Transcription of Mary Sunshine Raleigh for the show Multiple Sclerosis: Understanding & Hope, #100
Lisa: It can be challenging to be a physician in today’s health care setting because we really want to help our patients and we know that patients are coming to us with increasingly complex medical issues but also social and emotional issues. It’s always wonderful to spend time with other physicians who take a broader view of medicine as I think most of us are attempting to these days but some of them like Dr. Sunny Raleigh who is at the True North Health Center in Falmouth really are dedicating their lives to looking at health and wellness in a bigger way.
As we’re talking about diseases such as MS that we don’t really have good answers for, it’s important to be talking to people like Dr. Sunny because may be she can think about ways that she can support patients that are outside of the medical mainstream. Thanks for coming in.
Sunny: Thank you for having me.
Lisa: Dr. Sunny, I am impressed that you are raising three little boys, canning fresh tomatoes and sweet potatoes and sweet pickle relish from the family garden, going to the Saco river. I know you have a background playing at Division One Soccer. You’ve been all over the country. I think actually all over the world. Your husband is working on his PhD dissertation on Going Back to the Land. You just have this broadly varied background and yet here you are in Maine and you are working at True North and you’re bringing in your specialties of family medicine, neuromuscular medicine, and I believe functional medicine as well to help treat patients.
You’re honing down on what it is that you really want to be doing professionally. How did you get to this place?
Sunny: I was born in Northern Illinois and raised on land there with a family that was involved in a tile and slate roofing business. When I spent quite a few summers repacking hundreds of year old slate and tile and getting my hands dirty and finding all kinds of creatures buried in there, I knew that that would not be my future. It was in high school when I was doing a biology class that I had the thought I will be a doctor someday. Through my journeys, through high school into college and then even beyond, I did not really know where and what I would do specifically but I knew that I would somehow be in a healing profession.
It was when I had a life-altering appendectomy when I was living out in Sun Valley, Idaho that really prompted me into action and then that just catapulted me into the many states that I’ve lived in for furthering my education. Through it, my boyfriend became my husband who is now the father of our three boys and we were guided by what we believed in and where we wanted to settle, establish some roots and then begin a family.
When we were living in Tampa, where he was studying for his PhD, we discovered Maine. Neither of us had ever been here and as soon as we visited, it was established that this is where we’re going to make it happen. I did my residency through the University of New England in both family practice and neuromusculoskeletal medicine which was the crux of I think how I became of all encompassing physician that I have tried to become because in osteopathy, it’s the A.T. Still, our founder, his addage was “Anyone can find disease.” It’s the goal to find health in the system.
By doing that, I feel that that’s what offers a different approach specifically in osteopathic medicine and then in my practice trying to really support and nurture that hope for finding health in the system. In doing so, I was in another model of medicine that was not satisfying. I felt there was an unresolved within me. When the Medical Director of True North, Bethany Hays, approached me about really changing my practice, I was both intrigued, worried, and very hopeful. This is a rare opportunity.
When I made the leap this past January to full time at True North, I no longer had the sleepless insomniac nights of that performance anxiety that I have when I only have that 15-minute appointment and what did I miss? Was there something I could have done more thoroughly and there always was. Now, when I have this opportunity to truly listen to their story and then capture the highlights and put it on a timeline and make connections. It’s a simple practice of timeline on a piece of paper, but when 1989 what was it that happened? That was the last time you felt well and then it was like, “Oh, foreign travel, three months prior.” “Okay, well then let’s dive into that a little deeper.” Those different connections that turned on the light bulb for them to see that there could be this connection.
Whereas before while those stool studies were always negative, it’s not that or that test is fine, it’s not your thyroid or it’s not Lyme disease or you’re not anemic. Your hemoglobin and hematocrit is fine. When you delve in a little deeper, you can elicit more pieces for the puzzle and that’s what the time that I now have allows me to do. I try to compliment their specialists as a family doctor and/or a consultant and say, “Okay, I know that your specialist is excellent at managing this disease. I would like to support your entire system to optimize your functioning whole body to then support this disease process.”
By looking for the health in the system and making suggestions for lifestyle modifications and making sure that their iron stores are truly at their optimal level and taking the time to discuss their last 24 hours of nutrition and really how do your bowel movements affect your life. All of those seemingly littler components have such a foundation that my goal is then to broaden their eyes to see how that choice is then going to affect whether or not they’re going to need that intensive steroid treatment from their specialists.
