The Sjogren’s Sisterhood
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Kara Wada, MD:
Welcome back everyone. Thanks so much for joining us again, and welcome to our new listeners. I am so excited to introduce you to someone I have been wanting to connect with for quite some time, Dr. Susan Masterson. She is a fellow Sjogren's patient, likely sends childhood. She's a trained clinical health psychologist and learned all about the worried well and thought she was one until she was finally diagnosed with Sjogren's in 2017.
And at that point, researching Sjogren's became her mission, and she wrote her book, "You mean it isn't in my head?", to validate what others feel and give a broad overview as a starting point when newly diagnosed patients don't know anything about their disease. So I am so excited to connect with Dr. Masterson to learn more about you. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to talk with us and share your story.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to talking to you too for quite a while, so this is a perfect way to do it.
Kara Wada, MD: We also found out we're geographically not too far from one another, just about four hours away.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Oh yeah. What do you know? Maybe we can meet live sometime.
Meet Dr. Susan Masterson
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Kara Wada, MD: I would love that. So maybe you can start by just sharing a little bit more about you and your story. How did you end up where you are now?
Susan Masterson, PhD: I guess as a child, I think you mentioned a minute ago, I've had symptoms probably most of my life where I'd feel like something's in my eye and my eyes were dry when I would try to wear contacts and I would have joint pain and the fatigue has been this constant thing I've been living with for forever, pretty much.
Anytime I would go to a doctor, I would first and foremost always talk about, I'm just so tired. If I mentioned my heart's doing something funny, or I've got joint pain, doctors would always be like, "Oh. Okay. Nothing that I know of explains it."
They wouldn't say this out loud, but they would think to themselves, "Okay, here's a kid..." and to be honest, if they knew my family, my grandmother had a reputation of being a hypochondriac.
So I think the ones that knew her and then knew me, we're like, "Okay, I've got another one here." And they would just say, "Look, you need to manage stress or get a better diet. Let's test your vitamin levels, your iron. Let's check your thyroid."
They would do this, I think, please me, honestly. . Sure enough, everything came back within normal.
It was so frustrating. I was like trying one thing after another, trying to figure out what am I doing wrong to cause these symptoms?
Something I'm doing clearly is the reason. I would try vitamin supplements even though everything was in normal limits. Yeah. I would try, chromium, I would try gin thing and ginkgo and all those things that are supposed to make you think clearly and feel better and just nothing ever made a difference.
So then I'm guessing, a lot of people say in the field of psychology, when they get into school, they decide to do research on something that's pertinent to them. Yeah. And my degree is in health psychology, which is all about how the mind and the body work together to either make you sick, keep you healthy and there's that constant interplay between the two.
And cuz I was just I knew, I always knew something's not right, but it must be in my head. It's gotta be in my head. So I went to graduate school sure enough, learned all about the worried well they take up such a huge portion of doctor visits. They may have 80% of people or I don't remember the percentage of their patient.
That have nothing really wrong with them, but they're worried about something being wrong. And I assumed I've gotta be one of those. And I was embarrassed. I was just, I wouldn't talk about it. I would go to doctor's appointments and I would just stop telling anybody about anything because what's the point? They just think I'm crazy.
Anyway, so when I was in graduate school, I don't remember what made me start talking about it again. I did have a heart problem that was diagnosed by a PA that was brand new, fresh outta school, and was like, I'm gonna be, I mean, Doc House wasn't on TV yet, but they were gonna be like, Doctor House. And she sure enough, did an EKG. I'd never had an EKG in my life, no matter how many times I'd mentioned I've got something weird going on with my heart. First time I had an EKG you have Wolf Parkinson White Syndrome, which is an electrical disorder. Yeah.
Kara Wada, MD: You don't really wanna miss. No.
Susan Masterson, PhD: I had to have that treated. That kind of emboldened me a little bit to be like, all right, that wasn't in my head. So I'm gonna start bringing up this other stuff again. sometime during the years when I was in graduate school, cause this all happened when I was in graduate school, sometime during those years complaining about fatigue and stuff, I started getting a few more tests beyond all the nutrients stuff and thyroid.
They did test on my sed rate which came back high. At the time they said, your SED rate is high that means in the future you're gonna have an autoimmune disorder. But at the time, I didn't push it. I didn't say what might I have and why aren't we testing for those things now? We just, they didn't do it.
