Podcasts about so lauren

On today's episode of The Shine Show, you'll meet one of my favorite humans and phenomenal Launch Lounge students, Lauren Marie!    She is brilliant, encouraging, inspiring, a master at making people feel good, and has an incredible ability to guide her audience to do more! (And if that wasn't enough, she has some of the funniest online content you'll ever see - do yourself a favor and check out @laurenmarieglobal).   After becoming a mom to twins, Lauren entered the online course world, looking for a way to balance the two things she loved: work AND family!    So Lauren decided to jump off the cliff and build her plane on the way down by launching an online membership, with no real idea what that would look like each month!    AND an incredible 110 people signed up!   So how exactly did Lauren manage to successfully launch without a perfectly wrapped-in-a-bow product, get into Zuckerberg's bad books causing her account to be shut down TWICE, and yet STILL manage to land on her feet with an impressive 5 figure launch?   You need to hear the whole incredible story for yourself! I hope you feel inspired by Lauren's journey. It's a great reminder that all your hard, unseen work, whether it be the weekly email or the online content you freely share with your audience, isn't going to waste; you're becoming a person of VALUE to the people around you. Keep going because it will pay off!   Tune in to today's episode by clicking here!   XXX Salome P.S  Lauren was able to skyrocket her success by joining me as a student in The Launch Lounge! If you're like Lauren and ready to take the next giant leap to scale your course BEYOND your wildest dreams, join The Launch Lounge waitlist for my next intake in July. Limited spots are available. Join today by clicking here!

Raising teens with diabetes can be very difficult, but there's a lot parents can do to make it less stressful. This week's guest has advice because she's been there. Moira McCarthy is the author of Raising Teens with Diabetes and she shares how a very tough time with her daughter, Lauren, taught her what these kids really need. The secret? You might think it's better technology or a certain diet or even discipline, but as Moira explains, it's compassion.  Lauren is all grown up now, with a great job and a life far from home. She and Moira have a terrific relationship and she very generously shares her story to help others. This episode originally aired in July of 2015. Book: Raising Teens with Diabetes  Moira's post: Freedom is their secret drug The follow up: When your teen with type 1 becomes an adult   Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android   Episode Transcription Stacey Simms  0:00 This episode of Diabetes Connections is brought to you by inside the breakthrough, a new history of science podcast full of Did you know stuff?   Announcer  0:13 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:18 Welcome to a classic episode of Diabetes Connections as always glad to have you along, we aim to educate and inspire about type one by sharing stories of connection with a focus on people who use insulin. And with these classic episodes, I am bringing back interviews we did years ago, they are evergreen interviews that can still help people and you can really benefit from hearing these stories. But they are interviews that were done in 2015 and 2016, before the show had found all the listeners that it has now maybe that's you if you are newer, and with more than 350 episodes, you are sure to have missed a few. So this has been a fun way for me to go back and revisit some of the cool guests and great stories that we have shared. You know, it's funny to think about, but when I started the show, I was really concerned with Benny, my son becoming a quote, teen with diabetes. He was 10 when I launched in 2015. And you can hear that 10 year old voice at the end of every show when Benny reads my tagline. It is funny looking back because for us at least Middle School, you know ages 11 to 13 were actually much more difficult for diabetes stuff than the true teen years have been so far. As most of you know Ben, he was diagnosed right before he turned two. And as you'll hear in this episode, and in pretty much every episode from that first year, I'm terrified. I'm trying to figure out a way to make sure bad teen stuff doesn't happen to us and looking back it really makes me smile because what I was actually afraid of shows how much I misunderstood the teen years with type one my guest and now my dear friend Moira McCarthy has probably done more than anybody to educate me about this and she continues to do so to this day. A longtime listeners know more I became a frequent guest we even started an ask the demon segment we are due for another one of those pretty soon. If you're not familiar, Moira’s daughter Lauren was diagnosed with type one at age six. She's all grown up now living a very independent life with a great job in Washington DC and Moira , by the way lives in New England. They're not in the same town. They're hundreds of miles apart. But their path together with diabetes wasn't always smooth. Moira wrote one of the most widely read blog posts about diabetes parenting back in 2010. called freedom is their secret drug. I remember reading that boy. And just last month, she wrote a follow up to it. I will link them both up at the episode homepage at Diabetes connections.com. I am so grateful to Moira  and her whole family really Lauren, their other daughter Leigh, Moira’s  husband, Sean, for being open and honest about not just the good times with type one right not about the easy stuff not about when it was going well and about their community support and all the great things that they've done their accomplishments, being honest about their struggles more his interview from July of 2015 in just a moment for this is one of my first episodes. So I hope it sounds okay, I'm still doing radio stuff like introducing the guest a few times during the interview, you'll hear that but first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by insight the breakthrough a new history of science podcast, its historical wisdom, mixed with modern insight and insight. The breakthrough was created by SciMar. SciMar is a group of Canadian researchers dedicated to changing the way we detect treat and even reverse type two diabetes. 2021, as you know, is the 100 year anniversary of the discovery of insulin. It's arguably the biggest scientific discovery in Canadian history. This series examines that moment and many others through the lens of Canadian researchers trying to find what's next for the fight against diabetes. You can find inside the breakthrough wherever you find this podcast. And you should also know that Diabetes Connections is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider.   Moira  McCarthy, welcome to Diabetes Connections. I'm so glad you could join me.   Moira McCarthy  4:16 Oh, it's great to be here.   Stacey Simms  4:17 So much to talk about with you today. We met at a jdrf event in St. Louis last year. After which I read your book. You know, I don't have a team with diabetes   Unknown Speaker  4:28 yet.   Stacey Simms  4:29 It's kind of like looking into a time machine. And if you haven't seen raising teens with diabetes that's got the best cover. There's a teenage girl just rolling her eyes. As we've all seen. I have a teenage daughter but it's my son who has diabetes and he's 10. So more what do we have to look forward to?   Moira McCarthy  4:48 Oh, it's just a snap. You know, agers all they want to do is please their parents. So I like to say we need the walk to cure adolescent. I think the good news Is that it really is temporary. When you're in it, it feels like it's not. But it really is a passing phase. And I think that when I hear like someone like you has read the book already, it makes me really happy. Because my hope is to be proactive and help people be proactive and kind of think ahead of the challenges you're gonna face and ways that you're going to try to work through them with your teenager.   Stacey Simms  5:25 I think there are things that you can do, looking forward, to figure out maybe some things to do now when your kids are younger. But take us back and tell us a little bit if you don't mind about your story and your family's story with diabetes. How old was your daughter when she was diagnosed?   Moira McCarthy  5:41 Sure, Lauren was diagnosed right at the start of kindergarten, right around actually at her sixth birthday. I knew nothing about type 1 diabetes and children before that. Once she was diagnosed, I realized that every single sign and symptom was right in front of my face, but she diagnosed   Stacey Simms  5:59 on her birthday.   Moira McCarthy  6:01 Well, she was diagnosed at her checkup, which was just shortly and wow. Which is very common, you know, yes, people go for checkups, then. So we were I say this with all the arrogance that that shouldn't be attached to it. We were the model patient family for a very long time. Lauren was extremely willing to just do what she had to do. I threw myself into becoming educated. She was actually the first young child in Massachusetts to go on an insulin pump in 1999, which seems crazy now because everybody can. We were progressive. And I really thought that I was the smarter mom who had it all figured out. And I would hear story about parents, with their teenagers and think, Well, I'm glad that's not us. And then I realized that I hadn't raised a teenager yet. And that no matter how hard you work, and how vigilant you are, and how wonderful your child is, the teen years can be extremely challenging and humbling. And so I learned a lot about, you know, the fact that you can't necessarily outsmart all of the challenges of diabetes all the time.   Stacey Simms  7:17 And as a teenager with diabetes, let's talk a little bit about that. Because my understanding is it is not just the attitude, it is the physical as well, right?   Moira McCarthy  7:26 There's a lot going on. It's just so unfair. I mean, think back to when you were a middle school, or an early high school kid, it's just such an awkward, uncomfortable time in your life without something like diabetes on top of it. And that's not just because of social reasons. That's because of hormonal reasons, too. And so you put diabetes on top of it, and you, you know, add to it, that it can make your blood sugar go crazy because of hormones. But you don't want to do what you have to do anyway. So who knows what it is in it. It's just a big old mess. It's a It's a challenging time, I really feel strongly that one of the reasons that I really support better technology is even if all we can do is just get this better technology to kids in their teen years. We're going to make life with diabetes so much better. I now that I've watched my daughter go through it, I totally get it. And I have so much respect for all teens, no matter how much they're struggling. I really do. That's great. And   Stacey Simms  8:27 you and your daughter have been very open about your story. Do you mind if I asked you a little bit more about and I don't want to put it in terms of what went wrong. But what was difficult for her as a teenager? And how is she doing now? Oh, I   Moira McCarthy  8:38 think it's fine to say what went wrong. Um, so what went wrong is is multifold first of all, I mentioned my arrogance, I really, really, really thought that I had it all figured out and that she had it all figured out. I trusted her so much at such a young age and put so much on her that I set her up to fail if that makes sense. Um, she actually came to me once and said you shouldn't trust me so much. And I think I just laughed at her.   Stacey Simms  9:09 You'd be like just trust her to check at school or things like that   Moira McCarthy  9:12 way. Um, you know, the old you yell into the next room, what's your blood sugar and they yell back a number. So what happened with Lauren is she she actually just wrote about this for a sweet life, I believe, where she explained when it all started. And she was at the pool at our beach club and I yelled across the pool, check your blood sugar and she went to get her meter out and just went huh. And waited a minute fiddled with it and yelled, you know, 118 or whatever, she yelled, okay, and I put it into my color coded Excel spreadsheet chart. And that was the beginning of it for her. She realized that she was trying to break free of diabetes. Ironically, she was feeling worse but in a in an adolescent mind that made sense to her. And I was I was letting her because I was burnt out. And it was pretty easy to just, you know, actually literally and metaphorically be in my lounge chair, letting her run the show because I was sick of it, when what she really needed at that time was me to at least check in on her. And by that I mean see things happen from beginning to end, at least once or twice a day instead of just trusting her to go off on her own and report in to me. And that's a funny thing, because she's a trustworthy child. She's honest, she's open. She was honest about everything in her life, except her diabetes and her blood sugar's and so under my nose, under my nose, and on my guard, my daughter went into real life true, not a joke. ICU DK. Wow. And that was when even her doctors were shocked. You know, that was when I knew I had to fix me so that I could help her get through this time.   Stacey Simms  11:09 That's such a hard thing to hear knowing how on top of it, you thought you were in and she was, what happened? How did she do?   Moira McCarthy  11:17 So at first, she dove back into doing everything great, and everything was fine. And then the struggles continued. And what I realized was, I needed to find a new acceptance or a new level of what was acceptable in her diabetes care at this point in her life. Was she scared?   Stacey Simms  11:42 Was she upset? I mean, what was her reaction?   