My Expert Odyssey Part 1: Depression, Diabetes & Trauma (Bonus Episode)
SHOW NOTES
Experts:
Dr. Sheri Colberg, PhD: Website, Google Scholar, Twitter, Books
Relevant Publications
Jacob Meyer, PhD: Wellbeing and Exercise Lab, Twitter
Notable Publications:
Dr. Lisa Russell Lowe, DPT: PowerHousePhysio
Resources:
Hear the full episodes featuring these experts:
Josie & Joe in Tandem vs. Multiple Sclerosis
Generational Gene: Cycling for Diabetes Prevention
Rowing Through Cancer, Injury, & Trauma: Three Body Odysseys at 2022 Head of the Charles
What leads someone on a path to becoming a noted researcher on the benefits of exercise for depression or diabetes? Or a coach in the relatively new sport of para rowing?
Not surprisingly, personal experience can play a huge role in lighting those pathways. In this first of two bonus episodes, we get a bit more personal with our Season One expert guests whose own experiences motivate and inform their professional endeavors.
Dr. Jacob Meyer, Director of the Wellbeing & Exercise Lab at Iowa State, confides that “my own personal struggles with depression coincided with periods when I was much less active.” He explains how the beneficial stress of exercise creates resiliency against the inevitable periods of distress, or negative stress, that bombards us in everyday life.
Diabetes literally ran in the family of Dr. Sheri Colberg, diagnosed with Type 1 at age four. The author of over a dozen books on diabetes and exercise, she recounts encouraging her Type 1 Grandmother on laps around the backyard from an early age.
And DPT Lisa Lowe, former able-bodied competitive rower describes re-adopting the sport she loved after a horrific car accident crushed her legs - though this time with more assistance getting in and out of the water. She’s now a para rowing athlete and coach.
“Especially if you’re someone who uses a wheelchair for mobility,” Lisa explains, “there is something about the independence and freedom you have in the water that is an entirely different relationship to the world around you.”
My Body Odyssey is a Fluent Knowledge production.
Original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.
What's your body odyssey? Let us know.
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Robert Pease (co-host)
You’re listening to My Body Odyssey, a podcast about the rewards and challenges of active lifestyle. I’m Robert Pease and this is our first of two holiday bonus episodes.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
I’m Valerie Wencis. Happy Holidays to you and yours and best wishes for an active, healthy New Year, as well.
Robert Pease (co-host)
And Valerie, we really should confess up front here that when we started putting this show together, we had this kind of clear separation between the protagonists who are facing health challenges and the medical experts, who comment on our protagonists and their odysseys.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
But we pretty quickly discovered that these experts were on odysseys of their own. We’re talking world class authorities on diabetes who have diabetes themselves. Innovative researchers in behavioral issues who had noticed their own moods darken when not being active.
Robert Pease (co-host)
And so we decided to devote a couple of episodes just to our experts. To learn more about them and hear some of their great personal insights.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
So stay tuned to unwrap this first of two holiday gifts from the My Body Odyssey team at Fluent Knowledge.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
In episode six, we met Josie, a retired special needs teacher. Josie’s MS got to a point where she could no longer do the cycling she loved on her own. But her husband Joe found a tandem solution.
Josie
I get excited knowing that I'm gonna get on the bike. Once I’m on the bike I’m like okay, we’re out. We’re out so I can enjoy this ride. We get home and I'm like, oh. It's like that high is there and I feel so much better and I can get my day on the right path.
Robert Pease (co-host)
One expert on that episode was Dr. Jacob Meyer of the Wellbeing & Exercise Lab at Iowa State. He and his team have conducted some really trailblazing studies on the behavioral benefits of exercise. But Dr. Meyer’s interest in the field began with much more personal data points.