I just went, okay. When I was in graduate school, I took a class called Psycho Neuroimmunology. We learned about an autoimmune disease called Sjogren's syndrome. Say syndrome cuz it's what it's called for so long.
I remember hearing that there's chronic fatigue and some pain and I thought, do I have that? You know how, if you live with something for so long. Like my eyes were a little bit dry for so long. My mouth was apparently a little bit dry for so long. Oh. And I had little pieces of teeth would break off for no reason when I was a kid. What the heck is that? Nope. I took good care of my teeth.
Never got cavities. Just chunks would fall out. And I just never really thought of myself as somebody who lives with dry eyes and dry mouth. I knew I couldn't wear contacts, but I thought, okay, because I guess everybody's got some level of dryness, but it's, I didn't think much of it. So when I was learning in this class about Sjogren's, she said the primary symptoms are dry eyes and dry mouth and I went there was that. I don't have that cause I don't have dry eyes and dry mouth. So that's not gonna...
Kara Wada, MD: That was your normal, like you...
Susan Masterson, PhD: That was my normal. I thought, that just, that doesn't explain this fatigue, the pain, brain fog, all these things that are just always with me.
So I continued on my schooling and life. Just remembering that I had a high. Little red flags, liver stuff would pop up, but no, no answers. Just little things here and there. So then fast forward to 2017, my father had Alzheimer's and cancer. My mother was a wreck taking care of him, and I was around them a lot.
Yeah. So my stress level was like, through the roof. Okay. I went to a doctor and I said, look, this fatigue is outta control. This I can't do anything. The pain is incredible. I'm exercising. I had been exercising, I was down to 114 pounds. So doctor can't say you are deconditioned and you need to lose weight.
It was that those excuses were not options for her. She said anything stressful going on, and I started explaining to her what was happening and she started going, okay, stress related, blah, blah, blah. In her mind I said, but let me tell you about some past test results that I've had, had high rate.
I've had liver function elevations, things that are just not right. They told me I probably will get an autoimmune disease. Don't autoimmune diseases make you really tired? So she went, yeah. Yeah. Let's look at that. Boom. Positive SSB. Positive ANA. Oh yeah. I guess my eyes mouth have been pretty dry. Come to think of it.
Kara Wada, MD: Hindsight, 2020.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. Anyway, I started getting treatment for the Sjogren's, and I'm not cured. I don't feel a hundred percent by any means. Boy, my brain fogs gotten so much better. Since I've had the been treated for this, my pain has gotten better. I still find that if I do the lifestyle things like exercise vigorously.
Yeah, no, it's just gonna knock me out too much. Remember the first 5K I ever did, I went home and slept for two days. What the heck? That's not supposed to happen. What is that? That's not a marathon, so I do know that the treatment has helped me. In some ways I feel a little more functional, but I do find that I need much more rest.
I do know that I still have to take good care of myself cause I know my diet has a huge impact on how I feel. If I'm not moving, I get a lot of pain, which is happening lately cuz I've been sitting at a computer like this not doing anything. This time. Yes it is my fault.
Shame on me for not moving more, but I do know I have to have that balance. I can't go crazy exercising. Yeah. But yeah that's my story. Just years and years of shame and embarrassment that it is in my head. And lo and behold, nope, it wasn't.
What does psychosomatic mean?
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Kara Wada, MD: Can you explain a little bit more about what that term psychosomatic means?
I think that gets thrown around a lot. Maybe not when a physician necessarily, it may not say it to the patient, but they may see it right on the after visit summary or in the note.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah, that term is actually quite big. There are, there's an entire chapter in the Diagnostic Statistical manual, which is the Bible for mental health practitioners.
There's an entire chapter called Somatic Symptoms and Related Disorders. It's an entire. So somatic meaning body, right? Psycho meaning the mind, somatic meaning body. So there's, it's about the connection, how they're related in some way.
So there's a whole chapter in the DSM, but the DSM news version thankfully, is not so much about, okay, this is all in your head. If you've had a past trauma, you just need to go to therapy and your physical symptoms will go away. That's not what it says at all.
There's a lot more recognition in the mental health field that just because you can't diagnose something physically isn't enough to say it's a psychosomatic.
