Dr. Yu - Rheumatologist and Intergrative Health Advocate

Jayson:

Well Doctor Yu, I really appreciate you showing up on the show today. It's great to have an actual rheumatologist that's also dealing with an autoimmune disease. So welcome and how are you today?

Dr. Micah Yu:

I'm doing well thank you. And thank you for bringing me on your pocket. I really appreciate the fact that you have Ankylosing Spondylitis. You're really helping the masses out there.

Jayson:

It's fun to do. And I learned something new every day after almost 40 years of dealing with this. I still realize I don't know anything. So it's just neat to keep learning. So, you have such an interesting position, not only are you a rheumatologist, but you're working on your Integrative Health Fellowship right now. Could you explain a little bit to the listeners’, kind of what Integrative Health is or Integrative Medicine is?

Dr. Micah Yu:

Yeah, so I'm definitely doing several things. So I'm certified in Lifestyle Medicine with a new specialty. Now, it's from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine that focuses on six pillars. It focuses on nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress, emotional well being and tobacco and risky substance cesation, but also taking courses in Functional Medicine right now as well. And I'm doing my second fellowship in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Andrew Weilprogram. So that program is what I'm most excited about. So that program not only goes over nutrition, but also goes over different complementary or alternative modalities such as traditional Chinese medicine, Reiki, ayurvedic, supplements, manual medicine, mind body medicine, meditation, and so forth. Yeah, so those are the things that it covers.

Jayson:

So in my past episodes of the shows, I've done episodes where we've discussed, you know, working with or finding a rheumatologist using meditation, in some cases, yoga, all these different things, and what you're really doing is kind of wrapping it all up into one specialty.

Dr. Micah Yu:

Yeah, that's, that's my goal. I really want to combine the world of traditional allopathic medicine with complementary medicine. I think that's where the most benefit life of patients and that's what I want as a rheumatologist, and that's what my patients are speaking as well.

Jayson:

So as a rheumatologist, when you're working with patients, I get a lot of listeners as an example, that say, I can't get my rheumatologist to believe that I think I have as they want to keep telling me I have something else. I always wonder, do you continue to be your advocate for what you think you may have? Or do you follow the course of path that the rheumatologist is going or if it's just a head, but do you look for a new rheumatologist? I never know what the correct way to look at it is.

Dr. Micah Yu:

Yeah, so that's a very tricky question. Rheumatology is probably one of the most difficult fields in medicine to practice and there are still many questions, still nebulous answers as well. So I would say as a patient, if you feel like you have Ankylosing Spondylitis, and you're not getting the answer from your doctor, I would seek out a second opinion from another rheumatologist in the area or virtually as well, because sometimes the rheumatologist can have three rheumatology in the room and all three rheumatologist will have a different opinion. So it's very important in rheumatology to get that second opinion, to see if it matches up with the first opinion.

Jayson:

And what about things like maybe you haven't been diagnosed yet? I would think that x rays and MRIs can be very important to at least at a minimum set a baseline to say here's what my spine here's what my hips, here's what everything looks like, how does it look like six months a year, however far in the future?

Dr. Micah...