Dr. Jonathan Fisher | Taking Ownership of Your Health & Preventing Burnout From a Cardiologist’s Perspective
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Burnout is a huge global crisis in the workforce and more needs to be done to support individuals’ health and well-being. Dr. Jonathan Fisher shares a wealth of knowledge on the importance of maintaining a happy mind, heart, and soul, as well as valuable lessons on stress reduction, resiliency, and emotional intelligence.
Key Takeaways From This Episode
Why is burnout a major crisis in the healthcare industry?
The power of mindfulness and its benefits
How to reimagine the workplace in the 21st century, wellbeing-wise
Secrets and behavioral shifts to take to maintain a happy heart
Facts about eating foods high in saturated fat
Disclaimer: All information and views shared on the Live Greatly podcast & the Live greatly website are purely the opinions of the authors, and are not intended to provide medical advice or treatment recommendations. The contents of this podcast & website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified health professional when you have any questions regarding your specific health, changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About Dr. Jonathan Fisher
A Harvard-trained physician, clinical cardiologist, and certified mindfulness meditation teacher with 20 years of clinical experience, Dr. Fisher survived burnout and rediscovered his joy at work the hard way. He is now committed to ending workplace burnout and optimizing peak performance in healthcare and the corporate world.
Participants learn evidence-based high-yield easy-to-implement skills and techniques in highly interactive keynotes, workshops, and retreats.
After ten years of mindfulness, meditation, and yoga training, Dr. Fisher obtained his Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification with the UK College of Mindfulness Meditation in Birmingham, England. Dr. Fisher teaches in a dynamic and impactful way. With an engaging mix of intensity and playfulness, he leads training sessions at leadership workshops, corporate wellness retreats, department-wide team-building meetings.
Connect with Dr. Jonathan
Website: Mind Heart Now
Facebook: Jonathan Fisher, MD FACC
Instagram: @happyheartmd
LinkedIn: Jonathan Fisher, MD FACC
Kristel Bauer, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people thrive personally and professionally. She is a corporate wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Top Female Keynote Speaker, TEDx speaker & Physician Assistant experienced in Integrative Psychiatry and Functional Medicine.
Follow her on:
Instagram: @livegreatly_co
Clubhouse: @livegreatly
LinkedIn: Kristel Bauer
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Episode Transcript
Kristel (Disclaimer)
And now for a quick disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed on this podcast are purely the opinions of the authors. They are not intended to provide medical advice or treatment recommendations. Contents of the Live Greatly podcast are intended for informational and educational purposes only. And make sure to always seek the guidance of your physician or qualified health professional when you have any questions regarding your specific health, any changes to diet and exercise and any medical conditions.
Dr. Jonathan (Teaser)
When you practice the strengthening of this natural trait that we have in our minds that also uses parts of our body, uses all of our senses. When we spend time practicing that skill. It has a positive spillover effect into all aspects of our life, particularly towards our relationships with other people.
Kristel (Guest’s intro)
If you are interested in learning ways to support a healthy heart. And if you're also interested in learning a ways to prevent burnout. You’re going to love today's episode with Dr. Jonathan Fisher, Dr. Jonathan is a Harvard trained physician and he's a practicing cardiologist, doing a lot of really incredible things.
He's the co-founder of the ending physician burnout global community. And we're going to have a really interesting conversation about how you can support your overall wellbeing and how corporations and hospitals can support their employees. So I'm so very excited about this. Let's jump into it and welcome Dr.
Jonathan Fisher to the show.
Dr. Jonathan:
Thank you. I'm excited too.
Kristel:
So to start, I would love for you to share a little bit about what you're up to, what you're doing, you know, for those who don't follow you on social media or LinkedIn. Cause I know I see your stuff a lot on LinkedIn and that's how I originally found out about your work.
But for those who don't follow you on LinkedIn, what can you share about what you're currently doing and a little bit about your background.
