Frances Pitsilis has learned the hard way and has put her learning’s to good use. The good Doctor is passionate about educating stressed New Zealanders on how to cope and thrive in an ever more complex world. Her thriving practice and stints on TV and radio are all about helping us get and stay well- using an “integrated” approach to medicine.
“My goal is to change the health system. I would love patients to influence their GPs to learn about Integrated Medicine. It sounds awful, but patients are sometimes smarter than their doctors. They do research on the internet, and when they come to me they already know much of what I have learned over the past few years – but another doctor might tell them that it’s no good because they don’t know it”.
What is integrated medicine? Getting the best of everything I know. Take the best out of drug-based therapy, take the best out of diet, use natural therapies that are evidence-based, researched and safe.
The tools I have as a traditionally-trained, drug-based GP are not adequate. According to the World Health Organization, only 25 percent of the world uses Western medicine. How does the other 75 percent cope? What about the Chinese discipline, which is 5,000 years old.
Western medicine is: you watch people get worse, then you give them more drugs. I believe my job is to prevent illness, and I see diet and lifestyle as a very important part of keeping well.
If I had a magic wand, I would have the government subsidise some natural medicines as much as they subsidise drugs. Good natural medicines to start with would be fish oil, a good multi-vitamin and vitamin C.
I grew up in a traditional Greek family in Australia. My mother would say,” eat your spinach, it’s good for you, it has iron, have your orange juice, it has vitamin C”. When I went to medical school we didn’t cover nutrition much, and as a GP I took an interest in it.
I trained at Monash in Melbourne, a very go-ahead university, the first in the southern hemisphere to do sex-change operations and the first IVF baby in the southern hemisphere.
I came to New Zealand to be with my husband, Andrew. We met overseas and had a long-distance relationship for a year, and then I made the big decision. I arrived here in 1983 and at the time I thought my lifestyle and career were over and I was going backwards.
In fact, I ended up having a better medical career here. I decided to do general practice because I would get more of everything, but I quickly realised that a lot of illness was related to stress, which I had never been taught about.
Most people don’t fit with a textbook. You can’t just pick a page and say, ‘That’s the formula, and that’s the treatment.’ So I learned about stress management myself.
At first, I asked people how they felt and what was happening in their lives, and developed a stress management programme for them – exercise, diet, relaxation techniques. Then I realised that it wasn’t enough, they wouldn’t be able to just eat broccoli and walk around the block. I had to start helping them manage their work and their lives, so I had to learn about Stephen Covey – the seven habits of highly effective people – stress, time management and personality styles.
I am a workaholic and I have been burnt out twice. I am very driven. I wanted to use all my talents, but it was too much. The first time I got burnt out, I didn’t know. I just couldn’t cope as well and my staff had to protect me a little bit, and I didn’t really stop working.
I was doing ”cradle to the grave care”, as a GP – delivering them, looking after them, and at the end, terminal care. Long hours and lack of sleep. The second time I burned out it was that, plus the frustration of dealing with a system where the government is giving you less but you care about your patients and you want to do more. I was angry at not being valued because good family doctors are worth their weight in gold.
I was told to take six months off and I decided to reinvent myself, and use my natural gifts of problem-solving and communication. In 2000 I did the Diploma of Occupational Medicine. I wanted to use it with stress at work, but the Health and Safety Act had not been amended to include stress at that point, and no one wanted to listen to me. I joined a club and learned to be a professional speaker. I did a lot of work with the Employers and Manufacturers Association. I spoke at their conferences and I did many staff assessments for their members.
I wasn’t a normal GP. I was the chairman of the after-hours service. I balanced a lot of extra commitments. I am no smarter than any of my colleagues but I’ve always been a good communicator.
A few pennies dropped when I went to the first World Longevity Conference in Sydney around 2003. The Health and Safety Act was amended too, and I realised I had to do more with bio identical hormones and nutritional and herbal medicine to get results. I didn’t have enough tools in my toolkit at that time.
That’s where the journey started. I have always been a person that listens to the universe.
As a workaholic I have become more aware of when I start to get into old habits. I try to follow my own advice. I’m not always that good at it. I’m still working hard, but I am getting fantastic results. I am being appreciated and am satisfied, and that makes the difference. One of the things that cause a lot of stress for people is not being supported and appreciated – we all need that.
I redo my goals every three to six months. I write them down. I have a big grid with all my life departments across the top and time periods down the left side. I put my age too – that is a real catalyst. When I get my old goals out, I have achieved most of them. There is a lot of power in writing down your goals – you don’t want to get to the end and wish you’d done it differently.
You need to give your brain a break and just ”be”. Often when I power walk I take nothing with me and try and “notice” what I am looking at, and feeling out there.
I have the best husband in the world. He was my rock in helping me overcome burnout. At the beginning I just waited to get better. I was in limbo. It slowly dawned on me that I had to do things differently. You know the saying, ‘What’s the definition of stupid? Doing the same thing over again and expecting a different outcome’? I did a lot of work on myself. You reach a point where you have to accept what has happened to you and move on. Those things have been sent to teach you something.
The book by Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, is how I have dealt with major adversity in my life. The first thing was my father’s death when I was 20. The only way I could deal with it was to see what I could get out of it. I worked out that it would make me a better doctor.
If I know my husband Andrew, is going to be out in the evening doing a photo shoot, I will make sure I see him at lunchtime. We both know spending quality time together is important for a relationship, and we both have our priorities right. It has to be your health and your marriage that are number one – you see what happens to other people all the time.
We don’t talk shop.
We cope. We have a housekeeper three mornings a week for three hours at a time. She is my wife. She does everything.
The shift work, when I was working in hospitals, was difficult. It became harder and harder to cope with being up half the night. I always made sure that I exercised. Exercise has always been a very important part of my life.
My routine is power walking-five days out of seven. I do my own yoga stretches at home. I went to yoga classes and gyms for years, so I know all the stretches. I have my little routine that takes 45 minutes, and that keeps me flexible, and I do whole body vibration training on a power plate 2 or 3 times a week.
Seventy percent of my work is from people referring their friends for health conditions or chronic illnesses that aren’t getting better. Hormone problems, chronic pain, fatigue, stress, depression, anxiety, constipation, all sorts of things.
Dr Frances Pitsilis at a Glance
- More than 20 years in medicine
- Completed medical training at Monash University in Melbourne
- Regular contributor to TVNZ’s Breakfast show and Easymix 98.2 FM radio, and professional speaker
- Focuses on integrated medicine using, where appropriate, Western pharmaceutical medicine, bioidentical hormones, diet/nutrition and lifestyle tools, and some herbal and natural medicines
- General Practice are stress management and treatment of chronic illness, and appearance medicine
- Does second-opinion and consulting work on stress-related illness and chronic medical conditions for private patients, employers (staff assessment and rehabilitation)
- Married to Andrew Bignall, photography guru
Goalgetting Tips For Today
- It is possible to come back from many major health setbacks including burnout- but you need a plan and a support system.
- Try to look beyond drugs alone – to your lifestyle in order to create lasting health.
- Write down your goals and review them regularly.
- Invest in “home-help.” When you have two busy careers. Even if you can’t afford it at first – the time you save (and the benefit of additional “down-time” will help you earn more in the long run and be more productive).
- Work exercise into your routine until it becomes a habit.