Transcription:
Beginning the Journey to Better Health

Wendy Kelly: Welcome back to Outerbanks Health, the official podcast of the Outerbanks Hospital and Medical Group. We are your co-host, Wendy Kelly.

Jen Schwarzenberg: And I'm Jen Schwarzenberg.

Wendy Kelly: Today we're joined by Marielle Silk. She's a family nurse practitioner with our Center for Healthy Living. before we start speaking with you, Muriel, I just want to brag on you a little bit. You've got your Masters of nursing from Yale, plant-based nutrition certification from Cornell and Tobacco treatment specialist certification through the Mayo Clinic.

Jen Schwarzenberg: Yes. And in addition to those accolades, Marielle has just completed her gray area drinking coach certification courses. our development council actually helped to support Marielle's efforts with that. And Marielle also has her lifestyle, Medicine certification from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, and I think that's a great place for us to start. Maryelle, welcome. And tell us a little bit about what lifestyle medicine is and why you are inspired to choose that as your specialty.

Marielle Silk: Well, thank you both for that introduction and for having me on the podcast. lifestyle Medicine is a approach to medicine that uses evidence-based therapeutic lifestyle interventions to prevent, treat, and even reverse chronic diseases. I started on that path a long time ago. I've always been interested in health and wellness. Not many people know this about me, but when I was in high school, I was a personal trainer on the side. And I went on to study psychology first in college and went into social work. Ended up finding my way into nursing and eventually becoming a nurse practitioner.

Lifestyle medicine really incorporates all of those aspects and it really addresses the root cause of illness and looks at the person as a whole, which are things that are really important to me. once I started learning about lifestyle medicine, Was kind of my first patient and she started making really healthy lifestyle changes, adopted a plant-based diet at 70, started exercising more lost weight and really shifting her mindset on health. And she was able to come off of five prescription medications and make just really significant changes. And that just really solidified for me that I wanted to help other people experience that transformation.

Wendy Kelly: So some folks listening, I just wanna clarify, you're not a primary care provider. How do you work with primary care providers?

Marielle Silk: So, correct. I'm not a primary care provider, but I work with clients in conjunction with their primary care provider. So oftentimes we'll receive a referral from a primary care provider for a patient with conditions like diabetes. Hypertension. Sometimes their cholesterol's high and they wanna avoid going on medication. So their primary care will send them to us first, and we'll work together and I'll communicate back with the primary care how they're doing when they've reached their goals. sometimes that's a goal of losing weight before, joint replacement surgery or quitting smoking before a joint replacement surgery.

Wendy Kelly: That seems to me to be a big help to other physicians, whose time is very limited these days. Right? with each patient. that this gets taken care of, this part of it gets taken care of. Because it's time consuming, isn't it?

Marielle Silk: Absolutely. Now they don't often have enough time in office visits to deep dive into these different aspects of healthy living.

Wendy Kelly: I just was just thinking that it's, the turn of the year and with a lot of these healthy lifestyle choices, people may have thought about a New Year's resolution, like, I'm gonna exercise, I am going to lose weight, I'm going to stop smoking. Just the best time to do that. What are your thoughts around, setting those kinds of goals?

Marielle Silk: I think anytime is a great time to start. I love a quote from Robin Arzon, who's a Peloton instructor, and she always says, start before you're ready. And I think that's so true. A lot of times we wait for this perfect moment in time where we're gonna be able to, you know, meal prep every day and exercise every day. And then we just wait for that time when we don't have that time and we don't do it. So holds us back from making these healthy changes.

I think winter is a great time to make healthy changes and just pour into taking care of yourself and so with New Year's resolutions, I think it's just really important just focus on small steps, making progress, not striving for perfection, because eventually life will happen and you won't be able to continue at this high bar that you've set and then you give up. So it's better to just take small steps and build on that.

Jen Schwarzenberg: That's great. That's, something that I'm interested in hearing your thoughts about. You know, you're a busy mom, working mom. I'm a busy working mom. Wendy's a busy working mom. her, child is flown the coop as opposed to hours, Marielle, now. But I'm busy working. You're busy working, that's for sure. But you know, how do you find. Things can get very overwhelming. the pressure to get that healthy meal on the table every night, and to meal prep and to find time to exercise and get enough sleep. I've heard you talk about, and I'd love for you to touch on, the six pillars of health and what you think might be the best pillar to start with?

Marielle Silk: Absolutely, yes. This is a topic I definitely am passionate about as I am, as Jen mentioned, a working mom of three young kids. Three dogs, a full-time job. So I think it's really important, again, just to start with small steps and just carve out a little bit of time, whether it's five, 10 minutes a day to start, and looking at the pillars. So the pillars of lifestyle medicine are a whole food, plant centered diet, regular physical activity, quality sleep, stress management, avoiding risky substance use and positive social connection. I think they are all equally important.

