Healing When it Seems Impossible with Dr. Shiroko Sokitch

Dr. Cates: Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr Trevor Cates. On today’s podcast we’re discussing healing when it seems impossible. Have you or someone you know really struggle with skin or other health issues for many years with little or no relief and you feel like you’re just searching for answers that you haven’t been able to find. If so, this podcast is for you. My guest is Dr Shiroko Sokitch who is the owner of Heart to Heart Medical Center in Santa Rosa, California. She has a specialty in healing when it seems impossible. She brings hope and healing to difficult how conditions by blending Chinese and Western medicine with a deep spiritual and emotional healing approach trained in general surgery and working as an emergency room doctor for 10 years while attending acupuncture school. Doctor Shiroko has a broad range of medical experience, her new book Healing When it Seems Impossible: Seven Keys to Defy the Odds is a book about her unique and comprehensive healing approach. In this interview, we discuss looking at skin holistically, including a Chinese medicine perspective on skinny skin issues, including Eczema. And Doctor Shiroko shares her seven keys to defy the odds and heal your body when it seems impossible. So please enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Shiroko welcome to my podcast. It’s great to have you here.

Dr. Sokitch: So great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, so we know that you, and I know it’s had a lot of patients in this, we’ve also had our own personal struggles with health issues and when it seems like you’re not going to get better and that when healing seems impossible, right? And so that’s what we’re talking about today and I know that there’s definitely a reason why you wanted to write a book on this, why this has become such an important topic for you. So start by explaining what led you to being so interested in this topic.

Dr. Sokitch: Well, really it’s been an interest of mine for most of my career because I seem to … I used to be a surgical resident and while I was a surgical resident, we would have patients that had problems that seemed to not fit the model of what we were working with, you know, so like they’d get sick and they’d have surgery and the surgery wouldn’t necessarily help them or there wouldn’t be an answer that helped them get better. And so I’ve always been interested in figuring out how to help people get better, which is part of what drives me. And so about my second year of residency, I hit sort of a wall where I felt like I don’t, I’m not getting, I’m not helping people in the way that I want to. And I had a sort of a crisis at the same time and they collided. And I, I felt like I couldn’t continue as a surgeon. I actually had a dream, if you stay in surgery, you will die. And I was like, okay. And, and I was at a level of dissatisfaction because I wasn’t feeling like it was getting results. So I started looking for what else I could do and I couldn’t find anything within the conventional medicine world that really appealed to me because I’m sort of results oriented and that’s why I liked surgery. So somebody gave me this book on Chinese medicine and how it’s, uh, the web that has no weaver and it’s about how to, you know, how Chinese medicine works in the whole thing in Chinese medicine is that we look at things in a different way and it allows me to see people in a way that gives me answers, even if there’s not a diagnosis. And so I’ve always sort of, once I started studying Chinese medicine and I was working in the ER for while I was studying Chinese medicine, I kept coming across patients who have difficult problems and western medicine didn’t have an answer, but Chinese medicine could at least provide some possibilities where we could start to solve the problem. And so, because of that, and because as my practice evolved, I just kept getting patients who had those sorts of issues. And then about 10 years ago, I, I went through a major loss in my life. My marriage ended and, and I was devastated. I was heartbroken. And so I had to sort of begin to figure out how to heal myself. And it was the love of my friends and the support of my community that helped me heal. So another dimension was added to this whole idea that healing when it seems impossible is this like connected to love and connected to so many other things. And so all of that kind of came together for this book.

Dr. Cates: And Chinese medicine is such a powerful tool. And the, the way that it’s the, that you look at patients is very different than from a conventional medical perspective. So it was probably when you went to school to do that, it was like learning a whole other way of, of looking at people and they’re, and, and there’s signs and symptoms including their skin. Right. So how would you from a Chinese medicine perspective look at skin differently than when, you know, if you were just looking through the lenses of your conventional medical training?

