Men’s Health Matters: Suicide, Stigma, and Systemic Gaps Ft. Fiona Flaherty
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Inspired Men Talk. And I'm gonna pass over to Gary to talk about our sponsor for this episode. So, Gary, if you'd like to tell us about our sponsor for this episode.
Gary Johannes:Absolutely. So our sponsor for this episode is mental health and workplace work in partnership of organizations who recognize that success of their organization is reliant on the success of their people, and that people success ultimately comes down to their level of mental well-being. So if you're an organization who want to improve the well-being of your teams, your individuals, and anybody who works within the organization, mental health in the workplace may well be the people who can offer the best change in training and the culture of the business.
Peter Ely:Thank you very much, Gary. And so, yes, my name is Peter Eley, and as you know, I am a solution focused hypnotherapist. I work with people who are struggling with their self care. So if you work through your lunch hour, if you work the weekends, if you have to hand back annual leave, perhaps it's worth having a chat with me before you get to the burnout stages. And with me, as always, is Chris Johannes.
Peter Ely:Chris, hello.
Chris Johannes:Yeah. My name is Chris. I'm also a solution focused hypnotherapist. I also am a landscape gardener. I also run a scout group local to where I live, so I like to keep nice and busy.
Peter Ely:Excellent. And with us is Ben. Hello, Ben. How are you? And could you give us a little bit of an introduction to yourself?
Benn Baker-Pollard:Hello. So, yeah, Ben Baker Pollard. I'm a solution focused hypnotherapist. But, also, my prior experience, I was a police inspector in the police. I've been in policing for eighteen years.
Benn Baker-Pollard:So different perspectives, but happy to be here tonight with Fiona.
Peter Ely:Excellent. Thank you very much, Ben. And last but by no means least, Gary. Hello. Would you like to introduce yourself?
Peter Ely:Oh, he's on mute again. You're on mute, mate.
Gary Johannes:Only everybody else.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Mute. But I'm
Gary Johannes:so my name's Gary, and I'm from Inspire to Change. And over the last thirteen years, everything COVID do is around improving people's mental health, whether that's one to one where I see clients, or one to many where I do training and support people and organizations to get the very best out of themselves and their teams.
Peter Ely:Thank you very much, Gary. And as always now, we've started to have some guests with us who are coming to talk to us about various different topics, and this week is no different. And today, we have a very lovely guest, a very wonderful and engaging guest, Fiona Blahaty from from Meducate. So good evening, Fiona. How are you?
Fiona Flaherty:Thank you, Peter, and a lovely welcome.
Peter Ely:Thank you. And, Fiona, if you'd like to tell our listeners a little bit about you, who you are and and where you are and why you why you are at you, where you are. Let me start again. So, Fiona, thank you. If you'd like to tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us what it is that you do, and what what's your journey been to get you to where you are today?
Fiona Flaherty:Lovely. Yes. Of course. Well, I've lived a long time, Peter, but I've still kept my hair, so that's a plus for a figure. And I wandered accidentally into men's health.
Fiona Flaherty:My background is I've been in health for over forty five years. I came up through a traditional nursing and midwifery route, which predominantly was females. It's female workforce, female managers, and the wards were then divided into men and women. I had to do the female awards as you do as part of your training, but I did find having done that and done midwifery, I really got quite tired of women because they think emotionally, they buy emotionally, they make decisions, or they don't. They change their minds, and it was tough.
Fiona Flaherty:So what I liked was all the male stuff. I liked male orthopedics. I love male pelvic health. I like male mental health, and I love cardiac. And the reason I stuck with all of those was because the care was exactly the same.
Fiona Flaherty:The delivery was the same, but they received it much more positively. And they didn't question what was being done so long as it made sense. So the nice thing was that men just got better that much faster. Mhmm. Now the reason that men get better that much faster is men tend to be much more analytical.
Fiona Flaherty:Us females would like to tell you that you don't know what you're doing. You're a grown man. You come down the stairs completely fully dressed, and for some strange reason, we ask you, does that tie match that shirt? Are you going to wear those shoes with those socks? So we start straight away.
Fiona Flaherty:If we ask you to compliment what we cooked, we say you didn't like it enough because you didn't like it as much as the last time. If we ask for opinion, we disrespect it because we tell you that, actually, we don't believe what you've said. But I found what I was doing with men with something which was tangible, which was give them the stats, give them the information, give them the facts, and tell them there are two options, this or nothing, they went with it. So I've been playing for a very long time as a non sports person with men football because they will talk about a missed goal for as long as a goal. One of the best ways for me to actually get to men was to work predominantly with men, work in men's health, get out of illness, and go into wellness.
Fiona Flaherty:So in 1997, I set up my first company in Harley Street. I had a lamp, I had a leather chair, and I thought I'd made it. But the men weren't coming in, the women were. So then I refocused and I changed a few times, and then I went out to work in The Middle East. And I found out I was dealing with men there who were very easy to work with because, again, it was all about they'll do what you say because their goal was whatever they'd come in for.
Fiona Flaherty:They didn't have too many hidden agendas. They didn't want to talk. There There wasn't a lot of adjectives, but by and large, they just wanted results. So when I came back then, I decided I would focus purely on men's health. And so thanks for that introduction.
Fiona Flaherty:I actually did a master's in public health, and I looked at all the things that men would worry about. I went into the pelvis first, and I looked at chlamydia.
Peter Ely:Oh, let me let me just hold up for one second because I wanna ask you, why did you choose that whole men's mental health master's thing? Because that seems like a I don't know. I don't know if it was a were were you like one of the only females in that in that course?
Fiona Flaherty:So I went to an international public health college to do it, university to do it. What I found was the men's perception was totally different to the women. I was one of two women who were interested in men's health, but it was about our perspective. The men were into making it not a problem anymore, and myself and another colleague were finding the problem, taking it out, laying it open, and giving it back to them to do something about it for themselves. So I looked at chlamydia.
Fiona Flaherty:I looked at triggers like smoking. I looked at men's general diet and nutrition. And so I actually did my dissertation on male suicide. And what I got what got me thinking was, it isn't a very different model to how we deliver health in this country, but the NHS was set up in 1948 for women and children, not for men. So probably an answer to your question, if women have a problem with breast tissue, they can go to a breast clinic.
