Dr. Nisha Chellam on LinkedIn: Have you been shopping and looked at labels and felt you were buying… (2024)

Do you know what is the most important step a woman should take before she is pregnant?Focus on 🥗 having a fantastic gut health.A mother gives these 3 things to her child- 👉 DNA👉Mitochondria (energy producing machines of the cell)👉 Gut microbiome. Father also gives his DNA and some mitochondria.The gut microbiome is the non-genetic inheritance from mother to child.Why is this important?🤯 The child inherits 27 times more genes from the mother's microbiome than her genetic DNA. So if they are an unhealthy set of bacteria, the child can have some early signs of chronic diseases.The health of the bacteria on the mother - In her mouth ( oral), vagin* ( vagin*l), and her intestines(gut) determine the long term health of the child.What are the signs a woman needs to work on her bacterial health?👄 - If she has dental issues🙆♀️ - If she has constipation or has irritable bowel💪 - If she struggles with her weight (both unintentional weight loss or gain)🎂 - If she has fluctuant blood sugars🗯 - If she has frequent bacterial vaginosis (vagin*l infections)💉 - She has gestational diabetes or hypertension( sugars and blood pressure during pregnancy)What are some of the early signs that the child is affected by an imbalance of the inherited bacteria from mom?😷 - Child with frequent infections👶 - Low birth weight👼 - Very high birth weight🚼 - ADHD🐥 - Learning disabilitiesWhat factors affect the mother's microbiome?🥗 - Diet😱 - Stress🔥 - Tobacco use🛑 - Douching💉 - Mother with diabetes🎡 - Unresolved mental issuesSteps to take to resolve these issues?▶ - Change diet to have enough fiber to feed good gut bacteria▶ - Stop smoking▶ - Reduce stress ▶ - Get mental health treated well.▶ - Get to normal BMI (weight)▶ - Consume probiotic rich foods.Remember the health of your child begins way before the child is even conceived. It begins with your health. Not only the health of your cells but the health of the bacteria on you and in your mouth, skin, gut, and vagin*.And these bacteria are affected by what you think, eat, and drink.So choose wisely. 🙂

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Happy mother's day for those of who Celebrate your mothers or mother figures and to the mothers who celebrate their children.Give your mother the gift of self care.Give her a membership at Parsleyhealth.com Use the coupon code Chellam200

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My mother was a nurse when she worked.She never wanted me to go into medicine, but I was wired to do it and could not think of doing anything else.She was the happiest and saddest person when I got into medical school! I have always maintained the best relationship with the nursing team in the hospital or my office.Here is my post paying tribute to them -Happy Nurses Week!https://lnkd.in/eVK7USeQ

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Last week I had a frustrating meeting with a patient of mine.I had an office visit with a patient who had abnormal blood work and she told me it was because she did not take her medications.This was not the first time.Her history with her previous doctors indicated she always missed medications before her blood work.She felt she really needed an adjustment of her medication.I started telling her that given that all her blood work is done without medications in order to change the dose I needed some compliance so I can see the actual blood work on the right dose.I continued to tell her my recommendations on lifestyle and the root cause and what needed to be done as the next steps.That should be how it should go right?Educate, so she can do the right things?After all I am the doctor.She smiled, said that she has a tumultuous relationship with food and does not want any dietary advice.She does not want to start any intervention unless she "learns" more about it.A younger me would have allowed my ego to push through and go on the offense. The journey I have made as a physician has taught me the old adage"When the student is ready the teacher will appear." Today, I was the student this patient was my teacher, teaching me my next steps to evolve as a physician.I physically backed off-even though this meeting was on zoom.In those seconds I realized: ⛔️I have not earned her trust.⛔️She is in protective mode and does not feel understood so this is not the time for me to be her doctor but to simply listen.What she was teaching me was, I may know what to do, I can be good at my job but I am still not doing right by giving her advice as she was not ready to receive.This day, she is not receptive and I am throwing things at her as I believe I have this appointment time and I want to make it useful.She made me pivot in that split second and step back, stop speaking and listen. She was not impolite, she was not rude, she just needed to be heard.The rest of the meeting I allowed her to speak.We ended the visit on time, with no recommendations from me.This is a patient who needs my help but is not in a space yet to receive it.Somedays the most frustrating moments with patients are the best teaching instances.They teach you to be humble, help you understand about your theoretical limitations, teach you the art of communication and if you listen, make you a fantastic physician.Grateful 🙏 for the difficult days, as those days that you feel like you are burnt down to become ashes, are the days that create a diamond of an experience.