I know that you said, like you said, a lot of doctors. Yeah, I guess they're just, they're not familiar. Why would they know what the DSM said if that's not their field?
They're not gonna know that. And I think you and I were just talking a few minutes ago about a study where they in the Netherlands in 2015, I think it was, they they took a group of GP doctors and had them video tape their sessions with patients and after the session, they would say on a scale of one to three, one being I can't remember which end with which, but on one end it was, there's definitely a medical reason for their symptoms. The middle could be, you know, well there's some medical stuff I think that's there, but I'm not quite sure could be unexplained. The other end is, it's medically unexplained. I know there's nothing wrong this person.
So they had to fill out a little thing at the end of each session right away. Then some time went by and they would sit down with an interviewer and watch the video. The ones that they said, Yeah, that's medically unexplained. They focused it on those sessions.
They said. At what point in this interaction did you decide that it was medically unexplained symptoms. And it was an average of between two minutes and four minutes into the interaction, if they hadn't already decided before they walked in the door that it was a medically unexplained set of symptoms.
When you have that and doctors aren't familiar with diagnostic criteria for the mental health stuff, yeah, of course you're gonna feel like gaslighted. And then I don't like, I actually don't even really the term gaslighted, and I'll tell you why.
Because doctors are not as bad if you've seen the movie Gaslight.
Biases and Misunderstandings in Medical Diagnosis
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Kara Wada, MD: I don't think generally there's not the malice involved. But yes, and this is where, it's like the intent versus the impact discussion too.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. But so of course you're just, you're gonna come away feeling not listened to, not understood. That's not helping. You are already feeling all these symptoms and you can't explain it. And you're having self-doubt and feeling like you are doing something to cause your symptoms or questioning your own sanity. Is this really true? Am I imagining this stuff which happened in the movie, questioned her sanity?
There's that bias coming in. And they also said what contributed to your decision that it was medically unexplained. Some of the things they said were like if the patient presented as all over the place.
Their symptoms were just vague, like fatigue, pain, maybe some dizziness, maybe some tingling in the extremities. What does that sound like? Sjogren.
Kara Wada, MD: Essentially these doctors had preconceived notions going in if these patients were scattered or maybe had symptoms that they weren't able to really explain very well, vague type symptoms, and unfortunately this is what happens when we have brain fog or we have some of these autoimmune conditions like Sjogren. This is how it plays out.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Exactly.
Challenges and Complexity of Diagnosis for Sjogren's Syndrome and Related Conditions
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Kara Wada, MD: What I find so, this is kind of what has fueled a lot of, in part, a lot of my passion for spreading the word amongst my peers. Here I was now granted allergist, immunologists. We are not the first line people treating Sjogren's, but we see patients with sinus issues, eye issues.
I see patients with other immune system issues all the time and all I knew, and all I was taught to look for and think about was Sjogren's was to look for and think about was Sjogren's was SSA, SSB, and dryness. That was the extent of it. Had my labs not been totally off the wall, I wonder if I would have a diagnosis yet.
Susan Masterson, PhD: I don't think I would've. I don't think so. You just reminded me. I've had sinus problems going back to 2000. I've had lung issues going back to 1992 that they would listen to my lungs and go, your lungs are clear. No, I'm fine. You're fine. I had allergy shots for a long time. In the allergy tests, you're allergic to everything.
Mm-hmm. , uh, no, I wasn't allergic to cows.
Good thing I'm not allergic to cows since I'm around them so much. But you're allergic to everything. Yeah. Doesn't that tip you off that it's not everything. Something in me is going on. I got to where I would touch myself and I'd get a welt on my skin.
Kara Wada, MD: Yeah. Fancy word, dermatographism, writing on the skin.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. Here take antihistamines. So I've been living on antihistamines, and I know they say, don't do that if you have Sjogren's, but my sinuses will not let me not.
Kara Wada, MD: Yeah. You gotta, I can't. And that's where it's so important to, I think, find someone who will help you come up with a personalized approach because even with within Sjogren, the Sjogren's community, there's a lot of variation in how each of us, in each of our conditions present.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. The neuropathy, I got tested for it and you don't have neuropathy, but nobody did a test for small fiber. Yeah. Neuropathy. So yeah, just the complexity is maddening and keep doctors don't know what they have in one package. It's a recipe for this whole worried well thing going on.