Dr. Jacob Meyer
You know, my own personal struggles with depression, really over the course of my life, at different times coincided with periods in my life when I was much less active. And it made me wonder what was going on. Is this just me? Am I just weird or is this a consistent thing that's true across sort of, you know, humanity? And that really kicked off a career for me of trying to figure out how the brain and the body, particularly movement of the body is connected, and how knowing that might actually be able to help us design better treatments for depression, for other mental illnesses if we can really figure out how what we're doing is linked to how we're feeling.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Dr. Meyer also explained for us the really important connection between stress and depression and how exercise might combat both issues.
Dr. Jacob Meyer
So stress and especially things like adverse childhood experiences or early life stress can be a major predisposing factor to someone developing depression later on. Might be related to cortisol, which is the major stress hormone in the body. So maybe stress is causing some increasing amount of cortisol and that's interfering with our ability to have a positive mood. So if that's what starts it, then the question is how does exercise help afterwards? And it turns out that exercise releases cortisol, exercise is a stressor to the body. It just turns out to be a EU-stress, which is a term for sort of a good or a positive stressor.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
And is EU-stress, is that like E-U?
Dr. Jacob Meyer
Mmhmm.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
Okay.
Dr. Jacob Meyer
And the body responds to a EU-stress in a different way than to a distress or a negative stressor, and it leads to sort of adaptation or getting used to stress. And so we can think about exercise as something that builds stress resilience, so that when someone is exposed to a stressor down the road, their response to that is gonna be less, so that it's not necessarily gonna kick off the same things negatively that it otherwise would have if someone didn't have a resilient system in place that was sort of built piece by piece or run by run by exercise.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Moving on from the challenge of MS to that of heading off type two diabetes. Some of you may recall meeting Gene, a high school superintendent, back in episode eight, just as we first met him. At an American Diabetes Association Tour De Cure cycling event, Gene is determined to outpedal his family history of developing type two diabetes through exercise and diet.
Gene
Sometimes it does feel like you’re pedaling to save your life.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
We spoke to two diabetes experts on Gene’s odyssey including Dr. Sheri Colberg, a widely published expert on diabetes and exercise.
Dr. Sheri Colberg
When I was a kid, I had type one diabetes. I got it very early, at age four, and the only person I knew at that time in my entire life that had diabetes besides me was my maternal grandmother. And I remember, when I was probably 13 or 14, where I was helping on one of her many diets. I helped her try to weigh herself in every day and track her weight loss. And I had her running laps around her backyard and I'm measuring out her cottage cheese and whatever because she had made this deal with me that she would pay me a dollar for every pound that she lost that week that I was helping her.
Robert Pease (co-host)
In a sense then, Dr. Colberg was already on the path to becoming an expert on diabetes and exercise at a really young age. And seeing some success with her first patient – at least initially.
Dr. Sheri Colberg
And she lost eight pounds in one week. It was the first week. So that's not that uncommon, but it sort of got me. And so that made me a really rich kid. I mean, that was a long time ago. I think I just felt compelled, actually seeing her go through some of the cardiovascular problems she went through about 10 years after that, in heart attacks and strokes and bedridden and all the awful complications you hear about. And I thought, I don't want that to be my path. So, you know, at that point I was already studying exercise physiology and trying to figure out how to be healthy and how to live a good long life with diabetes. And so that's sort of what has driven me overall, partly my own personal experiences with it, but just knowing that it's possible to live long and well with diabetes, regardless of the type
Robert Pease (co-host)
Dr. Colberg had a lot of practical recommendations for our protagonist Gene, and frankly, anyone with elevated blood sugar in that very large prediabetes category – as much as 40% of the US adult population. Such as making movement part of your work day.
Dr. Sheri Colberg
You can still move more all day long, even when you have a very busy job. You can stand up, you can have walking meetings with your colleagues. You can be the only one who stands up in a meeting and does some stretching. I've done that many times and people look at me, well then they get up too.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
And really thinking intelligently about your food choices.