Fiona Flaherty:If a man has a problem, he goes to thoracic. If a woman has a gynae problem, she goes to gynae, and a man has to go then to general surgery, general medicine. So I realized that there was a huge, big gap, and the only way for me to address that gap was to make men matter.
Peter Ely:Fantastic. Thank you. You've said a couple of things there that I completely forgot. And I remember when I was younger, I was in and out of hospital, And wards were male and female, and I I'd forgotten that. So gents, let's bring Gary in.
Peter Ely:Gary, you've done masters. Tell us a little bit about well, I wanna start with that. Why did you chew you didn't do your master's in men's health, though. Can you tell us what you did you do your master's in and why you chose that topic?
Gary Johannes:I did mine in on the neuroscience and psychology of mental health at King's College. But I did it just quite recently. I only graduated last year.
Fiona Flaherty:Congratulations.
Gary Johannes:And the reason I did that was because I do a lot of training for other people, whether that's within our team, whether that's training other people who wanna be therapists or generally. And it's for me, it's always about what's the latest evidence, what's the newest stuff out there. And more importantly, Fiona is talking beautifully about the gap in men's mental health, which I think is really important. Unfortunately, there's still a bit of a gap in my opinion. But the neuroscience is teaching us so many new things, and it's keeping abreast of that.
Gary Johannes:And I think that's really important that we're continually updating on the latest evidence, the latest knowledge rather than going on, oh, we did this twenty years ago and it worked then. Well, we've gotta go, what were you gonna do tomorrow, not yesterday? And I think that's really important to go where the science has taken us rather than just guessing. So that's why I did it so I can be able to support people more, whether that's trainees or people who I
Peter Ely:meet. Amazing. Thank you very much. So I'll ask one more question, and then after that, I'll kind of open it up to the rest of the team. Fiona, can you shed a little bit of luck?
Peter Ely:We had an episode a few episodes back with a company called the Ollie Foundation, and they're a suicide prevention charity. And they talk very passionately about suicide in general, not just male suicide. But can you maybe shed some light on what you found out on why suicide rates are higher amongst men, and maybe what are some of the factors that might contribute to this?
Fiona Flaherty:Yeah. Of course. If I tell you what I do now so I can backtrack and you can see, so I work predominantly in men's health screening and nutritional and lifestyle planning. My reason for doing that was there was a big gap. So it's about very much perception of male role, and we still haven't lost that.
Fiona Flaherty:We haven't lost the fact that men provide even though women might work and perhaps it's a salary issue, that men share childcare. Now they're having to share care with the COVID dogs. They're actually getting more involved in family life. Yeah. They spent a long time in COVID living at home with the entire family that they've been paying for, but they probably didn't know.
Fiona Flaherty:And society's changed. We've got blended families. We've got people living apart. So traditional male roles have disappeared. So from my research that I did, I was looking very much statistically with coroners in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, and I was looking at what's written on death certificates.
Fiona Flaherty:And what was really scary was often suicide and suicide ideation gets missed. It gets missed in casualty because the priority is to look after somebody who's come in with a heart attack first because you've come in with an attempted suicide, so you get missed. The gaps between the community health services and the health service and hospitals is still wider and widening because without a diagnosis, they don't know where to put you. And sadly, when you get a diagnosis, it's very hard to unravel that diagnosis. So people sit with diagnosis like depression and anxiety for a long time without anybody actually taking anything that works.
Fiona Flaherty:So I worked for a long time with so I went into companies, but my most interesting remit was when I went to work on construction sites where you get men to talk to men. And their conversations were usually very short, not many descriptors, answering the question without having to endorse it or qualify it or make an excuse or explain why they'd come to that decision. So when they have things that are troubling them, they're solution focused, and they can't find solution, they carefully take that out and put in another f word called failure. And that's really where I rest a lot of how I run my business now, which is I talk about failure first. Mhmm.
Fiona Flaherty:And it's not always about finding a solution. It's allowing them to articulate that they got some failure going on rather than brush it under the carpet and pretend it doesn't matter. If you look at any kind of treatment model in the health service, which is allopathic, you know, men may go to a GP later, but they tend to stay on their medicines without questioning them. They take it because that's obviously what was suggested to them. And I think there's more in life that men could access.
Fiona Flaherty:They just need to per give themselves the permission to do it.
Peter Ely:Yeah. That actually resonates very much with me and was very much a part of my medical kind of model. And we talked about this, I think, on a previous podcast. But you've obviously worked in the police industry for a long time, in the police force for a long time. And has your experience of men when they've been in the emergency like, in the hospitals, in the emergency wards, in the A and Es, has it been that kind of thing that Fiona was describing there where kind of men where the hospitals will deal with they'll they'll put suicides to one side and deal with other stuff first?
Peter Ely:Has that been your kind of experience of things that you've seen?
Benn Baker-Pollard:I think you've got to remember that when I've been seeing them in the policing, crisis point has hit. It's either because they're at the point of suicide or attempting to do it, or they're going into a hospital because they've suffered injuries from violence or something that's happened. So it's a slightly different way of introducing them into the system, and whether they fully talk or expand on what's going on for them is always that challenge for maybe the mental health team or the doctors that are treating them. But what I find interesting is your the way you talk about it, Fiona, and it's brilliant to hear that you keep it that simple because I think that to me is almost like a moment of clarity that if we actually speak to guys in that simplest format, they'll follow the instructions and get the outcomes that they need to achieve. And and you mentioned that you started with chlamydia.
Benn Baker-Pollard:So one of the questions that we never actually got anyone on the program, you might be able to answer it or not, but was how do men with, like, their sexual health problems generally come to light, and and what's the stigma surrounding that and getting them in? And is that when perhaps you get the offload because there's some sort of problem that they've got that they can't avoid anymore?
Fiona Flaherty:Yeah. I could spend all night here talking about the pelvis. It probably answered your question. So let's just take something like chlamydia, and it used to be the stigma, wasn't it? Because we've had everything from back clinics to gum clinics to sexual health clinics, and I do run a sexual health clinic once or twice a month.