Moira McCarthy  11:44 Well, you know, she said to me, once, someone asked me years later, I'll be honest, I went through anger, I, I wanted to shake her it's really, really frustrating. When you just want your child to feel good, and and, and do what they have to do. But what do I know, I'm not the person who was inside her head as a teen. So a couple years ago, someone said to me, ask Lauren, what the best tool is I can use with my teenager with diabetes, you know, is it is it a CGM, and I should watch everything? Is it a pump? Is it a meter? What is it? So we're driving the car and I asked her, and she thought about it for a while. And she said, I've got it, mom, I know what it is. It's compassion. And I'm like, but she said, you know, that whole time, I was beating myself up more than anyone could ever possibly beat me up. I felt like a failure. I couldn't face that I wasn't doing the right thing. I was letting myself down. I was worried about my health. So pointing any of that up to me was pointless. I already was doing that at a level you could never do. And so that really spoke to me about that makes you think about the struggles teens have that all that was going on in her head. I don't know how she was, you know, she was through all this. She was her student body president. She was homecoming court. She was star, the tennis team with all that going on physically and emotionally. It's pretty remarkable.   Stacey Simms  13:21 And this is a, I guess I can say a bit of an overachieving family. She's now she's now in a good way. And she is now a college graduate has a great job doing very well. How did you get from DK a to that?   Moira McCarthy  13:36 It was a process. I think that I had to realize and parents listening to this whose children are younger, I can't stress enough how you have to start doing this earlier is you have got to stop nagging them. Because when our voices fill their heads, there's no room for their own rational voice. And so it took me a really long time to stop nagging her and in fact, this morning, I kind of sort of wanted to nag her from 500 miles away to hurt work, but you just can't. And what happens when you stop that nagging is their own internal nag kicks in and they will listen to their own internal nag more than they will listen to ours. So I had to let go a little bit. But on the converse, I also had to make sure she was safe. But I had to have a new definition of safe while we went through this time. safe for us was not an A one C of 6.5 safe for us was not a log sheet with tons of checks in it every day safe for us was not now it would be the straight line across the CGM safe was knowing that she was never going to go into DK And all I had to do to make sure of that. And this will be confusing for parents of younger children, because they haven't experienced freedom in teens yet, all I had to do was check in and see her, do a blood check and put insulin into her body, at least one time a day. And if that's all you can manage for a period of time, they're going to be safe. And then you can work through the other things. And what worked for Lauren, she moved to a new endocrinologist, I loved our old endocrinology team, but she made a change. And her new under chronologist is very intuitive. And he treated her as a human being and not labs while working on the labs, if that makes sense. And he was the one who really cut back on what his expectations of her were. And by cutting back on the expectations, she was able to experience success and stop beating herself up as much. And then do more. Does that make sense?   Stacey Simms  16:04 It makes perfect sense. And another piece of advice that I've tried to incorporate that I've heard you talk about is when your child comes home from school, and again, my son is 10. You know, we all want to say first, hey, how was your day? What's your blood sugar? Or, you know, how was your day? What do you do for lunch? And how did you bolus? And I have tried,   Moira McCarthy  16:20 I don't really succeed,   Stacey Simms  16:21 I have tried to stop doing that and say, how was your day? What were your friends like, and then either later on, ask them about it or say, hey, just give me your meter. And then you know, and we don't talk about it as much as we used to, I find that to be pretty helpful.   Moira McCarthy  16:35 It really is I just got off the phone with a mom who reached out to me and asked if she could talk to me on the phone because she has a struggling teen, and she has an older child with diabetes. And she said that that action actually damaged their relationship to the point that she's still trying to rebuild it   Stacey Simms  16:54 by just simply asking about it all the time.   Moira McCarthy  16:56 All the time, the minute he walked in the door after school, it's such a natural thing for us to do as parents, but and I found when I first started working my way past that I was faking it. And that was obvious to my daughter because she said, you know, Mom, I know that you're asking exactly three questions about other things and just counting them until you ask about diabetes. So the answer is, and this sounds wacky, don't ask and what you said in there makes sense. You can look at their meter and get your answers, you know, and then whatever those answers are, you move on from there, don't go backwards, you know, so. But it's really hard because we care so much about this. And I think a way to try to work around it. And I talked about this in the team book is to remember that we're not raising an agency or a blood sugar, we're raising a human being. And their diabetes seems really important to us because it's such a responsibility medically and every other way. But the rest of who they are is just as important for us to nurture too. And if you can try to remember that it can help you pull that in. But it's what parent doesn't have that problem, you know, wanting to say what was your blood sugar. It's just what we do. So   Stacey Simms  18:20 one of the things that you and I have talked about before is this remarkable advancement that's happened in technology. I my son has used a CGM for the last year and a half. He's had a pump since he was two and a half. But using a CGM has really changed the way I look at his blood sugar. And the way it appears throughout the day, and you mentioned a concert I want to talk about is the success is success, a flat line on the Dexcom. And that is something that I have to steal myself against going for because we all want to see those super steady, wonderful numbers. But that's just not how diabetes operates, at least not my kid. And he still does very well. Can you speak a little bit to this, I don't want to call it an obsession, but this it's almost this fear of letting kids kind of go in and out of range. Because at any moment, something terrible could happen when that's really not the case.   Moira McCarthy  19:14 Yeah, so first of all, I want to premise that with if my daughter was newly diagnosed, and I was using these tools, I would absolutely fall into the category of wanting a straight line and worrying every time she went up and down. So I totally get it. Even though I started out this journey in a different time. And before those things, I can totally see how it could happen. But I have this wish and I just said it. I was lucky enough a week or two ago to be at a meeting with all kinds of the CEOs of all the technical diabetes technology companies. I was one of the only patient people you know, I'm a patient parent in the room. And what I said to them is we're developing these amazing tools to solve See more. But we're way behind on tools, ie faster insulins, better infusion sites, things to make things work better on treatment of them. And so parents particularly, and I would think newly diagnosed adult patients, too, are trapped in this period of time now, where they have, they can see everything, but they can't do anything about it. And they think they need to do something about it. So Lauren was diagnosed back in the days of mph and regular when you had a chart of spikes and dips, and you match those throughout the day. In other words, we knew there were going to be three mph spikes and two regular spikes, and then dips along and we matched them. So that helps you understand the ebbs and flows of blood sugars in a person. And I think that parents now who are going right on CGM, with their children are so afraid when that arrow goes up, and when an arrow goes down, that they never fully experienced those ebbs and flows. And the thing about that is, Jeff Hitchcock said it beautifully, we can raise a child with a perfect agency forever, all we have to do is lay them in a hospital bed with an IV of glucose in one arm and an IV of insulin the other arm and check them every 15 minutes and tweak it. But that's not a life. That's not a life. So I look at my daughter, and I look at what she's doing and how she's living in our life. And I look at her success, and she loves her career, and she's in her apartment in Washington, DC and she has a million friends. Well, if I match that with her line across the CGM for the past 18 years, if you only looked at that CGM line, you might be like, Oh, my God, this has been a nightmare. But if you look at her, and frankly, she's perfectly healthy, and everything's fine. I like that side of it. So as far as the fear goes, this breaks my heart. I like to call fear. Now, the newest, most frequent and most frightening and devastating complication there is in type 1 diabetes today. And I think that it is partially because the way we all communicate and are linked with one another, and you see things and hear things like you never did before. And frankly, you don't know the whole story behind everything you're hearing. And also, these tools that are making people think that you know, because your child's blood sugar is going down, if you hadn't done something, they were going to die. And I really, really, really am struggling to help find a way to change that. Because we parents have an obligation to our children to help them live a life that they embrace without fear, diabetes or not. And no matter how many times you say you're not passing that fear on to your child, you're passing that fear on to your child. So it would be nice to change it.   Stacey Simms  23:09 My mother always said that kids take their cues from us. So what we do and what we feel, we may not think we're modeling, but they're getting it, they're picking up on it. Yeah.   Moira McCarthy  23:18 And a lot of it is in language. Like, I don't think you should say, I saved my child's life again last night. Giving your child glucose is not saving their life, any more than feeding them dinner every night and saving their life because they would starve to death. It's a little more urgent. And, and, and yes, it's scary, but lows are lows and you treat them and you move on. And it's all going to be okay. And the same with highs, you know, even my daughter and the decay, thank goodness, she got to a point where she was so sick, actually, her friends intervened and said, you're going to tell your mother what's going on right now. And we're bringing you to tell her and we went right to the hospital. But there are ways to fix things and it's better. I think it's better to have your language just be okay. It's a high, it's a low. It's not good. It's not bad. It is what it is. And that way you're not passing that on to your kids. I camps have a huge problem now that they never had before that children go into diabetes camp are petrified to go to sleep at night because their parents aren't there. That didn't happen before. Wow. Yeah.   Stacey Simms  24:38 My guest is Moira  McCarthy, author, travel writer, speaker, diabetes mom as well. I want to talk to you about the jdrf ride to cure diabetes because my friend, I think you're crazy. You went through Death Valley on this thing. What possessed you? Why do people do this? How far is it?   Moira McCarthy  24:58 105 miles My friend, and not a motorcycle. And it's funny because I actually said the words out loud at jdrf national meetings, you will never get me on a bike and I will never do that ride. But I did. And the reason that I did for me, we were a big walk family, we had a big walk team like you do. We loved walk every year, we were one of the highest fundraising families in the country. And when Lauren went away to college that dissipated, which is quite normal, the culture of walk is getting people together and families and stuff and when your kids go off to college, people move on from that. And so that first year, I felt, I felt a responsibility that all this money that was coming into jdrf wasn't coming in, and that some researcher somewhere wasn't going to be able to do what they needed to do. And I had to find a way. So I thought, well, I'll try this ride thing. So I bought a bike, I hadn't owned a bike in 25 years, I had no idea how much bikes cost, Holy moly. But I started training. And I put the word out and I thought, Oh my gosh, I hope I make the minimum I chose the gold minimum, which would be $4,000 raised and I held my breath and cross my fingers and had a little faith and put the word out to my friends. And not only did I do the ride, but I raised $40,000 my first year. Wow. So what that said to me was a I guess I should have done the ride. My friends probably felt just as guilty about not having a way to support our dream, too. And see, taking that kind of action that requires tons of training and tons of work and tons of effort, on my behalf showed my friends that I respected their donations, and that I understood that after all these years, it was amazing that they would do something so I needed to do something possibly amazing for them. What is it like?   Really, really, really   good experience?   