admin
16 April 2019
Hi, thank you for coming back for the latest edition of Beyond Primary Cares blog; where I highlight healthy and fun recipes, healthcare news, advice for medical conditions, as well as how membership for care works! Dr. Jeff O’Boyle is the owner of Beyond Primary Care, which is a new approach to family medicine and addiction medicine that creates the time and space your healthcare deserves. Beyond Primary Care serves patients in Ann Arbor and throughout Washtenaw, Livingston, and Wayne County.
The primary purpose of the blog is to introduce healthy lifestyle concepts and answer common questions I receive from patients that I believe are important. I want to start discussions that will help educate, benefit, and improve your well-being.
In this post I am discussing a common condition that I see at my clinic: knee cap pain. Knee cap pain can present itself multiple ways that may not always be muscular in nature, so you should always check with your doctor before starting any treatment. However, a common reason for knee pain is patello femoral pain syndrome (PFS), where the knee cap begins to increasingly track to the outermost part of the leg bone (femur) with movements such as walking, going up/down stairs, and squatting (pretty much any movement when someone bends their leg). Improper tracking of the knee cap can mechanically be due to a number of problems, and can be years in the making or due to a single traumatic event.
Your quadriceps muscles are key to many movements and activities that you do. The group is made up of four muscles (a “quad”) – rectus femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus intermedius, and vastus medialis obliquus (the VMO). All four then run down to your knee and they join together, becoming a single tendon that surrounds your knee cap (patella). This tendon then continues down to connect to the knee bone (tibia) of your lower leg.
The VMO contributes to running, jumping and nearly every other basic movement, because together with your other quad muscles, it’s a powerful knee extensor along with pulling the knee cap to the inside. Anytime you push off the ground, your VMO is involved. It’s also an important knee stabilizer—a critical function that’s often overlooked. The other three quad muscles are either neutral or pull the knee cap to the outside. If you don’t have a developed VMO that can hold its own compared to the other quad muscles, you may experience tracking issues which leads to the vicious cycles of knee pain.
Minimizing pain and swelling can be done via an interdisciplinary approach with ice-packs and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Consider using ice-packs over the affected area, fifteen minutes at a time, two to three times a day. No heat, as this only will exacerbate the pain/inflammation cycle. Next, consider NSAIDs as these have anti-inflammatory properties and are used widely for musculoskeletal disorders. Select NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen and naproxen, are available over-the-counter.
In a relaxed, seated position with your legs out in front, place a rolled-towel under your knee. Next, feel your VMO by placing your fingers just above your knee cap on the inside aspect of your leg. Extend your leg by bringing your knee cap down into the towel. The extension of your leg should occurring slowly (like 5 seconds), over just a small range. When you do this you should feel the VMO contracting under your fingers. This should be your first exercise.
The first step in improving your situation is going be be determining if you have tight muscles as lack of flexibility can disrupt both the timing and contraction of muscles that will ultimately lead to more pain. From a balance standpoint, a tight muscle may limit the range of motion through which an opposite muscle can move (example of opposite muscles include rectus femoris/glute). Learn what you can about stretching, then find specific flexibility builders such as hip and ankle muscles.
Taping the knee is very easy and has been validated by research to help improve the nervous system firing of the weakened VMO muscle. Purchase some athletic or kinesio tape. To apply the tape, place the tape on the outside of the affected knee and pull it across the knee cap inward making sure you have enough pressure that you see a little skin fold crease as you do this.
Once your swelling has subsided and pain is improving, you need to start with simple non-weighted stability exercises to regain integrity of the joint. Consider one-legged standing exercises. As you progress, start with non weighted strengthening exercises such as lunges, step-ups, and squats. Lastly, if at any point treating your knee becomes too complicated, talk to your doctor about a prescription for physical therapy.
admin
12 April 2019
Hi, thank you for coming back for the latest edition of Beyond Primary Care’s blog; where I highlight healthy and fun recipes, healthcare news, advice for medical conditions, as well as how membership for care works! Dr. Jeff O’Boyle is the owner of Beyond Primary Care, which is a new approach to family medicine and addiction medicine that creates the time and space your healthcare deserves. Beyond Primary Care serves patients in Ann Arbor and throughout Washtenaw, Livingston, and Wayne County.