Dr. Sokitch: Oh, big time. Big Time difference. And you know, interestingly because from my conventional medical training, I find skin care or skin issues to be extremely difficult because, because there’s so few possible answers and, but with Chinese medicine, you’re made up of energy and energy travels through your bodies and each organ has many different functions then it does in Western medicine. So the skin is connected to the lungs. And so the lungs regulate your physical, lungs, your nose, your throat, your physical lungs, your large intestine and your skin and your ability to protect yourself and things that come in from outside. So your skin is a representation of your immune system. And it deals with the emotion of grief this with the lungs do. And so there’s a lot of connection there too. What’s going on with when somebody has a skin issue and how to dig deeper into it. Because a lot of times when people have skin issues, they also have maybe digestive issues or they may have lung issues, you know, stuffy nose or even coughing or things like that.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. When you look at a patient, when you look at their skin, what are you looking for?

Dr. Sokitch: Well, a glow and you know, a texture. So it’s not even just looking. So there’s, when you look at it and it has to look a certain way, like your skin is gorgeous and of course, but it’s like a certain smoothness, a glow, a texture. So touching skin is actually important in my world because we want to have a certain resilience to it, you know? And so, yeah.

Dr. Cates: So what are some of the signs that show up on the skin that show imbalances and, and how do you know what those imbalances are from a Chinese medicine perspective?

Dr. Sokitch: So if somebody is, so first of all, of course there’s rashes and, or acne or outbreaks or any kind of bumpiness color. So if like if people have a really red face, that’s an imbalance that could actually, that’s not necessarily lung related. That could be related to their heart health. Like if their skin is really red on their face, then it reflects something going on with their heart or their small intestine. If they’re really super pale, if like there’s no color in their skin. So color and again, shininess and evenness of the tone of the skin all reflect a certain level of health.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And so when you’re looking at people’s skin, that’s a really important tool. And Chinese medicine, right? I mean there are certain things that, um, that from a Chinese perspective when you’re looking at to evaluate a patient’s overall health, it is a big part of that. Right. Um, and so, and how does it relate to, as far as location of eruptions, a worse people are having skin issues? Is that an important thing as well?

Dr. Sokitch: Yeah, so, um, depending on like, I mean a lot of the people I see have had skin issues for quite some time and they’ve, you know, they’ve become full blown. But as this something starts where it is on, the body will reflect a meridian or an energy pathway. So let’s say it was here that would reflect their heart again. So because this is where the heart meridian is, or if it’s here, that would reflect the lung meridian. On the face there are different places like if, if you’re have dark circles under your eyes, it reflects something going on with your kidneys because the kidneys have to do with the color black. Again, if they have a red shiny face that might have something to do with their heart. So the skin and how it looks reflects the possibility of other things going on with other organs.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, a bit more about what Meridians are for people that aren’t familiar with those.

Dr. Sokitch: Sure. So the Meridians are all the organs have a pathway of energy on the surface of your body. They actually also have a pathway of energy inside your body. So they start wherever the organ is and then they have a pathway on the surface. For example, your physical lungs start in your small intestine and your large intestine. So they start way down in your large intestine. They come up through the physical lungs and out your body right here. And then the pathway of the lung Meridian starts and goes down your arm to the side of your thumb. And there are points on all of those along the pathway that are places where you can put needles or stimulus of some sort in order to help balance that, the energy in that Meridian.

Dr. Cates: Right. And so the needles are, that’s acupuncture. And then with them you can also use acupressure. Right? So that’s the other way, that stimuli, that’s just massaging those areas rather than using a needle?

Dr. Sokitch: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Cates: And then there are the, then there’s a lot of points in your ear, right?

Dr. Sokitch: Yes. Yeah. I actually took a course in Paris last year with this woman who has been doing acupuncture for like probably 50 years and she specializes in ear acupuncture. And she figured out a system where you can actually look at the skin on the ear and based on the look of the skin, you can tell which organs are out of balance. And then, and she treats, she treats the whole body, but she treats the ear in that way. It’s amazing what happens. I healed, I had a bladder infection was in Paris. I had a bladder infection and I couldn’t, I didn’t have access to any medication. I didn’t want to take drugs. So I did ear acupuncture on myself and I was better the next day.