Stacey Simms  27:12 What was it like, though on the bike? I mean, it's just hard. It's not that's not an easy thing. You know, you have to train for a long time. You can't just jump on the bike and pedal away. No,   Moira McCarthy  27:19 the first time I rode, I wrote about seven miles. And I got back and I called my friend Katie Clark, who got me to ride and I'm like, I think I have allergies. And she said, Yeah, you're allergic to cycling more. Love I was and now I can tell you. It's really wonderful. You still have to train and build up. But if someone said to me on any day, do you want to go on a 50 mile bike ride? I could say Sure, sure. And I'm not like an Olympian. You know, I'm, I'm just an average person. And I found that I love being on a bike. So I got something out of it for myself, you know, you don't wear music in your ears when you cycle because it's not safe. And even though if you're with people, you're still in your own space. So it's very meditative. I can think through things. I see the world in a different way. Even my town I cycle by things that I drive by every day, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's really pretty. You know, I never noticed that little paths. So I feel like it's been a real gift that said ride day. You have a lot of adrenaline. It's really special because you're riding with all people who care about the same thing you care about. When I get done, the last thing I want to do is ever get on a bike again. But I do maybe not the next day, but   Stacey Simms  28:42 Wednesday, when is this ride?   Moira McCarthy  28:45 I'm doing to this year, August 13 through three states through the Midwest, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa and then Death Valley is October something teen whatever that Saturday is, so I'm doing too.   Stacey Simms  28:59 Yep. Well, hats off to you. That's, you know, maybe I'm the person who will say now you'll never see me on a ride. And then Mike, he'll go to college.   Unknown Speaker  29:07 I'm gonna remind you, Oh,   Stacey Simms  29:10 I love it more. Thank you so much for talking to me today. And again, the book is raising teens with diabetes. And she is you can find more publications, but more writes for many publications. And we'll have links you can find out more and where to catch your columns more. Thanks so much for joining me. Absolutely. Thanks   Moira McCarthy  29:30 for what you do.   Announcer  29:36 You're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  29:42 More information about more of the blog posts I mentioned, you know the one from 2010. And the follow up that was just published last month on health line. I'll put those both at the episode homepage which also has the transcription and it's interesting to me listening back because I don't feel that the teen years quote. You know, our Behind us by any stretch of the imagination, Benny is 16. He just started driving and there's new challenges and with diabetes and kids, you're facing new challenges every year anyway. So I'm still listening to Moira  and calling her up and asking her my questions. But it is remarkable to look back and think how scared I was when what I really needed to be thinking about was less about me, and how can I make this right for Benny? And how can I make sure he doesn't rebel? And you know, and does what he's supposed to do? And instead, look at it through the lens of how can I support him? How can I give him more empathy? How can I give him more compassion? How can I talk to him about the tools that he needs? And it sounds very woowoo Brady Bunch, whatever you want to call it. But I can tell you having these conversations with Benny over the years, even many conversations where he rolls his eyes and doesn't want to talk about it. I mean, he's not he's far from a perfect diabetic is far from a perfect kid. But I feel like all the time I talked to him and told him, you know, we're here for you. It's your decision, we'll support you. It's not about a perfect agency. It's not about this. It's not about that. He listened. He heard us. It's absolutely amazing. And I'll say one more thing about teenagers with type one. I think sometimes it is a bit easier if you're a younger child is the one with diabetes. There's not some weird genetic thing going on there. It's just that once you see and I'll give my example here I have a daughter who is three years older than Benny, but four years older in school, because the way they their birthdays ran, when she entered her teen years, I had this wonderful, nice, rule abiding kid who started forgetting in quotes, forgetting to do homework, slamming doors, yelling at us being unhappy, changing her clothes, changing her hairstyle, doing all the things that normal teens do. But when you're first kid, your older kid is the one with type one, and you're entering those teen years, and you're seeing all those changes. I have a dear friend and this is her situation, the older kid is the one with type one. You don't know if it's diabetes, or teen nonsense, because you haven't been through it before. And I think it's really helpful to understand that the transformation is kind of a strong word. But the wackiness that happens in the teen years isn't all about diabetes. And that helped me an awful lot, because sometimes it's just nonsense. Moira  is definitely the authority on this, we are still feeling our way through the remaining teen years, maybe I'll write a world's worst teen mom in 10 years from now, when I'm looking back, I can tell you everything we did do wrong during this time. But there's lots of good stuff coming up on Diabetes Connections. We're gonna be sharing stories about mutual aid diabetes, have you seen this on social media? Who are these people? What are they trying to do? How can we help? How can we trust that the money that we're using to help in the community is going where it's supposed to go without a big organization behind it? These are some really interesting people. And we're going to talk about the City of Hope. This is a big research facility. They do a lot more than diabetes, but they have some very interesting studies. They talked about their reverse vaccine a couple of weeks ago, and they're going to jump on and give us an update. Thank you, as always to my editor john Kenneth from audio editing solutions. thank you as always for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here in just a couple of days until then, be kind to yourself.   Benny   33:14 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged

Oh boy is this a good one. Lauren is joined by Robert Yaniz Jr. from the Crooked Table Podcast to discuss the Funny or Die short "WEIRD: The Al Yankovic Story." We have a great conversation about all things Weird Al... and we make some BOLD CLAIMS. VERY VERY BOLD CLAIMS. Lauren has BRAAAAAAAINS Guava Guava Guava from Drekker Brewing Company and Robert has Florida Man from Cigar City. Cheers! Crooked Table: https://www.crookedtable.com/   And listen to Lauren with Robert on Crooked Table here!: https://www.crookedtable.com/crooked-table-podcast-uhf-feat-lauren-carey-of-the-beerd-al-podcast/   Weird: The Al Yankovic Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcNuiri2dV0   We also recorded this BEFORE this article came out. So Lauren is definitely psychic. https://www.menshealth.com/entertainment/a35520993/weird-al-yankovic-elton-john-goodbye-yellow-brick-road/  

Dennis was ‘all in’ on Lauren Colantoni from the moment he interviewed her. She had that thing you look for in a candidate, he knew it for sure, so he hired her. What he didn’t know was that a decade later she would launch The Woffle Company, a "Get & Give" dog bed business that would eventually sponsor this very podcast you're about to listen to. So random. So cool. So Lauren. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ever since the inception of Christianity, Jesus & the Apostles warned against false teachers and the need to identify them. It is important to see what that looks and compare what's said to what God says. So Lauren from Tulips & Honey Podcast and Patrick from Cave To The Cross Apologetics slog through the entirety of Joyce Meyer's book "Battlefield Of The Mind". This...this was something. The post Ep. 106 – Battlefield Of The Mind by Joyce Meyers One Shot appeared first on Cave To The Cross Apologetics.

More than 2 million people have turned to Career Contessa each year to help them with their career. However, prior to creating this incredible platform, it took Lauren many years to get to where she is today. Despite hitting every target on the post-grad roadmap, somehow her expectations had failed her. She saw a consistent theme that women everywhere seemed to have reached the goals they’d set, even exceeded them, only to find themselves exceedingly unhappy. Across the board, the same questions came up that Lauren and millions of others were asking themselves. So Lauren decided to answer these questions with Career Contessa. From this journey of helping women in their careers, she decided to compile all of her lessons learned into her new book, Power Moves. In Power Moves, Lauren answers those career sabotaging questions and shares her insights and the secret to building a purposeful career. Power Moves will be released May 19, 2020 and is currently available for preorder. Enjoy the episode!GET MORE RUBY IN YOUR LIFE...Up for a challenge? Join the 7-Day Online Coaching Campfire here.Follow me here for all of the after-the-show goodness.Join the Own Your Hustle Facebook Tribe here.Join Own Your Hustle: The Membership here.For speaker enquiries please email support@rubylee.coSupport the show (https://ownyourhustle.buzzsprout.com/)

Two big topics for this mini-espidoe. Stacey talks about Spare a Rose and talks to the leaders of Patients for Affordable Drugs. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Spare a Rose is an initiative to get insulin and other vital diabetes supplies to children in the developing world. Learn more here  Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Stacey also talks about what we can do about the price of insulin with Patients for Affordable Drugs founder David Mitchell and Lauren Stanford, the community organizing director. Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode transcription:  Stacey Simms  0:00 This episode of diabetes Connections is brought to you by the world's worst diabetes mom real life stories of parenting a child with Type One Diabetes available at Amazon as a paperback ebook and audiobook. Learn more at diabetes connections.com   Announcer  0:20 this is diabetes connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:26 Hey, welcome to this week's minisode something a little bit different. I've been doing these short episodes all year long for 2020. And this is our first interview type episode. But I wanted to get some information to you that I thought would be interesting and helpful and about patient advocacy. So we're going to talk about what's been happening with patients for affordable drugs. I spoke about them. Last fall of it put out a report and I wanted to follow up on it. Of course there's a lot of information in the news these days about the price of insulin price of insulin There were advocates at State of the Union address. These are not the same advocates, but a lot of the same push. And I also want to talk about spare arose. So let's do that first spirit arose is an initiative that happens every year to help kids with diabetes in developing countries, so that they can get insulin. It doesn't take a lot of money to help out and it really does make a huge difference in the lives of these people around the world. Why is it called spare arose? Well, back in 2013, a group of people in the basically the diabetes online community realized that for the price of one rose for Valentine's Day, they could make a huge difference in the lives of children. So you spare a rose, you save a child, they've expanded it so that you can, you know, spare quite a few roses. There are different ways to pay for this. But it's really a very simple concept. Where does the money go? There is an organization called Life or child, and they partner with diabetes centers in places like Rwanda, Mexico, India, to give critical supplies to young people who really have nowhere else to turn. Right now, this program supports 21,000 people in 42 countries. And the goal here, no child should die of diabetes. If you'd like to learn more, I will link up everything in the episode homepage. You can see pictures of the families that have already been helped. You can read stories of kids who need help, and you can find easy easy ways to donate. So if you can possibly spare arose this Valentine's Day, it would be very much appreciated. We have done a lot on this in the past. I will link up a very fun episode we did a few years ago with Carrie Sparling and Scott Johnson and Bennett Dunlap, where we talked about this initiative. Gosh, it was probably 2015 maybe was 2016 but it was a while ago about learning more, and why I really do urge you to consider taking part in Spare a Rose While you're learning about that initiative, I also thought it was a good time to take a look at what's happening here in this country, and what's going on with our communities struggle to get the word out about the price of insulin. And if you've been following a lot of this, it has really heated up in the last couple of years. It seems like a lot of state legislators are taking this on. But at the federal level, it seems like it is stalling and you know, what can we do? Well, patients for affordable drugs put out a report a couple of months ago now. And I want to follow up with them and learn more about what they're doing. What we can do what what can be done about the price of insulin because I think when many of us hear this, we feel like there's just nothing I can do. It's overwhelming. Politicians are just arguing they're never going to get anything done. Well that may be true, that last bit, but there is something we can do. So I wanted to talk to the founder David Mitchell and community organizing director Lauren stand I should note that since I talked to them, each are three, which they're mentioning here did pass the House at the time of this interview, it had not yet passed, but the Senate has not acted. I reached out to Lauren to get an update on that. And she said that they need to pass the health care package by May. So they are pushing for them to include s 2542. It is less far reaching than HR three, she says but would bring meaningful relief to many patients. This is also called the prescription drug pricing Reduction Act introduced by Senators Grassley and widen and it has passed out of the senate finance committee as of this taping in a bipartisan fashion. It has not yet passed the full Senate and it includes the following it would penalize drug makers for price gouging. It caps Medicare beneficiaries out of pocket spending on prescription drugs, and it requires pharmaceutical companies to justify high prices. I will link up information on this as well as h3 and the other items we talked about in the episode homepage. Here is my interview with David Mitchell and Lauren Stanford, David and Lauren, thanks so much for taking some time to kind of explain a little bit about this. I really appreciate it. Thanks for being here.   