Fiona Flaherty:How do you get them to talk about it? It's dead easy. You start the conversation with the most difficult thing, which is if you can't see it, smell it, and you don't know it's there, how do you know you've got a problem? So sometimes talking about something as simple as chlamydia, you can actually talk to them about their mental health, which is an easy fix. So chlamydia still remains highest in the over fifties.
Fiona Flaherty:Mhmm. Whereas we'd assume it's the young people having a great time. So, therefore, you've got the hope saying, there's hope for some of the new yet. And that's because, again, if you look at sexual health, which has been divvied up in the health service, even with the private sector, it's so will you go in because they you're too old to go in, so I'm not gonna action it. Or actually, who am I going to tell that I think I've got an issue?
Fiona Flaherty:Because women have toilets, and I can tell you we have doors, but we have conversations in our individual cubicles at the same time under the doors while washing our hands. Men go into your windows and having worked in construction. They don't even have a conversation. They're there to do one thing and one thing only. And so, you know, in answer to your question, you know, chlamydia to me is the same as mental health.
Fiona Flaherty:You've got to talk about it and just sort of, you know, say to them why it's an issue, which is why in my clinics, I offer every single man that walks through the door a PSA and a chlamydia. Because if they don't wanna talk about it, I already have. Saying no to me is quite a tough thing because I just have to understand if you know why you said no because you always have the option to come back to me or to someone else. It gives you permission to start a conversation. Just start the conversation.
Chris Johannes:I think that's a really powerful thing you've said. I mean, we talk a lot about this stigma that men don't talk and the fact that, actually, we're big advocates that men do talk given the right environment. And I think that's just you've nailed your way of doing that, your way of breaking down those barriers and just opening that conversation. You know, it speaks volumes for what we are all advocates for, that men do talk given the right circumstances. A lot of the things you mentioned quite early on actually surprised me even though they're so obvious.
Chris Johannes:Like, you talked about the fact that there's lots of the NHS was set up for women and children, and that's evident by the different clinics and different things that are available. And it's something I never realized. You know? I'm a man in my thirties, and I never really registered that women do have lots of specific areas where they can go for different areas of their health, but men don't. We get lumped into the general surgery as is.
Chris Johannes:And that's actually surprised me even though it's so obvious.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Yeah. You resonate with me, Chris, and I work in the NHS on the ambulance. And and, like, the minute you were saying it, Fiona, I was like, oh, yeah. That's, like, smack in the face of reality that how how blatantly obvious it is. You've only
Fiona Flaherty:got to read the signage. Yeah. That's exactly who you look at the signage. I mean, perfect example. You know?
Fiona Flaherty:It will say, come into outpatients. It's on the left. It will say, female children, maternity, etcetera. And I think, god. Yeah.
Fiona Flaherty:Men are missing.
Chris Johannes:I was at the doctor's hospital today with my son, and he was at the children and young people services department.
Gary Johannes:Can I ask a question of that then? Because, you know, there's loads that's always buzzing around my head. But there's taken that little bit what the NHS was set up for. I get the opinion that women demand more. So if they haven't got the service they deserve, they'll make sure people know about it.
Gary Johannes:They'll stand up for themselves or men will just go, and then go back to doing whatever whatever they're doing. So we don't make enough fuss as men. Certainly my age group, I think. We we we we we moan if there's no pies at the football, but not if there's no signage or services for us where women will demand it. Am I right in that?
Fiona Flaherty:I would actually say that it's because we just need to keep it simple for men, which means that you do have a choice. You know what you like. You know what works best. You don't do failure. So, you know, if you're asked to do something, you might sit and read the instructions and then do whatever you're meant to do.
Fiona Flaherty:With the female, and I use myself as an example, we have a go, and when it doesn't work, we tell him it doesn't work. The first thing you're asked for is, have you got the instructions? So the don't need instructions. Sorry. I haven't looked at the I mean, I've got lots of things.
Fiona Flaherty:I'll I'll
Gary Johannes:tell you the I mean, I've got lots of things, but I've got they're all taken a minute. Maybe my headphones don't work because I've got the instructions.
Fiona Flaherty:But I think if we look at sort of the male model, which is the allopathic model, the way the NHS runs, that we are seeing all the time that men's health is always going to be around heart disease and bowel problems and whatever. Well, actually, if one in four men is not going to make retirement age because of suicide, that's a big scary stat.
Gary Johannes:I mean, we
Fiona Flaherty:we just don't we don't acknowledge it as it's the biggest social issue that's not addressed.
Gary Johannes:So, Fiona, you've just hit such a fundamental I do a lot of work around suicide as well as the guys know. No one's ever said I've I've worked with lots of charities, lots of funds. I've done fundraising myself. No one's ever said it like that, and that's just struck me between the eyes. One in four men don't make it to retirement age.
Fiona Flaherty:But you know, I'm 67.
Gary Johannes:That's just hit me between the eyes. And I I I I talk about these stats all the time. I've never heard it like that. So I don't know if that's a gift or terrifying, but wow.
Chris Johannes:Maybe it's because you're that age. I mean, maybe that's why I hit you so hard. But it is a good point. It's just another perspective, and that's why it's great having people like you on, Fiona, because we all have our own perspectives of these things. But just somebody saying something like that can change the way we all view this.
Chris Johannes:You know? And I I I feel like I'm going on the same point again, but do you think if the NHS did have more male specific clinics so if there was a big sign saying men's mental health clinic on the door, do you think that would help men go there or men's testicular clinic? Do you think that would make more men go, oh, well, there's a place for me to go then, or do you think it would be, I'm not go don't wanna be seen walking past that side. I wanna make sure I don't go past. I'd rather walk past a sign that says general surgery that nobody knows why I'm here.
Chris Johannes:Does that make sense?
Fiona Flaherty:It does. So let me ask you a question. If you follow a particular sport or you go to football or obviously, I know Gary goes because if there's no pies, he's not happy. Do you have to have permission to go, or is it assumed that because it's now a habit for you, you always go?