Can we prevent that? Maybe your last treatment was 10 years ago with high dose intravenous steroids. How can we make that 10 years further down the road if ever again? By supporting those patients that have such a potentially debilitating disease and to see how it affects their psyche and that they can fall into a categorization and they become labeled and then they could potentially begin to live that label that’s where I try to find their barriers to overcome that and then slowly break those down. I always give the analogy of peeling back the layers of an onion and with each visit let’s remove a layer and really analyze what now lies beneath it and where are we going to go next?
I try to lay out a plan so options. Here’s the spectrum, this and versus this end. Where can I meet you? Is it in the middle? Are you ready to go for the gusto? Are you a little timid still land really need the guidance of someone else and need a little more feeling me out, making sure of what I’m talking about which I can support in that wellness wealth.
Lisa: Describe to me how something like functional medicine or neuromusculoskeletal medicine can be helpful in dealing with more really any chronic problem such as MS or maybe Lyme disease or any other of these issues that we have are challenged by medicine?
Sunny: The practice of functional medicine is to go upstream, find the underlying depletions, errors complicating factors, make them as little as possible. Try to minimize any of those upstream issues to prevent the downfall of the diagnosis. Then by optimizing the nutritional status of the individual for one example, treating underlying chronic bacterial infections or yeast overgrowth or analyzing medication and/or supplement interactions that are causing X, Y, and Z by truly looking at the foundation of the problem and then knocking out each leg of a stool of that to then break it down and then by bringing that awareness to the patient that we have to think back higher upstream as to where we can have control over this really awful disease process when it’s gotten to this big of a problem because it can seem very overwhelming.
By going to smaller, individual supportive cases that gives them some ownership of I can not only just manage this but perhaps overcome this to a greater degree. I think with the approach of functional medicine that can give patients at least hope that something they could do will really help their situation.
As far as osteopathic manipulation, I find that by having that hands-on connection with patient brings the report to another level and not only does the patient usually look very forward to just the manipulation appointment, as a family doctor I cannot check in with this, that or the other thing before they lay on the table, but I try to reserve that time for, “Okay, as we’re here together my hands on your body let’s see where we can improve on a muscular level. Are there restrictions in myofascial and in muscles to get your hip more flexible? On a deeper level at a visceral level, am I going to help with your intermittent constipation and let’s see if we can tone down some of the nervous system that’s preventing nice regular bowel movements.”
Then I feel like on the deepest level that I attempt to attain with each patient is that connection to the spirit, whatever drives the patient towards health where they’re drawing their energy and if I can meet them there and rest and settle and allow that embryo within the human to breathe that is a very powerful connection for the patient that allows extra, I considered extra healing to come in. The body has an inherent ability to heal. It’s marvelous, marvelous miracle. I am there to just give a little pat along the bomb to say, “Okay, don’t forget about this area and let’s really expand over here,” and so allowing that expansion to happen within the entire body and then beyond is my connection that I ultimately aspire to attain.
Lisa: Dr. Sunny, how do people find out about your services and also the services at True North?
Sunny: The best referral source that I have had is through word of mouth and most physicians feel that that is always speaks for itself. The wonderful social media has been great for True North of late. Our Facebook page has wonderful links for everyone and multiple hot topics that we’re discussing and our website at truenorthhealthcenter.org has pages on all of the providers, our services, the different ways to access our care and desecrate thorough foundation of our philosophies.
Lisa: What do you and your children and your husband look forward to doing this fall?
Sunny: Apple picking and lots of preparing the beds for rest for the garden and planting our covered crops. Our boys hopefully will get on the soccer teams for the fall and I’ll get back into my indoor soccer. Christopher is a professor so he’ll start classes again. I got two boys in school so it will be great fun car pooling and getting into the school scene again.
Lisa: You are a busy woman so we are very privileged to have spent time with you today. We’ve been speaking with Dr. Sunny Raleigh of the True North Health Center in Falmouth. Thanks for coming in and thanks for offering this broad-based care to patients.
Sunny: Dr. Lisa it’s been my pleasure, thank you for having me