Dr. Cates: Wow, that’s amazing. So give me a sample of something that you’d see on that year that would give information.

Dr. Sokitch: So first of all it’s like an upside down fetus. And I have a headset on my ear so I can’t show you my year. But the, so the ear lobe is the head and then the helix or the curved part is the spine. And so you can kind of Orient Yourself. And then the deeper inner part that’s near the ear canal, that’s all the internal organs. So you just think about it as an upside down baby. And um, let’s say, uh, at the top there’s like a little triangle. Usually most people’s ears, that’s where your sex organs are. Let’s say that area was really red and a woman was in menopause that, and if it was tender then that would mean that there was some inflammation in the area where her sex organs are and that might be connected to her menopausal issues. So we’ll put some needles there and it might help her with the hot flashes or with her sleep. And if, let’s say near there there were a whole bunch of blood vessels around where that area, where the ridge is, there would be possibly a low back problem. So you can see blood vessels or you can see red spots or you could see swelling. Like a lot of people who get headaches down on near the ear lobe, there’s a little, I think it’s called the Anti Helix. Anyway, that area could be swollen and that represents the brain. And so if there’s an area there where there might be swelling and it’s tender again, you could put a needle there and it would help with the headaches. And it’s, it’s amazing. Yeah, it’s really amazing. And then the outer layers of the, of the, of the ear represent the immune system, his skin. And so if there are discolorations there or bumps there that would represent something that’s more deep in the, in the system, like a scar tissue or an immune system issue.

Dr. Cates: It’s so amazing how connected the body as. And we oftentimes trying to separate out, you know, like in dermatology we’ve got, we treat the skin separately from everything else, you know, cardiovascular issues, gynecology, all the, you know, the different systems of the body. We, a lot of times we’ll try and isolate them and treat those as a separate system, but there are, everything is so connected and I know that you have such a strong sense of that in a doing Chinese medicine because it’s a very different way of looking at the body holistically. And this is just an example and then you know, of the ear as representing the entire body. And the same thing with the foot, the bottom of the foot, right? With reflexology, the different areas of the foot correspond to different areas of the body. And I know, I think it’s fascinating and I know that you work a lot with people that have, and I asked myself the same, they’ve been to everybody and are kind of at the, at the end, like I’ve been struggling with Eczema for years and years and years and you know, for example, I’m just giving an example of somebody and they have tried all these different medications, but every time they stopped them it comes back with a vengeance or they’re just not getting better. It’s continued to spread. So let’s use Eczema or atopic dermatitis as an example. What, what, what do you, when you have somebody that comes in with that, what are you looking for and how can you help someone like that?

Dr. Sokitch: So I do both Chinese and Western medicine and I used functional medicine as my western medicine work. And so I love that because it’s similar to Chinese medicine in the sense that it looks at the body from the perspective of a system. And so first of all, of course I do a long intake and find out what’s been happening in their bodies. And when did it start and, and what was sort of before it started. And especially in people who have had a long history of problems, you know, what happened in their childhood, how was their birth and how, you know, were they breastfed, you know, like all of those things affect your health going forward. What was your diet like? And, and then based on that and my Chinese medicine exam, I use feel the pulse and they look for which organs are out of balance. Then I decide which tests to do to figure out what’s wrong and eczema and whoa skin conditions are connected to the immune system, like I said, the lungs and the large intestine. So I often end up doing a stool test to figure out what’s going on in their digestive system. Because often if there’s a problem with either food sensitivities or an infection in their digestive system, that will affect their skin eventually or will affect their skin completely. So we start there and we, and then based on that, I come up with a plan of treatment. I also like with skin it’s more difficult because you don’t see results right away, you know, cause it takes a while or changing how you eat and changing what supplements you take and finding the root cause. But I do acupuncture to help balance the whole body because whenever somebody feel, one of the premises is, my book is the physical balance, and I call it the triangle of wellness. So I look at the hormones, the immune system and the nervous system as the foundation of everything else. So whatever else is going on, you know, we’ll look for the root cause and we’ll look for whatever other problems. But if these three things come into, then healing can occur. Most of my patients have had something for a long time. So if they’ve had it for a long time, then then it’s harder to get them into balance. So I work at this. So I look at their hormones, I work with the immune system, I work with the nervous system to create balance so that whatever else I’m treating it will start to fall into place more easily.