Chris Johannes:I mean, I'm not particularly a sports fan, but I can relate that to a lot of other things in my life. And I think, yeah, it does become an habitual thing for me. It does definitely become a like, I I've mentioned earlier, I'm a scout leader. I run a scout group. That is if it's a Wednesday, I'm doing that.
Chris Johannes:You know? There's no it's not an option. It's what I do.
Fiona Flaherty:How so one of the ways to create a safe I'm not in top of the health service, but one of the ways to create a cell safe environment is have no go areas for women. It's quite simple. You know, we we we do it with, say, with breast clinics where they try to put female staff, female radiographers because that way, if you've got people from cultures where they don't want to be seen by a man, we do it, but we don't do it for men. We just don't do it for men. We just make
Gary Johannes:Do you think
Fiona Flaherty:that would be accepted? Do I think that it's about making a demand?
Chris Johannes:Yeah. I don't want to pull a thread here, but do you think if you did that, there would be people that would be going, well, that's not fair. That's not right.
Fiona Flaherty:Do I think, of course, there'd be objectors, but you represent 49% of the population. So you've got a big voice. That's quite a big vote. Yeah. And you just have to make the demand and say, yeah, what it is you need.
Fiona Flaherty:And I think as well, if you go into the workplace, we do the two m's. We do mental health, and we do the menopause. Well, hang on. The men have got andropause. That's fifty forty fifty one percent of the population is a beneficiary.
Fiona Flaherty:What about the forty nine percent? Could Could you
Chris Johannes:could you tell me what that is, please? Because I've I've never heard that term.
Fiona Flaherty:Right. So with changes in HR and legislation, companies now have to create wellness in the workplace, and it's about time. And and the areas they focus on is great mental health and well-being. And the other area is menopause. So it's the females when she's going through a transition with her hormones so that she's no longer fertile and she either premenopausal or menopausal or postmenopausal.
Fiona Flaherty:Because of changes in your hormones, you're going to have perhaps some flushing or some sweating or some brain fog or all of this because your hormones are actually changing, you know, the biochemistry in your body. So organizations have to make sure that they have encompassed that in their policies so it's fair.
Chris Johannes:I'm sorry. The men's version of it.
Fiona Flaherty:I like to call it the menopause. Yes. Curve, which I love, which is my favorite talk to give, but it's called the andropause. It's the absence, and it's a pause. So the menopause is actually a Greek word, and it means absence from the lunar month.
Fiona Flaherty:And that's why years ago, they used to say women were howling at the moon once a month.
Chris Johannes:Okay.
Benn Baker-Pollard:It's interesting what you're describing because when you're describing this segregation in the NHS or this option of having somewhere for men to go, do you know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of pubs many years ago where they used to have a taproom in a restaurant.
Fiona Flaherty:Yes. And
Benn Baker-Pollard:women in the taproom, and they swore and shouted and carried on with life and were able to vent while the family or the the wife and the children went into the restaurant part, and that's where they sat sat separately. And it did create that space for guys to go and talk. So I think, definitely, there would be a huge uptake on that if if they knew they could go to places that were male orientated and focused around us. I think that's great. And, also, the stats that you were talking about, I think is like Gary said, it's quite profound.
Benn Baker-Pollard:And, actually, I've just had a quick check on the national segmentation from the leading the NHS and the future of the NHS. We went to the Royal Society of Medicine. And looking at the anxiety stats and all the stats they presented, they presented them as a whole without the gender being a factor. So I think it would be incredibly interesting to see the actual breakdown of who comes out top with the anxiety as that's mental health. And whether there's a men are higher than females.
Gary Johannes:So in mental health first aid, they do show that a little bit. And they generally say women are two times or two three times more likely to have anxiety than men. However, more men self medicate. So it's swips back to front where men will have medication issues, whether that's alcohol or gambling or whatever coping mechanism they need so they have a different scaling. So they don't have their anxiety because they're medicated with alcohol generally, but sometimes drugs, sometimes all the other things, what they might use for coping.
Gary Johannes:So it doesn't show up as anxiety. It shows up as other conditions.
Chris Johannes:Could I ask you a question, Fiona?
Fiona Flaherty:Please do.
Chris Johannes:So you mentioned what you do now and that you open these conversations quite well as far as I'm concerned. You you you drop those conversations so they've got nowhere else to go but to talk. What do you do with that information if you do find somebody who's struggling with their mental health?
Fiona Flaherty:I find it very easy because I come from a health background. I have the advantage, and I've worked for pharmaceutical. I've worked in clinical trials. So I know what the course of action will be if you're gonna fall into the NHS. I know from getting you into your GP, if I write a GP a letter, no GP will ignore me.
Fiona Flaherty:I will be on the phone. I will get you into where you need to be. I will get you access to services where you need to be. So whether it's somebody who's got some anxieties going on because I don't like labeling, I don't like words like depression because that's a medical term, I like low mood, anxiety. I like to use all the descriptors you've used because if you're comfortable and stopped at I'm not sleeping and I just can't concentrate, that's what I want to work with because I think that's really important.
Fiona Flaherty:So I think it is easy to get in. We've got to make the job easy for the health service because it is low in numbers, and it's overwhelmed. So if you have an issue around your mental health, and we all have mental health, if we didn't, we wouldn't be humans. But if you have an issue, men tend to sort of pass it off as not important enough to tell anybody. Whereas if a female has a headache, yeah, you'll know about it.
Fiona Flaherty:If a female has an issue going on about it, you'll know about it because we're gonna cry in public. We're gonna cry. With the men, it's this stoicism and you've got to be brave, and you mustn't do that. And sadly, it's happened in school. We rub their knees with little children and say, don't cry.
Fiona Flaherty:You're a big boy. Still got an awful lot of division of gender that society is still perpetrating as that's the way you need to be. But getting access is not it's actually not difficult for any of this client to get access as a GP. You've got to write the letter so you've made it easy for them to action the points, and they feel that they can do it. And you start with the NHS guidelines, which you've been referred to, you know, earlier on.
Fiona Flaherty:Look at what the guidelines say. What are the access points? I think the gap of the health services, the wait. If you've got some something going on, waiting is not an option. Nobody's promised tomorrow.