The primary purpose of the blog is to introduce healthy lifestyle concepts and answer common questions I receive from patients that I believe are important. I want to start discussions that will help educate, benefit, and improve your well-being.
This featured recipe is Huevos Rancheros. These recipes are my attempt, in a way, to bridge that Doctor’s adage of “Eat Better & Exercise More.” In this post, I will showcase a healthy meal made on a budget, my pictures are pretty decent, and that is how I got into this food endeavor.
Adapted from Gina’s Weight Watchers Recipes
Prep time: 10 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 yellow onion, minced
4 plum tomato, minced
4 tablespoons green chiles
Oil spray
Salt and pepper to taste
4 eggs
1 cup shredded lettuce
1 tablespoon cumin
1 oz Mexican cheese, shredded
2 teaspoon cilantro, chopped
1 (15 oz) can refried beans
1 (13 oz) package Tostadas
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 avocado, thinly sliced
1) Set oven to 400 degrees F
2) Spray baking pan with oil spray. Place tostadas on baking pan, Drizzle lime juice and add salt to taste. Cook for 2-3 minutes
3) Add vegetable oil to fry pan, sauté onion.
4) To pan with onion, add tomatoes, green chiles salt, pepper, and cumin
5) Heat refried beans in microwave until warm
6) In a separate pan, cook eggs over easy
7) Top heated tortillas with heated beans, add second tostada, then top in order with cheese, tomato sauce mixture, lettuce, eggs, avocado, and cilantro.
admin
4 April 2019
Hi, thank you for coming back for the latest edition of Beyond Primary Care’s blog; where I highlight healthy and fun recipes, healthcare news, advice for medical conditions, as well as how membership for care works! Dr. Jeff O’Boyle is the owner of Beyond Primary Care, which is a new approach to family medicine and addiction medicine that creates the time and space your healthcare deserves. Beyond Primary Care serves patients in Ann Arbor and throughout Washtenaw, Livingston, and Wayne County.
The primary purpose of the blog is to introduce healthy lifestyle concepts and answer common questions I receive from patients that I believe are important. I want to start discussions that will help educate, benefit, and improve your well-being.
Today, I’m glad to welcome guest blogger, my friend Dennis LaVoy. Dennis and I co-authored this piece about freeing up cashflow through Direct Primary Care (DPC).
Dennis LaVoy is the owner of Telos Financial, a fee based, holistic financial planning firm located in Plymouth, Michigan specializing in serving young professionals and families. Dennis is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) professional and a Chartered Life Underwriter (CLU®) founded Telos to provide financial advice and uses his experience, knowledge, and expertise to help families and individuals in Ann Arbor, Detroit, and across the country achieve their financial objectives.
He went to school at Eastern Michigan University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude while receiving his degree in Finance. He has worked 10+ years as a financial advisor and opened his own firm, Telos Financial in February 2018.
We’re going to discuss some of the financial incentives for using a DPC model.
Health insurance coverage is a very personal decision each family must make on their own, considering their personal values, tolerances, geographic location, and needs. Direct primary care is a membership model of health care that works well in conjunction with a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP), commonly referred to as ‘catastrophic insurance.’ Combining a DPC membership with a HDHP addresses the main drivers of increasing cost in healthcare, such as the patient being seen in a timely manner, being proactive about your health, and ancillary medical costs (medications, labs, imaging). This allows individuals and families to have extra money on-hand every month, often saving thousands of dollars per year. So, if this type of insurance aligns with your values and tolerances, it can mean big monthly savings for your family versus a higher premium insurance arrangement.
