Nimeet K 00:12
Hello, Welcome to the Adventist HealthCare & You podcast. We're back with our first episode in 2024. I'm Nimeet and I'm joined by Shanna.

Shanna M 00:20
Hello

Nimeet K 00:21
Hi Shanna, how are you doing?

Shanna M 00:22
I'm good.

Nimeet K 00:23
And we're excited today to have Dr. Ogechi Anyaoku, who has been to our podcast before, she is a primary care physician.

Shanna M 00:30
Welcome Dr. Anyaoku.

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 00:32
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Shanna M 00:33
Thank you for coming back.

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 00:35
Oh, I love it with you guys.

Shanna M 00:36
Oh, thank you. We love it when you come back to

Nimeet K 00:38
So you know it being the beginning of the year. I think it's a great time to talk about New Year's resolution, reflect back at our old resolutions. Shanna, do you remember what your old resolution was? Or last year's resolution was?

Shanna M 00:49
I do. And I am going to have a moment of vulnerability here and admit that I did not achieve my resolution, I believe it was to be more physically active. And I tried. I gave it a good faith effort for a couple of months and was got out of the routine.

Nimeet K 01:11
Most people don't fulfill their resolution.

Shanna M 01:14
Yeah, it took me it even took me a while to even get started. And then I did really well. And then life happened. And I was not able to sustain the change. So maybe Dr. Anyaoku will have some tips for me.

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 01:25
You know what, that's okay. It's a new year.

Shanna M 01:28
Yes, that's true, I like that. That's a good attitude. It's a new year. What was your's Nimeet? Do you remember?

Nimeet K 01:34
I now remember it, it's um spending more time with my family. And having a better work life balance. And I was able to spend a lot of time with my family, my baby finally recognizes who I am and sort of just being another person in the household.

Shanna M 01:48
Okay, that's progress.

Nimeet K 01:51
I'll take that. So I'm very excited about that. I'm excited to create new resolutions, for this year.

Shanna M 01:56
Yes. Dr. Anyaoku? Did you have any resolutions? Or do you like to start the year with a resolution.

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 02:01
I do. And, you know, I think this year, my resolution is just to get more sleep. You know, we're all so busy with the kids and just work, you know, sometimes I can slip even though it's so important. And I think I'm just gonna kind of make a small little little goal of an extra hour, and just kind of work my bedtime back by 15 minutes every, you know, couple of weeks or something like that. But I think getting better sleep and more quality sleep is my goal for this year.

Shanna M 02:31
That's good. My goal for this year is and I'm hoping this actually spurs me to better action than than last year's goal is to be more intentional with my time, my time with my family, my time with friends, my time with work, my time with my health, and just be more focused, versus trying to do all things all the time.

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 03:00
That's a great goal.

Nimeet K 03:01
My goal this year is to eat out less or order in less. Last year, I made a mindful effort of eating out less, but I think what ended up happening was we were just ordering in. So I think this year my goal is to like not order in either. And you know, it's cheaper to make your own food.

Shanna M 03:03
Healthier too, it's healthier.

Nimeet K 03:26
And I'm not gonna tell anybody that I had Thai food two nights ago, but that's okay.

Shanna M 03:31
Hey, nothing wrong with Thai food.

Nimeet K 03:34
It's not the best start of a resolution, but that's my hope for this year.

Shanna M 03:38
Okay. All right. Well, Dr. Anyoaku, do you get asked about resolutions a lot from your, from your patients? Or is this, does this come up, you know, at this time of year when you're meeting and seeing patients?

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 03:50
Yeah, you know, I get asked by my patients and my family members, my friends, and the kinds of questions kind of vary. Some people ask if it's even worth it to make a New Year's resolution. Some people want to know what types of resolutions they should make. And then they'll ask me what my resolutions, if I make resolutions at all, but yeah, I do get that question quite a bit.

Shanna M 04:13
A lot of people make resolutions, it's a new year, it's a new beginning, it feels fresh. You know, I wasn't able to keep mine. You know, obviously nimet was successful in his, but I do feel like it's really hard for some people. What should we be looking at making? How can we keep them stay motivated? What's a healthy way to make resolutions?