Fiona Flaherty:It's today you need to get some
Gary Johannes:So, Fiona, that flies in the face of so many stats around. There's no doctors because they're low in number. There's no appointments. I think I heard today they're gonna they're thinking about cutting tens of thousands of appointments to go fit in with the budgets and everything. And you're saying you can easily get an appointment if you do it right.
Gary Johannes:Well, the average person in the street doesn't know how to create that link, write those letters, you know, as a specialist, as somebody who works for people, if I write to the GP, I never ever had a response. I write the practice manager will it will get there, and they'll go, oh, it's just a therapist, and they won't respond. And that's happened many times. So I I agree with you, but not many people have got a Fiona on their team. What does the average person who's struggling try to get into the doctor, has been palmed off?
Gary Johannes:And I see this client after client after client where they've been through the to to the doctors. They've been through as with the whole weight, and they've ended up at my door because nobody's on their team writing the right letter to the right people with the right guidelines. And they wouldn't know where to find them because we don't educate our public on public health and maybe not many people are interested. So how do we help those people?
Fiona Flaherty:I think it's about you point to somebody else that's quite important, which is they shouldn't be coming to you last. You should be at a point somewhere in their timeline.
Gary Johannes:I agree with that.
Fiona Flaherty:It may not be at the beginning, but it's telling people that there's options. This free NHS model is misguided, so people assume because it's free, that's the only access point. I'm always interested in what have you tried already that hasn't worked. So, you know, yeah, what did you try to help you sleep? Did it work?
Fiona Flaherty:Yes. For how long? Great. Why aren't you taking it now? So when you actually point out to them that they've actually made a huge amount of inference in terms of trying to adopt changes, maybe reduce some of the triggers, maybe change work, change some things to work.
Fiona Flaherty:It's about permission. And so the lesson you want to write to the GP is the lesson that you would like to read, which is having tried all of these and they've worked to a degree of something, a lot, or not, this is what you want. So my letter to a GP will outline why they came to me, all of the things that have been successful, where the gaps are, and what the GP needs to do about it to address those gaps.
Gary Johannes:Real sense.
Fiona Flaherty:Yeah. And most of us can do it. We've moved on from medicine. Now the NHS is set up in '48. We've moved on.
Fiona Flaherty:The doctor is not at the top of the tree. You and I sit in the middle of this tree. And as far as we're concerned, all of our needs are on the branches. They're on the twigs. They're on the leaves.
Fiona Flaherty:They might be in the roots. They're somewhere. And the client, patient, has the opportunity to make decisions. And I'll qualify that by saying something, and you've said it, and I think somebody else said it earlier. We have clients because we're all an independent practice.
Fiona Flaherty:When you have a patient, they are now handcuffed because they have surrendered, And therefore, they are getting and we've all been patients of the health service, and I've offered it because I'd worked in it. But you are a patient. You don't have to surrender all of your needs to them, just the ones that you think that they can adopt.
Gary Johannes:Me. That's an important statement. I I wouldn't be here right now. I'd be dead and buried many years ago if it wasn't for that NHS, and I don't know what other people are gonna say. So for the NHS, for me and my family, they are superheroes.
Gary Johannes:Yeah. But there's sometimes they forget their cape. They really do. Because there's other things in my life which are so frustrating that it's just like, wow. When I needed you, really needed you, you was amazing.
Gary Johannes:No one needs you so I don't go back there. I had an appointment last week, and my daughter laughed at me because it was my follow-up appointment when I was in the hospital two years ago. It was my follow-up to see it, and it's just like, what? And the doctor said, oh, you have not been here for a while. I was like, no.
Gary Johannes:You keep count as long as me. And there's nothing they can do about that. They're so overwhelmed.
Chris Johannes:Yeah. But I think you're right. It's when it hits crisis point, you can't fault them. You know, they do what they can. And there's success stories and there's not so much success stories, but it is that preventative stuff or that early help where I think they struggle a lot.
Chris Johannes:I mean, I I said earlier, I went to an appointment for my son today, and we were talking to the and he was actually the director of the pet place where we were. He was the clinical director of that team. He said he started there twenty years ago, and they used to see four people a week. They now see 40 people a week, and they have not increased the staff numbers in twenty years. You know?
Chris Johannes:So I think and he was a fantastic consultant. He was a really, really brilliant doctor. He's one of the best ones we've seen. Why is it taking so long for us to get in front of you? You know?
Chris Johannes:And it and that says it all, doesn't it, really? They haven't increased any staffing numbers in twenty years, but the amount of people they're seeing has skyrocketed beyond belief.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Yeah. I know if I'm I'm gonna say tree surgeon because I just delivered some training to a tree surgeon a load of tree surgeons the other day. So if I'm a burly, hairy assed man, tree surgeon who's got stuff going on, but he's struggling to make that approach to the GP and is in that scenario where they're kind of writing stuff off. What would be your advice to make sure that they get the appointment that they need and get access to the people that they need?
Fiona Flaherty:With all clients, I do a discovery call, which is half an hour on the phone because I can sometimes really you may I may not be a great fit for you, but I gotta find you someone who is. So that's my first point of course. So I would need to at least have documented something. Secondly, I want to make it simple. We've got 10 body systems.
Fiona Flaherty:So if you want to see a GP because you just can't sleep or things aren't great at home, I've gotta work out. Is it a debt agency you need to talk to or a mortgage adviser or your bank? Or, actually, would you be better off going to talk to somebody about how you feel about your position, your family, which might be some sort of therapy, whether it's a talking therapy? And keep the medical model out of it because you don't want to you know, we're not dusting over the top just trying to hide the cracks. What we want to do is give you the opportunity to say, I've taken the lead off.
Fiona Flaherty:Now please find something for me. And so even if I feel that one of your big gaps is the fact you don't do any exercise, it will be, here's a gym. This is great. Shall I write to the PT and say, these are your needs. This is what you need to do because you're just not sleeping very well at night, and you just need some stretching to go on.
Fiona Flaherty:So I think writing letters, I love writing letters to opticians and dentists and GPs, whatever, because that you are my client, but you're their patient or you're my client and we're gonna share a client. And this is what I'm handing over to you, and I want it looked after. I want it looked after because, you know, health is something so fragile. When it's gone, it's gone. And everybody would like to go back to how great it was.