David Mitchel  5:18 Thank you, Stacey, for the opportunity.   Stacey Simms  5:20 Thank you for having us. Before we talk about the report itself, and you know what we can do as individuals. David, let me just ask you to explain a little bit about what patients for affordable drugs is all about. Can you talk to us about the organization?   David Mitchell  5:35 Yes, patients for affordable drugs is the only national patient organization focused exclusively on policies to lower drug prices. We're independent, we're bipartisan, and we don't take money from anyone who profits from the development or distribution of prescription drugs. We do two main things we collect patient stories elevate those stories to policy makers and elected officials and train people to be advocates Lowering drug prices. And we are building a community of patients and allies that can be mobilized in support of policies to lower drug prices, both at the state and federal levels. My wife and I decided to do this, because she's a cancer survivor. I am a cancer patient. I had an incurable blood cancer. My drugs are very expensive. They're keeping me alive, but they're keeping me alive at a cost list cost of $875,000 a year right now. And just one of my drugs and oral cancer drugs carries an out of pocket cost of more than $13,000 a year. So we have a personal experience here. And we're trying to bring that experience to bear to mobilize folks who are struggling with high drug prices, whether it's for cancer drugs or Crohn's disease, drugs, inflammatory drugs, insulin, there are millions of people who are struggling We're trying to help them have a voice and get something done that will actually lower the prices of drugs.   Stacey Simms  7:06 Was it your personal experience with your cancer diagnosis that led you to start patients for affordable drugs? Or had you been doing this and then this happened.   David Mitchell  7:15 I had been doing health policy work in Washington, DC for about 30 years, then I got cancer. And my experience as a patient was really searing for me to find out how difficult I prices could make trying to manage a chronic disease or stay alive with an acute deadly disease. And I became increasingly frustrated because there were no patient groups speaking out about drug prices. Literally one day I woke up and I had an epiphany. And it was, hey, maybe if nobody else is going to do this, you should try. And that morning, I went downstairs and my wife said, Honey, can I retire? Can I work for free? Can we put in some of our own Money and try and build an organization of patients that would fight for lower drug prices? And she said yes. So here we are.   Stacey Simms  8:07 All right, I could talk to you about the organization for hours and hours. But we're really here to talk about this report the truth about insulin prices. So Lauren, let me ask you, as a person who lives with Type One Diabetes, what do you get out of this report? what's the takeaway here?   Lauren Stanford  8:22 Well, Stacy, I will tell you, when I first read this report, it was kind of shocking. I knew the prices of insulin, were out of control, but just seeing it all written down and laid out. Like that was kind of horrifying for me as a patient. And I know when people in the community saw it, it was kind of the same feeling like seeing the chart with the prices just going up and up and up and reading about the 300% increases and all this and that it was really like startling, but really good information, but kind of heartbreaking at the same time.   Stacey Simms  8:56 Lauren, let's go through this a little bit, because in the report, you will Aren't pulling punches. I mean, there's a section here that's headline price gouging and price fixing. Tell us about that. So not pulling punches. Yeah,   Lauren Stanford  9:09 we're really there's a lot of facts in this. And I think that the spec facts kind of speak for themselves, the price gouging. You can when you're reading the report, you can see that the three companies Eli, Lilly, Sanofi and Novartis, they've all been working together, it seems and price fixing this insulin to keep raising the prices and the report, our chart goes back to 2001. And you can see since then there's been this steady increase from all three of them. It's just crazy. I mean, I can't put into words how exactly it makes me feel. But David might be able to speak a little more to the history of the price gouging and fixing   David Mitchell  9:47 Well, the fact of the matter is that those three companies have managed to take control of the global insulin market, and they have effectively blocked other competitors from entering the market with The enough competition to actually drive down prices. And rather than compete with each other on price, they are content to maintain market shares and divide up the profits and be able to keep raising their prices in lockstep. It's very important to look at that chart and see whether or not they talk to each other and say, Hey, we're going to raise our price 15% next month, or not, they can each see what the other one is doing. And clearly, none of the three is willing to lower the price in order to try and steal market share their content to keep high profits and divide them up. We're going to have to break that cartel in order to lower prices or develop the ability to negotiate with the three directly which is why legislation to permit direct negotiation by Medicare in this country for lower prices is so important.   Stacey Simms  10:54 One of the things that that strikes me when you use words like cartel and gouging and fixed is why hasn't the government already stepped in? If this is so blatantly obvious, right? Why hasn't the government stepped in and said, you cannot do this?   David Mitchell  11:10 Apparently, I'm not a lawyer, apparently, unless they get on the phone and say, we're going to move our prices 15% all at once and talk to each other about it. They are allowed to do shadow pricing under our current law, and they're allowed to see what the other one is doing and then just match the price. So long as they don't talk about it. You can see what they're doing. It's obvious, but under law, if they don't talk to each other and collude, it's a harder case to prove. That's my understanding. I'm not a lawyer, to say, however, that the government isn't doing anything about it. You have to put one word behind it and that is yet because there are plenty of bills in Congress that would tackle high drug prices. And would allow, for example, Medicare to negotiate directly with the drug companies, including the insulin companies for lower prices. And there are bills to encourage the development of more generic and biosimilar drives that would provide additional competition that would also lower prices. So there is a recognition that this is a problem. But as with every one of the drugs we're fighting for lower prices for enough has not been done yet. We have much more work to do. The fact is in our system, drives are supposed to get a period of time to make a lot of money when a new drug comes to market and then we introduce competition through generics and biosimilars to make prices go down. Insulin is the exact opposite. We introduce these three drugs and instead of prices going down because of competition, they just continue to go up. And it's because of the abuses of these companies engaging regulators recognize it And I believe that within the next couple of years, we will succeed in making insulin look like the more normal model of high prices end and prices go down.   Stacey Simms  13:12 One of the things that I think is really interesting in this report are the personal stories, because it's not just numbers, which are great and useful information. But there are faces and names of people who have rationed insulin who would talk about the struggle to afford it. And Lauren, I mentioned that you live with Type One Diabetes and you have for more than 20 years, can you talk about your experiences and of the people that you know as well because I know you have to know people who've really been in tough spots.   Lauren Stanford  13:39 Yeah, and I always say that I am definitely one of the lucky ones because I've always had help and support with paying for my insulin and I've had my parents to fall back on but especially through my work. At p for ad I've heard stories about I were talking with a patient Yesterday who has to sometimes not pay your electricity bill so that she can afford her insulin every month? And I just hear so many stories like that every day and it's awful. And I mean, Stacy, you know, in the community, I think there's been, I want to say a isn't he? We don't. There's been multiple people who have passed away, I think five in the last year from rationing insulin, and it's just incredible that this can happen in America. I can't believe it. And like I said, I talked to people every day that are rationing their insulin, and it's just outrageous and heartbreaking. And like we say to legislators, when we're on the hilar we hear in our stories, like insulin isn't optional for us and rationing isn't an option at all or it shouldn't be an option that people have to do   Stacey Simms  14:48 something to do. I think one of the ways in which my eyes have been opened in the last few years is you know, when when we're fortunate like you and I Lauren to have insurance, right, right go and I get my supply and my insurance pays for it and it's 25 bucks for me it's no big deal here and there, but then there was a time where we were one bottle short, and they said okay $300 Yeah, that one vial of insulin right you think you think who is paying these prices? Right? It seems like well everybody I know has insurance. So even though the list price is $300 are people really paying that and you come to find out and correct me if I'm wrong here. The system is so complicated that even if you have insurance, sometimes you are paying list price you're paying different prices is that something that you found as well   Lauren Stanford  15:34 was prices are really important because a there are people who are uninsured and be when you're on a high deductible plan, you're paying lowest prices until you meet your deductible. So if you have a $5,000 deductible, then you are paying those lowest prices until you hit that 5000 marks and you know how many bottles of insulin someone may need in the first month of the year. I mean, that could be pretty close to five thousand dollars and a lot of people don't have that   David Mitchell  16:02 out of pocket. So well and I would add that in some plans, insurance plans, even after you meet the deductible, you will have a co payment or coinsurance and frequently that's based on list price. That's certainly true in Medicare. You pay all of your out of pockets based on list price. So list price really matters. And I think it is somewhere in the range of 65% of people who pay for some or all of their medications through the year based on with price.   Stacey Simms  16:41 David, you mentioned earlier, some solutions. Some you said yet. I really liked that. When you said there's this is you know, there's not solutions yet. Can you talk a little bit about some of the things that Congress is considering and also you mentioned a couple of them but help people who are listening Try to make a difference. am I calling up my representative and saying vote on this? am I writing letters? What can we do?   David Mitchell  17:07 Well, you can come to patients for affordable drugs.org and share your story with us because we will see to it that the story gets put to work making the case for why this problem needs to be addressed. And then if you're if they're interested, we'll be in touch after they leave their story and not for money because we don't ask patients for money, but to let them know of times that they can call their right their member of Congress or state legislator to speak up for reforms. What are some of the reforms? There is a bill in Congress right now and it may be voted on in coming weeks, called HR three, which is a very comprehensive bill in the House of Representatives that allow Medicare to negotiate over drug prices, and was set as a cap a number that is no high Or than 120% of what six other wealthy nations paid for their drugs. This would lower prices in this country dramatically, because we pay two to three times what other countries pay for their drives. HR three has other good features would cap out of pockets for people on Medicare, it would include inflation caps, so their prices can't be raised more than inflation. year over year. There's a bill in the Senate that is bipartisan, being championed by Senators Grassley and why didn't that would have inflation caps, again, making sure that drug makers can't price gouge by capping increases year over year at the rate of inflation. And the Trump administration has thrown its support behind the senate bill and the Trump administration may be about to bring forward April causal only covering Part B drugs. Those are drugs administered by doctors and nurses in hospitals or doctors offices that would use reference pricing international reference pricing to literally lower the price of Part B drugs to small sliver of drugs. It's only a pilot program, but it's very significant that the administration has brought this idea forward. So there are a number of proposals that are floating around. There are a number of other dynamics in play right now. And I'm laughing It's not funny, but there is a lot of obviously political energy being sucked out of the room by the impeachment process and the partisanship that exists, but I can tell you for sure that if Democrats and Republicans Both in Congress and in the White House could get a deal on drug pricing, they would all really like it. Because there's so much anger and energy around this issue. They want to go home and campaign on having done something. So we are trying to leverage that political energy to see if we can get something done. Before we get too deep into the election year in 2021, it will become increasingly difficult. Yeah, that   Stacey Simms  20:25 makes a lot of sense. It really does. I'm curious, and I don't want to be devil's advocate here. But and I know there's a lot of hope. And there's a lot of energy, as you say, but I'm trying to think of a time where we actually made progress on medical pricing, and things like that. And I mean progress, where prices came down and access improved in the last generation or so. Not to say it can't happen now. But has it happened have we had success in any of these things?   