Dr. Jonathan:
Sure. So I am the youngest of seven children and my dad is a doctor. He's 96, still alive. My mom was a physicist and there were a lot of nerdy brainiacs in the house growing up.
So one by one, they went into medicine and became doctors and we have a family that is all doctors. And so I'm a little kid. Yeah, it was around me. It was in my blood. It was in the environment and people ask, did you ever have a choice? And I did have a choice, but there was also a very strong feeling that this was something that was meaningful and important and a good way to help other people.
So I followed in my father's footsteps and my brothers and sisters went through medical school and found myself very focused on Physics and electro physics in college and was wondering how could I tie that into helping people and medicine? And I discovered that the field of cardiology allowed for all of that, so I can honor my mother's history as a Physics teacher and we used to sit and do problems together. And at the same time really get into the emotions of the heart. And that was the first half of my career was focusing in a very linear way. How do you prevent heart disease? How do you treat heart disease by the book? And then for a number of reasons, I realized that was missing a whole way of helping people, which had to do with dealing with issues of the spirit and with the mind and mindset with attitude, mind, body connection. And it really was my own job to do my own homework and discover through yoga meditation, mindfulness, nutrition to make up the gaps in my own medical education.
And so now. I’m half of the time practicing as a cardiologist. So I work in the hospital, do shifts, intensive care, emergency room, and because of my own struggles through burnout about a decade ago, and even more recently, I decided to devote myself to more organizational level work. Thinking about how do we address the problems of workplace, wellbeing or poor health at a very large scale. Having been there in the trenches. So I'm doing two things right now. I'm doing clinical practice and I'm also spreading the word that burnout is a huge issue and it's a crisis in healthcare. It's affecting a large portion of the rest of our workforce. There's something specific about healthcare though, that if the people caring for us during COVID and beyond. Can't even focus and are exhausted and are unhappy, that comes out in very, very real ways that can have negative financial and life and death consequences. So those are the two things I'm doing Kristel
Kristel:
Right. And you know, to be honest with you, like as a prior practicing clinician, I'm not practicing any longer, but the majority of doctors and healthcare providers that I worked with and interacted with, had like very, very high stress lives, like high stress. And to be honest, I don't think that was really addressed during any of my traditional training. We address that in my integrative medicine fellowship, but it's not something people are taught. And the same thing with, you know, for those out there who have high stress jobs.
And that also could be being a stay-at-home mom. That's a high stress job too. So there's all different types of roles. It's not something that we learn in school. Typically, maybe it's changed now, but like how to manage that stress, how to take care of ourselves and navigate that. So I would love for you to touch on that from a standpoint of mindfulness and then also from a cardiologist standpoint, what can people will be doing to take ownership over their health. If they are in a position where they're feeling overwhelmed, potentially teetering on the edge of burnout.
Dr. Jonathan:
I love how you put the question and your experience really matches my own experience in so many of us, Kristel. That's why there's so much burnout in healthcare.
The rate of stress overwhelm and burnout in healthcare is almost double what it is in the rest of industries, whether you're talking about finance and there's been lots of studies on this. So the question is why, and I think, you know, you hit on this part of it is the culture of medicine. And you'd think that medicine is about health and healing, but the model that we've used for the last hundred, hundred and 50 years has bee looking more focusing on disease, focusing on problems, focusing on, well, how can I just solve problems rather than prevent problems? And how can we focus more on the mind and the body as a unit, instead of saying, well, if there's a problem with the body, let's forget about emotions and the mind, let's use medicines and procedures.
So to move on to the second part of what you were asking about, there's the tremendous stress and overwhelm in healthcare right now. And yes, mindfulness has a role, but I am very careful when I speak about mindfulness in the context of burnout, in the context of depression and the context of anxiety. For a long time, mindfulness was used as kind of a, a simple remedy it's free, it's easy. Let's just offer mindfulness to our workforce, to our doctors and our nurses. And finally, and thankfully, because of the voice of a lot of leaders in healthcare starting only about five, six years ago. We said, the way out of a dysfunctional healthcare system is not by teaching doctors and nurses to meditate more because we're like canaries in a cold mind.
