The Book That Led Me to A New Doctor | State Change Book Review

The book in this review was recommended to me by a very thoughtful and intellectually curious colleague of mine, David Griswold , who knows how passionate I am about bringing the future of health into my own “patient” life. A few years ago, we worked together to design an AI-based solution for a client who wanted to automate their Operating Room scheduling. Lots of conversations with the client regarding their hospital systems’ goals, pain points, and current state processes turned into long “offline” conversations between our Deloitte team about the future of care. A concept we turned to often was “data-driven precision medicine”, the idea that one day (and probably a day within our lifetimes) AI would be able to use tangible data points to tell you exactly what was wrong and exactly how to fix it. The trial-and-error days of treatment would disappear…

The project we worked on together helped me find my purpose: to work on, advance, and spread awareness about precision care solutions. But “precision care” goes so much deeper than work for me. I aim to be a true early adopter and a living example of data-driven personalized care, finding ways to integrate solutions into my own day-to-day life. In a time where my personal experience with (well-intentioned) doctors made me feel like an overanxious, high-maintenance patient, I kept asking myself: “How do I leverage all my data to optimize my health? Why do my doctors not even look at my wearable data? Why, when I say I have chest pain, do they just say it’s probably just anxiety and to ‘watch it’ over the next few months?”

The book David recommended was State Change: End Anxiety, Beat Burnout, and Ignite A New Baseline of Energy and Flow by Robin Berzin MD , the Founder of Parsley Health – and it held many of the answers I’d been searching for. Though positioned somewhat as a self-help book, what it really highlighted for me is what precision care looks like today, as big data, AI, and other advanced technologies start to revolutionize the health care system. While we are not yet at the point of mainstream AI-based clinical solutions, Parsley Health is the closest I have seen to heading that direction. Their intensive, data-driven approach is refreshing and, though it appears somewhat obvious, very innovative for the health care industry.

To be honest, this felt like a book I would have loved to write myself and in many ways I felt like this book was preaching to the Talia choir! “Let’s leverage all the available data to inform clinical decisions.” Yes, that seems like a no-brainer. Let's do it! But it’s much easier said than done and the fact is that no doctor I went to before Parsley Health ever attempted to use much of my data at all.

This book provides an excellent view into how a health care organization that embraces the idea of data-driven precision medicine thinks and operates. It filled me with hope and excitement about what the future of care looks like!

Key Takeaways

Here are my key takeaways, which are short this time around because they are rather obvious. The challenge lies not in our ability to understand these takeaways but to action them:

1.    Long-term health comes down to simple habitual actions. There are five core actions that have the greatest effect on your mood: 1) nutrition, 2) exercise, 3) sleep, 4) technology, 5) alcohol and drugs. Yes, that’s right, the best medicine is still free and available to you anywhere: movement and rest – the yin and the yang.

2.    Prevention – it needs to be the first line of attack. The diseases that scare us the most – cancer, cardiovascular issues/heart attacks, neurodegenerative diseases, etc. – can be avoided or significantly delayed with the right preventative care. According to the National Cancer Institute, 50% of cancer is preventable. While conventional care has started to pivot, medicine is still largely oriented around critical care and saving the lives of the sick rather than helping healthy people remain healthy.

3.    Symptoms are important – masking them doesn’t really help us in the long-run. Symptoms might be annoying but they serve as critical pieces of information. They’re our first warning signs of underlying issues like a hormonal imbalance, an unhealthy microbiome, an autoimmune disease, or a more serious condition that could be paving the way for a chronic illness. Be grateful for the language of your body.

4.    You don’t have to live in discomfort. So many people have fallen into the chasm of feeling crappy, emotionally and physically, often relying on conventional medicine and/or learning to live with the pain. This has become somewhat normalized but there are ever-improving solutions to living a pain-free life.

5.    Diagnostic testing should inform your prevention plan. Diagnostic testing is important, even if you feel fine, because many conditions don’t manifest with symptoms until you’re already seriously sick. Your body has ways to compensate when something is out of alignment but these compensatory mechanisms can add up over time, creating inflammation and leading to chronic conditions, as well as lowering the quality of your daily experience. You can’t manage what you can’t measure.

6.    In most cases, genes do not determine your destiny. Research suggests that only 10% of our medical outcomes stem from our genes – the other 90% are the result of our environment and how we eat, move, and live. Genetics load the gun but the environment pulls the trigger.

7.    Supplements work when you take a scientific approach. You can’t just pop supplements in whatever quantity or combination, whenever you want, and expect successful results. Furthermore, not all supplements are created equal, more is not necessarily better, and the “it can’t hurt” approach is not the right one. You need to understand the “why” behind the supplement, have a way to measure it’s impacts, know the minimum necessary dose to be affective, and usually take it daily for several weeks before you’ll see meaningful effects.

My thoughts on Parsley Health so far...

I read this book and then immediately signed up for Parsley Health, where I’m currently a very satisfied and happy patient (this endorsement is not sponsored).

I quickly discovered that Parsley is truly unique in a number of ways:

First of all, they encourage 5 visits with your doctor and 5 visits with your health coach per year! 10 total appointments. It’s not an annual check-up to make sure you’re not falling apart. It’s personalized care provided over time to help you optimize your health.

Prior to your first visit, you complete extensive questionnaires so your doctor has a deep understanding of your medical and non-medical history. This includes the Parsley Symptom Index (PSI), a full-body assessment of patient reported outcomes designed to help people and their doctors connect the dots between a patient’s symptoms and their overall health.   

During the visit, your doctor puts together a list of diagnostic tests they want you to get so they’re not making recommendations without the data to support it. My doctor compiled 30+ various tests and panels for me to get done.

A care management team then helps you find the best way to pay for the tests – and this team is really there for you! Going through my insurance for all the tests would’ve cost somewhere between $800 - $3,500. Yes, sadly, United Health Care, my insurance company, could not even tell me the price I would pay (that’s its own HUGE issue) and LabCorp, the lab I had originally planned to go through, could only provide the total out-of-pocket cost. It’s interesting to me how no one could tell me the price up-front but right after I would’ve gotten the tests, I would’ve been sent the actual bill. The idea to tell patients what their service will cost ahead of time seems obvious. But, as a general theme in today’s health care world, easier said than done.

Anyways, not surprisingly, I was very daunted by the possibility of a $3,500 lab bill but my Parsley Health Care Manager helped connect me with a lab in my area where I could get all my labs done for just under $400 without using my insurance. It’s sad how shocked I was when I saw a transparent and affordable price tag!

Once you get your lab results, you work with your doctor to understand the results and decide on a care management plan. THEN you work with your health coach, a trained practitioner who helps you get tactical with the actions to take and provide accountability.

The biggest difference though is how supported I have felt as a patient at Parsley Health, which made me realize how negative so many of my past doctor appointments have been. Everything was easy and felt designed to suit the patient as opposed to designed to suit the doctor. The doctor was on-time, she had reviewed my information, she was interested in hearing my problems and knowledgeable about which diagnostic tests would be useful for me, she didn’t make me feel high-maintenance for wanting to take preventative action, in fact, she encouraged it.

I'm still very early on in my journey at Parsley Health but I plan to write more about it in future article.

If you have questions or would like to connect, don’t hesitate to reach out!