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Do you know your patient personality type? Studies show 5 types of patients that show up in a doctor's office.The Acronym is OCEAN.O-openness, people who are open to new adventures. This would be a patient excited about new experiences and can take a lot of risk but most likely will lose interest in a treatment plan.C-conscientiousness, the self disciplined. This might be the one that needs very clear instructions and will do exactly as you say. A blessing and a curse because they will need a lot of clarifications.E-extraversion, one with engagement of the external world and talkative. These patients like to chat and love to be the center of attraction, they will interrupt you and so even though enjoyable the appointments can be long.A-agreeableness, polite and concerned.This is the one who will get swayed easily by new treatment programs like "drinking bleach to protect from COVID."N-neuroticism, gets stressed easily.This would be the most difficult one as they get irritated easily, have a multitude of medical symptoms, and difficult to care for or change.Since we cannot change the personality of a patient, we as physicians have to learn to communicate with them and understand how to lead them where they need to go. Sometimes it may not be successful and as such would have to transfer the patient to another's care.The study warns us that even though personality may impact clinical outcomes we should not judge a patient as it will lead to delivery of suboptimal care.In my personal opinion the best patient to have is the one who trusts, engages, has the right mindset because in this relationship we both have the same goal to get you better.Finding the right doctor can be a journey and connecting with a patient can be an art.

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Have you ever wondered how our whole body evolved from 2 cells - a sperm and an egg?How is that you do not grow a liver in your brain or nails on your forearm ?It is because of a very important process called methylation.Next to the production of energy in your cells that is ATP (which is why cyanide kills you in seconds as ATP production is stopped), the most frequent and ongoing biochemical process is the process of methylation.The way we age, how fast we age, and how many diseases we may get is based on this process. The best part is that we can measure the amount of methylation in the cells. We can assess your capacity to methylate.This is the basis of how we diagnose possible cancers early with liquid biopsy.The process of methylation silences your genes.In other words whatever feature your gene has that could be suppressed by this process.So, for instance if you smoke you will change the pattern of methylation and have increase risk of cancer because smoking can silence the gene that protects you from getting cancer.Why is it important for you to know this? Because even though this is about your genes this is how you can change how your genes can express good or bad.If you eat the right foods your methylation pattern can change to promote health.If you stress all the time your methylation pattern can silence all the genes that protect you form chronic inflammation and blood pressure, sugars and you can have these diseases.If you exercise the methylation pattern can silence the genes that can cause obesity and heart disease. This is the study of Epigenetics.So changing your genes is simple and can be done strategically and long term.Even though your family had cancers, diabetes, heart disease by changing your lifestyle in simple ways you can silence those disease promoting genes.Knowing your methylation patterns, inflammation patterns, stress patterns and the ability to detox can help you change the trajectory of your health.This is the power of personalized medicine.So the next time you feel compelled to express helplessness about your health, or what genes you may have inherited, today's medicine can help you silence the ones you do not want and prevent or postpone chronic disease.And the best part is you don't need any fancy treatments. Just these:➡️ food➡️ exercise➡️ personalized supplements➡️ sleep➡️ stress reduction All of this you can get and are available free to you.(except supplements). The prescription for health is in your cells right to the tips of your fingers, the prescription for disease is at the tips of your doctor's fingers.Your take home message is the best doctor you can ever find for yourself is in YOU-LITERALLY!

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Here are 3 patient stories for you today 😀 No.1: A young lady woke up one morning with severe throat pain and swollen lymph nodes and she thought she had a viral infection but wanted to get checked. She calls her primary care doc's office, who was booked all day so told her to get it checked out at the urgent care to make sure the throat will not close off. Till then she was not worried about throat closing, and so she shows up at the urgent care anxious. The urgent care sees an anxious woman and does an X-ray to make sure it's not "closing". They give her a steroid shot and antibiotics and tell her she should go to the ER so she can be checked out by an ENT specialist to be sure. The ER sees her after 2-hours and tells her they do not have an ENT on call and with the swollen glands she probably should see one for a biopsy. Now the patient gets more anxious so they transfer her to another ER who has an ENT. In the second ER she is finally seen by the busy ENT team that scopes her and tells her she has a viral infection. The whole ordeal was 7 hours and 10k billed to her insurance.Story No 2: A young lady had chronic stomach issues. She had seen a lot of docs and had no diagnosis. Then one of her cousins gets diagnosed with celiac disease (an autoimmune condition with reactivity to gluten). So she gets off gluten and feels finally better. Then she decides she should get a diagnosis. So she sees a gastroenterologist. He tells her to eat a lot of gluten for a week so when he scopes her, he can get a positive biopsy. She was worried but decides to do it. Gets scoped and biopsy was negative. She was sick for a couple of months after this and despite being off gluten the inflammation took time to resolve.Story no 3: A 45 year old has had 25 biopsies of her breasts. Every time she has a mammogram there is a suspicious area requiring a biopsy. Each of these ordeals last a week the time to get biopsy and wait on results and the days are filled with anxiety. All 3 of them felt angry and betrayed by the medical system.Lessons:All 3 of them showed up with fear and anxiety about their own body.All 3 of them could have refused the procedures and asked further questions. All 3 of them could have asked for alternative options or recommendations.When you show up with fear, the chances are you will be over tested and over treated. When you show up with fear the medical system will practice defensive medicine. This is what we call the TYRANNY OF DIAGNOSIS. We seek a diagnosis even though intuitively you know what it might be.Remember health is intuitive, and your business. Disease is what you pay for and that's the business of Medicine.

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