Hospital systems and insurance-based clinics have higher costs for many medical services and their prices do not reflect the true cost of services even after insurance negotiations. When eliminating the costs of using health insurance, many patients can find equally effective and far more affordable options for their healthcare needs.
For example, let’s say your family is pretty healthy overall and have a high premium/low deductible health insurance policy that you pay a lot of money towards every month, where your monthly premium is $1,600, or $19,200 per year.* You believe you are not extracting enough value from your insurance, but still want coverage for those ‘what if’ scenarios.
Switching to a HDHP insurance plan combined with a DPC membership still means you have that insurance for those ‘what if’ scenarios, but now also you have virtually unlimited access to your doctor where they can focus directly on you and not the middleman (insurance companies). Your new monthly insurance premium is $718*, and by enrolling in a DPC practice for as low as $130** a month you will have $750 in savings every month, or $9,000 per year.
*These figures were obtained by providing realistic information to ehealthinsurance.com to compare health insurance rates for 2 adult non-smokers along with 2 children for comparable health insurance plans that are compliant with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly referred to as Obamacare.
**This figure was obtained by combining the rates for adults and children at Beyond Primary Care, Ann Arbors only direct primary care practice.
Combining a DPC membership with a HDHP can save families and individuals thousands of dollars per year where this arrangement is appropriate. Because Direct Primary Care provides so much in a membership, it is gaining national attention for the associated cost savings. A testimonial to this national attention is Consumer Reports listing Direct Primary Care as a top five smart money move in 2019 saying “joining a DPC medical practice will give you around-the-clock access to your doctor and could save you money on primary care.”
With a couple hundred saved each month, that is money you can have working for you- not the health insurance companies. An extra $9,000 may allow you to create an ‘emergency fund,’ pay off loans, or even invest for the future.
A $750 savings per month could build a substantial investment portfolio over time. I always recommend working with a financial planner to decide how best to invest for your family, but depending on your income, goals, and life situation, you could also save to a Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, or to a non retirement investment account.
$750 per month is a lot of money for many families. Over time, it can be hugely impactful for long term financial. Let’s further play out the scenario in this example and you have a family of 4 and that you were able to invest $750 per month at 7% growth. 7% is an assumption based on a balanced portfolio, as a point of reference, the S&P 500 from 1937-2017 (90 years) averaged 10.4%. Further, let’s assume in this example the family of 4 is two adults aged 30 and they’ll save for 12 years (Let’s say until the kids move on).
In this example, at the end of 12 years or age 42 for the adults, you would have saved a total of $108,000 and the account would be worth over $175,400! If they didn’t save another dime after that, the account would be worth over $1,000,000 around their age 65 and 3 months. If they were able to continue the $750 per month savings, when they reached age 65, the account would be worth $1,532,591 on a total investment of $315,000. The numbers really speak for themselves and really demonstrate the power of compound interest.
DPC is not available locally in all communities. If you do not utilize healthcare services on a regular basis or when you do, you are just looking for one-off visits or one-time services, DPC probably is not the right fit. As always, it is something you have to consider personally.
If your employer provides a ‘comprehensive’ high premium/low deductible policy, DPC may not initially be advantageous. Still, consider bringing up DPC to your human resources leaders and incorporating into your benefits package. A partial, or fully self-insured model in conjunction with DPC has been show to result in a 30-60% reduction healthcare expenditures.
The views expressed are my own opinions and do not apply to every situation. Your situation may vary so make sure to consult a professional for advice prior to making any decisions.
Financial planning should take into consideration all your needs and wants, review costs and tolerances, and educate yourself about the options. To learn more about financial planning, Dennis LaVoy, CFP®, CLU®, or Telos Financial please check out his website at https://telosfp.com/. If you believe Dennis may be a good fit for your family and you live in the southeast Michigan (or really anywhere), call him today at 734-468-3050.