Fiona Flaherty:They go, well, that's not possible, but how about we create something that's even better? And it's possible.
Gary Johannes:So
Fiona Flaherty:That's an awesome customer.
Gary Johannes:Fiona, question I've got. Because we this is inspired men talk, and we come up with a name because we believe men talk in the big. Everybody says men don't talk, and we're we're all men. We all talk. We can't stop us.
Gary Johannes:But why is men's mental health still seventy five percent of men taking their own lives early? Why are men why don't men talk? Why is there still stigma? Why is men's mental health such a big issue? Because you're right.
Gary Johannes:Everything you said is bang on, but it's not fixing anything. So what's the you know, I mean, it is like the $64, thousand dollar question. If everything you're saying is right and it's fairly common sense, you know, and it's fairly simple to ask those questions, why are we still in this, you know, massive crisis with men's mental health?
Fiona Flaherty:It's simple. If you do think about the two bodies, both men and women, we're just basically a skeleton.
Gary Johannes:Mhmm.
Fiona Flaherty:You know, with a structure with a skin over the top and organs inside with hormones and enzymes and things that work together. And the gap very much is that we've got a biochemical imbalance going on in the body. So men tend to take all of their body systems as I've got one system that doesn't work, pain, back pain, or I don't sleep very well. Whereas with women, we tend to couple lots of our symptoms together, so we're trying to address a few things, our sleep with our digestion. We may be looking at our neck pain with the same time as the fact that we're not going to pass urine as often.
Fiona Flaherty:So because men tend to look at their health as one system, one problem, one issue at a time, it doesn't get addressed because they don't bring everything to the table. They just bring the one issue. So getting a seven minute appointment with your GP, they're only gonna talk about one thing, which may not be the root cause. And only ever treating one symptom will never get you where you need to be. That's why the gaps are so enormous.
Fiona Flaherty:It's because men don't look at themselves as a whole. They look at themselves as parts that are not working well.
Chris Johannes:To be honest, if I think if I went to the GP and listed all the things that I probably should have gone to the GP for over the last three or four years, it would be a long they wouldn't see me. You know?
Fiona Flaherty:It won't.
Chris Johannes:And it'd be hard enough to get the seven minute appointment, but they wouldn't they wouldn't see me for that long. So if if I'm in that situation, what do I do?
Fiona Flaherty:Right. So one of the things that I'll say, if I've done a discovery call with somebody who says they've got these issues, I'll say you can book one or two appointments with me, but I will write you a letter to give you a GP, or I'll give you a GP that will be composed by me. You sign it, and you say to the GP, yeah, I've come to see you about, and hand them letter. And let them spend the first two minutes reading what your issues are. Because the first thing is you slide in the door and they say, hi.
Fiona Flaherty:How are you? Fine. And you say, fine. You shouldn't have said fine because you've gone there because you're getting headache or you can't sleep. And then they'll ask you what's wrong, and you're trying to list all of your symptoms as they've happened.
Fiona Flaherty:Start with how bad it is. My sleep deprivation means that I can't drive and I can't take my son to school. I can't work because I don't want to drive because my sleep so inadequate. As a result, I'm not working, and my employer says I've had too much time off. What can you do for me?
Fiona Flaherty:And you've now given them enough information, so you need action. What you don't need is a sticky plaster on top. You need action, and decide for yourself what you want. Is it a talking therapy? Do you want something just to put a plaster over the top?
Fiona Flaherty:Do you want to be referred somewhere else? So you it's not by demand. It's about what is available, what is there for you.
Peter Ely:Yeah.
Chris Johannes:I think I need a
Benn Baker-Pollard:a Fiona letter writing course to start writing. Yeah.
Fiona Flaherty:Well, happily, write and I do it a lot. If I've had a chat to somebody, I won't say, you know what you should do. It will be. You can consider doing this day alone, but I don't know how to start. And I said, would you like me to compose something for you to put into your own language?
Fiona Flaherty:And that's what you give your GP. It's very powerful if you go for an appointment. And Peter knows it the way I work. If you come to one appointment with me, the first thing I hand you is a notebook and a pen. Like now, I write everything down.
Fiona Flaherty:And I say, write things down as I'm talking because you won't remember what I've said.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Mhmm.
Fiona Flaherty:And it's really important. When you go to a GP and you've got your piece of paper, take out your notebook. Read from it. Read what you want to tell them, but start with the end in mind. Start with what?
Fiona Flaherty:You know, you wanna come out of this. What's the one thing you want to achieve? And if it's the, I want the sleep to improve, yeah, and therefore I want to refer to a sleep clinic because that's what's waking me at nighttime because I'm snoring, start with what you want.
Chris Johannes:This is what we should be investing in. Somebody like yourself as a port of call as to the people who don't know where to bloody go or don't know how to get to to the doctors in the right way, there should be somebody that we can go to like you. Everybody should have access to that. You know? Somebody who can just point you in the right directions and be your advocate.
Gary Johannes:The challenge is, as all of us are clinical therapists, it goes against our code of conduct to interfere with medical status. So somebody comes in here and sees us, unless they're showing signs of danger, either to themselves or to somebody else, we shouldn't interfere. And that's part of our training, and that's part of our code of conducts. So it's and I have got no medical trainer, and I'm a really good therapist, I hope, but only as a therapist. I don't have that medical knowledge or medical background.
Gary Johannes:We've got people in our team who do, but that's just a chance. So it will be inappropriate for us to tell people we should write letters. We should tell maybe our clients whether they should write a letter. But it's like, how do we get this message out to people generally without us having to take that on board? Because this is again, I can see tell my clients if I was skilled enough, I can only see so many people.
Gary Johannes:Each of us can only see so many people, and this is a general thing. Because if every doctor got a list of, you know, a worksheet before they go to work, it would save them a fortune of time. So I totally agree with it, but most people don't have to waive with all all the skills or the or the understanding of how to deal with that. So how do we educate people to do that?
