Freedom From Anxiety with Dr. Alice Fong

Transcript for Freedom From Anxiety

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast, we’re talking about how to be free from anxiety this time of year. During the holidays we’re more prone to feeling stressed and anxious. So on today’s podcast my guest covers her five step holistic approach to addressing anxiety. Dr. Alice Fong is my guest. She is a naturopathic doctor specializing in anxiety and stress management who helps people develop more awareness of their minds and bodies to give them the power back to heal themselves. She practices in both the Bay Area and Sacramento, California as well as virtually in order to have a larger global impact. She is creator of the Healing Around the World Project, Introduction Leader for Landmark, video blog host of Love Lessons with Dr. Alice and an inspirational speaker and coach. She strongly believes that the mind body connection is an essential component of health and having love and happiness for yourself and for your life are very important. In today’s interview, we cover everything from best and worst foods to eat, key nutrients, underlying causes and mindfulness tools to help reduce stress and anxiety. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Alice, welcome to the spa doctor podcast. It’s great to have you on.

Dr. Fong: Well, thank you Trevor. It’s good to be on. Yeah. So I know we are talking about anxiety today and who doesn’t have anxiety, especially this time of the year. So it’s good to talk about. And so what led you to specialize in this area first of all?

Dr. Fong: You know, I actually suffered from anxiety myself for a long time and had racing thoughts all the time, especially through med school. I think that just amplified my anxiety to a whole other level where, you know, I remember finals week we had nine finals. It was insane. And I was like surviving off of a rockstar energy drinks and getting four hours of sleep and it was not working. And it didn’t improve my performance at all. And I realized like anxiety can really be detrimental to having a fulfilled and enjoyable life.

Dr. Fong: So, I’ve dealt with, I’ve done so many things for myself. I’ve been on personal development retreats, meditation retreats, I’ve done biofeedback, counseling, all sorts of things for myself. And I utilize a lot of those tools when I help my patients.

Dr. Cates: Right. Okay, great. So, well, when you, when you think about underlying what’s underlying anxiety, what do you think? I know as a naturopathic physician we always talk about the root cause. So what do we think about some of these underlying causes of anxiety?

Dr. Fong: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think a lot of the underlying anxiety is caused by believing that our thoughts are the reality of this situation. Like all of us have this little voice in our head that’s like chattering, chattering, chattering, and saying things like, I’m not good enough. Oh, it’s gotta be better. It’s all of these like, oh, like the worst could happen. You’ve gotta be prepared. And all these things that feel like the truth and reality of the situation. But it really, it’s just thoughts and when we can separate ourselves from like, hey these are thoughts I have occasionally and we can actually be freed up to just continue on in life in a lot of different ways.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, yeah, like you know, we were talking about it’s normal, have some anxiety, right? It’s just, it’s a lot about how we manage it and at certain times of our lives that anxiety is worse. And so if we can support ourselves during those times, especially as we are going into a potential situation where we know that we’re going to be more triggered for this, then it’s going to, we’re going to set ourselves up for success. Right. So what are some of the things, some of the tools that you think are so important to help support people through times of high anxiety?

Dr. Fong: Yeah, I think that’s a great question too. There’s so many different tools and I use kind of like a multifaceted approach. Actually I developed like this new system called the Amour System, which is like five parts, a holistic approach that, you know, the first part is really looking at like your more, I was trying to figure out something that started with A, so I started with like amazing nutrition, amazing nutrition is like the foundation you would be so surprised how much food affects how you feel.

Dr. Fong: And you know, especially around the holidays are really stressful. You start eating a bunch of sugar and junk and, and you feel more stressed and that’s just a coping mechanism. And when you can like focus on those whole foods, you can really like feel a little more balanced in your body. That’s actually balancing your hormones. It’s balancing your blood sugar levels. That is really essential. The second part of the, Amour System, the M stands for mindfulness. Mindfulness, can be from counseling or meditation, other different techniques. I do hypnotherapy, I do biofeedback. There’s a lot of different tools within the mindfulness realm and I think that’s really essential to treat anxiety. The O in Amour in the more system is standing for ordering labs cause we really gotta see as a naturopathic doctor, you know, we have to really look at the underlying root cause to our concerns.