If we are sick and we're exhausted and we're leaving our jobs, it's not because we're not resilient than strong individuals. You know this, people who go into medicine are among the most resilient, powerful, thoughtful people in the world. So you have to then look and say that. Maybe it's not the individuals.
Maybe it's the way we structure our organizations. The way that leaders are trained, the way that managers run teams and the physical environment of their day to day. So I want to talk about mindfulness, but I want to put it in a very specific context, not to make anybody think that this is going to cure Burnout. It is however, an incredibly powerful tool. That number one, I was going to say everyone should have at their disposal, but I really say that, you know this, everybody already has mindfulness. Mindfulness is not something magical and mysterious and mystical that you have to go into a mountain or a cave and put robes on. Mindfulness and neuroscience is showing this, mindfulness is a trait that we already had. We're pouring with mindfulness. Mindfulness is simply the ability to pay attention to what's happening right now in a way that's calm, open and nonjudgmental. That's it. It's nothing magical and mystical. And there's, it turns out for a number of reasons that we could dive in. to. That when we practice strengthening this natural trait that we have in our minds, that also uses parts of our body uses all of our senses. When we spend time practicing that skill, it has a positive spillover effect into all aspects of our life, particularly towards our relationships with other people or romantic relationships with our children. You see courses on mindful parenting, mindful leadership, mindful clinical work.
So for me, that's how I think about mindfulness. It's not the cure for burnout. It's a powerful, in a sense self-help tool that we already have. But with practice, we can become incredibly skillful at dealing with day-to-day stresses without getting overwhelmed and without acting like a jerk to the people around us and without losing our focus and our creativity.
Kristel:
Well, you hit on so many different things. They're like, okay, where to go next to, I want to say all this stuff, but what resonated with me was you were talking about that,a lot of the problems are stemming from the way things are, run the organizations, et cetera, et cetera. And something that was, I was thinking about is for me personally, before I made the transition over to what I'm doing now when I was practicing clinically, when I was in a really high stress environment.
I thought the answer was okay, I'm gonna take a little bit more time off. I'm going adjust my hours so I can spend a little bit more time away. I'm going to, you know, make sure I'm exercising every day. I'm going to, you know, still eat well, I'm going to meditate. I'm going to do all these things. Check, check, check, check, all those boxes.
And what I found is, that didn't solve it. I still was extremely stressed when I was in those environments. It took me, you know, I carried it home. It was hard for me to then it took me time to kind of readjust to the home environment after that high stress of work. So I think that you really hit that spot on, like, you can do all of these things, but if it's not really fixed in the workplace, Yeah, it's, there's still more to be done.
So how do we do that? Like what do we do? Should we go, can we go to like a four day work week, but even then, you know, do you set hours? I mean, what do you think?
Dr. Jonathan:
Oh, it's such the multimillion dollar question right now, and I'm very happy to say that there are leaders across industries and across governments and internationally that are working on this very problem, which is how do we reimagine work in the 21st century, because the older model that's been used since the dawn of the industrial revolution with chest to do purely with the capitalists, make more profits, have people work harder for more profits. We know that that doesn't work anymore. And there's a trend in our society to focus more on wellbeing, not just on the individual. And I want to be careful here because there's a lot of focus in the self-help world where if we can just keep working on ourselves, working on ourself, self care, self care, it's not selfish, true. But at some point, unless we look around at our brothers and our sisters and our colleagues and our organizations, we have to look beyond the self.
So for me, self care is an avenue towards looking beyond our self in a non selfish way. So with that as a beginning, I would say that organizations depend on leaders and leaders who state very clearly what the mission and the purpose of the organization is. And if we look at a lot of the flaws and the deficits and organizations, it has to do with either unclear purpose statement or employees being encouraged to work at cross-purposes to, what is most important to them and in health care, that's part of the root of what's called moral injury. So if you're trained as a nurse or a PA, or as a doctor to help people at all costs, and then you have an organization that says that's going to cost too much, we don't want you to do that. We don't have proper attire for you.