These examples are for illustrative purposes only, not indicative of any specific investment product. Material discussed herewith is meant for general illustration and/or informational purposes only, please note that individual situations can vary. Therefore, the information should be relied upon when coordinated with individual professional advice.
Dr. Jeff O’Boyle of Beyond Primary Care is not affiliated with FSC Securities Corporation.
admin
23 March 2019
Hello and thank you reading my blog at Beyond Primary Care and trying the BPC Good Eats recipes. This featured recipe is a Chicken Stuffed Acorn Squash. These recipes are my attempt, in a way, to bridge that Doctor’s adage of “Eat Better & Exercise More.” In this post, I will showcase a healthy meal made on a budget, my pictures are pretty decent, and that is how I got into this food endeavor.
Chicken Stuffed Acorn Squash
Adapted from: Eat At Our Table
Prep time: 20 minutes
Total time: 1 hour
Ingredients:
2 small acorn squash (2-3 lbs)
1 tsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 (12 oz package) chicken sausage- your choice flavor
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp chopped fresh sage
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 tbsp thyme leaves
1 cup cooked quinoa
1 cup grated parmesan (divided)
½ cup panko bread crumbs
1 egg (beaten)
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
Instructions:
1) Preheat oven to 400F.
2) Cut acorn squash in half, rub with teaspoon of olive oil and season with salt and pepper
3) Place the squash cut side down on a sprayed baking sheet and roast 20 minutes.
4) While squash is roasting, place a saute pan on over medium-high heat, add 1 tsp of olive oil
5) Cut the chicken sausage into bite sized pieces and brown in saute pan
6) Add the fresh herbs and sautee for an additional minute, then remove from heat.
7) In a bowl combine the cooked quinoa, ½ cup parmesan, panko, and salt / pepper.
8) Add the chicken sausage/herb mixture to bowl, and stir together. Add the egg and stir again.
9) Stuff chicken mixture into acorn squash, sprinkle with remaining parmesan.
10) Bake for 20-25 minutes
admin
19 March 2019
Hi, thank you for reading! My name is Dr. Jeff O’Boyle. I am a board certified family medicine physician. My clinic, Beyond Primary Care is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In this post I am answering a common question that I receive, and that is how does Direct Primary Care (DPC) keep medications costs low for it’s members? Offering low priced medications is a key feature of virtually all DPC practices, and is something that is done to increase the value of a membership. Just how low? Many DPC practices do in-clinic dispensing and can provide hundreds of medications to their patients at a tenth of the costs that many national retailers can provide.
DPC practices, like pharmacy retailers have applied for and obtained their medication dispensing license from their respective states. This allows a DPC provider to contract with pharmaceutical wholesalers of medications, the same wholesalers who retail pharmacies such as RiteAid, Walgreens, or CVS may use. My clinic, Beyond Primary Care, uses two wholesalers of medications, AndaMeds and Bonita Pharmaceuticals.
These wholesale companies sell the medications, often in large quantities to the DPC practice. However, unlike hospitals and retail pharmacies where selling medications IS their business – resulting in the expected mark-ups (250%!) and high-prices as noted by the American Journal of Pharmacy Benefits– DPC practices turn around and sell the exact same mediations to their patients at those near-wholesale prices. As noted, DPC sell the medications to their members in this innovative manner because our primary business is taking care of you and NOT being just a pharmacy. Your membership for care to a DPC practice allows for this innovation.
You may be or may know some people who take multiple medications. Medications for blood pressure, diabetes, urinary incontinence, anxiety, heart conditions, COPD, or erectile dysfunction may add up to hundreds of dollars a month you are paying out of your pocket. Compare this to the costs I charge my members for the exact same medications. Often times the money saved in medication costs alone pay for a DPC membership! Don’t see your medication on my sample list? Don’t worry, I may still stock it or I can order it too!