David Mitchell  20:55 know we actually have the most expensive health care system in the world. Some people think we have the best health care system in the world. But we don't actually, we have the most expensive health care system in the world, other countries have found a way not only to pay less for their drugs, but to pay less for all of the elements of health care, and still have better health outcomes, longer life expectancy. We have a system that is built in many ways, not only the drug pricing system, but the whole system is in many ways built to benefit the people who make money on it more than benefit the people who is supposed to serve. So we have hope, and drug pricing because 90% of Americans say they want Congress to do something about it. Democrats, Republicans and independence, there is an enormous energy. It's the only reason that there's hope because pharmaceutical industry is probably spending about a billion dollars a year to fight anything that would lower drug prices. And the amount of money that our side has, is dwarfed by that billion dollars. But what they don't have and we do is a very angry electorate, demanding that the people who they send to Washington and state capitals do something. That's what gives us hope. And that's why having people speak out is so important.   Stacey Simms  22:27 Lauren, let me ask you, you have been at patients for affordable drugs for not not too long. A couple months now. Are you? Okay, are you more hopeful than when you walked in the door?   Lauren Stanford  22:38 Ah, definitely. I don't know if that's because of the political timing, but I can tell you what, these people if anyone's going to get it done. It's this group and our advocates. We have strong voices and to echo what David said before something that we have that pharma and the pharmaceuticals don't have are these compelling patient stories and I think we're doing a really good job of making sure they're heard on the hill and that something needs to change. And I'm definitely hopeful that something is on the horizon, there is not a more deserving cause I think then lowering drug prices so that people can afford to live. So I'm very hopeful.   Stacey Simms  23:19 Thank you both so much for spending some time with me. We will link up the full report, you know, as we have in the past and information, how people can get in touch and share their stories, but I really appreciate it and thanks for fighting the good fight.   David Mitchell  23:31 Thank you, Stacey very, very much. Thank   Unknown Speaker  23:33 you   Stacey Simms  23:34 information on everything they talked about at diabetes connections. com, click on the homepage to learn more about patients for affordable drugs, the legislation that they talked about a link up some insulin for all hashtag stuff as well some other resources that are out there. And of course, I will also link up to spare heroes that I talked about at the very beginning of the episode. I know Valentine's Day is just about here as this episode airs. It's tomorrow but it is Not too late. And of course, the sparrows initiative will continue for a few weeks after Valentine's Day as well. So please, if you can take part back next week with our longer interview episodes, those drop on Tuesday, and I'm going to be talking to the guys behind the new book that's coming out. They have a podcast to mastering diabetes. And I don't know if you've seen these guys, their claim to fame, their big trademark is they're like, eat 500 carbs of fruit. And I had to talk to them, because it could not possibly be that simple. Of course, it was not. But they really were fun to talk to. It was an interesting conversation. It didn't go quite the way I thought, because sometimes there's a lot of snake oil out there. This is not that they are the real deal. They are the real different deal. But it was great to talk to. That's on Tuesday. And then next Thursday, we will have another minisode and that will not be an interview episode as I just did. And that'll be back to just me talking about one topic for 10 years. 15 minutes. I love doing these. There's so much fun. I've learned a lot already in just the last couple of weeks and I hope you're enjoying them too. If you have a topic that you'd like me to talk about our question you'd like answered, please let me know Stacey at diabetes connections. com or you can just go ahead and post in the Facebook group. I have so many fun interviews lined up. I'm so excited for the weeks to come. But I always want to listen to you and deliver what you would like to hear. So if you got something, please please please let me know. All right, I am Stacey Simms. I will see you back here on Tuesday. Until then, be kind to yourself.   Unknown Speaker  25:42 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Sims media. All rights reserved. All rounds avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

In this episode, Lauren rides solo as Amber takes off to visit her family for the holidays! (Well deserved). So Lauren decided this was the perfect opportunity to have her sister, Maegan Rose, join her on todays episode! They discuss all funny, embarrassing, and memorable stories of their childhood to today, of course all unfiltered! These sister's release some juicy stories, so you better listen in! You WON'T want to miss this! Who else can relate?! Let us know in the comments, leave us a rating and send us a dm to our instagrams linked below. Instagram: @2girlsnofilter @lauren.unfiltered @maeganr0se For serious inquires only send us an email at: 2girlsnofilterpodcast@gmail.com

Sustainable Travel Our Guest today is Lauren Chu of the Ridgeline Report. As the world gets more crowded and the increase of the middle class around the world means that there are more folks touring the world, it becomes even more important to consider sustainability and our part.   Sustainable travel means we seek to minimize any negative impacts on the local people and environment of the places we visit, so that tourism can continue long term with a neutral or better yet, a positive impact.  Otherwise we risk damaging or ruining the very places we treasure.     Links Mentioned in this Episode: Active Travel Adventures podcast episodes: Cassis France Whitewater Raft the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon The Ridgeline Report (Lauren’s blog) Subscribe to the Active Travel Adventures podcast Sustainability’s Three Pillars: Environmental, Social and Economic   The Environmental Pillar   The Environmental Pillar seeks to minimize impact on the landscape and wildlife.   You can reduce you impact on the environment by using least the harmful means of transportation.  You can minimize waste by bringing your own reusables and following Leave No Trace principals. Buy (and then properly recycle or dispose) products with minimal packaging. When it comes to local wildlife, be respectful and avoid unethical businesses that exploit their animals.  While not all human-animal encounter tours are unethical, many are and if you saw how the animals were treated out of your sight, you would be appalled.   Sure it’s cool to ride an elephant, but did you know that some companies keep them chained on a small leash when not in service? Heart breaking! Do your homework before you go on an animal encounter tour and choose the responsible tour operator.  Call and ask questions, and while they might lie, as many companies “Green Wash” and act so responsible, dig deeper and ask HOW are they implementing their policies?   We all want to see the animals, but seek to find companies that put the health and wellness of the animals first.  Sadly this means that often you won’t have the super close encounter that you want, but it will be better for the animals.  Seek companies that show you the animals from more of a distance. Then you will also be seeing their natural behavior instead of tourist inspired behavior.   The Social Pillar   The Social Pillar consides how we impact the local community and its people.  To help prop up the social pillar, try to use local businesses, buy local food, and enjoy local tourism projects.    If you hire a tour company, ask if they are they using locals guides and are they taking you to the local restaurants and markets?    As relaxing as they may be, an all inclusive resort discourages leaving the compound, so while they are often using local foods and employees, the surrounding local businesses won’t get the benefit your tourism dollars unless you get out of the compound and wander.  Also, check to see whether the companies you hire are treating their employees fairly.  Lauren advises reaching out to a recent visitor on Trip Advisor and seeing if they’ll answer a couple of questions for you about their experience with a company.  Consider volunteering with local charitable projects.  Make sure any volounteer work you do is actually assisting local people help themselves.  I have found some NGO’s seem to put an ineffective bandage on a problem rather than truly helping to solve a problem,  because actually solving a problem puts them out of business. I prefer locally led organizations myself.  Instead of bringing things from your home country to distribute to needy in the country you are visiting, BUY THE NEEDED ITEMS LOCALLY.  I went on a mission trip to Haiti and was appalled to discover that we brought hundreds of pounds of beans and rice.  Sounds nice, no? Except we literally stole the sales from the mouths of the local businesses.  Instead, bring things they CAN’T buy locally, and then buy what you can from small local vendors.  That’s how you can really help!  In addition, LEARN ABOUT THE CULTURE.  If nothing else, take a few minutes to read the Wikipedia site about the country you are visiting.  There you will get a brief overview of their land and history which can help put what you see and the people you meet in some context.  I also like to check out this fascinating website that caters to business people doing international business, but this one page can give you a quick snapshot of the common embedded beliefs of a nation.   Bookmark it to check out before your next adventure!  Be sure to understand the cultural norms so that you don’t inadvertently offend the locals like the backpackers did in Malaysia that Lauren told us about.  A quick Google search can help you here. Remember that even though we are fascinated by the people and cultures that we visit, they are living what we consider an adventure as their everyday lives.  Do not treat their lives as a tourist attraction but rather meet with them on a one to one human level to learn more about the hows and whys of their lives which can help you gain insight into your own.  And remember, ask permission before taking a close up photograph.  People are not on display for your entertainment.   The Economic Pillar Really a sidebar to the Social Pillar discussed above:  buy from local vendors, choose locally owned and operated lodging, go with tour companies that hire local guides and treat them ethically.   Economic sustainability and following responsible tourism practices can not only help improve the lives of the people you encounter, but sustainable tourism means that it will continue to do so in the long term. Ecotourism is bandied about and the greenwashers will tout that they are eco friendly.  Do your homework to make sure they are not just riding the wave of what is trendy to call themselves.  Call them up, Lauren says, and ASK THEM not just about their sustainability policies and ethical treatment of employees, but ask them HOW they implement their policies.  It’s a good bet that a greenwasher will have all the right answers to the first question, but they are likely to flounder when explains the answers to the second.   Question:  Are you helping or hurting the places you love and visit???   Question:  Are you making the most responsible choice in regards to the three pillars when you go on your adventures?   Complete Transcript: Note that this is an unedited machine transcription, so there will be boo boo’s.  I offer this for those that prefer to read rather than listen to the show.     Kit Parks: (00:00) A quick glance through Instagram and you can see our public lands plus the even incredibly remote and inaccessible landscapes sound the most fragile and beautiful environments in the world are getting really crowded and I get it. You want to see them? I want to see them. They're special for a reason, so what can we do to make these lands and make these environments and our impact on them more sustainable? Today we're going to look at our impact, both positive and negative on the people and the landscapes and the places that we visit. Welcome to the adventure travel show podcast. I'm your host kit parks. This is a companion podcast to the Active Travel Adventures podcast. On this podcast you're going to learn about the how tos of adventure travel. Whereas on ATA, you're going to learn about destinations. I encourage you to subscribe to both today. I've got a great guest, Lauren Chu from the Ridge Line report whose specialty is talking about sustainability and safety in the wild and it's a great interview. I can't wait to share it with you. So at that further ado, let's get on with our interview with Lauren.    