Lisa Sniderman on How She Kept Shining & Thriving Even With Chronic Illness and Limited Energy (You can do it, too!)

In this interview, Lisa Sniderman talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about her virtual summit, Keep Shining: How to Thrive With Chronic Illness and Limited Energy.



“Where you are and who you are right now is enough.” ~Lisa Sniderman

Lisa, in 2019, collaborated with some 20 artists to help create an animated video and song about her illness and recovery, and during the same year, her book, A Light in the Darkness, had been converted to an audiobook with her as the narrator and had been considered for the Grammy awards, which she went to in January 2020. The awards were an experience, as she needed to rest between awards events – an experience which she remarked as feeling “surreal.” (Lisa implemented a “no hugs” policy during that event, due to her autoimmune condition, which she remarked was a forerunner for actions that need to be taken during the Covid-19 pandemic.) She had been honored with over 20 awards for both audiobook and video, and has been home-bound since early 2019 due to a flare-up of her condition. Although Lisa has been receiving infusions intended to moderate her symptoms, she has decided to discontinue these and use diet and activities such as yoga, due to the present Covid-19 pandemic and concerns arising from this.

Lisa has focused on creating and had been working on the free virtual summit since July 2019, which created a challenge where creating time and balance between work and self-care were concerned. She thus limited herself to conducting ten interviews a month, with a maximum of two interviews a day. Lisa is also creating a spoken-word album in collaboration with her Producer and an ensemble, which focuses on grief and thriving – a process which is challenging, given the present sheltering conditions around Covid-19. That said, she remarks that those with chronic illnesses might be more adapted to the present conditions of self-isolating, and could thus be in a better position to help others adapt.

Lisa has been living with dermatomyositis, a degenerative, inflammatory muscular disease whose symptoms include skin rashes and which causes muscular weakness and attacks the immune system, since April 2008, and in addition to helping manage this with medicine and therapy, has also been managing her condition with creativity. She realized that she presently has challenges creating and connecting with others while creating a community while at home and with a limited amount of energy, and this is the seed of her online seminar, along with the video and the book that she had helped create. Lisa intends to inspire others in a similar condition as herself to thrive, and this is the purpose of her two-week, 60-talk summit. The summit itself starts on July 10, 2020, which is Chronic Disease Awareness Day, and this also plays into seven out of ten people in the United States living with chronic illness (7/10).

The summit’s expert speakers consist of medical experts, artists who are battling illness, alternative practitioners, thought leaders, spiritual leaders, healers, creative therapists and members of online support networks. Lisa focused on speakers who can address familiar issues which face those living with chronic illness, such as how to address one’s emotional, spiritual and mental well-being – things which, she notes, “fall by the wayside,” given the emphasis on physical well-being. In addition to 60 interviews, two speaker panels will also be involved, where the questions asked by summit participants will be answered by experts, participants can interact with each other through Facebook, and drama therapy workshops will be conducted. Although the summit is intended primarily for those with chronic illness, Lisa believes that anyone interested in improving their health and well-being during these times of pandemic can get something out of this seminar, as the emphasis of the summit is how to thrive during challenges.

Some of the topics that Lisa is excited to present include holistic nutrition (which includes practical strategies on what to eat and how to reduce inflammation); using meditation to relax, heal and transform; and using expressive arts to heal and transform. She also noted the involvement of Amy Oestreicher, whose stomach had exploded; who, after coming out of a months-long coma, learned she could not eat or drink; and who gives practical advice on thriving, based on the lessons she learned from her experience. Lisa also notes that one of the topics in her seminar is on sex and intimacy while living with chronic illness, which isn’t much talked about but which is important to the relationships in one’s life.

To those who are impacted by chronic illness, Lisa recommends finding a trusted disease-related organization or a disease-focused support group, as well as a doctor who takes the situation seriously. “Don’t go at it alone,” she emphasizes. Lisa also remarks that one should grieve when one is suddenly confronted by the reality of chronic illness, as this is necessary to eventually keeping one’s dreams alive.

BUY on AMAZON: 
A Light in the Darkness: Transcending Chronic Illness through the Power of Art and Attitude Paperback by Lisa A. Sniderman

Links from Lisa Sinderman:

Sign up for the Keep Shining virtual summit (July 10-24, 2020) and learn how to thrive with chronic illness and limited energy

Join the How to Thrive With Chronic Illness and Limited Energy Facebook Group 

View/download Lisa’s Life Lessons for Living Well With Chronic Illness 

Watch the Keep Shining summit trailer 

Watch Lisa Sniderman's Keep Shining Music Video which shares her personal story and struggle with illness, disability and her recovery   

Martha Howard, M.D. Reveals the Secret to Being Alive and Well

In this interview, Martha Howard, M.D., talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her book, Alive and Well: Your Survival Guide for the Health Care Apocalypse.