Kara Wada, MD: What would I start to wonder as well, up until maybe year and a half ago, I had never referred anyone for a lip biopsy. Ever. In part I didn't realize or know how often folks are seronegative?
So your blood testing is normal, essentially. You're told your blood tests are normal, but that doesn't fully rule out, Sjogren's at all.
It's probably a happy accident in some respects that I, as an allergist, as an internist pediatrician, trained allergist, it's extraordinarily rare for me to be working within a department of otolaryngology or the ear, nose and throat department.
That's not a normal setup, but the ear, nose, and throat surgeons who do the biopsies in the office are in the next hall, I'm in this in this micro, of in this environment where it has been easier to get that done than many institutions and places.
But had there been more of a barrier to get that done or resistance, I probably still wouldn't necessarily be recommending or referring folks as often.
Susan Masterson, PhD: You need people that are receptive.
Addressing Psychological Factors in Medical Conditions
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Kara Wada, MD: Exactly. Yeah. Anytime. I feel like, especially within the current medical landscape, anytime you run into bumps in the road or resistance in one place or another, everyone's bandwidth is limited.
It's just that little bit of resistance sometimes is enough to just be like, "ah, heck with it."
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah, exactly. But when you ask me about what psychosomatic is, I don't sound like it's about whether or not you have, there's way more than that to it. There's also a section in there basically about psychological factors that contribute to medical conditions.
Kara Wada, MD: Yes. So talk more about that.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Even if you have an underlying medical condition causing your symptoms, the psychological, you can't discount that all together. It's still tangled up in there and you can't just, "I've got a medical problem. I can take a pill and everything's fine."
If you're really stressed out, if you are depressed about what's going on cuz there is clearly gonna be a grief stage when you get diagnosed with something and you've gotta adjust your life so much that you have to give up things or you have problems with people who don't get it in your life.
So there's clearly gonna be stuff that's feeding the flames of your symptoms and stress management is just absolutely critical for incorporating that into your self care.
There's one study that I absolutely love to talk about. It was people who have psoriasis we're getting certain kind of therapy with a light, a UV light therapy on top of their medicine. A group of researchers took a bunch of these patients who were already doing this treatment and divided 'em into two and said, "Okay, this half while you're going through your light therapy, you're gonna play this tape recording— it's an old study tape. We still have tape back then— of a mindfulness meditation session. You're gonna be doing this mindfulness focused activity while you're doing your light therapy.
The other group just did their traditional light medicine, everything they usually do well. What they did was they measured their skin lesions across time.
The group that did the meditation with the light therapy, took them significantly faster to get to the halfway clearing point and then to the complete clearing point than the people who just did the traditional therapy.
So you can't say that what's going on in your thoughts and your feelings has nothing to do with your symptoms. You can't say that. When you can calm that and let the dust settle, your body gets the chance to activate the healing process because the sympathetic arousal blocks that.
I did wanna say that cause it's so important. Many people think that if it's a medical condition, then I don't need any mental health help. Not saying that everybody needs to go for therapy, but don't ignore that.
part
Mindfulness and Emotional Regulation in Daily Life
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Kara Wada, MD: Oh my gosh. I have to say, if I could go back in time and tell Teenage Kara or early twenties Kara ,go learn how to do this. Learn how to do some meditation or learn about some of the therapy slash coaching type principles or just the idea that our thoughts and feelings, we have some control over that. Teasing out like what is the actual circumstance and like what is everything else that we the stories we make about that.
Goodness, what a difference. Yeah. I think that would've made and I even, look, I had a, something happen this week that the old me days out, I know still would've been in that fight or flight over this particular, you know, set of circumstances, old me would've totally been still stewing about it, worrying about it and everything and me from the last couple years with, some of these skills of mindfulness and these other principles.
Holy moly, it's life changing.
Susan Masterson, PhD: You learn how to separate the thought from the event.
Kara Wada, MD: Yeah, and just realizing that my brain, like my brain has a negative bias. That's what kept us alive as humans for millennia. And the stories I was telling myself when the proverbial poop was hitting the fan were stories, like being able just to take that pause and I ate my feelings a little bit and that's okay.
Susan Masterson, PhD: And even if they weren't, even if there weren't stories, if it is really that bad. Yeah. Looking at can I control this?
Kara Wada, MD: Yeah. What can I control and what can't I?