So you won't be able to do that. We want you to spend time with people, but we're going to give you more computer work to do during and after the visit, those are all examples of how you may say that your goal is one thing to care for patients. But in reality, if you don't change the processes on the ground, you're really getting in the way of allowing people to live into their purpose.
And what we know about wellbeing at work is that if you want a workforce that's productive and happy allow them to feel a sense of purpose and meaning as an individual and as a group.
Kristel:
Yeah, that is so well sad. I was doing a little bit of research on this when I was giving a talk on burnout and I, there was one study that showed that where, um, particularly with healthcare providers, there were lower instances of burnout in practices where they felt valued.
And I think that's going to look differently for people, but I agree the purpose feeling like you're appreciated, that you're valued. You know, those are things that are complex. There's not like a simple do this and that happens, you know, there's so many layers, but.
Dr. Jonathan:
Oh, sorry. This is where I was going to say.
It's so helpful for me to go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And just to look at, you know, this American psychologist, 70 years ago, who laid out basic human needs, and it's not a strict hierarchy, but it helps us understand how to make people happy, how to make ourselves happy. And when I say happy, I don't mean feel a momentary pleasure.
I really am talking about. Uh, sense of long-term wellbeing. When we look back at our lives, do we remember the experiences and the moments and the relationships in ways where we can say that we lived well as opposed to temporary happiness. And so at the top of that hierarchy of needs is this idea of going beyond yourself and feeling a sense of purpose, connection, and service to others. Exactly like you were saying.
Kristel:
I love that. So I think we touched a good amount on, on this topic, burnout prevention, you know, there's a lot of work to be done here, and I would love to segue into talking about how people can help support a healthy heart. Cause let's kind of dive into that cardiology. And I would really appreciate you sharing maybe like five tips that could help people support, prevent heart disease, or I should say, support heart disease, prevent heart disease and support a healthy heart.
Dr. Jonathan:
I really loved the way you phrase that question. A lot of people phrase the question of, well, how do we treat the different diseases of the heart and what should we do about this problem and this problem, but what you're asking, I want to just pause there and say that the way that you asked that question is the secret to the whole answer.
Public health, which is instead of saying, how can we look for problems and fix them instead, you asked, how can we create a state of optimal health? Which, because I understand as a cardiologist, the direct connection between emotions and the heart. I don't think we should just focus on heart health. I'm going to, because that's what I do.
But if I focus on the heart and I forget that the gut is connected to the heart is connected to the mind, then I may again, cause problems with my heart by what I'm eating. So the simple answer is there are a couple of determinants of heart health. So one is maintaining an ideal body weight, a healthy body weight.
And along with that is having nutritious diet. And we could talk for hours about what the best diet is. And I even believe we shouldn't use the word diet because it gives this idea of confinement and limitation and restriction. We want to just set healthy boundaries, which is about eating. If you want to say lots of plants, lots of vegetables and fruits getting plenty of fiber, which most of us don't do and trying to avoid the processed foods rich in chemicals, simple carbohydrates.
So we're talking about nutrition. We're talking about exercise. So 120 to 180 minutes a week of moderate cardiovascular exercise. Again, I want to say this people who are listening to this shouldn't feel bad if they're not getting or doing all these things, because it's one thing to know the tips, but really the name of the game is on behavioral change.
How do we get into this mind of ours? That's so tricky. Even as a cardio doctor, I know the 25 things we have to do to stay healthy, but I don't do all right. So we could, maybe we could dive into why that is. I would say, uh, nutrition, exercise, sleep is important, seven to eight, or even more hours a night, getting good restorative sleep.