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 04:32
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I do think resolutions and goals are great because they do kind of set you on a path of making good choices. And in general, that's what you want a goal or resolution to be, you want it to be something that improves your life, adds value to your life. So I would say start small, make a small goal, so that it's much easier for you to achieve that goal and then you get less frustrations along the way. One of the acronyms that I like to use whenever I'm making a goal is SMART. And that stands for, the S in SMART stands for specific. So making a specific goal. So I'm going to use the example of weight loss. So some people will just say, yeah, I wanna lose some weight this year. But it should be specific, say I want to lose either five pounds, 10 pounds, 15 pounds, whatever it may be, make it a very specific goal. The M in SMART stands for measurable. And you want it to be something that you can measure, so that along the way, as you're going through the process, you can kind of see if you're on track to achieving a goal, or kind of just where you are. So again, with weight loss, you're able to weigh yourself every week or every two weeks, whatever it is, so that you can kind of see what your trajectory is. The A in SMART stands for achievable. While you want to have goals that can stretch you and kind of challenge you, you want to make sure that is something that you can achieve. So nothing that's too too lofty. And if you do want to have lofty goals, you should set small goals in the interim until you achieve that lofty goal. And then the R in SMART stands for relatable or relevant. So it should be a goal that is relevant to your life and not something that's relevant to somebody else. You know, some people see their friends and they say, oh, my friends are losing or they want to lose 20 pounds, I should lose 20 pounds too, that may not be relevant for you, maybe you only need to lose five pounds or 10 pounds. So just taking inventory of your life and your needs and figuring out what makes sense for you. And then the T in SMART stands for timely. So you want to have your goals time bound. So that is if I have a weight loss goal, that goal should be in maybe two months or one month. So I want to lose 10 pounds in two months. That gives you a nice timeframe for you to be able to, you know, challenge yourself so that you can reach your goal in a good timely manner.

Shanna M 07:01
I like that, I also like what you said earlier, which is, you know, resolutions or goals should be things that add to your life. And I really love that because it versus you know, the weight loss or this or that, it you know, that's like, oh, I'm gonna deny myself for all, but reframing it as I'm doing. You know, I want to add to my health, I want to focus on my health and make it better versus denying myself something. I feel like that's a mindset change for some people and it definitely, that struck me as a really nice saying.

Nimeet K 07:34
Yeah, and I think I like the acronym that you shared, because it makes the subjective version of like this big thing you're trying to achieve into like smaller segments and making an objective version of it right, because people say I want to lose weight, like okay, what does that mean? What timeline? How much? What are you going to do about it? How are you going to measure it? and track it? So I think all that matters a lot. So I think by having a structure to it helps people keep their resolution for the new year.

Shanna M 08:03
Yeah, definitely.

Nimeet K 08:04
You know, people say that they want to get healthier as one of their New Year's resolution, you know, whether it be going to the gym or walking an extra mile each day. What are some of the things that people could do to be healthier this year?

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 08:17
So you know, I think visiting your primary care provider every year is a really important kind of baseline. Because you can get your baseline status, we always talked about knowing your numbers. So whenever you see your provider for your annual physical, you'll know what your blood pressure is, you will get to check your cholesterol and see what your blood sugar is, if you're at risk for developing diabetes. So I think it's important to see your provider so that you can kind of have that information. And then also just talk about any recommended health screenings that you may need.

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 08:54
Some things that I find really important that I discuss with my patients at their annual physical are kind of five big areas. And you know, it's easy to remember because you've got five fingers on one hand. So you know, I always talk about their diet. So making sure that everybody's eating a nice balanced healthy diet, you want to eat the rainbow, there are seven colors in the rainbow. And as long as on most days of the week, you're eating something from you know, several of those different colors, you should be good to go, because that is really more so of a plant based diet. So you see all those colors in nature. So you know the reds, orange the green, you know, that can be fruits, vegetables or all of those colors. So eat the rainbow. I also talk about exercise, so extremely important to lead a very active life. You know, we recommend moderate exercise of at least 150 minutes per week. So just finding ways that are most days of the week that you can do something that's active. So taking a walk, it can be cycling, whatever it is that makes you feel good while you're doing it is important. And then also, you know, I talk a lot about mental health. So that's a big issue. And especially since the pandemic that has become even more of a big issue, so I talk to my patients a lot about their mental health. And also about stress management, what ways can you relieve your stress? What outlets do you have? And then sleep, sleep is so important, which is my resolution. So you know, making sure we're getting adequate sleep is so important to our overall health.

Shanna M 10:28
Those are all really good tips. I love the sleep and the mental health, and just small things to get you moving toward just an overall healthier lifestyle. What are some recommended screenings or other things that we can do throughout the year that we might not be thinking about to be taking our health more serious or be healthier?

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 10:50
Yeah, so for most women at around the age of 40, we recommend breast cancer screening. And that can vary based on your family history and your personal history. For colorectal cancer, for the general population, we recommend screening at the age of 45. And again, depending on what your medical history is, and your family history, that age can also change and it can be earlier, and generally colon cancer screenings with colonoscopy or every 10 years. But then, of course, that can change depending on the results of your initial colonoscopy. We generally recommend lung cancer screening in patients who have smoked for several years. And that can be between the ages of 50 to 55. And that actually depends on your insurance, how early you can do it. And then prostate cancer screening for men, you know, some populations, we start a little bit earlier at age 40. And then other populations can kind of push that out a little bit later on as well. We recommend skin cancer screenings, as well as vaccinations. So you know, we have COVID, we have flu, we have tetanus vaccines. And then we have the more age related vaccines, like pneumonia shots, and also related to any conditions you may have prior to and then shingles vaccines in patients who are 50 years or older. And then now we have the RSV vaccine in the very young and then in the elderly population.

Shanna M 12:19
And this is all just to you know, prevention, catch it early. Promoting that, just taking your health, it's not always it's not the number on the scale, sometimes it's the total, your total health, right, and your family history and, and just trying to stay up to date on some of the things is really important and goes a lot, goes a long way toward just having a healthier lifestyle.