Susan Masterson, PhD: Because if you can't control it, why waste your energy?
Kara Wada, MD: Exactly.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Being caught up in it. Learning to step back. I can't do anything about that.
Learning to Let Go: Tools for Navigating Life's Ups and Downs with Chronic Illness
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Kara Wada, MD: Every time someone brings up my mind goes to that scene in Frozen where Elsa is just let it go. That's what happens, I guess when you have two little girls in the house.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Oh, I have, I've got a girl. Yes.
Kara Wada, MD: Yeah. Frozen on repeat. But yeah, that, that has become also a little repeated kind of mantra of sorts that comes up from time to time.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. Letting go doesn't mean you don't care too.
Kara Wada, MD: Absolutely, yes.
Susan Masterson, PhD: I had don't know how many times I work when I was doing clinical work, people would think that if I forgive and let go or just learn how to not be emotionally in it that most people don't care and that's a bad thing, and it's just no.
Kara Wada, MD: You're just stepping outta the pool.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. Just stepping out. Exactly.
Kara Wada, MD: I think about that so often of, " Okay, this idea of we know better, we do better."
And trying to do my best to pass on some of these lessons to my kid and their friends and so that hopefully they have a set of tools to help them through all the ups and downs that are just kind of part of life, but definitely part of chronic illness living.
Susan Masterson, PhD: The only thing that's predictable is that it's gonna be unpredictable.
Kara Wada, MD: Absolutely. Yeah. I was talking with a friend. She has rheumatoid arthritis and I think this episode probably will be after the one with Cheryl aired.
But we were talking exactly that we could get hit by a bus tomorrow and who the heck knows.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah, you can't put your mind in the what ifs and not living.
Understanding Autoimmune Diseases and Anti-Inflammatory Eating
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Kara Wada, MD: Could you share a little bit more about your book and who should be reading it? Tell us more about it.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Okay. When I wrote it. I have been doing a lot of research and wanted to know what does this blood thing mean? What does my diet do to it? How does stress impact? How do all these things work together? How do you diagnose it? How what is it? What is happening in my body?
So if you're just diagnosed and you still have all those questions in your head, this is a small, compact book that pretty much it's a good go-to when you got a question like, What is that again? What does some of these words mean again?
It's not a in-depth clinical type of look at it, which some of the books about Sjogren's are, and it's not just about stories.
My story's in there, but it's not all about my story. It's just, what do you wanna know? What do you need to know now to get you started as you...
Kara Wada, MD: Digestible. It's digestible.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. I, yeah, that's my, that was my hope.
Kara Wada, MD: I think, one thing that is so challenging and I struggle with on the physician side and educator side is I sometimes just wanna tell everyone everything all at once because I'm so excited to share the knowledge.
But restraint can be really helpful too in, in just like keeping things manageable and in being able to then actually absorb and understand and then, if you want more detail after, absolutely those other resources may be helpful. But having something just to get ya jumpstarted.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah.
Just to kinda make you go, "Oh, okay. This is what it is.
Kara Wada, MD: The overview.
Susan Masterson, PhD: I and I can do these things and then you start.
Kara Wada, MD: I think that's the other battle, right?
Everyone who's listening, no matter what your education, background, whatever you are an intelligent, amazing human being.
You've probably heard a lot of the things that Dr. Susan and I will recommend, when it comes to diet and exercise cause I think at least following each other's things, we tend to recommend similar things especially as it comes to like diet and lifestyle recommendations.
There are things you've heard before. It's not necessarily rocket science, but sometimes it is that support and being able to just start taking those first steps and getting into action mode that can be challenging and but getting into that routine, developing those habits really make a huge difference.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. Just the starting is usually the hardest part.
Kara Wada, MD: Yes, absolutely. I come back to, I know you did a recent post that was just this really great side by side look at, what is the difference between anti-inflammatory eating and autoimmune protocol?
Because I think that gets confused so often. And admittedly I went down the rabbit hole of a i p when I was, felt like I was between a rock and a hard place. Some my symptoms and stuff going on. I remember having a conversation with my husband, he's a practicing cardiologist. He's like, "Hun, there's no way this can be healthy long term."
