Episode #135- Treating Neuroplastic Symptoms with Dr David Clarke
Today I have a special guest, a leader in the field of Mindbody medicine and President of the ATNS (Association for Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms, formerly PPDA), Dr David Clarke.Dr Clarke practiced Gastroenterology in Portland from 1984 to 2009, treating over 7000 patients whose symptoms were not explained by diagnostic testing. In this episode, Dr Clarke summarizes Pain relief Psychology. With research based methods teaching patients to take their focus off the symptom, shift attention to brain, and feel the emotions or deal with life stressors. Responding to chronic pain or symptoms this way rewires the brain, so that symptoms can be eliminated instead of just managed.Listen to hear more! Find Dr Clarke and the 12 question quiz on the ATNS website- https://www.symptomatic.me/ Dr Clarke's challenging patients course https://ppdassociation.org/online-course For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/ Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com Transcript- Automatically Generated: This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 135, Treating Neuroplastic Symptoms with Dr. David Clarke.In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become Unstoppable Body and Mind.All right. Hi, everyone.Welcome.We have a special, special guest today. This is Dr. David Clarke. Welcome.Great to be with you, Betsy.Well, we are so glad to have you here. So Dr. Clarke is one of the pioneers and leaders in this field. The head of the PPDA, which is now the ATNS, we can talk about what all of these initials mean and acronyms.But why don't we start with a little bit about your story, coming from being a Western physician to what you do now?Yeah, I didn't know anything about this. The first seven years of my formal training and education, you know, it's kind of embarrassing to admit as a physician that nobody ever mentioned the idea that your brain could cause serious pain or illness in your body, in the complete absence of anything wrong structurally or with your organs. But then I encountered a patient, I didn't know the first thing about diagnosing or treating.In year eight of my formal training, she was referred to us at UCLA where I was in training by another university because they couldn't find anything wrong to explain her symptoms. She was actually averaging one bowel movement per month, despite taking four different laxatives at double the usual doses. We did some specialized testing on her that also was normal.I was doing her exit interview and basically telling her she was just going to have to live with this because there wasn't anything more we could do. But just so the conversation wouldn't be over in two minutes, I started asking her about stress. She didn't really have any.You know, her current day life was really going just fine. But when I asked her about stress earlier, she started talking about having been molested as a girl by her father. Unfortunately, not just once or twice, which would have been bad enough, but hundreds of times.And I had never heard anybody say that before. I didn't know what to do with that information. I had no formal training in how to respond to that.But I fell back on basic instincts as a doctor, which is to try to get the story. When did it start? How often did it happen?When did it stop? Those kinds of things. And she was telling me the story in a perfectly calm tone of voice.It didn't look like she was distressed by this at all. If you didn't know better, you would think that, and I didn't know better at the time, you would think that she had completely processed this information and had moved on. And yet she has this te