Dr. Fong: So maybe there’s some underlying medical condition that you’re completely unaware of. Maybe it’s a thyroid issue, maybe it’s autoimmune issue that’s contributing to the anxiety that you have no idea is going on. And that can manifest in a lot of different ways. The U stands for uncovering pathologies or diseases or those from ordering reviewing the labs, basically uncovering like nutritional deficiencies. Maybe you’re deficient in magnesium or certain B vitamins, vitamin D that can contribute to things. Maybe there’s underlying food allergies too. So that can be also like gluten and dairy. Those could be contributing factors as well. And then the R my favorite. The last part of Amour is the restore, renew, reshape, reenergize your body. That’s like the best part is like really taking the time to care for yourself because a lot of, I feel like a lot of us are just in this hamster wheel. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And we don’t take the time to like see what we need for ourselves to listen to our body, to listen to our intuition and move forward with that.

Dr. Cates: Absolutely. Okay, so let’s go through, I’m going to go back through some of these. So when you talk about the amazing foods, or amazing nutrition, what are we, you talked about the foods that are the big trigger foods like sugar and processed foods. And I know those are foods that we’re so often craving when we are stressed or going into high anxiety times. So what are some tips to help people avoid those foods? And then what are the foods that are more nourishing to the body that, that you encourage people to replace them with?

Dr. Fong: Yeah, so sugar, I know it is my weakness as well. I’ve done the elimination diet. For those of you who don’t know what the elimination diet is, it’s not about losing weight, it’s about figuring out what food sensitivities you have. And I’ve done it myself probably five. I always do it in January, just right after the holidays because I need to reset my body too because that sugar, it just creeps in. And then there’s points like I know when the sugar cravings are controlling my brain because I will want to go to the store in the middle of the night and get something sweet. And that’s when I know that’s when the problem is happening. And so that’s when I know like the really the best and only way I think to cut it to, to remove those cravings is to cut it out for a while and you have to go through that withdrawal, which is really for me like cutting out gluten, dairy, not hard, but the sugar, the withdrawal is the hardest.

Dr. Fong: And I was actually at a medical conference like two years ago and something I learned and discovered in that conference was that it’s not just, this is how I like encouraged my patients. It’s, it’s not just a lack of willpower when you, when to run off to the store to get that sugar. It’s actually what happens to your body is when you eat all that processed junk in the sugar, it actually feeds the bad gut bacteria that tells send signals to your brain to say keep eating that junk. That’s what helps it grow and flourish, even though it’s not good for your body, it helps me the bad gut bacteria. So really the best way to get rid of that is to like start them out. Don’t give them the foods that they want. And so that’s going to be a process I’d say like give yourself at least a week, get that like, you’ll, you won’t even realize how much you crave that sugar until you’ve cut it out and you realize, Oh man, I want to run to the store.

Dr. Fong: And that’s when you’re like, no, I can’t do it. Starve those suckers out and promote the healthy gut bacteria with like vegetables. I always say, you can’t go to town and as much vegetables as you want. I’m a person that doesn’t emphasize a low calorie diets, I actually emphasize high quality foods and eat as much high quality foods as you want. And that includes as many as many vegetables as you can handle so you’re never hungry. And then you know, just some healthy proteins. That could be some lean meats like some chicken, fish, maybe beef on occasion, or beans if you’re vegetarian. And yeah, having some quality fats, like avocado is a good source. Fish is a good source. Helping nuts, beans. Those are some good sources of health fat. Olive oil of course. Yeah.

