If you are a fan of pan-fried beef liver, you are in luck and can get plenty of vitamin A with a serving of beef liver every few days while healing. I’ve actually had a patient do that! But if you aren’t, then you have to eat a lot of vegetables and servings of dairy to get the daily suggested value of

USING HOLISTIC MEDICINE PRINCIPLES WITH HIGH TECH CANCER SURVEILLANCE Once a breast cancer patient has completed breast surgery or surgeries, radiation, chemotherapy, etc., it’s time for them to move on from their diagnosis and get back to living life. The risk of recurrence is not zero but there are several ways to make that risk as close to zero as possible as he/she lives their best cancer free life. It is important to figure out what your risks actually are. Some risks a

Also called partial mastectomy, “lumpectomy” is when only the lump or mass is removed, not the whole breast. It can be confusing to have two names for the same thing. This surgery is done for cancer, a suspicious area seen on mammogram, an abnormal cyst, or a bothersome fibroadenoma. Self compassion journaling or meditation (w/ links) for your abnormal imaging, diagnosis, and/or need for surgery Take the surgery healing supplement Percuro before and after Melatonin for sleep

Have compassion for whatever reason you are having the uterus removed- painful fibroids, crazy amounts of bleeding, or cancer. In any of these cases, your daily life is affected and you can’t be entirely yourself. Have compassion for having the uterus removed at all. Because this is THE organ that grows babies, having it makes a lot of women feel like a woman and it is a difficult emotional process having it removed. Have a plan for returning to your normal sexual life after

Stop eating any processed foods, fast foods, foods with added fats, and foods with added sugar 2 weeks before surgery, or as soon as you can before surgery. This will avoid asking too much of your gallbladder AND help decrease any inflammation at the cellular level. You’ll feel a lot better. Eat whole foods and drink plenty of water daily. Have self compassion for the pain and discomfort of the gallbladder, the stress of surgery, and the stress of not knowing when another att

The "sampling” or “biopsy” of the lymph nodes under the arm is done for any breast cancer surgery as well as some preventative breast surgery. This is when the “gate-keeper” or “first draining” lymph nodes of the breast are taken from under the arm, and this helps the cancer doctors determine the treatments you need after surgery. Even thought he term is “biopsy,” we take the entire lymph node, and try to get at least two, but that leaves 20-40 more under the arm to work for

Mastectomy means removal of the entire breast. This most often includes a night in the hospital to watch for bleeding as there is a large “raw” surface under the skin, as well as a drain to remove fluid that the body uses to fill in empty cavities. We need the skin to stick to the chest wall, so we drain that fluid. Expect the drain to be in place for several days to a week or more, depending on how much fluid your body makes. And nope, you don’t have control over this. But t

For whatever reason, American society has decided that we need to be tough and deny ourselves the compassion we are due when under stress.. Well, guess what? THAT DOESN’T WORK especially when we are faced with surgery, cancer, or a significant injury. There is plenty of research showing that self-compassion (not to be confused with self-pity) is incredibly helpful during times of personal struggle. Life is most often a range of hard times. Let’s acknowledge the impact it has

Turns out that a bedtime routine is really good for adults too… ESPECIALLY when their sleep is compromised because they are going through health problems and need surgery. Respecting the routine around sleep will improve your SLEEP HYGIENE. Start the exercise of creating a bedtime routine with the typical dinner, bath, and bedtime items, and build from there. Add in more complex parts listed below that apply to you. I’ll also give some examples. Together we can make this eas

Many of the ways to improve one tenet of surgical wellness will also improve another, and if one is improved then others often benefit. They are all interconnected, which is why we need to care for the whole of the surgical patient but also makes improvement easier. A little goes a long way! Read the Surgical Wellness Reflection to see where you would benefit from small adjustments in your daily life, or scroll through each tenet of Surgical Wellness below and note if any of

Don’t go into surgery alone, let our surgical wellness coaching program walk WITH you on your journey to THRIVE with surgery! We are starting to see more in surgical literature about the importance of being supported emotionally, and honestly this seems super obvious. It’s amazing to me that the western world hasn’t figured this out sooner. I digress. It’s my opinion that everyone could use that support when going through the really tough scary time facing surgery. Step 1 Whe