16th Annual Patient Day
Your Mother Should Know, Your Doctor Should Know Better!
Patient Day - March 2, 2025
Einhorn Auditorium
Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City
Scientific Director
Dan Martin, MD
Program Director
Tamer Seckin, MD
I'd like to first introduce the moderator for the next session. Adi Katz, MD is the Director of Gynecology and director for the Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency Program at Lennox Hill Hospital. She is a reviewer of abstracts for national meetings, including the American Association of Gynecologic, laparoscopic Laparoscopes, laparoscopies, and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Please welcome Adi Katz, MD to the stage.
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This, I'll leave this here. Yes, we always try to use as many tongue-tying words as possible. It is my great pleasure to introduce Judy Jo. She's a Korean American chef roster tour and author and TV chef. She appears regularly on the food network and still is going to star in House of Knives. Is that it? It is very appropriate for surgeons to introduce later this month. She has restaurants in New York, London, Edinburgh, and Las Vegas, and she's in the Iron Chef in the uk. She had stage 4.5 endometriosis and had surgery in 2019. Okay. So I'd like to ask you both about your personal journey with endometriosis and how it impacted your career path and your daily lives. We'll start with Judy.
Well, I actually didn't know I had endometriosis for a very long time, which I think is a very common story that all of us women who have and have had the disease. I was in the UK living in London, and my doctor, I had struggled with fibroids for a long number of years. My doctor just one day said, oh, you have endometriosis. Didn't really know what it was, didn't know how bad it was, and just kind of over the years, just kind of just telling me, oh, you have endometriosis. What drove me actually to get my surgery was that my ca 1, 2, and 5 levels were through the roof, like in the five hundred or something, which is a very, very difficult and quite dangerous situation. So then I started looking for surgeons and my top surgeon on Harley Street, which is a private area in London, my surgeon there said, we can't deal with this disease in the uk, period.
If you have insurance in the United States, go there and do it, which is pretty alarming. But if you think about it in the United States, Dr. Samir was just saying how we are the leaders and at the forefront of all this medical research. But the NIH money, it's only less than 10% goes to women's research. So what's going to be cut with all of these cuts? It's women's research. So it's really alarming of how little dedication and funding goes towards 50% of the population and the population that is in charge of reproducing and creating a population. So it's quite important. But my journey with endometriosis was a little bit interesting. I had a very severe case by the time I was caught. I wish I had gone to seek surgery earlier because if it was caught earlier, I would've had a much easier surgery. I had an eight-hour surgery with Dr.
Satchin endometriosis 4.5. But what was interesting about my case also was that I wasn't that symptomatic in terms of debilitated of a lot of people with stage one endometriosis can't get out of bed, they're completely debilitated, they can't work, whatever. Here I am, I'm an Iron Chef. I was standing on my feet for 15 hours a day under huge amounts of stress. I'm hiking, I'm active, all this stuff. And I really believe that that had to do with me leading an eating, an anti-inflammatory diet, just kind of quite regularly and just naturally being a chef. I love to cook. I was eating good food. I'm not a big drinker. I stay away from processed foods. I just didn't like it. But I'm also a huge fan of acupuncture. I was managing my endometriosis symptoms with acupuncture, osteopathy after my surgery. I was doing hypobaric oxygen treatments.
I come from a family of doctors and I have to stress that everybody is different and personalized nutrition, personalized treatments is a hundred percent the way to go and epigenomics and epigenetics really takes in a large part of this. I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor for, well, not because I'm diabetic, but because I wanted to know what I could digest. I'm Asian, I can't digest, maybe dairy that well. Whereas my friends who are from Ireland can eat dairy and cheese every day until the cows go home and nothing happens. I was noticing I was having oat milk every single day in my coffee and I was spiking higher with oak milk than I was with a bar of chocolate. So it's something that you can just do on your own, and we saw that everybody's individual really demonstrated. When everybody came down with covid, everyone presented systems that were really, really different. So I think really pay attention to your symptoms. Make the dots of connection. Why do I feel like crap today? What did I eat? What did I do? Did I not sleep? What did I drink? What did I not do? So really know thyself and listen to your body. There's a famous saying that if you listen to your body whisper, you will never have to hear it scream. So try to get things and tackle things early and food really is medicine.