Dr. Cates: Great, great. Those are fantastic. And you know, I feel like you said, vegetables, eat more vegetables. And so I think if people make it easy and cause one of the things about sugar sugary high sugary foods is they’re usually really easy to grab. And when you’re hungry it’s really easy to grab those first. But if you make vegetables easy, which chopping them up and having them all prepped and ready to go and you eat those first, you’re going to be less likely to grab those sugar, high sugar foods. Right. It’s cause you’ll grab those first, get rid of that immediate hunger or that desire to just chew on something. Sometimes it’s something to chew on. And so if you’re chewing on like zucchini sticks or cucumber sticks or cherry tomatoes or something like that, you’re just chewing on those instead and then hopefully you won’t need to grab the sugar as much. Right. Okay, great. And I know you talk about mindfulness practice and you mentioned hypnosis as one of the tools that you do. How does that play in? How do you put that? When do you recommend that for people? How do you put that into your patient care?

Dr. Fong: Yeah, it is really amazing and effective for people with anxiety, especially like phobias and fears. I’ve treated people with like fears of flying, fears of driving and it’s really, really effective. Like I remember doing like two sessions, with the person who had fear of flying and it resolved her fear. What it does is like how hypnotherapy works is that it’s kind of, or how I do it, it’s actually a, a specific type of technique. The neuro-linguistic reprogramming and what it involves, it’s kind of like meditation combined with counseling. So I’m not just talking at you the whole time. I’m actually I’m talking, I’m guiding you.

Dr. Fong: It’s kind of like a relaxing, guided meditation as I get you into that trans state as they call it. So you’re nice and relaxed and I think it’s sometimes faster and more effective than traditional talk therapy because you’re in that relaxed state and so that’s staying in your brain and your head. And like intellectually you can understand how things are working, but on an emotional level, you’ve, you’re still like not following those similar repetitive, unhealthy bad behaviors or thought patterns. And so what hypnotherapy does, it’s like once we get you into that relaxed state, we I’ll be conversing with you, kind of like counseling you to help you discover what’s in your subconscious mind that’s getting in your way from like being more effective in life. And it’s really an amazing tool. Usually and it’s safe. It’s like, I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, I can’t make you, there’s no like risk of maybe you doing something immoral, something like that, but it’s pretty safe and powerful. And usually people feel really positive and confident after even just like one session. But it does take, you know, a few sessions depending on the severity of your case as well.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. You know, we’ve all heard or seen those hypnotherapists or people that do performances where they make people do things that they don’t even remember doing. So it’s not like that.

Dr. Fong: No. That’s strange hypnosis. That’s not, no, I won’t make you quack like a duck or anything like that.

Dr. Cates: I used a while back, I had a fear of swimming because I had a near drowning experience when I was a kid. So I work with and hypnotherapists who also did NLP, neuro-linguistic programming and it was great because I was able to overcome that fear and actually did a mini triathlon in Santa Barbara. Yeah. So I, that was years ago when I in Santa Barbara, but I mean I’m forever grateful for that. It was such a powerful tool and now I’m comfortable swimming laps and you know, my fear wasn’t extreme to begin with. But I was amazed though that how it would, it was limiting my ability to just swim laps and enjoy swimming and then I got to the point where actually I enjoy it. So it’s a very, very powerful tool and so I encourage people to, to find a practitioner that’s really good. Is there some sort of training that people that, you know, people should look for when it comes to hypnotherapy or NLP? That is kind of like a good place to look?

Dr. Fong: You know, I trained with Mary Lee Lebay and she is an amazing trainer. She’s been in this work for decades and she’s incredible. I did her programs as continuing education through Bastyr University, which is where I went to medical school. So it was an incredible tool and I love it, my patients love it. They feel good when they do it. And, and yeah, like you were said about the swimming, it’s not like a live or die kind of situation, but you know, it is limiting and that’s what people find, you know, a fear of flying or if you’re driving or fear of anything is limiting you to having like a more full life and it doesn’t have to be that way. And I like to let people know that.

