Ellen Vora, MD, Author at Ellen Vora, MD

The Challenge of Modern Life Is Having a Properly Calibrated Immune System

by Ellen Vora, MD on Mar 30, 2020 / Share

Throughout human evolution, you couldn’t help but have a properly calibrated immune system. It got trained by a diverse gut flora in infancy, and then challenged with frequent exposures. These days, there are so many aspects of modern life, from antibiotics, to excessive hygiene, to pesticides that cause leaky gut, that leave our race car immune systems very confused, speeding in all the wrong directions. A dysregulated immune system might attack the self (autoimmune disease), and fail to keep an infection in check. I think we should do what we can to maintain strong terrain and a balanced, calibrated immune system. How? Longer conversation, but it starts with eating fermented foods, avoiding interventions that damage our guts, gardening, and managing stress.

Mindfulness Exercise for Parents

by Ellen Vora, MD on Mar 20, 2020 / Share

When my husband holds my daughter’s hand, he runs his thumb back and forth, measuring the size of her hand. Over the years, this has been a tool for tuning in to her growth and the passage of time. A small action like this can be an instrument of mindfulness, allowing us to wake up to the present moment. What tiny hands are growing in your life? How do you remind yourself to wake up and witness the impermanence and heart-aching glory of it all?

Simplifying Our Lives

by Ellen Vora, MD on Mar 19, 2020 / Share

An unexpected shift I’ve noticed in my practice:

As people cancel events & travel, work from home, and generally batten down the hatches, we are now, finally, simplifying our lives. We’ve been overdue for a correction to the busy-ness trap; who knew it would take a global pandemic for us to finally do less?

Next challenge: simplify your information diet.

A Simple Shift

by Ellen Vora, MD on Mar 19, 2020 / Share

These last few days, all of the tension I’ve been feeling has made me wake up very early. Instead of struggling with that and tossing and turning, I’ve decided to get out of bed, light a candle in my living room, and meditate so that I can get still and quiet and listen for what is being asked of me in these trying times.

Social Distancing Looks Very Different Depending On Circumstances

by Ellen Vora, MD on Mar 19, 2020 / Share

I have to admit, I was getting triggered seeing all the posts about extra time for baths, meditation, learning to knit, or even watching “all of netflix”. I keep thinking, “you must not have kids.” As a household with two remote working parents, our work has not paused, yet we’re suddenly without school, nanny, or any childcare. I was feeling bad for myself.
Then it occurred to me, any time you’ve got tough circumstances and you’re envying/resenting people who have it easier, take a step back and recognize you’ve got the enviable/resentable circumstances from someone else’s perspective.

So I have turned my lens on all the people for whom social distancing does not mean extra time for arts & crafts, it means: how will I survive without income? How can I report to my job at the grocery store when my kids can’t go to school? How will I survive if my home health aid stops showing up who helps me with toileting, showering, and opening the can to make soup?

If quarantine means time for rest and turning inward for you, be in gratitude and, without feeling guilty or diminishing your gratitude, think on others with a more complicated burden under these circumstances. Help where you can.

Self-Care Is An Outcropping of Capitalism

by Ellen Vora, MD on Mar 11, 2020 / Share

Self-Care is an Outcropping of Capitalism

The self-care industrial complex is in many ways trying to profit off our burnout. But the workism episode of the Ezra Klein show opened my eyes to the idea that self-care itself is an example of how capitalism has permeated our lives. “Self-care” is what happens when leisure needs to feel productive. It rebrands relaxation into a virtuous activity. Now, instead of staring at the sky to relax, we meditate and gua sha our jawlines. Productive relaxation, optimizing ourselves so we can be more productive at work, live longer, and enhance the lymphatic drainage in our faces. I encourage you to rebrand your leisure time as leisure for the sake of leisure. Even better: leisure for no sake at all. Sometimes we work, and sometimes we rest. When you’re resting, just do what feels good, and enjoy it, the end.

The Need To Feel Witnessed

by Ellen Vora, MD on Mar 5, 2020 / Share

Humans need to feel witnessed, but these days we’re siloed off in McMansions, SUV’s, and lonely studio apartments. Sometimes a zoom conference is the most social thing we do in a day.
As we’ve moved away from church communities, rotary clubs, living with extended family, and feeling known by our villages, we have an unmet need to feel seen and witnessed as we go through the ups and downs of our lives. I believe social media has stepped in to be our surrogate village. Now, when we have a baby, take a vacation, or get nail art, we post it to feel witnessed. Someone shared in our experience; it was not all for naught.

Yet this surrogate village is less tangible. I don’t find it to be a wholly satisfactory form of feeling seen. What do you think?

You Are Enough

by Ellen Vora, MD on Mar 5, 2020 / Share

It used to be you could arrive at a state of “enough” and feel content. These days, there is no enough. Never rich enough, thin enough, working enough, optimizing, scaling, outsmarting, anticipating, stockpiling masks for coronavirus, prepared enough for the apocalypse. I believe this relates to venture capital and startups. These days, a business can’t just be profitable and stay that way. It has to scale. It can’t coast at the same good speed; it needs to accelerate. Which means you could always be doing more. I think this has created untold amounts of burnout at work, and it has trickled down into our mental health and the way we lead our lives. There is no more enough. As in: I worked hard enough today, and now I can rest and relax. We’re all on a treadmill where the speed is slowly increasing, and we’re constantly trying to “optimize.”

Try instead to take inventory of all the ways things are enough right now. You have enough material possessions, you’ve worked enough for the day, you’ve done the best you could (within reason), your body is perfectly enough, and, most importantly, you are enough.

You. Are. Enough. Already. Right now. And maybe you don’t need to be optimized or scaled. I believe this is the antidote to venture-capital-induced workism, burnout, and excessive anxiety. Recognize the enoughness of it all right now.

Healing Anxiety Starts with Blood Sugar

by Ellen Vora, MD on Feb 26, 2020 / Share

When your blood sugar crashes, your body responds with a stress response. This is the system of checks and balances that allows us to manufacture blood sugar from our body’s storage of starch. It’s great that our body has a system for saving the day after a blood sugar crash, but the end result is a 5-alarm fire in the body, which can feel synonymous with anxiety and panic.

Why is your blood sugar crashing? Here are some reasons I see in my practice: 1) you haven’t eaten, 2) you ate refined carbohydrates or sugar that caused your blood sugar to spike and then crash after a compensatory wave of insulin, or 3) your appetite is falsely suppressed from things like stimulants.

If you want to decrease anxiety, keep your blood sugar stable throughout the day and night. The best way to do this is to rehabilitate your diet away from sugar, refined carbohydrates, low fat, and booze, and toward balanced meals of real food at regular intervals (which sounds simple enough, but is admittedly challenging in our modern world). Short of overhauling your diet, there’s also a hack: take a spoonful of almond butter (or coconut oil), or a handful of almonds, every few hours throughout the day. Come for the hack, stay for the diet overhaul. And check-in after a few days: are you having fewer panic attacks? Less anxiety at 5pm? At 7am? Sunday evening?

No Shame, No Judgment: How to Deal with Depression and Anxiety – Women of Impact Interview

by Ellen Vora, MD on Feb 21, 2020 / Share

It was such an honor to sit down with Lisa Bilyeu for this vital conversation. I am still tingling from her kindness and warm energy! Watch the full interview here.