A lot of times we truly just focus on nutrition and exercise, which are very important, huge pillars to address. But we all know if you're getting really poor sleep, if your stress level's really high, you're drinking too much, you're not gonna be able to eat a healthy diet and exercise. So I think it's taking a really honest look at your lifestyle, an inventory of what habits you have now, what area do you wanna start with? Do you wanna start with maybe an easier one for you to start with, to build some confidence? Or is one of those really getting in the way of your health habit?

And that's what led me to do the gray area drinking certification is we are finding often people were overindulging in alcohol and that was really restricting them from being able to exercise or eat healthy or manage stress or get quality sleep. So it's really just looking at your own personal habits and seeing which area you wanna start.

Jen Schwarzenberg: I love what you said about an inventory. That's really cool. That's a really cool way to think about it. And going back to what Wendy said before about New Year's resolutions, like I almost kind of think about, maybe there's a tool out there or maybe it's just getting a piece of paper and writing down different things. That's what I think I'm gonna do, is I think about the six pillars of health and lifestyle medicine and, trying to put to good use. Some of the takeaways that you're giving us today, Marielle.

Marielle Silk: Thanks.

Wendy Kelly: And I think we were talking earlier about time. I think we all feel that we don't have enough time to do anything. But this sort of thing, we all know in our heart and our mind that it is the most important. If we don't take care of ourselves, we can't take care of others. . but I like what you said about just five or 10 minutes. You wanna talk a little bit more about that? Like, what do you say to a client that comes in? I don't have time, I don't have that hour to go to the gym or swim. I just can't do it.

Marielle Silk: Absolutely. Often time it's just reprioritizing. Sometimes we'll say I don't have 10 or 20 minutes to exercise, but I'm spending 30 minutes on scrolling on social media a night. Or, I don't have time to go to the gym. Okay, but can you set your alarm for 10 minutes earlier and do a couple yoga poses or take a walk or can you take a. Quick lunch break or bring your lunch instead of gonna buy lunch, that's faster. And then you can walk for 10 minutes and it all adds up. Oftentimes my exercise is 10 minutes of a walk at lunch, 10 minutes squeezing something in, in the afternoon when I can after work.

Doing a couple yoga poses at bedtime. It's just fitting it in where you can. And the same thing with meal prep. It doesn't have to be this big, elaborate, multiple hours. It's carving out like an hour on a Sunday and an hour one night midweek to just chop some veggies, cook some grains, get some beans ready, make things easier for yourself on those busier nights.

Wendy Kelly: I know the Center for Healthy Living can help too, even if, we're having trouble trying to carve that time out, you have something called, Healthy Living Jumpstart. It's group sessions, right? I think one starting in a couple days, but the intention is to have others down the road.

Marielle Silk: Yes. Yes. So we offer a Healthy Living Jumpstart, which is exactly as the title is. It's a six week, program of group visits. So you meet with our team, you see the nurses, you get your vital signs, your blood pressure, and then you meet with our health coach and our dietician, and we often have guest speakers come in and talk about exercise stress management. All the different pillars of lifestyle medicine. We offer some healthy food samples and we just discuss as a group different barriers that people are experiencing, successes they've had. We really bring in that pillar of social connection to help our group work together and work on building a healthy life.

Wendy Kelly: Yeah, it's a great opportunity to talk about what your barriers are and how other folks maybe are, addressing them, or maybe they should even cheerleading Absolutely. Or cheer you on.

And we do have, as you mentioned, we have one starting up soon

Marielle Silk: and we're gonna have another group session starting in February.

Wendy Kelly: Great. So folks can just keep an eye on our social media, Facebook and our website to find out about those.

Jen Schwarzenberg: You have covered so many interesting little facets here of lifestyle medicine today. I love what you've told us, and if you had to think of one just quick takeaway for our listeners, what would that be?

Marielle Silk: I think it's really important to just work on a positive mindset around healthy living and focus on abundance and nourishing your body and not deprivation and diet mindset.

Wendy Kelly: That's perfect. I'm gonna make a pillow out of that .

Jen Schwarzenberg: I know, right? I think I need to write that down. I need the transcription of this podcast, right? That was beautifully said, Maryelle. Thank you. Thank you.

Wendy Kelly: Thanks for joining us today, Marielle. It's great. You gave us a lot of tips and tricks for, beginning or even expanding our journeys to a healthy lifestyle. So we really appreciate your being. If you enjoy today's discussion, the full Outerbanks Health Podcast Library is available on most major podcast platforms and can also be accessed on our website at theobh.com/podcasts. I'm your co-host, Wendy Kelly.

Jen Schwarzenberg: And I'm your other co-host, Jen Schwarzenberg. Thanks for listening.