Dr. Sheri Colberg
We know that all those foods that are partially predigested for us by the manufacturers, meaning that when we eat them, particularly carbs, they make our blood sugar go up really quickly. Those are best to limit your intake of, and instead focus on ones that have more fiber or that take longer to digest that are not gonna make those same sort of peaks in your glucose after meals. And that goes a long way towards beating type two diabetes as well.
Robert Pease (co-host)
As well as minimizing stress where possible and placing a really high value on your sleep.
Dr. Sheri Colberg
And then there's just the whole stress factor, because you can certainly – when you're very stressed out physically or mentally – you can increase levels of hormones like cortisol that make your blood glucose go up. And so just finding techniques, ways to relax a little bit, dig deep breathing, or whatever works for you during the day to help manage that stress is also gonna have an impact. And then finally, I have to mention that sleep also has a huge effect. We know that people that don't sleep long enough because of physical stress to their bodies and they tend to have more cortisol and higher blood glucose levels. So simply just trying to get adequate amounts of rest can also help.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Our season finale took us to the Head of the Charles Regatta. An annual rowing mecca of sorts where we met and spoke with dozens of rowers, including Ron, formerly a high level financial executive who turned to para-rowing after a terrible cycling crash paralyzed him from the waist down.
Ron
My rowing partner this year, he had no mercy for me. And that was great, because I felt like an athlete, not a disabled athlete, an athlete again.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
One expert in that episode was Lisa Lowe, a physical therapist and experienced rower in Boston who works with para-rowers like Ron. But what we didn’t know until we spoke to her is that Lisa is also a para-rower.
Dr. Lisa Lowe
I was hit by a car about four and a half years ago and had my legs just totally smashed. So that's where I'm lucky to have had the sport of rowing anyway, because I didn't have to give up my favorite sport. So I actually competed in the same race as Ron did at the Head of the Charles, just in a different category. So I’m a PR3 rower. He I believe is a PR1 rower.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Like Ron, our protagonist in that episode, Lisa sought out a rowing club with an adaptive program.
Dr. Lisa Lowe
This was a barrier I put up for myself that probably wasn't necessary, but I didn't feel as comfortable going back to where I've always rode because it was like, oh, that I have to coordinate with X number of people for them to help me carry my boat down and for them to help me this and to help me that. And I just didn't want to impose that on anyone, even though honestly, if I had, they probably would've very gladly done it. I just didn't want to. And so going to community rowing in Boston, because we have a boathouse that is built for there to be a system of adaptive and para rowers with help.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
Ron actually capsized his first time out as a para-rower. Very scary. But he unclipped his straps and pulled himself to safety. And he continued rowing. But we asked Lisa if many of those who do try para-rowing find it just too challenging.
Dr. Lisa Lowe
I will say obviously we hear more of the stories of people who pursued than the ones who didn't. And it is a common story to have had your first few rowing experiences be, you know, whether it's ridiculous, or whether it is a capsizing moment or any of those things that present initial challenges. But I will say there is – especially if you are someone who uses a wheelchair for mobility – there is something about the massive amount of independence and freedom that you have in manipulating where you're going on the water in a way that is just an entirely different relationship with the world around you.
Robert Pease (co-host)
We all have challenges, though perhaps not on the scale of para-rowing. So hopefully we take away a bit of inspiration and motivation from experts like Lisa Lowe, and also from Sheri Colberg and Jacob Meyer, who’ve turned personal challenges into professional knowledge we can all benefit from.
Valerie Wencis (co-host)
And we’ll hear more of that important personal dimension from four additional experts on our next bonus episode, as a New Year’s gift from all of us here at My Body Odyssey.
Robert Pease (co-host)
Stay tuned for that episode and for season two coming soon in 2023. Meantime, make sure to subscribe if you haven’t already done so. And please reach out if you or someone you know is on a body odyssey that might inform and inspire others. My Body Odyssey is a Fluent Knowledge production; original music by Ryan Adair Rooney.