Thank you. Winnie. You did share a little bit about the story in your presentation, but you can elaborate a little bit more.
Always be curious of your body. If it's something's wrong and you're not right, why am I feeling so low energy today? Sometimes you feel so low energy, but yesterday was really, really normal. You just go for a check. Maybe you have the flu, but for endometrial symptoms, if you see consistently during every monthly cycle, trust yourself, go see your ob, GYN. Also, maybe it's like keep a food, do diary. I did that first when my pelvic rehab doctor asked me, oh, keep a diary for about a week on what you ate and how do you feel about it? I was like, I don't want to do homework. Come on. But I did it anyways and it was so helpful. One thing for me was cutting dairy and cutting eggs. Eggs was a big factor for me because I was very high in a lot of hormones, so eating eggs, I was eating two eggs a day. It helps me with energy, but I felt really, really sick afterwards. But each person is different. So explore, keep that diary.
Thank you. I'd like to give an opportunity for our audience to ask questions, and if not, I have 10 of more questions.
Can you offer some words of encouragement for people who are going through elimination process? Just having to reintroduce foods and it's just a never ending process to find what your trigger foods
Just wanted to ask, do you have any words of wisdom or advice for people that are going through an elimination process such as an A IP diet or a low food maps diet or anything like that that are trying to identify trigger foods, but it could be very overwhelming, it could be stressful. Just like any kind of advice
I would say when dealing with elimination diets, also be careful and also try to address other things that could be going on. Make sure that your hormones are in check. Make sure your gut is healthy. If your gut's not healthy, nothing is going to agree with you. So I would try to also address greater issues overall. And gut health is first and foremost, so heal your gut and then go into something like that. So whether it's taking probiotics, eating kimchi, I'm the Korean chef, or just making sure everything else is in check, you have to think of your body and your overall health, like a symphony, like an orchestra, and the music isn't going to play or sound right if every single section is working correctly.
Yeah, Judy, I can also add to that for definitely keeping your gut healthy and how do I do that? And you can eat your probiotics, but I have a stack of vitamins in my dry. I've bought everything before and I don't touch it honestly nowadays. I don't touch it. What I do is I would look for different recipes and keep eating those recipes consistently. How they say of Apple Day keeps the doctor away? Well, I stew my apples, I stew them with boiling water. I add a little bit of honey. I also cook the apples with the skin because there's pectin on the skin and it's very good to actually prebiotic for your bowels, and I was able to go regularly every day. I always love warm foods. Another thing is that I do a diet where if I don't feel like eating, I'm not going to drink just water.
I'm going to drink electrolytes and where do I get that is bone broth. So I drink bone broth every single day. Sometimes access to bone broth is different for a lot of people. I know that there's a lot of Vietnamese restaurants, they sell fa, the bone broth there, you can just ask for a quart. Sometimes you just buy maybe three quarts and you put it in your freezer and sometimes you feel tired. Low in energy, get bone broth. I would just dilute it with water. It might be a little bit salty or too much for you, but it's very, very good. And for women it keeps collagen and your skin looks beautiful without collagen. Other supplements go natural,
Can I? It's an amazing, sure.
I just want to add to that really quickly because I feel that we have to remember that food is our friend and food is celebratory. I feel that a lot of times food gets a bad wrap and it's like, okay, this is a chie whatever. Food is one of the greatest pleasures in life. Okay? I'm a chef. I love to eat. You don't have to eat perfectly all the time. Give yourself a break. You can eat that cookie and enjoy it. When you go to Italy, you're going to drink too much. You're going to eat too much pasta and pizza or whatever. That's fine. It's just about balance. You have to live your balance. If you overdo it one day, just be good on the next day. It's the same with anything in our lives. You have to have work-life balance. You have to have eating balance. If your birthday, eat your cake, drink, whatever. So food is our friend. It gives us a fuel to feel good. It gives us energy to work well, make us happy, et cetera. So make sure that you have a good and happy relationship with food. Yeah.
We had a question out there.
Say once again, thank you, Winnie for sharing your story. I cried with you. I also have a lot of complications and I have a ileostomy bag, but it's permanent. So I did try acupuncture once and I would love to continue with someone like yourself that understands. Are you able to share your information for us here so that people like myself that would like to see you? How I can go about that?