Dr. Cates: Right. I mean, because like you said, it gets in the way of your life. Like for me, I had little kids and I was thinking, gosh, if I can’t swim and if they fall in the water and I’m not a strong swimmer, that’s tough for me. And also I want to be able to empower them with swimming and feeling comfortable in the water. So if I have that fear, most likely I’m going to pass it along to them. As parents or teachers or anybody that tries to guide other people, they pick up on our fears and our anxieties. So if we can reduce or eliminate them, then not only are going to help ourselves, we’re going to help the people around us. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so, but let’s talk about some of these underlying causes. You talked about because if someone has some of these root causes, they may not even realize they’re connected to the anxiety that they’re having. Like you mentioned some thyroid and autoimmune diseases and hormonal imbalances that are related to anxiety. So can you explain more about that? What people should look for?

Dr. Fong: Yeah, that’s really comes to, you know, anxiety doesn’t necessarily come as like a, well I mean it’s, sometimes it’s just like a sole symptom in itself and that’s all your experience. But usually if you’re noticing other other things like you’re have difficulty losing weight or you have joint pain or you just feel like fatigued and you just feel gross in your body all the time, I would wanna say maybe there’s something else going on that’s also contributing and then you feeling gross or not good in your body that’s feeding into your anxiety or your depression and that anxiety, depression feeds into whatever you’re having and then it just like circles around continuously. So really I recommend people get checked out by their doctor, whether it’s a naturopathic doctor, your primary care and make sure you get the blood tests to rule out any of those conditions because if that’s not being addressed then it will continue to feed into your condition’s going to feed into your anxiety and that anxiety is going to feed into your condition. And what happens over time if you’re in a prolonged anxious or stressed state, you’re kind of like stuck in this loop. There’s this like our nervous system, that sympathetic nervous system for those of you who might not know that that’s your fight or flight mode and if you’re stuck there that’s really detrimental to your health because it decreases your immune function. It makes you so that makes you more susceptible diseases and it just messes your whole body in a lot of, a lot of different ways. So I always talk about the autonomic nervous system and how to balance that with biofeedback.

Dr. Cates: Great. And I think working with an naturopathic physician like yourself or you know, like one of us or a functional medicine doctor that can help identify help you figure out what those other health challenges might be. Identify them through different from different lab work and various things to determine what exactly is behind this and addressing those other health issues so that you don’t have anxiety around those. And also figuring out what your unexplained symptoms might be related to. Right, right. Absolutely. Yeah. What are some of the tests that you like to do with your patients to help reveal their root causes.

Dr. Fong: Yeah. I noticed that a lot of patients come to me with thyroid issues and all they’ve been tested for is their TSH, which annoys me because I want to see a full thyroid panel all the time. And what also gets missed a lot of times in lab work is your thyroid antibodies cause you don’t know if it’s like your run of the mill hypothyroidism or if it’s like the autoimmune version, which is the Hashimoto’s Disease where you’ve got to run the auto, the antibodies for that to really know because there’s, there’s a slight variation in how I would treat it. So that’s important. Sometimes I do a reverse t3, that’s also a common thing that doesn’t, or it’s an uncommon lab, I think a lot of doctors don’t run. I do your complete blood counts. I do your metabolic panel, but some other underlying, like more like specialty labs or functional medicine labs that I tend to order that you don’t necessarily see with your traditional primary care, not all, but would be like I love ordering the micronutrient tests which tests like 35 or six different micronutrients. So that’s your vitamins your minerals your amino acids, your antioxidants and what it looks at is your white blood cells and not your red blood cells. Red blood cells are helpful and indicative of a lot of things, but the benefit of the white blood cells is it’s showing a long term picture of like the last three or six months. Whereas if you’re looking at the blood, the red blood cells, then it, it’s looking at our short term picture and it might not be the more accurate picture. Like if you ODed on B12 the day before it might impact, your results for that. So the micronutrient test, and you’d be amazed at how many nutrient deficiencies can cause anxiety, depression as well as a whole myriad of other, other conditions like weight issues or hormone issues.