And then I would say no smoking. Yeah. It's not a matter of moderation. I don't believe that everything in moderation is good. Moderation and smoking is not good. Other drug use, alcohol. The thinking now on alcohol is different than we used to say that it might protect you. So now we no longer believe that alcohol protects your heart.
So just to be cautious and aware that everything has potential benefits and risks. So nutrition, exercise, sleep, no smoking alcohol. And then for me, I think the most important thing is having warm, loving relationships. So I make sure that I ask all of my patients even before smoking and those other things who's important in your life? Do you spend quality time with them? So you know how much they care about you or they care about you care about them and if not, How can we think about a plan or a strategy that you can find just one person to connect with? Because the studies show that those who have at least one or more follow through on all of the other healthy habits.
So it's really a foundation. And then along with that, stress reduction. All of my patients, I prescribed some form of stress reduction technique. It could be a mindfulness practice and I sit with them and I meditate in the office with them. It could be a breathing technique and there's so many ways to use the breath to calm the nervous system.
It could be a cognitive technique where we learn to reframe experiences and thoughts in healthier ways to have a more optimistic outlook. So there's so many ways to work with the mind. Okay, I'll stop there. But those are a coupl.
Kristel:
Yeah, no, that's great. And the nutrition piece, you know, there are so many different tips and recommendations, but I liked how you just, you laid out some of the basics and those are things that I also am all for increase the plants, increase the fiber, lower the inflammatory foods.
I'm curious what your take is on oils and butter. You know, there's different things that come out like grass fed butter. Don't do that. Don't have this. Olive oil I know is something that is recommended, but I would love to hear your thoughts on that and also eggs. Eggs. Is it that's another one. Should you be eating eggs or should you not be eating eggs?
Dr. Jonathan:
The question about eating certain foods or not eating certain foods is always a tricky one because my answer today may be different than it will be a year from now. And if we look even at the history of eggs being good or not good, it's gone in circles. You look at certain fats, but what I will tell you is.
Number one, we want to be very careful eating saturated fats. There's really very little doubt that saturated fats, which are found in cholesterol, which are found in egg yolks and other high-fat animal proteins are linked with cardiovascular disease, a hardening of the arteries, a buildup, a plaque in the arteries.
There are some exceptions. So olive oil, for example, has certain benefits across different diseases, may be relating to its anti-inflammatory properties. But I would not say that that applies. It does not apply to coconut oil. I would also be careful with the thick butters. And once we're talking about whether it's grass fed or not grass fed as the source of the butter, I think we're addressing a very small niche.
And if that means that we're following all of the other recommendations, I don't think it's going to make a huge difference in terms of getting that exercise, eating those pound of vegetables a day. And the other thing I'll say about olive oil. It can be wonderful, but if we're trying to lose weight or develop a healthy body weight, it can make it challenging because pound for pound, it's one of the most dense materials, uh, in terms of calories per ounce.
So we just want to be careful not to overdo it.
Kristel:
And then love to hear your thoughts on red wine in moderation, because like you said, it used to be okay, red wine could be protective with antioxidants for your heart. Obviously I'm not talking about anything excessive here, which we know is bad, but I'd be curious if people are having red wine in moderation, you know, within the recommended guidelines, what are your thoughts?
Dr. Jonathan:
So there has been a research in the last two years, which really go against a lot of what we've been saying. Which say that there may be a higher risk even with low levels of alcohol. So it used to be, we might say two to three drinks, no big deal. One to two drinks, no big deal. And there is now some evidence saying that any level of regular alcohol may increase the risk of high blood pressure, uh, vascular disease, stroke, et cetera.
And we're going to see more of that. It's not a very popular area of research because people love alcohol. Right. And at the same time, we do want to adapt and adjust when information comes in, that is very plausible. So keep your ear out for that. But there's some new information this past two years suggesting that even moderation and alcohol may increase our risk of certain health conditions..
Kristel:
It's interesting, how like studies always change, you know, it's like, this is recommended based on research we have, and then there's new research. It's like hard to keep up sometimes.