Yeah. You are at increased risk with Sjogren's, folks with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, these inflammatory diseases you are at increased risk for heart disease and all that eating all this meat and saturated fat. Everything cooked in coconut oil, all these things like that cannot, that is not sustainable. No. And that was kinda a reality check.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. I don't know if you're aware, actually I wrote another book about that exactly.
Kara Wada, MD: Oh, do tell.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yes. It's understanding food and inflammation and it's for autoimmune patients. Amazing. Based on research out of the University of South Carolina where they came up with something called a dietary inflammatory index.
Kara Wada, MD: Yes. I'm familiar with this. Yeah. It's been used with asthma. Yeah. Like you look at asthma.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Right? And I wrote a book that to say, okay, here's what is shown clinically to reduce well in the lab, to reduce inflammation, your biomarkers, the cytokines and all the inflammatory markers will show. As being affected by this type, these types of foods, making it worse or better, and they get, put it on a scale from negative one to positive one.
I think that is honestly the best guide for figuring out how to manage your disease.
That being said, clearly, like we know biomarkers don't always tell the whole story. You still might feel pretty rotten and the cytokines might be fine and all that stuff might be fine.
So some people do want to delve in, do the AIP diet, and so I have the back of the book of saying, okay, this is what it is, this is what AIP is, and it's different. It's an elimination protocol.
Whereas an anti-inflammatory diet is, this is what you should eat and you should not eat sugar. That's one thing. That's a bad one.
Kara Wada, MD: That has been, oh my gosh, that has been the hardest for me. I will say I'm gonna knock on this desk, which is probably particle board, but since the new year I've been doing better. But that has been a harder egg to crack personally.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah, I notice a huge difference in how I feel when I'm cutting that sugar way down or out. But I do I will admit it, I am like a drug addict when it comes to chocolate. You cannot give me a piece, a few pieces of chocolate, and then I can't stop.
Yeah. Yeah, Sugar's a struggle for me.
Promoting Self-Compassion and Body Positivity in Health and Nutrition
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Kara Wada, MD: We can come at it from that that maybe that frame of mind of self-compassion that, as cave women, finding that honey hole or that ripe fruit or, those things like that was, that's what kept you alive, made you stronger in the, stronger in the tribe, but that was also very rare. Yeah. Yeah. Now, it's everywhere.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah, you did. You mentioned self-compassion, and I think that is key with all of this. Number one right there. People saying, my body hates me. Actually, no, your body's misguided and it's trying very hard to protect you.
Kara Wada, MD: Yep. So we're too hard sometimes.
Susan Masterson, PhD: But still it's misguided, right? Yep.
Kara Wada, MD: Yep. I jokingly, I call it the misbehaving immune system because I think of it as like a little child who's got their hand in the cookie jar and like smiling and, " oh, look at me."
Susan Masterson, PhD: Hahaha. Look what I can do to you and you can't stop.
Kara Wada, MD: Yeah. That's how I envision that.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah. But along with the self-compassion that okay, no, my body is trying to do something good, really. It's trying to protect, but also when you think about, I gotta change my diet or I have to do these things, don't think about it in that deprivation aspect of it, but think of it as I am doing something that makes my body feel better when I focus on adding all these things that are good and squeeze out the stuff that's not good.
Absolutely. So yeah, do it for yourself because you're worth it, not because you're punishing yourself.
Kara Wada, MD: Yeah. That has so much overlap in what we have been fed, pun intended, from diet culture for a long time. Yeah. Cut things out, hate your body, all these messages as opposed to, " What can we add? How can we love how can we care for ourselves?"
There's so much science to support the self-compassion. Yes. Like physical, like better diabetes and hypertension. Yeah, It's not kumbaya.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Right? The old research about self-esteem is going away. It's really more focused on the con. We can really see measurable changes in people when we look at compassion.
Kara Wada, MD: Oh, this has been wonderful. I feel like I could talk with you all day long.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah, I know.
Kara Wada, MD: Any parting wisdom or things left unsaid, we're gonna make sure that all of your Twitter, your Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, website, all that stuff is in the show notes so that people can find you and follow your posts.
And we need to get the link for your books too, so that people can pick those.
Susan Masterson, PhD: Yeah, they're both on Amazon. Oh, great. Yeah, I had it self-published, so they're just there. That's only,
Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Kara Wada, MD: Thank you. I I can't wait and we'll have to do this again. Thanks so much everyone for joining us this week and look forward to talking with you next week.
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