Dr. Cates: And so what, what is an example? What does it look like a treatment protocol what’s an example?

Dr. Sokitch: Okay for Eczema. Let’s talk about Eczema. So I would do a stool test and I would look at a food allergy panel and based on that it would create an elimination diet to get rid of the foods that they’re reacting to. And, often if they’ve been on lots of medications, they’ll have what’s called leaky gut. So we’ll have a protocol for one, getting rid of the things that are infectious, based on the stool test, healing the intestinal lining by eliminating the things that they’re reacting to. Um, again, depending on their age and what else is going on with them, I might look at their hormones and see what’s going on with their hormones and then create a protocol for balancing hormones. Cause a lot of times with a chronic issue, the hormones have come out of balance because of all the stress. And so I lay a foundation of healing the immune system, healing the nervous system, balancing the hormones so that that can start and then getting rid of the infections and eliminating the foods that are causing problems. And so all of that goes on together.

Dr. Cates: And you’re using a combination of supplements, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, yes. To address those root causes around. You really are using a combination of functional medicine and Chinese medicine.

Dr. Sokitch: Both of those. Yeah.

Dr. Cates: Okay. And, and what are the kind of things you expect to see, especially with them from a Chinese medicine perspective, when you’re using Chinese herbs and you’re using acupuncture, what kind of healing do you expect to see that showing you people are moving in the right direction?

Dr. Sokitch: Well, it’s different for everybody, obviously. I mean because there’s also, and this is why I love Chinese medicine, so lunch because there’s always an emotional and a spiritual component connected to each organ. And a lot of long term chronic problems have some emotional or spiritual connection in addition to the physical, right. Like for example, I do have a woman who has really bad psoriasis and, and her underlying, she hates life. Like she literally hates life. And she told me like from the day she was born, she didn’t want to be here. And so now she’s in her sixties, but it’s taken all these years and it’s sort of in the last 10 years gotten worse and worse. And, and it’s because it’s like her kind of rejection of life on a certain level in addition to all the other things, because she also had candida, she had food allergies, you know, um, she had chronic pain issues so that there’s a whole bunch of different things that are going on and all of those kind of come in layers. So with her, it’s taken a while cause it’s kind of a lifelong level of dysfunction. And so, what I expect is usually within a few months they start to feel better, but sometimes it takes longer than that and it just kind of depends on if it’s been a lifelong issue. And then we just work with the different layers of what’s going on. We’ll retest the stool is, see if there’s more stuff, we’ll work with the foods again to see if there’s more going on and we’ll just keep doing acupuncture. I use acupuncture to heal emotional trauma as much as I use it to heal the physical because so many people carry so much emotional trauma,