Dr. Jonathan:
And it really can be. And then the key is, and this is true with COVID is not everybody is trained to understand epidemiology and statistics, and yet everyone is being asked their opinion on what do you think about this, that, or the other thing?
And unless you have a background in some training and how to know whether a study is done well or not done well.. You might believe the results of a study that was done very poorly. You know, you wouldn't believe something if I said we studied one person and we came to a conclusion, we're going to apply it to the rest of the world.
Or if we study people that don't look like you and don't have your medical history. So I think part of the future in health, and for those of us who were interested is to teach ourselves how to interpret studies and how to understand the data that we are being presented, whether it's on the news or whether it's by medical experts.
And then we also have to decide the whole question about trust, which I find fascinating, who do we trust? Do we trust people because they have a degree after their name, because they seem to be charismatic. And we really want to start asking this question because it's a matter of public health who we listened to.
Kristel:
There's so many different variables to it that I find with some of these things and it, it is hard to interpret if you're just reading like the one sentence conclusion without taking everything into play, you could potentially be coming to the wrong conclusion. So that is, I think, a very hot topic at the moment.
And I appreciate your insight. We are coming close to the end. And what I like to do at the end is a quick wellness lightning round, where I ask you a few fun questions and you just give me whatever comes first into your mind. But before we do that, anything else you would like to share? I will put links to your social and all of that in the episode details, but any other tips, insights, things you'd like to share before we move to that.
Dr. Jonathan:
There's one message that I'd like to share that for me is more important than any other, especially for people who might be listening or dealing with the stress of COVID, which is the world can be hard enough with all the challenges that it can be helpful to start to be kinder to ourselves. So we often make it worse on ourselves by criticizing our behavior and I'm not enough and I'm not worthy and I'm not following all of these wonderful tips. I would say, take it all with a grain of salt. If we can all practice and learn to be kinder to ourselves. I personally believe we're going to see a lot more kindness in the world.
Kristel:
I love it. I love it. All right. So now let's move to the wellness lightning round. The first question I have for you, what is a self-care practice? Maybe you don't like that word, but self-care practice that you personally do on a regular basis.
Dr. Jonathan:
I love the word self care. I think it's the basis for all care for other people.
We can't care for other people, as long as it's not only self care, if it's self care, because it's going to make us more caring towards other people. For me, the regular practice is awareness. So whether I'm sitting here right now and just dropping my awareness into my own body. So I'm speaking with you.
But I'm just feeling my body. How does it feel right now? Am I feeling at ease? Am I feeling not at ease? And that's a practice of moment to moment sort of real life mindfulness, if you will. And that's rooted in my practice of what's called formal meditation practice. So. But a regular practice is a listen to an audio.
Often I'll use a guidance and I'll sit for five or 10 minutes, whether it's before work, during work or after work, to just kind of clear out the cobwebs of my mind and get settled.
Kristel:
Okay. Second question is what is a book recently that you've read recently or doesn't have to be recent if you haven't read one recently that you would recommend.
Dr. Jonathan:
I'm always reading books.
I would say. I liked the book called the biology of belief by Bruce Lipton. Bruce Lipton really was a pioneer and looking at how emotions can affect our physical bodies and even the way that our cells are affected by the stress in our environment and how we can overcome that. So Bruce Lipton, The biology of belief.
Kristel:
And the last question I have for you is knowing what you know today, what advice would you give to yourself from 10 years ago?
Dr. Jonathan:
Um, don't worry so much. It's going to be okay. People are nice. The world is, is basically a good place. And if you view it that way, you'll find a lot of wonderful people who care about you and who appreciates you.
So just don't worry. Things are going to turn out pretty good.
Kristel:
Well, that is a wonderful way to end. So thank you so much for taking the time to share all of your insights and wisdom today. I really, really appreciate it.
Dr. Jonathan:
Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for everything you do, Kristel.