Kit Parks: (01:19) I was recently in Portland, Maine for the Women In Travel Summit and was lucky enough to meet Lauren at the opening night party. Lauren has an extensive background on wilderness safety and sustainability plus guiding in the wilderness. Welcome to the show. Lauren. Lauren Chu: Thank you so much. I'm super happy to be here. You've got a great background. And could you just tell us a little bit... I got a little bit about it from you that night and also on the website, but can you give us a little bit of a brief summary of, of who you are and the things that you've learned and some of your training and background?    Lauren Chu: (01:49) Yeah, absolutely.  So I went to school for engineering. So I studied engineering and after a few years in the workplace, I kind of found that my desire to be outside and kind of be connected to nature was far stronger than my desire to be working with machinery. And so for the past few years I've been working as a guide and as a kind of facilitator for programs around the world. So I work leading groups on hiking trips and I also work for an organization that does educational travel for students.    Kit Parks: (02:21) Cool. Cool. Now adventure travel has become huge when people even my age are doing it. So can you tell us a little bit about the rise of adventure travel on? Where's the buzz there? What's making it so cool these days to go on adventure travel?    Lauren Chu: (02:33) Yeah, it's a great point. And I think really what I've come to realize is that adventure travel is almost synonymous with travel in a lot of ways these days. I mean, everybody's looking for a hike or an off the beaten path experience or some way to reconnect with nature. And I think there's a few things that have contributed to this. I mean, the rise of adventure travel in pop culture has a lot to do with celebrities and celebrity status. I mean you think of Red Bull and the way that they've just elevated extreme sports athletes to kind of be these pop culture icons. And then you know, that fantastic movie, Wild with Reese Witherspoon came out of this one woman's journey along the Pacific Crest Trail and it kind of just skyrocketed her to start them as well. And it brought through hiking and that kind of backcountry experience to light again. And then even environmentalism has always been important in the past few decades. But recently it's become really mainstream. I mean, Nat Geo- National Geographic-  just won an Oscar for their work on Free Solo, which is incredible. But again, it's just created this idea that adventure travel is the norm and it's something that we should all be seeking.    Kit Parks: (03:38) Is Adventure travel harmful to some of the places that we go to in any way? Let's talk first... Let's break it into two sections. Let's talk about the impact on the local culture and the people. And then let's talk about the impact on the environment. So can you address, how does all of a sudden this mass of humanity, now we're invading some of these really remote places now in mass, how is that affecting the local people for good and for bad?    Lauren Chu: (04:03) Right. I think it's a fantastic question because when we think of these remote places and traveling to them, I mean these are the world's most fragile environments, both socially and environmentally. There's significant impacts that that can be had. There's one example I think of and Mount Kinabalu is the highest peak in Malaysia. And there was a group of backpackers a few years ago who decided they wanted to climb it and for some reason felt compelled to take photographs naked on top of this mountain. And you know, despite multiple warnings from their local guides to not do that, they took off their clothes. They had a picture taken, it was this harmless act of fun-ness or horseplay or whatever it was. And they actually ended up being jailed because of the disrespect that they had done to what was a very sacred place for the local people. And so while well intentioned and while I think it's important that we really get out there and take those risks, you know, there's a lot of considerations to be had for the people who live the adventure every day of their lives.    Kit Parks: (05:04) To us it is an adventure to them, like I think I heard you say that their reality, that's their everyday life.    Lauren Chu: (05:07) That's right. I mean we think about going on, you know, this Himalayan adventure or this Amazonian cruise through this epic wild landscape and for the people who live there and who have lived there for ever, it's the reality and it's something that they've had to grapple with is, is this big influx of people who want to see this adventure or to live this adventure and to ask somebody to share their everyday life kind of like a show or, or as a performance,  is really tricky and there's a lot of education that I think we can do as travelers ahead of time to respect those people in that culture.  Kit: Give us some examples.   Lauren Chu: (05:57)   So, I mean I think a lot of it is really just doing your research and it's hard and it takes time. But I think we have the responsibility to do it.  And it could be as simple as understanding the history of the people. So who lives there, you know, how long have they been there is, are there any sort of cultural norms or tendencies I might want to be aware of and then doing your research on, on a provider. So who is going to be taking you there and what is their relationship with the land? Do they live there? Are they from there? Do they understand the impacts that these activities have? And again, it does take a bit of effort, but it is entirely worth it. And I think it's fantastic that more people are looking for these kinds of ethical experiences.    Kit Parks:  (06:38)  That reminds me of the story. When I was in Bangkok, I was on a boat and one of the floating markets and what a floating market is, is all the vendors are on boats too.  And they're just kind of going through the alleyways in the canals and the waterways trying to sell their wares. And I always try to ask permission before I take a closeup photo of anybody anyway.  But just to be on the safe side, this one woman marketing, she had a couple of different things in the boat... I can't remember what they were though, but what you saw that we were tourists put her finger in front of our face and shook her head like, “No, no, no. I am not a tourist attraction!”  And I thought that was very interesting. I never forgot her. Of course, obviously I honored her request. I mean we've got to remember that there are everyday people just like us, they just have a different culture than what we're used to, which makes them fascinating to us. However, you still need to build a relationship before you just go snap in people's photos.    Lauren Chu: (07:20) Absolutely. And there's so much opportunity act for learning when we meet with these people who are so different from us. And instead of seeing them as canvas spectacle or an object to view or to enjoy, it's actually what can we learn from them and what are they doing that could be interesting or impactful for us. And a lot of times they're curious about us as we are about them. Absolutely. Particularly if they don't see a lot of tourists. And you know, there's, there's entire industries that have been created around big adventure travel destination. So Mount Kilimanjaro is a great example that I always kind of come back to. And I've had the chance to lead a group up to Mount Kilimanjaro and for me, the adventure wasn't so much in the hike, which was beautiful, don't get me wrong, but the adventure was in connecting with the people of Tanzania and understanding the vast, like the, the different tribes and cultures and diversity of culture that exists in Tanzania.    Lauren Chu: (08:20) And it's, it's a really great learning tool.  Kit Parks:  And Kilimanjaro and Nepal makes me think of something else to, depending on the guides that we hire, we're either helping or hurting the local people because there's great companies that properly pay and train their people and there's others that exploit the people and just take the money and actually take it out of the countries. So I think one of our ethical challenges is to look into the companies that we're doing business with to make sure that they're doing things in the manner that you want them to be doing things and choose your tour companies accordingly.    Lauren Chu:  Yeah, absolutely. And you, it's so important to kind of do our research and understand where that money's going, but also not to take away the agency that they have in making it a business because it's such important money for so many communities around the world.    Lauren Chu: (09:06) Right? Tourism is huge. And so instead of saying, we shouldn't contribute to this problem, we shouldn't climb Kilimanjaro, we shouldn't even try. It's actually how can we do it in a way that is mutually beneficial and contributes to a sustainable place that we can continue to visit and climb. And see for years to come. And what do we look for?    Kit Parks:  How do we, I mean, what do I even look for when I go to a website or try to check out an outfitter?    Lauren:  Yeah, it's an honestly a fantastic question and it's one that I continue to grapple with, but I think the best thing you can do is actually try to get in contact with somebody who works there. And yes, you can say, you know, they'll tell you whatever you want to hear, Yada, Yada, Yada. But if you ask questions around how do they pay their employees, how do they hold themselves accountable?    Lauren Chu: (09:54) What are their policies around social justice or environmental justice or, what measures do they take to ensure that the way that they operate is just and fair to their employees? And another thing that I've actually liked doing is reaching out to somebody who's gone on a tour with one of these companies before. So, you know, on TripAdvisor, on any kind of review site, it's a great place to find up to date information. And so I'll, I'll comment on one of the most recent reviews and say, hey, would you mind if I reached out to you? I just have a couple of questions to ask about how you found their policies around x, Y, Z to be, or whatever it is. And, and those are a few things that I, I typically do just to kind of do some surface level of vetting of the companies that on balance.    Kit Parks:  Do you think that this explosion of travel into some of these remote areas is as far as the people are in the culture go a benefit or a detraction or is it a balance or, or where do you stand on that?    Lauren Chu: (10:42)   Yeah, I think I am a huge proponent of adventure travel. I think it is fantastic and I think we should continue to encourage people to take risks and to go outside their comfort zone because that's where the learning happens. I mean, that's, to me the most exciting part of travel is when you learn something, you see something differently or you understand something in a, in a slightly different way. And so I think it is really important to continue to seek these experiences. But I think it's important to recognize that these experiences don't come free, right? There is a cost and will this ever be sustainable? It's a tough word to use, right? Sustainability is more of an ideal than a reality. But I think the more that we have conversations around principles surrounding leaving no trace or ethical travel or who does this benefit, we can certainly work towards a kind of a more humble and curiousype of traveler.    Kit Parks: (11:54) And at least in my experience, it seems that the people are grateful for the tourist dollars that are coming into their local towns and villages.    Lauren Chu: (11:57) That's exactly it, right? I mean they are business people, they are smart entrepreneurial workers who are looking to be involved with this global economy and we should certainly be able to take part of that as well.    Kit Parks: (12:11) So let's switch gears then and let's talk about adventure travel and its impact on the environment. You had mentioned earlier that we're talking about going into some of the world's most fragile areas. I remember, I can't remember where it was, it might have been in Glacier National Park. We were up pretty high and the only vegetation was some little Mossy Lichen on the rocks. And I think they said that it took decades for that Lichen to grow. So when you left the trail and got off trail, you're actually harming decades worth of growth. Can you talk a little bit about this invasion of the people trying to seek out all these cool environments, which like, you know, I'm all gung ho like you, and want to adventure travel, but I do see that as many people get out there that we're not necessarily treating the land with as much respect as we should be.    Lauren Chu: (13:01) That's it. That's a great point. And it's something that is super, super important to recognize. These are the world's most fragile environments and lichen like that, you know, similar to Kilimanjaro, it grows at a rate of a few millimeters per year. Right? So, you know, this is some of the most resilient but yet fragile at the same time, vegetation and life. And I think there's kind of this disconnect between our impact and the reality. So you can think that, oh, there's just so much space out here. It's just so vast. It's so big and it's so beautiful. Like my walking off the trail for a short time or me climbing up this rock to see this different viewpoint isn't gonna make a big difference. But in reality, the more people that do that over time, the bigger the effect that there is. And so, you know, leaving no trace is exactly that.    