* Prices are subject to change without notice, one month supply listed unless noted
Many DPC practices do in-clinic dispensing of medications. Once the doctor evaluates you and discusses the best course of treatment, that provider can have the necessary medications dispensed to you before you leave the office. In urgent situations, this saves you time, energy, and of course MONEY, something that rarely happens in fee-for-service medical offices.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, there are times a member needs or would benefit from a certain medication that is brand name only (very expensive) and would be best obtained through insurance that requires a prior-authorization (what is prior authorization) from the insurance company.
In this scenario, we will work to fill out the necessary paperwork to get your needed medications at reduced costs or even reach out to the pharmaceutical companies seeking a reimbursement or free supplies on your behalf. A great example is we got one of our members Vivitrol, a vital medication for Medication Assisted Therapy in Addiction Medicine. This medication costs over $1,000 on the market, but we worked to get our member the medication FREE of charge with their insurance. Did I mention the office visit and the injection itself were included with the membership? So the patient literally paid $0. Saving money for our patients gets me so excited!
admin
13 March 2019
Hello and thank you reading my blog at Beyond Primary Care and trying the BPC Good Eats recipes. This featured recipe is a Spinach Tuscan Chicken. These recipes are my attempt, in a way, to bridge that Doctor’s adage of “Eat Better & Exercise More.” In this post, I will showcase a healthy meal made on a budget, my pictures are pretty decent, and that is how I got into this food endeavor.
Spinach Tuscan Chicken
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 1 hour
Adapted from: Alvin Zhou at Tasty
Ingredients
4 bone in, skin on chicken thighs
2 teaspoons sea salt
2 teaspoons pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
5 cloves garlic
1 onion, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
4 cups spinach
2 cups heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon cornstarch
½ cup parmesan cheese, grated
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
Instructions:
1) In a medium bowl, season the chicken with salt and pepper.
2) Place a skillet over medium-low heat, add the olive oil.
3) Place the chicken thighs skin side down and cook for approximately 12-15 minutes. Move the chicken around to ensure even cooking. Flip the chicken, cooking for another 15 minutes until chicken is cooked through. Remove from pan and cover with foil.
4) To same skillet, add the onion and garlic, stirring until onions are translucent. Stir in tomatoes and spinach until spinach is wilted.
5) Add the heavy cream, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil.
6) Remove 1 cup cream mixture into a small bowl, add the cornstarch and stir until dissolved. Once dissolved, add mixture back into skillet.
7) Add the Parmesan cheese and parsley, stirring until thickened
8) Place the chicken back in the pain, spooning the sauce on top of the chicken.
admin
8 March 2019
Hi, thanks for reading! My name is Dr. Jeff O’Boyle, and I am a board-certified family medicine doctor who owns his own clinic, Beyond Primary Care located in Ann Arbor Michigan. Like most family medicine doctors, our goal is to keep our patients healthy and out of emergency rooms if at all possible. My best friend is an emergency room doctor and I have the utmost respect for the care ER doctors provide and the role they serve in medicine. I have seen people in emergency rooms with life-or-death conditions such as chest pain and shortness of breath, and am grateful we have skilled providers in this area of medicine.
Yet, I meet a good number of people who utilize an emergency room like it’s a one-stop-shop for all their medical health. People going to emergency rooms for dental pain, refills on blood pressure medications, common colds, and various other complaints that have been manifesting themselves over the past 3 months. As a Direct Primary Care (DPC) family medicine clinic, I promote and encourage that longitudinal care with my patients to ask me for medical advise or treatment that can’t be achieved in emergency rooms. Here is some free advice why NOT to go the emergency room.
The trust that develops over time between a doctor and a patient (or family) is absent. It is also extremely helpful to have seen a sick individual or child when they were healthy, to know how far from their baseline they are.
Sick people are not happy people, and it’s hard to do a physical exam on someone stressing out. A familiar face causes less distress, and allows the doctor to do a better evaluation.
The ER team takes care of the sickest patients first. If you have a minor illness and a severely ill or injured person rolls in, you’ll be waiting a while.