Yeah, absolutely. Right now I have to set up my own practice, but because I graduated from acupuncture school in, I've been using the clinic there because it's part of the training rotation program. I'm going to set it up and I'll be sharing with you, but my email address is winnieChan590@gmail.com. And I also know that acupuncture access is an issue. Sometimes you guys are living far away traveling hours to actually see a specialist and might be that specialist doesn't work. So if you like to sync with me a little bit later and I can find out as an acupuncturist that works for you based on your zip code,
I had so much success with acupuncture. Thank you so much for opening this conversation. I'm just curious if you are hopeful that at some point it might be covered by insurance.
I know that it is covered by my, I have it covered in my insurance. Insurance. Certain insurance. Definitely.
I think, like we mentioned before, advocacy. Advocacy is a group speak up against your insurance companies. Don't let them just walk you through what is covered and not covered. What their goal is is not the same as your goal and you have to speak up. Otherwise, nothing changes.
I just say that because it was one of the most helpful things for me, and it's so unfortunate that acupuncture, physical therapy, yoga, all these things that help us all so much, massage therapy are usually not covered. So if Cigna does, that's incredible. I'll look into that. But this is something that's been so helpful to me and I'm so grateful for learning about Chinese medicine and how it's helped Endo.
I can add to that too, miss. I know a lot of acupuncturist friends who do sliding scale and community clinics. So you come by Wednesday, maybe it's $20 an afternoon from three to 7:00 PM in New York City. But let me know and I'll sync with you and share that information.
I had a question.
Hopefully mine's very quick. Can we please discuss that FA comes in plastic containers and the issues with that? I just find that incredibly ironic because of how bad plastic is for us. So we're trying to get something that's healthy in a container that's not,
It's a problem throughout the food industry. It's not just certain foods. I mean, even the containers that are seemingly paper have plastic linings on them because you have to make them waterproof. Packaging to go packaging for takeout is a huge issue in the industry, and if it's a hundred percent biodegradable, it does not stand up to holding your food together when it's delivered or when it grows through shipping. So everyone is aware of it and even things that are biodegradable, you have to actually make sure that they do get recycled in the correct way. Unless they're recycled in the correct way, they're still going to sit there in a landfill. So it's an issue, it's a problem. It's pervasive throughout the industry. It's everything from you buy a sauce to the utensils that you use to, you're getting your takeout, but the inflammation that the things that for, especially in patients, it's like cook your own food, right? Yeah. I mean it's basically, but you have to also just, I guess just do what is the best, what is the worst? You know what I mean? You're getting some bone broth, which is really nutritious. Maybe you can make it yourself or yeah, you buy it in a plastic pouch is usually what it comes to maybe. But even those metal foil pouches are lined with plastics. You just can't get away from it yet. So unfortunately, that's just the situation.
I think we have time for one last question from the audience.
Can you tell us more about how lifestyle affects symptoms and endo like drinking hot water or exercising? Oh, I drink hot water. Traditional Chinese medicine, the first day in our school is because our body is at a certain temperature. You get sick when you're 99 degrees, so you want to make sure when you drink cold water, like ice water, it hits your system right away. It feels good in the throat, but not in your stomach, not in your belly. Later on, you touch your belly. Right Now, is it cold? Right? That's not normal. And also, if you're going to carry a baby and have fertility issues, your womb is cold. You want to make sure that there's sufficient blood and everything is warm for your body. That's why you have that heating pad all the time. So my lifestyle is hot water everywhere I go, hot foods, warm food, cooked foods, not much raw foods.
I would say that it's a combination of diet, exercise, and the third pillar of health is absolutely sleep. So when you sleep and sleep is becoming more and more pertinent, it is very, very important for overall health. All your mitochondrial rejuvenation, your cells healing, et cetera. You really had to pay attention to your sleep patterns and also be active, active life. But it's all about balance. You can't overdo it in one area. Just do what you can and again, listen to your body. And certain exercises will work for certain people that don't work for others. Like I am a Pilates girl, I can't stand yoga. You know what I mean? So do what you enjoy and what works for you. Yeah,
I will just second that. Listen to your own body. Don't have other people tell you what works for you. Trial and error, because everybody's a little different and everybody's going to need a little bit of a different diet or have different enzymes. So just be kind to yourself, your mind, your body, what you put into it. And I think, listen, try other things than what is traditionally out there.
Thank you so much to both.