Dr. Fong: And it just feeds into that. And there’s a lot of different things that can be contributing to those deficiencies. Like certain medications can be causing deficiencies. Medical conditions like cancer or autoimmune conditions can, can be contributing to that. So, or if you have a gut issues, that’s a huge one. If you have a not healthy gut that’s, you’re not able to absorb those nutrients even if you’re doing it supplemental. So it’s good to know where you’re at.

Dr. Cates: Okay. And what about food allergies and tolerances?

Dr. Fong: Oh, yes, that is huge. You know, the, the funny thing, food allergies was, I didn’t realize how big of a difference, like when I was a new doc, seven years ago, I was really hesitant to recommend the elimination diet because it was really hard and intimidating and it was difficult, but as I got more comfortable and confident over the years, I realize this is like the, one of the first things I do is always look at food allergies and consider, having them consider the elimination diet because it is, it can be so effective. It, you know, sometimes the resolves 100% whatever they’re dealing digestive wise or mood wise or migraines. Perhaps it’s another common food allergy thing that we see. And because I started seeing like it was so effective and even if it wasn’t a hundred percent resolution of whatever they’re dealing with, it was like at least a considerable amount like 50-60% improvement, which is huge. And then for the remaining amount where they’re not quite to where they want to be, then we can explore other things. So for me, I always always start with nutrition because it’s the foundation of health and what you put in your body really impacts how you feel in your mind and your body.

Dr. Fong: So I always go there. So common ones like I mentioned before, it’s the dairy, the sugar, the gluten, eggs is another potential one. Soy, corn, this one is the hardest probably for some people to cut out is coffee. And it’s surprising because that can like, it’s like a slow buildup. You might not notice it, but when you cut it out after you go through the withdrawal symptoms, you might notice a difference in your mind doesn’t race so much perhaps. Or for me, I don’t feel like, I still drank coffee. I love my coffee, but I try to limit it, but for me, I notice when I cut out coffee for a while, I sleep better. It doesn’t give me energy, but I noticed it kind of interrupts my sleep when I’m doing it a little too much. So I kind of, those are little subtle things that you want to pay attention to.

Dr. Cates: Right. And you know, there’s a difference between allergies and intolerances. Right. And sensitivities and it, and, and like you said, for some people we’re not talking about an allergy and we’re talking more about an intolerance or sensitivity. It might be that you have that you just need to limit it or only eat it periodically instead of consuming it every day. Like you talked about caffeine and one of the big things with caffeine, like you said, withdrawal symptoms. That’s means there’s an addiction. That’s an addiction symptom is when you withdraw from something and you have headaches, that means you’re addicted. Your body is physically addicted to something. So that’s not a healthy thing for us to set ourselves up for. Sugar is, it’s similar and that people become addicted to it and they can have withdrawal symptoms if they stop eating it or they crave it.

Dr. Cates: And same thing with coffee, you know, certainly alcohol too. And this time of year on lot of times people are looking for those substances. And so even if we limit our consumption of those then we don’t become addicted to them. Right. And so there’re huge health benefits to not, not being addicted to these substances, not becoming physically addicted, emotionally addicted to them. Right.

Dr. Fong: Oh absolutely. And, you are absolutely hit the nail on the hammer about, you know, distinguishing between food allergies and like food intolerances or sensitivities because it, it’s not necessarily like a full blown allergy where you break out in hives and like you need an EpiPen because you might die. It’s like these food sensitivities, they impact our body. They might not be life threatening, but they impact our mood, they impact our weight, they impact our, our digestion for sure impact a lot of different body systems and like a visual I help patients see is like it’s, it’s not might be one thing or another that you was gonna like aggravate you. It’s the cumulation of all of it. So I have people envision a bucket, a bucket of liquid or water and there and that bucket is your body basically and your body can tolerate a certain amount of junk. It can, our bodies are very resilient. So like you fill that bucket with like inflammatory foods, pollutants, toxins, like all of that. Your body can handle it up to a point, but it starts to fill up. And then eventually it just can’t do it anymore and it spills over. And that’s when those symptoms happen. And you just feel gross. That’s where a lot of people don’t realize, they’re like I’m not allergic or sensitive to gluten cause I didn’t have that issue. And then all of a sudden in their thirties or forties they have it and it’s, it’s not because you were just like intolerant.