Really expensive as noted here and here. It costs about $1,000 more to evaluate a minor illness in the ER than it does in an office setting–and that’s without any tests.
This means needle sticks, radiation exposure, and increased cost. Often, a DPC doctor could do a thorough physical exam and schedule a follow-up the next day, all at no additional cost to you. But the ER gets one shot, and they can’t afford to miss something, so they tend to over-order imaging and labs.
They are not tasked with figuring out exactly what is going on and solving every problem; the focus is on ruling out life-threatening conditions and deciding which patients need to be in the hospital. This often frustrates patient’s who come in wanting answers.
In the summer it may be vomiting or diarrhea. In the winter, it’s the flu. Emergency rooms do their best to keep things from spreading, but viruses haven’t survived this long by being bad at what they do. If you weren’t sick when you went in, you may be soon.
This is more altruistic, like vaccinating yourself so nobody else gets the flu–but it’s real. Every ER has a limited number of beds, and when they’re full, they’re full. If they’re full of relatively healthy people, the really sick ones sit in the waiting room until a bed opens up.
This is the most important step, and it’s one that you should take when you are healthy. A good physician can identify diseases early, track a child’s growth and development, provide reassurance when that’s all you need, and handle the vast majority of acute illnesses. If–or rather, when–you get sick, your doctor has access to her records and history, avoiding expensive and unnecessary repeat testing. That doctor will understand your personality and perspectives, and you will be less scared of a familiar face. Look for a Direct Primary Care doctor, who routinely offers same-day sick visits, weekend hours, and phone availability even when the office if closed–a lot of ER visits can be avoided by talking through symptoms over the phone.
admin
2 March 2019
Hello and thank you reading my blog at Beyond Primary Care and trying the BPC Good Eats recipes. This featured recipe is a Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup. These recipes are my attempt, in a way, to bridge that Doctor’s adage of “Eat Better & Exercise More.” In this post, I will showcase a healthy meal made on a budget, my pictures are pretty decent, and that is how I got into this food endeavor.
Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup Slow Cooker
Adapted from: 365 days of slow cooking
Prep time: 15 minutes
Total time: 35 minutes + slow cooking time
Ingredients:
2 (14 oz) cans diced tomatoes, with juice
1 cup finely diced celery
1 cup finely diced carrots
1 cup finely diced onions
1 teaspoon dried oregano or 1 Tablespoon fresh oregano
¼ cup fresh basil
4 cups chicken broth
½ cup flour
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
½ cup butter
2 cups half and half
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
Instructions:
1) Add tomatoes, celery, carrots, chicken broth, onions, oregano, and basil to large slow cooker.
2) Cover and cook on low until flavors are blended and vegetables are soft.
3) About 45 minutes before serving, take the vegetables out of slow cooker and add them to a blender until smooth. If you prefer a chunkier texture you can leave it as is or just blend some of it. Return blended veggies to slow cooker.
4) Meanwhile, in a saute pan over low heat melt butter and add flour. Stir roux constantly with a whisk for 5-7 minutes. Slowly whisk in 1 cup hot soup. Add another 3 cup and stir until smooth. Add all back into slow cooker.
5) Stir and add the Parmesan cheese, half and half very slowly, salt and pepper.
6) Cover and cook on low for an additional 30 minutes or until ready to serve.
admin
22 February 2019
One of the most common medical conditions I treat as a family medicine doctor is anxiety. You most likely know what anxiety is, or personally know someone who suffers from anxiety. At my family medicine clinic, Beyond Primary Care, located in Ann Arbor Michigan, all appointments are a minimum 30 minutes, with opportunities to increase the appointment time. This length of time is an important for the treatment of any mental health concern.
Anxiety has many faces. Among others, it is that feeling of stress, apprehension, relentless worrying, tightness in your stomach or chest, racing thoughts, restlessness, rapid breathing, diarrhea, lack of concentration, and insomnia.