“I’d like to see the generation of my grandchildren be as healthy as the adults were when I was a kid in the 1940s.” ~Dr. Martha Howard

Throughout the years of practicing medicine and seeing so many unwell patients, Dr. Howard found herself wondering what happened to health care in the United States, particularly when she compared how healthy, energetic and slim people were when she was a child in the 1940s. According to her, one in three people in the United States is obese; six out of ten people have at least one chronic illness, and a sizeable proportion of these have more than one chronic illness. (Chronic illnesses, according to Dr. Howard, are due to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and covers such things as allergies, arthritis, Alzheimer’s, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, lung disease and pulmonary disease.) This made her think about what could be done about the present state, and her book, Alive and Well sprang from all the research she did.

Alive and Well is a “make it happen” book, according to Dr. Howard, and while around forty pages of the book are related to what she sees as what is wrong with the state of the health industry in the United States, the rest of the nearly four hundred pages are dedicated to her recommendations of what to do when one has particular health concerns. Her recommendations are based on 35 years of practice and thousands of patients and are ones which have worked.

Dr. Howard became interested in acupuncture when, after she got involved in a car accident, her neck was broken. She went to several doctors who suggested either living with it or taking painkillers, which she was reluctant to do. She then found an acupuncturist who, in three months’ time, fixed her neck, and after that, she apprenticed under the acupuncturist for two years. As she lived in Illinois, however, she couldn’t practice without a medical degree, which was why she went to medical school and got her medical degree at the age of forty-one. Dr. Howard uses “integrative medicine” in her practice, which means that she uses what she considers to be the best of Western and traditional Eastern medicine, those practices which work.

Dr. Howard points out that there are five major “Horsemen” or big market forces in the United States that keep people unhealthy. These Horsemen are:

• The Medical Industry, rather than the “medical profession.” Dr. Howard points out that a study from Johns Hopkins found that medical misdiagnosis and errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States.

• Big Pharm, the pharmaceutical industry, which Dr. Howard describes as a “robber baron.” She gave the example of Martin Shkreli, who raised the price of the drug, Daraprim, over fifty times its previously-sold price, and also noted that prices of drugs in the United States cost anywhere from three to six times more than the same drug in Canada and Western European countries.

• Big Food, which Dr. Howard holds responsible for the obesity epidemic. She noted that the sugar industry, according to an article published in JAMA in September, 2016, in the 1960s, had pushed sugar, despite the fact that it was known to be a factor in coronary heart disease, and paid scientists to show that it was fat that was unhealthy. According to Dr. Howard, the food industry then fell into lockstep, pushing high sugar, low-fat foods as a healthy option, as well as “hijacking” healthy foods with sugar.

• Big Ag, or, as she calls it, a “master of chemical attack strategies.” Dr. Howard points out that Big Ag’s extensive use of antibiotics endangers people who enter a hospital for an emergency due to this. She also remarks that the chemicals used in agriculture, such as chlorpyriphos, which was originally developed as a nerve gas, can cause brain damage in children.

• Big Pol, or the politicians whom Dr. Howard calls “profit-mad health care demolition experts.” She stated that big politics has been attempting to destroy the health care system for decades, as well as in specific ways, such as being part of the opioid epidemic. According to Dr. Howard, Big Pharm has paid Big Pol to ensure that punishments for excessive or improper prescription of opioids are light, which results in people being addicted to opioids when they likely wouldn’t have been.

Dr. Howard notes that the diagnostic system is broken, and gave the example of a patient who goes to a doctor with a complaint, such as an irritated bowel. The doctor will then say that the patient does have the complaint he has and then give a drug without figuring out why the patient has that complaint in the first place. Dr. Howard opines that the “clockwork” way of viewing the human body, where healing one part will ensure that the entire mechanism keeps running well, is not appropriate, as the human body is an ecosystem which interacts not only among the various parts within it, but also with the environment around it. This is why she focuses on holistic healing, and gave the example of Dr. Bredesen, who is the director of the Alzheimer’s Disease program at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, who undertook a study on treating patients with Alzheimer’s. Dr. Bredesen treated Alzheimer’s holistically, dealing with such aspects as food, sleep, dental hygiene and exercise, rather than just prescribing drugs, and six of the ten people in his study were able to return to work after being forced to leave it because of their condition.

Dr. Howard believes that the biological systems of human beings are still geared to a hunter-gatherer diet, rather than one based on grains, as this was the kind of diet that humanity has lived on for most of its existence. She notes that she had good results with her patients when they undertook the “paleo” diet, which she claims is easy and simple. Where exercise is concerned, Dr. Howard notes that doing interval exercise, which speeds up and slows down one’s heart rate comfortably, is the best kind to do, with twelve to fifteen minutes of exercise, four times a week being sufficient.

In the end, Dr. Howard would like public health in the United States to turn around, and have future generations of children as healthy as children during the time when she was a child.

Purchase from Amazon: Alive and Well: Your Survival Guide for the Health Care Apocalypse by Dr. Martha Howard