Lauren Chu: (13:55) It's leaving no trace of you being there. But more than that, to me it's, it's, it's the golden rule. Leave a place the way that you would like to find it. Right? And so it means staying on the trail, it means camping in designated areas. It means not making huge bonfires. It obviously means not leaving trash. And I think the more that we can instill that in people as the norm and not as something that we seek to, that we wish to do, but instead something that we have to do and are supposed to do, the better off we'll be.    Kit Parks: (14:29) Yeah. I remember when I was doing some sections of the Appalachian trail, I would get so irritated with some of the hikers out there because nobody wants to carry weight. You're backpacking. So I get it. We all want to minimize the weight, but when they'd leave their garbage or burn unburnable garbage in the fire areas, I'm like, they came out here for the beauty and then they're marring it for the rest of us and that would really get in my craw a little bit.    Lauren Chu: (14:53) No kidding. Yeah, I’m the same way. And you know, it's tough for, I'm not gonna say,  “Don't make fires”, and I'm not going to say that you can't go to these places, but, but there's certainly a level of responsibility that I think we have to take for each other. Really. It's just, it's looking out for each other.    Kit Parks: (15:08) So let's, let's talk about, so of course we want to stay on the trails and obviously you don't want to cut any live vegetation, trees or branches to make your fire. Can you just identify, leave no trace, I know you talked a little bit about that, but in a nutshell, what does that mean for people when they say when it regards to human waste and toilet paper and their trash?    Lauren Chu: (15:28) Sure. Toilet paper is kind of one of my favorite things to talk about in a funny way. So leave no trace principles are kind of these ethics, it's a kind of a code of ethics that people who travel outdoors and visit these backcountry areas should abide by. And again, the idea is that you leave a place the way that you found it in the way that you would like to find it. And so it means taking only pictures and not leaving garbage. And toilet paper is a, is an interesting one. It seems so light and so fragile and so many people just kind of leave it on the trail. I mean, the number of times that I've come across toilet paper on the trail is, it's just, I can't even, can't even articulate how frustrated it makes me.    Lauren Chu: (16:14) Toilet paper takes, I think around three years to biodegrade and that's in the most fertile environment, like in dirt or in like a forest full of mulch and full of leaves and wet leaves.  But you should really never be leaving toilet paper on the ground. You pack it in and you pack it out. So you just bring a little Baggie with you and you do your thing and then you put the toilet paper in the bag and carry it with you. It shouldn't be buried, it shouldn't be left. And if you don't want to see it on the trail, certainly don't leave it for other people to find.    Kit Parks: (16:48) Right. And actually when people say, “Oh, I bury it”.  But actually animals, will go dig that up too.   Lauren Chu:  Exactly. Exactly.    Kit Parks:  And speaking of like the biodegrading, one of the most irritating times I was up, I was in the little town of Cassis, France and there was this huge, huge cliff bluff that was just like a straight up hike to get up there. And I'm up there first thing in the morning, I got the whole thing to myself. It's absolutely beautiful except for all along the path was toilet paper because it hardly ever rains. So it doesn't decompose and it was disgusting.    Lauren Chu:  That's right. So anyway, I always tell people, bring a baggy, label it trash so you don’t get confused.  And then when you get to town you can dump it and use a fresh bag if you want. You never have to go in it, you know? So it's not a big deal.    Kit Parks:  Yeah, there's even some places now when I interviewed Mike of about rafting the Colorado River, they had to brown bag… they even had to pack out all of their human waste. That's exactly it. Yeah. And so is that common in many places or is that just in some of the really fragile places are parks?    Lauren Chu: (17:50) I would say that's kind of the but is it practice everywhere? No, and you know, in, in Canada or in Ontario anyway, in the places that I spend time, can you tripping in the summer there's what we call “Treasure Boxes”.  And so they're little... they're set up by, you know, Ontario parks or parks Canada and they’re boxes for you to use as a toilet. And so this is kind of their way of focusing on only putting human waste in one place. And so please use those treasure boxes. They're there for a reason.    Kit Parks:  I'd never heard about that before. That's new news. Cool. Cool. So overall do you have some overall thoughts about our impact in the world doing adventure travel?    Lauren Chu: (18:47) Again, I think I just want to kind of balance the idea of risk because taking risk is fantastic. Like I said, I think we should keep doing it. I think everybody needs to push themselves out of their comfort zone and seek these experiences in nature that for, for the past few decades, we've kind of forgotten in a lot of ways.  So that's one side of it. And then, and my, I guess my final thoughts are the more conversations we have and the more we hold each other accountable when it comes to safety and sustainability and adventure travel, we can certainly work towards a type of traveler and in a world and an industry that is sustainable and collaborative and mutually beneficial to everybody involved. And I think we'll get there and I think we can work to get there. And I'm excited to be a part of this new movement of travelers who care.    Kit Parks:  So Lauren you've got the Ridgeline Report. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And I'll put links to all of Lauren's website and blog on the show notes and on the website at adventuretravelshowpodcast.com/sustainability.  And so Lauren, can you tell us a little bit about the Ridgeline Report and whatever else you're up to?    Lauren Chu: (19:37) Yeah, sure. So, The Ridgeline Report is my personal blog and on it I kind of talk about hiking and biking and camping in Canada and around the world. But I do try to kind of provide a lot of resources for people around sustainability and safety. So, you know, I've got a bit on leave no trace principles and how to apply them in reality and just bits on hiking etiquette and, and all that sort of good stuff. So that's what's there.    Kit Parks: Well, I'll be sure, like I said, I'll be sure to link to all that. Lauren, I sure appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks so much.   Lauren Chu: (20:42)Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.    Kit Parks: Our thanks to Lauren for coming on the show. She’s given us a lot to think about and to chew on as we plan our future adventures. Some questions we need to ask ourselves: are we considering the impact that we're making on both the local culture and the environment when we do our adventures and what are some of the things that we can do to have a positive impact and minimize our negative impacts?    Kit Parks: (20:51) I'm going to have tips both from Lauren and from other research on the website, adventuretravelshowpodcast.com/sustainability and of course newsletter subscribers will get the monthly, once a month newsletter that it's going to come automatically. I would like to ask you, this is an important topic to please share this with with your fellow adventurers. It gives us all food for thought about where we stand and what kind of impact we're going to have in the future. In fact, next up I'm going to explore a little bit deeper and we're going to talk about manners. We're going to talk about outdoor and wilderness etiquette. There's lots of things that we're doing right and there's a lot of things we'd be not even realized that we're doing wrong. So we’ll drill down into that so everybody understands what is considered good manners out in the wild, our public lands are getting crowded, shoot for that matter, the whole world is getting crowded and if we all just play nice together, just like our parents taught us, then these beautiful and fragile lands will continue to inspire folks for generations to come. We just all need to work together and to think before we do and consciously choose to have a positive impact, Lauren will be right that we will get there in the future. Again, lots to think about today.    Kit Parks: (22:00) Next up on the companion show podcast, the Active Travel Adventures podcast. We're going to Acadia National Park and I'm super excited to share that with you. So that'll be coming up next week and again, the following week we'll be learning our manners in the wild and until then, thanks for listening. This is Kit Parks, Adventure On!

We expect our mothers to be infallible— all-knowing, all-caring superwomen who can solve every problem and care for us in every situation. Combined with the lack of connection to the divine feminine in society, we can feel an extreme lack in our lives and deeply crave this lost female influence.   By healing our Mother wounds and tapping into the power of the Divine Feminine, we can click these pieces of the puzzle into place to help ourselves flourish rather than getting stuck in our never-ending 'lack' mentalities.   Today I have the absolute pleasure of interviewing someone that you may know from Love and Light, Lauren Gandharva. She's the project manager and community manager for the Love and Light School so you may have seen her around in our Facebook student group popping in and answering comments online, or helping you with emails, but she's also an amazing tarot and oracle card expert. I just love the connection that I've made with Lauren over these past few years. So Lauren, thank you so much for being here with us today. Lauren Gandharva: Thanks for having me on Ashley. It's exciting to get to talk to you just about crystals for a while because we talk every day, obviously, but this is kind of fun to get together and chat. Ashley: Yeah. It's fun to just kind of switch things up and do it a little differently. I'm really happy to be talking to you about this topic for today, which is how to heal the Mother Wound using crystals. Can you tell us a little bit about the Mother Wound and how this got brought forward into our consciousness as something that we work through with healing?  Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. So, it's a pretty complex thing and it's so amazing when you kind of get into it, because you can go so deep with this topic. But the Motherwound is this idea that there is a wound in our souls that we have. It seems on the surface that it might have something to do with our own mothers and the relationship that we have with them, which is such a sacred bond. They are the people who birthed us, or who raised us, so we can have a really interesting dynamic with our own mothers. When we look closer, we really see that the relationship we have with our mothers can be a reflection of the relationship that we have with the divine feminine in our society and the lack that we've had of that growing up. Especially here for us, we grew up without this presence, without knowing that this was something that's happening in our lives in so many different ways. It's important to look at both aspects: both our relationships with our mothers and with the divine feminine as a level of consciousness. Ashley: Do you have a few examples of what the Mother Wound might look like in terms of our relationship with our own mothers? How does it manifest in our lives? Lauren: I think for a lot of us, it kind of builds up as a little bit of resentment. That doesn't mean that we just hate our mothers and we are out to get them and we think that they've done terrible jobs with us. Instead, it's like, even if we have an amazing relationship with them, we feel that maybe they could have done things differently, or that we wished for this constant affection from them and this constant perfection in the way that they nurture us. That's obviously impossible for them to do, because they're also women who have been living in this society and they've been nurtured in different ways and had a lot of lacks in their lives as well. So, we kind of want this nurture so badly from them and we start to resent them in different ways when they can't give us everything that we need and all the support that we need in the different phases of our lives. Sometimes, we take it out on our mothers when really we should be focusing on connecting with the divine feminine as a whole to nourish that hole that's left in our souls. Ashley: That's such a good explanation. I do think that you're absolutely right.

The holiday break is starting and 2018 is winding down. And that means a break in childcare for Zadie and Jude! So Lauren and Jesse have been busier than usual at home. However, there’s naptime and school, and that gives Lauren a few windows throughout the day to do some writing. Meanwhile, Jesse’s fresh back from the Picky Bars retreat. A full-team meeting where team members review their 2018 goals and accomplishments, and discuss how this past year will shape 2019. Jesse and Lauren catch you up on some changes coming to Picky Bars in the new year, celebrate some recent workouts, and jump into your questions. This week's Tasty Bits include: how to keep your hands warm while running and biking in the winter. How to incorporate the caffeine and sugar into your training plans. Jesse's and Lauren's favorite running shoes. And learning about why your heart rate is elevated when running in the cold.  In the meat and potatoes section, Lauren and Jesse talk about running technique, hunger management during peak training, breathing techniques, and what to do when your partner is a non-athlete, or just not into the same things you are. 