Peter Ely:I know that now my medical service is an online service. And before I do any appointments, I do have to put in what are my symptoms, what's going on, etcetera. So I think there is potentially the fact that the medical professionals recognize this and are moving towards it, but I don't fill out that form in the way that you've just described, Fiona. So that's actually been really useful for me. And I think part of that was that I was always brought up to be very respectful of the GP.
Peter Ely:The GP was someone that, you know, you didn't really answer back to. You didn't challenge. The GP was the person in charge. Now I don't know if that's kind of changed, and I'm still very respectful of my GPs, and I try to have that kind of positive relationship with them. Have you found that working with men that that that what that perception is?
Peter Ely:Is that why men don't do these things?
Fiona Flaherty:Well, two things that a GP can do that most of us can't, which is they can certify you dead, but they don't issue the death certificate. Remember that. They can just certify you as dead. And they have a expanded list of prescribing. So if you take those two things away from them, they've actually got the same amount of human knowledge as we have in terms of what would we want done.
Fiona Flaherty:So how would you get the GP to do what you want to do? Sit in the GP's chair. Think about how easy would their job be, and it goes back to what Gary said earlier. How easy would it be for a GP just to have clients coming through? Because don't forget, most GPs lose 16 clients a day who don't show up for appointments.
Fiona Flaherty:Don't show up for appointments because you've done it. You've booked the appointment. By the time it's come, three weeks later, Gary's waited two years for a follow-up. That's only because of the funding, Gary. That's why they do that, whereas they don't get paid.
Fiona Flaherty:So if you've waited a long time to actually see somebody, you don't turn up because your symptoms have improved, so you won't bother going. And you won't cancel because you're better.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Mhmm.
Fiona Flaherty:So, you know, think about how could you help your GP do their job better, which is what you've tried hasn't worked today. Just tell them what you need them to do for you that they've got. And it could be tends to be things around diagnostics and referrals. That's the two key areas in which they can measure what's happening because there's a paper trail, and it can be funded. That's the gap.
Fiona Flaherty:So when you're filling in your online econsult form, rather than you pick a system and then you point out what's wrong, start with and it says any other notes, anything to upload, Start with what you want them to do for you. Not I want an X-ray. I want this. And just say, an X-ray would enable you to give me the most appropriate treatment. Give them action points to do.
Fiona Flaherty:Wouldn't it be great to be a GP? They won't have this great sense of overwhelm. There's a lot of sickness in the GP practices at the moment because they're working crazy hours. And, actually, they can just keep you've done the thinking for them.
Chris Johannes:That makes a lot of sense.
Fiona Flaherty:Thinking you've done the thinking for them. Tough job. All that is years of training. And then you sit there, everybody walks in. It's miserable and ill and in need of care.
Fiona Flaherty:And it's not because as a publics, we don't do it, but we're left with a pharmacy which is selling synthetics, Prescribed medicines, which is synthetics because I work for the pharmaceutical industry. Yeah. Nobody ever talks about food. They demonize it. They tell you what you can't have and you mustn't have and you shouldn't have and you couldn't have.
Fiona Flaherty:They don't tell you what you can have. The GPs are not very good at referring people out unless it's back into the system. Mhmm. And then you are then waiting three months to see the physiotherapist because of your back neck bad neck. They're not very good at saying.
Fiona Flaherty:You could access it's a six month wait, or you could actually go and see an osteopath or physiotherapy privately to see if that helps you now. Yeah. It's not very good at bringing and I don't like the word complimentary alternate. They don't like bringing other therapies in to help the patient's journey speed up.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Yeah. You're making a side. And that's because the clinical guidelines don't really sort of direct them to do that.
Fiona Flaherty:No. Because it's not measurable. It's because why Gary had got called after two years, it's saying you could be signed off to show that that's a measurement that's been done. That's why. And it's a pity because the only thing the NHS does around food is registered dietitians, and it's a Greek word for daytime eating.
Fiona Flaherty:So they they spend most of their time telling you what you can't have, not what you can't have. And then when you're really unwell, they give you liquid full of sugar, protein drinks, and they give you food that's high in carbohydrates.
Peter Ely:Yeah.
Fiona Flaherty:It is never gonna help. You said,
Chris Johannes:you know, if somebody came to you, it might just be, well, you need a bit more exercise. And but, I mean, we've all been told that by the GP. I'm sure at one point, you know, go and get some more exercise. But you said, this is a gym that's local to you. This is what you need to go and do when you get to the gym.
Chris Johannes:And for me, that was like, yeah. Do you know what? I'd I'd be much more likely to go to the gym if I had that sort of instruction. And would it take that much longer to provide that? I don't think so.
Fiona Flaherty:Not a problem. You know? If you don't want to give you a GP letter, I'll take it. I'll write it. I'll follow-up.
Fiona Flaherty:You don't have a problem because as soon as I can get you into somewhere to help you with your issue, great. I've left a space for another appointment with somebody else who wants help, which is easy. It's easy.
Chris Johannes:Given that little bit more context of this is what you need to do rather than the vague version of this is what you need to do. You know, it's that difference, I think, is key.
Fiona Flaherty:The NHS changed in 2012 when it brought in the nudge approach with the change in health and social care, and it was very much about we used to have a health service in up until '86 where we we did prevention and promotion and protection, a public health model, and we don't. It's all about treatment because treatment means that you can put numbers on paper. A lot of people's health issues could be addressed by being given permission and a road map. So I do health journeys. You can put whatever you like in your sandwiches.
Fiona Flaherty:All you need to know is the day, the date, and the time, what time to be there, and what time you'll be finished. And it worked. It worked. It's about it's about celebrating success. We just need to start celebrating success.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Feel like I need a room with a Fiona in it at my practice.
Fiona Flaherty:At a time point.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Every room
Fiona Flaherty:I think what's really interesting, I work as a naturopathic nutritional therapist as well. I haven't got the answers, but I use my medical knowledge to dig deep. So if you've come in with a headache, I will ask about all of your 10 body systems. So I'll start with your nervous system because you got headache. And my second question is always your pelvic health because I have to address the elephant in the room really quickly.