Does a person have to experience all those symptoms to have anxiety?
Absolutely not.
Does having even just one symptom mean you need medical treatment?
The best answer is that it depends on you and what the severity is.
Dr. Jeff O’Boyle (who is writing this posts) experiences anxiety, you (who is reading this post) have experienced anxiety. Everyone has experienced anxiety. I feel a bit like Oprah when I just wrote that. Regardless, the truth is we all experience anxiety from the moment we are born.
Think about your own children, or other children you knew as newborns. The frequent cycles of crying and calmness. The newborn doesn’t know why they are wet, why they are hungry, why they feel cold, why they can’t sleep. So they cry. This is in part- anxiety. Eventually, after a few weeks (or months for some parents), the newborn stops crying. Overtime when there is a dirty diaper, or it learns that it will be feed every 3 hours, or the baby starts connecting it’s sleep cycles and starts doing it’s nights- much to the relief of the parents- the crying and fits decrease. The point is, we all have anxiety as newborns. We develop coping mechanisms though, inherent within our own emotional control centers to deal with this anxiety.
Just as no two people are affected the exact same way by anxiety, there is no “one size fits all” treatment that cures this condition. What works for one person might not work for another. The best way to treat yourself is to become as informed as possible about the treatment options, and then tailor them to meet your needs.
In my professional opinion, becoming informed about anxiety does mean you have to be honest to yourself with how you feel. Extending that honesty to your family and friends you trust, and honest to your healthcare provider is crucial is knowing that your mental health is not something to deal with alone.
It also takes time to find the right treatment. It might take some trial and error to find the treatment and support that works best for you. Understand how these treatments work and that they don’t work immediately. Anxiety cannot be treated like a case of bronchitis, where you get a course of antibiotics and poof- you are better in 10 days. In today’s society, I feel we are so focused on instant gratification and grossly appreciable results that we lose focus on the long-term control and relief.
Your emotional system only knows where it is at right now based upon where it just was. This is why in this work we are constantly reassessing our intervention afterwards. Where are you now? Now we do something. Where are you now? So we know if we are being effective or not. Do you want to waste your time doing stuff if you don’t know it’s working? I don’t. I want to do more of the stuff that is working and less of it that isn’t. As a doctor I’m constantly measuring.
But measuring anxiety, or any other component of mental health is not done over minutes to days, but weeks to months. Again, patience is key to treatment.
admin
19 February 2019
Hello and thank you reading my blog at Beyond Primary Care and trying the BPC Good Eats recipes. This featured recipe is a Brussels Sprout and Apple Pizza. These recipes are my attempt, in a way, to bridge that Doctor’s adage of “Eat Better & Exercise More.” In this post, I will showcase a healthy meal made on a budget, my pictures are pretty decent, and that is how I got into this food endeavor.
Brussels Sprout and Apple Pizza
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Total time: 1 hour
Adapted from: Hello Veggie
Ingredients
1 prepared pizza crust
3/4 cup raw walnuts
3 tablespoons shredded parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
Salt and pepper to taste
4 ounces Brussels sprouts, trimmed and thinly sliced
1 large apple, cored and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon roughly chopped fresh thyme
3/4 cup shredded fontina
1 tablespoon balsamic glaze
Instructions
1) Preheat oven to 425F
2) Place walnuts, parmesan cheese, and 1 tablespoon olive oil in a food processor and process until crumbly. Season with salt and pepper.
3) In a large skillet over medium-high heat, add 1 tablespoon oil. Once heated, add the brussels sprouts and apple splices; cooking about 10 minutes- until apples and sprouts being to brown.
4) Add the honey and thyme to the skillet and stir until mixed, then remove the skillet from the heat.
5) Top prepared pizza crust with walnut mixture, then the sauteed Brussels sprouts and apples. Top with shredded fontina cheese.
6) Bake for 10-15 minutes.
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