Session 64 Dr. Lauren Kuwik is a Med-Peds specialist in upper New York. She shares with us her desire to go into Med-Peds vs other specialty and so much more. Check out all our other podcasts on MedEd Media Network. We are constantly looking for people to guest here on our podcast. If you know a physician whom you think would be a great guest, reach out to them and give them my email address ryan@medicalschoolhq.net and have them contact me and we will get them on the show. Today's guest is a private practice Med-Peds doctor. Med-Peds is internal medicine and pediatrics combine specialty. Lauren is now practicing for five years in Buffalo, New York area. And she talks all about her journey with us today. [01:50] An Interest in Med-Peds Lauren grew up knowing a doctor who was a family friend who ended up being her internist when she transitioned from her pedia rotation and she was Med-Peds. Having always wanted to be an archaeologist and a teacher, she feels that Med-Peds allows her to be both. With internal medicine, in terms of the archeology part of it, you're always putting together clues to figure out what's going on with the patient. She loves the mental tenacity involved in internal medicine. While for the peds part, she loves children and thinks they're fun. She loves taking care of kids. And as with the teaching aspect, she loves educating patients on a daily basis. So she gets to do all the things she wanted to do together in one specialty. "You're always putting together clues to figure out what's going on with the patient." [03:08] Is Med-Peds Going Away Soon? And How It's Different from Family Medicine With the generality of it with both internal medicine and pediatrics, she doesn't really see any risk of the Med-Peds going away over time. There's a need for primary care doctors and specializing in both really gives you the opportunity to be a better pediatrician and a better internist. People really like to have someone that they can see themselves and their kids. They're both the doctor to the mothers and kids. So Lauren thinks this specialty is really here to stay. "Specializing in both really gives you the opportunity to be a better pediatrician and a better internist." How is the specialty different from family medicine then? Lauren explains it's similar to family medicine or family practice where they take care of the whole spectrum from babies all the way to patients in their 90s or 100s. But they don't do OB, so they don't deliver babies. They take care of pregnant patients but they're not involved in their prenatal and delivery care. They do very little surgery. And while family medicine may do a couple of months in pediatric training, Med-Peds would have to do a full residency in pediatrics and they're board-certified in pediatrics. They can subspecialize if they want to. So any specialty comes out of internal medicine, out of pediatrics. You can either subspecialize in the pediatrics and adults subspecialty or you can specialize in both. There are those that may want to take care of patients with compact heart disease as a kid. They're then repaired and now they're in their 30s. So there are people who will do a longer fellowship and combined internal medicine and pediatrics, cardiology and then they can take care of those people throughout their whole life. It's longer. If each fellowship in internal medicine or pediatrics three years, that's usually about a five-year fellowship. Other people just do adult cardiology but because they're pediatric certified, they feel very comfortable with those cases. There are other ways to do that without doing it for five years. Nevertheless, it's a lot of training. [06:00] Traits that Lead to Being a Great Med-Peds Doc Lauren explains that you have to be willing to talk to people. You have to be willing to build relationships and be comfortable speaking with specialists. This will help your patients out in the future. Additionally, you have to be able to apply knowledge to things that don't seem very straightforward. Some people like to have one specialty where they get a lot of deep knowledge in a very narrow pocket. You have to know a little about everything and be really willing to work hard. Alternately, if you're someone that doesn't like to do a lot of procedures or like to be in an operating room, this is where you can do minor procedures that are not heavy. So this is a good fit as well. "You have to know a little about everything and be really willing to work hard." Aside from Med-Peds, another specialty that actually drew her was Emergency Medicine. In fact, she thinks most people in Med-Peds, at some point, considered a career in Emergency Medicine. For her, a couple of things impacted her decision. First being was that her mother was an emergency medicine nurse practitioner. She spent a lot of time volunteering in the emergency department. She found it to be so much fun with a lot of variety. But ultimately, she likes controlling her time. She doesn't mind an emergency every once in a while or dropping everything to take care of it. But she doesn't lots of emergencies going on at the same time. She doesn't like feeling flustered.  She really likes having control over her schedule in deciding the hours she wants to work without someone assigning those to her so she gets more time with her family. [08:05] Types of Patients and Typical Day Lauren sees a mix of patients from a one-day old baby to a 91-year old patient. She sees a mix of well visits or annuals. She sees people who are getting ready to go for surgery or those who come in for chest pain or for fever. It's just a variety of things. A typical day for Lauren is getting to the office 30 minutes before she starts her day.  She'd do a lot of things between seeing patients like talking to her nurses, answering calls, checking labs, reviewing many documents, images, and sometimes prepping her notes in the morning. She sees patients in the morning for about three to four hours. And then she also sees patients in the afternoon. She has a late day where she's in the office until 7 at night, but she comes in at noon when this happens. So it's basically the same day just pushed forward. Lauren explains that where she lives, she does more of outpatient care. But for most outpatient primary care doctors, are having their patients taken care of in hospital by hospitalists. So she only goes to the hospital for babies born to her practice at the newborn nursery. Most pediatricians have their hospitalists and the nursery sees their patients. That said, she reckons it at 95% out patient for her. [10:22] Taking Calls and Work-Life Balance Lauren takes calls one day a week. She might get one phone call usually. In fact, one time, she went almost three months with no phone calls on that day. Sometimes, she gets two or three. And every fifth weekend, she's on call. She gets an average of ten phone calls. She doesn't necessarily have to be somewhere. She just has to be available by phone. If patients hear her kids talking, they know she's living her life. But it's not as time-consuming. Lauren has three kids and two of them, she had during residency. However, with the kind of schedule she has, she feels like she has a lot of time with her kids. "Anything after having two kids back to back in residency seems like a ton of time." [12:05] The Training Path As a Med-Peds doctor, you're taking a three-year pediatric residency and a three-year internal medicine residency. Then you're mushing them together into four years. Because of that, there's a lot of overlap especially in the first year about learning how to be an intern. A lot of the things that you learn are not really specific to one specialty or another. There's not a lot of time for electives or research months. They have a lot of inpatient and intensive care unit months compared to a traditional pediatric or traditional internal medicine residency. "There's a lot of overlap especially in the first year about learning how to be an intern and a lot of the things that you learn are not really specific to one specialty or another." For Med-Peds, there's a national guideline that you have to hit to both finish your pediatric requirements and finish your internal medicine requirements. And Lauren doesn't think this is a modifiable thing. She feels lucky though because her clinic "assignment" was at a private practice and a community where the other doctors are really happy in primary care. It gave her a great introduction to life as outpatient primary care doctor and talked her into that role. Lauren goes on to explain that Med-Peds programs are usually pretty small. She's from the east coast and most programs were 2-4 residents per year. Most people who graduate from her program would be one in the primary care. They only did dev specialty in internal medicine or pediatrics. And sometimes, they overlap stuff such as sickle cell care or cystic fibrosis care. She has seen people do both although she has no knowledge of the actual data. But speaking of her program, most people went into primary care. Lauren doesn't think Med-Peds is competitive. She went to state school and interviewed at top programs but she didn't think it was particularly competitive. Primary care in general, she thinks, is not as competitive too. Although she wished it was more competitive, but she assumes it has more to do with salary. "I wish they were more competitive. It probably has a lot to do with salary. I think they're the greatest field in the world, but not as competitive." [16:30] Bias Towards DOs, Special Subspecialties, and Working With Other Specialties Lauren doesn't really see any bias towards DOs. A lot of times, she forgets when she thinks about her colleagues that she did training with as to who went to DO school and who went to MD school. As to what's not available to a Med-Peds doc to do a fellowship in, there might be people who do a Med-Peds residency and then do a fellowship that is just within one sphere, for instance, pediatric ICU. But the practice both in the pediatric and adult realm, she does see this happen. But there's not anything that's cut out. When she was rotating in pediatrics and internal medicine, most of the attendings are happy to have Med-Peds on their teams knowing they're pretty academic and they work hard. Other specialties they work very closely with Cardiology, Oncology, Surgery, and sometimes Nephrology. Outside of clinical medicine, special opportunities would be telemedicine, college health, reviewers on different journals, etc. [18:55] What She Wished She Knew that She Knows Now Although not specific to Med-Peds, Lauren wished she knew so much more of how the business in medicine. Being a private practice owner and actively learning, she wished they taught this in medical school. She wished she got a wiser advice about her student loans before entering attending shift, although it's coming around and she plans on them being gone in a couple of years. "I wish I knew so much more of how the business in medicine because I'm a private practice owner and I'm actively learning but I wish that they taught this in medical school." What she likes the most about being a Med-Peds doctor is being someone's doctor. She likes taking care of families and she loves taking care of older adults in their 80s and 90s. She thinks there's so much to learn from them and she loves taking care of first time babies of families and guiding them through the process. On the flip side, what she likes the least is the reimbursement compared to specialists. Although there's not a lot to complain about, it seems like it's a fact that they pay more for procedural specialties than they do for those people who hold their patient's hands and talk to them when something's going on. And she really thinks the reimbursement playing field must be evened out. [20:15] Private Practice versus Academics The reason she chose private practice over academics is having control over her own schedule and over how things run where she is. Additionally, you get paid more, you get to have a better schedule, and so you get a better quality of life. You get to have more say over how your practice runs and you're not having an administration telling you what to do. Lauren recalls that in her particular practice for five years, the first four years, she was an employed physician. And then she became a Partner last year. And she basically realized she would never work for someone else for the rest of her life. [21:35] Major Future Changes in the Field Lauren mentions this thing called, capitation. It doesn't impact students but there's a change in the way that they're paying private practice. This is on a regional level, but a lot of insurance companies are interested in incentivizing in order to provide really good care to their patients. But then they pay you per month to be someone's doctor and they pay for sick visits when patients come in. "There's changes in the payment structure for private insurance right now." Overall, with the Affordable Care Act, this has not affected her practice in a negative way. So she's interested to see what happens in the new healthcare plans. Moreover, the one population she loves taking care of which are 80-year-old patients are on Medicare. They've worked so hard so you would want those to be available to those patients. [22:55] Final Words of Wisdom If she had to do it all over again, she'd still choose the same specialty 100%. Lastly, Lauren would like to impart to students that it's important to network and connect with attending physicians. Shadow them to see if this is something you're interested in. Most of them are really excited to share their specialty with people. So if you know someone that's a family friend or your pediatrician, or someone you met at a networking event for premeds, really take them up on the offer if they offer for you to shadow. Or reach out to them. Because they want to share that with other people who may be interested. Links: MedEd Media ryan@medicalschoolhq.net

Lauren Foundos is the Founder and CEO of FORTË, a streaming platform that brings live and on-demand boutique fitness classes to your home. It’s the Netflix of gym memberships. How cool is that? Lauren Foundos never set out to be an entrepreneur. She had a thriving career as a bond trader, but the Wall Street lifestyle was preventing her from integrating a core passion of hers, working out. So Lauren assembled a crew of co-workers and clients who, instead of going out to happy hour, would go to boutique fitness classes after work. Lauren’s love for working out and the community atmosphere ignited her passion to bring the boutique fitness experience to everyone, no matter where they lived! In this episode, Lauren shares how she developed a robust streaming platform with no tech experience. She goes into to detail about the importance of spending wisely and keeping a lean budget while expanding your business. She also offers insight about free marketing through strategic partnerships and leveraging the partner's network to share your business's message. There is no doubt that Lauren is an innovator and an expert in a new fitness industry. She is so encouraging as she confidently advises all entrepreneurs to stay focused on the present goals, and don’t get overwhelmed by the future. The best part about creating FORTË for Lauren is that she is the user of the product. She believes in what she has created and continues to work hard to share it with the world! Please follow Lauren and the FORTË team @Forte.fit on Instagram, @Forte on Facebook, and @Forte_Fit on Twitter. Be sure to go to www.forte.fit to check out their class offerings and subscription plans. Don't forget to follow us at @libertyforher on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Please let us know your thoughts about this episode by using the hashtag #libertysessions and please rate and review us—it helps to know if this podcast is inspiring and equipping you to launch and grow your ventures

In this episode we talk to Lauren Varlack of Visionary Stationary and the creator of the Brand Flava Quiz ://visionarystationery.com/brand-flava-quiz/. Lauren is a premier designer in the Atlanta area and specialize in helping business find their unique design style. In this episode Lauren talks about branding your boutique, finding your unique style and purpose. Here's what you'll learn: how visual element of your brand help people connect with your boutiqe the importance of choosing colors that portray the emotion of your brand using imagery to encourage more retail sales the visual elements you need to represent your boutiques brand A little about Lauren Lauren Varlack is the chief designer and strategist for Visionary Stationery | Lauren V. Designs. Lauren helps women entrepreneurs, especially women of color, unleash their purpose to create a spectacular visual brand that effectively communicates your powerful message to your dream customers and clients. Lauren has always been fascinated by art, design and computers from a very young age. She spent some time honing my craft by obtaining two Bachelors of Arts degrees: one in Social Sciences and Education, and the other in Fine Arts Digital Design. Lauren received accolades and awards as a high school teacher of 5 years. Also, since 2009, created beautiful visual brands for awesome business and clients through being a web and graphic designer many who are still loyal clients until today. The vision for Lauren's business came from the lack of authentic expression in the entrepreneurial world for African-Americans. At a point of emotional breakdown, in searching for stationery and visuals that represented who she was and her walk, Lauren noticed there were none.  So Lauren decided that it was time that we as African-Americans be who we are; unapologetically, do what we are called to do in life and business, and use visuals that represent our way of life. Thus, Visionary Stationery—Lauren V. Designs was born. When you work with Lauren, you will gain an effective plan and execution of your brand’s vision and message that speaks visually to the needs and desires of the clients and customers you want to embrace and work for. Your purpose is waiting to be unleashed and told in a colorful way! Sign up for a free brand assessment here: http://bit.ly/freebrandcheck