Dr. Fong: It’s just because you built up over time those toxins and those chemicals and those glutens are just, or those inflammatory factors are just building up. And it’s just like your body could only handle it so much. So you’ve got our reduce the trigger load. So in the elimination diet, when you start to reintroduce foods, you might not like notice any subtle like extreme change. But you definitely notice when you’ve taken everything out for those few weeks, you feel way better in your body. So that’s the difference.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. And I know that you talked about this sort of this tipping point where we hit our body, hits a certain threshold and starts developing symptoms. And definitely I’ve seen that a lot in my practice as well, where somebody will be fine for eating a particular food for awhile and then all of a sudden it changes for them. Or maybe it’s gradual, like they say I used to be able to eat this food every now and then, but now I’m realizing I can’t eat any at all. And also that reason why you might look at other people and say, why is it that they can get away with eating all this sugar or they drink so much coffee and they seem to be healthy and maybe that person hasn’t, hit that threshold yet. But if they continue I mean like if coffee is their only, you know, the only thing they do, and then maybe they’ll be fine, I guess, cause coffees not necessarily toxic for everybody, you know?

Dr. Cates: Yeah, it’d be fine. But if, you know, at some point in their life, if they’re doing a lot, if they’re exposed to a lot of toxins, they’re eating a lot of unhealthy foods, at some point it’s probably going to catch up with them. And genetics certainly play a role on this, right? So somebody might have a genetic predispositions that make them more sensitive to not being able to, more sensitive to toxin exposure. So they, their body is not as able to naturally eliminate those toxins. And so their tipping point is going to happen at maybe a lower threshold, right?

Dr. Fong: Oh, absolutely. Genetics definitely plays a role and, and sometimes it feels unfair to people because it’s a luck of the draw of like what your genetics are going to be. But I like to, you know, encourage people and realize, you know, lifestyle plays a huge role in the whole thing. Like, you know, people say genetics plays a role in their diabetes or their heart disease or their cancer. And it does, it does increase your risk. But for, I forget the statistics, it’s like 80 or 90% of diabetes are prevented with lifestyle change. Same with heart disease. It’s like 80 or 90% of it can be prevented with lifestyle change. So yeah, genetics plays a little role, but lifestyle is a bigger piece of the puzzle. So yeah.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Well Alice, thank you so much for sharing your tips today and what’s been working in your practice in your own life and really appreciate your expertise. Tell everybody where they can learn, find out more about you.

Dr. Fong: Yeah, you can check out my website at www.dralicefong.com I’m also on Facebook and Instagram doing a happiness challenge right now. That’s another thing, like a 365 days of happiness where I post every day a little thing to appreciate of the day to find a little joy in your every day. I encourage you all to try it on yourself. So Instagram and Facebook at Dr. Alice Fong. Yeah. Dr. Alice Fong.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Great. Who couldn’t use a little more happiness in their life, we can all use more. Right? Exactly. All right, Alison, thanks again for coming on today.

Dr. Fong: Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today. To learn more about Dr. Alice, you can go to thespadr.com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. And while you’re there, I invite you to join The Spa Dr. Community so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows and information. And if you haven’t already got your customized skin report, you can go to theskinquiz.com Find out your skin personality type, what messages your skin’s trying to tell you about your health, what you can do about it at theseskinquiz.com. Also, I invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and join the conversation there at The Spa Dr. And I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.