Nimeet K 12:47
Yeah, I think having that an annual physical is beneficial to you know have this too. Because, you know, not many people remember when the screenings are right, because guidelines change so often and there's so much to keep track of. I may not remember some of these things, you know, just so much to keep track of.

Shanna M 13:02
Yeah.

Nimeet K 13:03
But just having that relationship with the provider and at least making that at least once a year visit. Yeah. And talking about those things is crucial too.

Shanna M 13:12
Agreed.

Nimeet K 13:13
Dr. Anyaoku you mentioned stress management and mental health earlier, what are some of the things that people could do to you know, either avoid stress or if they are stressed to decrease some of their stressors?

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 13:26
Yeah, you know, unfortunately, we can never avoid stress, but definitely we can alleviate stress. So this can be so simple, this can be just taking a walk outside, being in nature is so important and actually very beneficial for our mental health. And just our overall well being. Exercise is another way to relieve stress. And just again, for your overall physical health. You know, sleeping well, that we talked about that's important. Journaling can be something that somebody likes to do. Meditation, prayer just even listening to music or dance, you just want an outlet to be able to express your emotions, and to really also kind of evaluate your emotions. And of course, I just want to make sure I mentioned that if you try these examples, and you just don't feel like you're getting where you need to or you feel like it's just, you know, a little bit more overwhelming than what you can handle, absolutely, you want to reach out to your primary care provider because they can offer you several different resources to help you with your mental health struggles.

Shanna M 14:33
That's a good tip and you know, stress affects your physical health so much too. And so if you're if you're struggling and you're not finding a way to kind of manage it, you know, talking to your doctor or looking for some of those ways that you talked about is really important to even just helping your physical health.

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 14:47
Yeah, absolutely.

Nimeet K 14:48
I think a lot of things you mentioned Dr. Anyaoku, they're like very simple and basic things that people could do you know, going for a walk in the park or getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night, and you know people may not do it, because they're like, oh, that's just so simple. It's not going to work with my stress, but I think they just may want to give it a try to see if it works for them. Because I tried walking this past summer, you know, for like a mile, two miles after work for like, about a couple of months when it was nice out, and it made wonders, you know, created such a big difference. And it just helped me relax and you know, in life, and just adding an extra thing in my days routine was like so helpful.

Shanna M 15:27
I think it's important to say, too, that not everybody has the time or has access to some of these things. And so I think that makes it more difficult to understand. But I think you gave a couple of examples that people could even, as you said earlier, even like really small things. So even if it's only, you know, 20 minutes once a week, it's a start. And so, and maybe that's something for people to take on and or to hang on to is, even if it's small, it's still important.

Nimeet K 15:56
Yeah

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 15:56
Yes.

Shanna M 15:57
All right. Well, we've talked about seeing a doctor, talking with your doctor, getting a baseline, if you don't have a primary care doctor, and there's actually quite a few people out there that don't, that don't realize they need to have that relationship or just haven't found the right one, is it important to get one this year?

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 16:14
Yeah, I absolutely think it is. Like I said, just having somebody that you can talk to about your health, where you are, what your risks may be, according to what your lifestyle is like, what your family history is, you can develop a plan with your provider to prevent any diseases from developing. If you do have any chronic issues, you can develop a plan to kind of mitigate or slow the process. So it's really important to have a provider, somebody else to kind of take a look at what's going on, what you're doing in your life and just find ways to optimize your life so that you can have a very fulfilled and healthy life.

Nimeet K 16:55
What is one tip for our listeners, you want to give for a happy, healthy life?

Ogechi Anyaoku, MD 17:00
You know, I think it's important to just be kind to yourself and give yourself grace. I think a lot of times the pressures that we feel, we put them on ourselves and we don't necessarily need to and when we do that we kind of give ourselves a little bit of breathing room, when we give ourselves some grace. And when we can do that we can extend that grace and kindness to the people around us.

Shanna M 17:22
I love that

Nimeet K 17:23
I was almost certainly gonna say sleep

Shanna M 17:29
No, I like that give, yes, we all need a little grace and extend that grace to other people as well. You know, I like that. Well thank you Dr. Anyaoku, for these wonderful tips and for always partnering with us and being a part of Adventist HealthCare. If you all would like to find Dr.Anyaoku, visit AdventistHealthCare.com, click on Find a Doctor. We'll also include links to her information in the show notes, and we're going to try something new this year. We would love to hear from you, our listeners this year. You can let us now if you liked the podcast by leaving a review, or you can email podcast at AdventistHealthCare.com, and let us know what healthcare topics you want to know more about. To learn more about Adventist HealthCare, visit AdventistHealthCare.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast so you can get new episodes. Thank you Nimeet as always for joining.

Nimeet K 18:20
Absolutely.

Shanna M 18:20
Looking forward to the next one and the rest of this year. Thank you Dr. Anyaoku for for coming on, and thank you to all of our listeners. Be well.