Dr. Cates: Right. With skin issues. It’s like, you know, that expression not being comfortable in your own skin. It’s, I think I feel that, and sometimes it’s as a result of having skin issues, people don’t feel comfortable in their skin and it creates emotional issues and sometimes it’s an original root cause they have emotional issues and then it’s one of the triggers that causes the skin to react. And so certainly I agree that it’s an important thing to address the emotional component. Um, so in your book you talk about the seven key is to defy the odds to explain what about those?
Dr. Sokitch: Sure. So the first one is left, and this is what kind of evolved in the last 10 years after I went through my divorce and, and I realized that the recovery from my divorce was the love of all the people around me and the love that I have for my patients. You know, it’s like, so the drive to continue to help people heal and the love that I’m connected to, but also every cell in your body is connected with love, right? So love is sort of the healing force of the universe. I call it love is your healing superpower because it is that force that helps all healing begin. And so many people when they’re struggling physically are so angry at their bodies and they feel betrayed. And so the idea is that let’s say that your body was your friend and, and it wasn’t doing anything to be mean to you and it wasn’t there to betray. It was there to give you a message or to help you understand something or to help you with the healing that you’re going through on some level. So if you approach it from that angle, everything changes because then you’re not, you’re like, I hate my body. No, I’m loving my body and it loves me and it’s giving me some kind of a signal. So that’s the foundation of beginning to heal. And then the second key is the physical, which I talked about already, which is that triangle of wellness. There’s several other elements including finding the root cause. But the triangle of wellness is kind of the thing that I think is unique, um, in my practice because it’s that blend of Chinese medicine and finding the foundation of energy so that your body can heal. The third key is finding your own unique lifestyle. And this one bounces back and forth with listening to your body. But, but there’s a million diets. There’s a million ways to exercise. There’s a million ways to do things in your life in order to achieve health and finding the ones that work for you is the trick. It’s like how do you find your way through the maze? So the book has some explanations about how to do that. And then the, the fourth key is listening to your body. And this is part is fun because it takes, again, the Chinese medicine because you have all these organs and there are specific symptoms that go with each organ. And again, that’s all laid out. Like for example, the liver regulates the smooth flow of energy and your whole body. And it regulates menstrual cycles in women. And so let’s say you had a stiff neck all the time, or it also regulates your eyes. So if your eyes feel really dry and irritated or you have a stiff neck and you have tightness in, you know that there’s some imbalance in your liver. And the liver also deals with stress. So if you’re stressed and you have all this and you go, oh, okay, this all goes together. So that’s all written in the book. And then the fifth key is your emotions and learning how your emotions integrate with your physical body. And again, the liver rules, the emotion of anger, the lungs rule, the emotion of grief. Every organ has the kidneys and the emotion of fear. So every organ has that. And so how to find balance. Let’s say you have a physical problem with that. You always have stiff neck and shoulders and get headaches and migraines that might represent a liver in balance. And then you could go, okay, well is there anger in my life? Is there, you know, is there, am I dealing with some kind of anger who isn’t? Right? So in our culture, we have a high stress culture.

Dr. Sokitch: We have a lot of people who are always on the go. And so even if they’re not by intrinsically angry about something, which most of us are, they, they’re stress to a degree that they might become irritable and, and, and the anger might start to manifest, which would then affect their physical. So that’s all together. And then the sixth key is learning, um, patience and persistence to never give up. And this is where so many people come to me at this point where they’re ready to give up or where they’ve been told that there’s no hope or there’s no answer, there’s no diagnosis. And to find inside of yourself that, I call it the hero’s journey and actually describe the whole book from that perspective. Because when we have a physical challenge, it’s just like having a heroic mission. You know, like Frodo in Lord of the rings, he had to go get that ring and put it somewhere right. And your mission is to heal. So if you have a difficult skin concern, you want to heal, you want to get better from the inside out and you don’t want to just make your skin better. You want to heal the whole party yourself, you know, which is why that occurred. And then the last key is trusting the process. And so again, so many people have been to so many doctors like you have already said, and, and they had been through so many different modalities and so many different things. And to trust that even that is a part of the process of the healing journey and that there’s, whenever we get a challenge in our lives, it’s, I think it seems a little easier. Like when you get a challenge that doesn’t have anything to do with your body, it’s more obvious that you’re on a hero’s quest and you have to do something. But when you have a challenge that deals with your body, it’s so personal, it’s so all about you. And, and to trust that that is for a reason and that that has got something to do with your higher good. That’s where things get interesting,

Dr. Cates: Right. I think then oftentimes we want a quick fix. We want things to happen like that. And I think that there are certain medications that can sometimes cause you to quickly notice a change in symptoms. I mean, you know, like taking Advil or whatever, you know, like that an immediate thing. And so a lot of times are expecting that with their health care. And uh, for, for some people that can happen. I certainly see it like suddenly very quickly they do a quick turnaround. But for most people that have been struggling, like you’re talking, like we’re talking about with a lifelong or a very long chronic condition, including skin issues that people may have had since they were children and in a way come and go, it does. There, there are these layers to it and it takes time. And to have that trust and patients, and I feel like it’s good to check in with milestones. So the people, you know, see that encouragement of, Oh, this is getting better. I’m moving in the right direction, but to not expect a complete turnaround in a very short, don’t give up. Like, like you’re saying, you trust in the, this is the edge, a healing journey, and that there is the silver lining in this. I love that, that this is, that you can learn so much from this. And, and you know, I think a lot of us that are in this type of healing work and you know, this type of medicine, we’ve had our own journeys that have led us to want to be able to help guide others. And that becomes our, our hero’s journey. Right? Like for me, when I was a kid, I had, I struggled with a lot of skin issues and it has what has helped me be on the path to help others with that. So seeing it as an opportunity for growth and, and it’s, it’s not always easy when you’re in it, right? When you’re really struggling and you’re suffering, it’s, it’s hard to see the end of it. So this idea of trust and, and any, any tips on how people can really learn to listen to their body to know that they’re moving in the right direction, that, that, that is to come to help them trust the process. Do you have any tips on that?

Dr. Sokitch: Sure. First of all, it’s interesting, but, but start with love, you know, like, like in, and to try to approach your body with love. And to try to approach your life with love, which is, trust me, it’s not that easy. It’s not as easy as we think. We think like feeling good and loving. It’s easy, but it’s not. Especially when you don’t feel well. But to start with that too, even if you find only one spot on your body that doesn’t have terrible skin, you know they have, let’s say it’s just this one finger, doesn’t have terrible skin. Love them, love those cells, love that part of your body. And then trusting in terms of learning to trust, you could keep a journal of the things that are going right, like especially if you’re on a path and you start out with the whole list of symptoms. You know, you have this whole, we call it functional medicine. We call it the medical symptom questionnaire. And you have this whole long list, right? And you have a score on this. So that’s one way to go. You can just check off a list of all your symptoms and then a month later do it again. And then a month later do it again and see, you know, what’s changing because sometimes the things that change are so subtle that you forget they were ever there. Like I’ve had people come in and they start out talking about this whole thing and then, and, and then two months later there, I still don’t feel any better. But their whole list of symptoms is completely different. Right? It’s like they started out here and they’re over here and now they still don’t feel good. But it’s a different story.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Let alone when your symptoms go away, you forget that they even existed. I’ve definitely seen that with patients. I remind them, oh my gosh, I totally forgot I even had that. And so, I always, I have in my book, I have a symptom checklist to do this at the beginning and then do it again at the end of the two weeks because it’s amazing what you forget that you have or not even. So he learned, even aware that that symptom, that a symptom that they had was connected to something that they were doing. And, and it had to do with,it was just something that they’re like, oh, it’s just cause I’m getting older or my, my parents struggled with this, so I figured this was just my, my bad genes. Right. Not realizing that you can change your genetic expression at a lot of these things can improve and, and there should be healthy aging. We should feel great. Yeah, as we get older. Right?

Dr. Sokitch: Exactly.

Dr. Cates: All right, well Dr. Shiroko tell everybody where they can find you, where they can get your book as well.

Dr. Sokitch: Sure. My website is heart to heart medical center.com spelled with H e a r t and my book is there. There’s a link called for the book and then there’s a free gift there for if you buy the book, you can get a free workbook that has all of the exercises that are in the book in order to work your way through some of these things. And all my contact information is right there.

Dr. Cates: Okay, great. Well thanks again for coming on today. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Sokitch: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr Shiroko. To learn more about her. You can go to the spa Dr Com, go to the podcast page with her interview and you’ll find all the information there, and while you’re there, I invited join the spa doctor community so you don’t miss any upcoming shows, and if you haven’t done taken the skin quiz yet, it can give you great information about what your skin’s trying to tell you about your health. Just go to theskinquiz.com this is a free online quiz that helps give you answers and solutions for your health and your skin. Also, I invite you to join me on social media, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, youtube, Pinterest, and join the conversation and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.