Fiona Flaherty:Because if I don't address that, you won't talk about it. If you've come in with a bad back and you think it's just something that you could do, I'll address your skeletal system, but I'm straight away into your digestive system because I want to find out what you're putting in to repair your body. So I will ask those questions. I use functional testing. So I will use hair and blood and stool and feces and genetics.
Fiona Flaherty:Because when you've got somebody's template and it's all laid out and it's a map, your story is different to the next person's story. It's different to your brother, your sister, your dad, your mother, whatever. It's your story. Then you've got a plan. And once you've got the base plan, you just know what to tweak each time you have an issue.
Gary Johannes:But we
Fiona Flaherty:don't do that. We wait for problems to be solved by somebody else until the next one comes along. Sorry, Gary.
Gary Johannes:I think I do know, but I'm not sure. But I think we're all very open minded. So I've had bladder cancer, so I'm very often having people put stuff up pipes which shouldn't be gone backwards. I've got Crohn's disease, so they often call me city as a nickname because everybody put something in every hole possible on a regular basis for forty years. So none of that phases me at all.
Gary Johannes:But I was having a conversation last week, and just my my wife recently had a mammogram routine, things like that. And it's just like, I'm 60 years old, just turned 60, and I can't you know, they're checking my they're they're checking to see if I got bladder cancer every six months. And on on the last time I was there, I said, do you check my prostate every time because you're going through it? And they go, oh, no. We won't know about that.
Gary Johannes:It doesn't show up. So even at 61, nobody's checked my prostate. And it's just like, why are they not doing you know, I don't know how much it cost to to test blood, urine, and stones all at once. But how much are you preventing by having that knowledge? So I I don't understand why all the people in this room, but maybe not Christopher yet, but certainly by the time he hit 40, and most of them look much older than 40 if you look up and look.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Speak for yourself, love. 30.
Gary Johannes:But why are they not just being called in once a year to give a sample of everything, which would be one ten minute appointment to do that. You could do it at home or and anybody can take blood. It's you know, you could train anybody to take those samples. So why you know, would that because I don't know why it's not happening. You know?
Gary Johannes:Because I can't see the expect I don't know whether that's a question or not on this probably event. I'm sorry.
Fiona Flaherty:Would you like me to answer that, Peter?
Peter Ely:Yeah. Go ahead.
Fiona Flaherty:Alright. So if you look at, again, the NHS model, here I go. Up to age of 13, and we've only just had the HPV virus come in in a decade. Prior to that, boys and girls got screened until they hit puberty because you had school vaccines. You might have your appendix out, had your tonsils out.
Fiona Flaherty:So we've taken out what we felt was gonna help your long term health. And then with females, we could then go down the route of the pill and contraception and smears and things. But there is no national screening program for men until they get to 60, and the first thing we look at is your bowels. Yes. So men have gone now from the age of 13 to 60 with no interventions.
Gary Johannes:Yep.
Fiona Flaherty:Now we do sneers for females from the age of 25 because the research says that's when you're gonna pick up the incidence of cervical cancers because it's caused by a viral infection. However, if you happen to have start sexual relationships much younger, you're missing out from 16 to 25 without being tested.
Gary Johannes:And I've got two or three friends in that age group who all had cervical cancer.
Fiona Flaherty:Right. So we've got a screening program we've got a screening program for cervical cancer. We've got a screening program for breast for women, for mammograms when they get to age of 50, and we keep going till 69. I don't know what happens when you're 70. I think you take them off and put them somewhere at nighttime because nobody's interested.
Fiona Flaherty:Crazy system. It's looking for smears. Apparently, your sex life has a sort as a female, and you're 69 because you don't have smears anymore unless you request them. You know, you've gotta wear a badge that says, I need a smear. I'm 75.
Fiona Flaherty:You know? It's this crazy system.
Gary Johannes:Well, actually, start you started with the over fifties are more likely to have chlamydia than under fifties.
Fiona Flaherty:Men. Men. I only
Gary Johannes:remember men. But they don't they're not all homosexuals. Not all homosexuals. Having sex with women 60 or 50. So it it goes hand in hand.
Gary Johannes:It's a simple maths. All this stuff is simple maths in my head, which seems to be over complex.
Fiona Flaherty:So two things. One, I only looked at men, so I looked at chlamydia because I was interested because I run a clinic, as I said, once a week, once a fortnight, and I was picking up a lot of it and I thought, oh, why is this? And I just thought, it's freedom. You no longer have to be the taxi driver. Your other partner has maybe now gone off to yoga and Pilates at night somewhere out with their other, you know, other friends.
Fiona Flaherty:Therefore, you don't know what to do with yourself, so you find yourself something else to do with your free time. So, you know, that's one of the ways to say. And, also, because we've got more freedom, you know, So we won't do it. But in answer to your question about ministers, we've only had a minister for men's health in the last eighteen months. We never had one before.
Fiona Flaherty:Yeah. UK had a minister for women and for children, but we didn't have a minister. So if you follow the men's health forum, there was no minister for men's health, and now she's a female. I mean, rock on. There must be some.
Gary Johannes:So totally alright if
Chris Johannes:you were there, Fiona. I say, well, I would have a good advocate if it was you.
Gary Johannes:So moving this on slightly, one of the things you talk what Peter said you're really invested in is male suicide awareness. How does this all add up? Everything we've talked about around men's health, how does it all add up to the horrific figures of one person out of three won't retire?
Fiona Flaherty:Yeah. One in
Gary Johannes:four won't retire.
Fiona Flaherty:Yeah.
Gary Johannes:How does all those medical issues or lack of preventative care in general medicine add up to such a high suicide rate? Is there any correlation?
Fiona Flaherty:Quite simply, and it goes back to what we said when we first started talking was a woman will go in with an issue, but she'll get more than seven minutes or she'll speak fast, and so she'll address two or three issues. Yeah. We've got it down to a fine art. Men will go in with one issue. They're either watching the football or playing golf, But we will cook the dinner, feed the dog, bring the washing in, and boil the kettle.
Fiona Flaherty:And because we think differently, women make greater demands. Men only make a single demand. And if you think about suicide, suicide is the top player of things underneath that are going wrong. And it's you know, if you've got 10 body systems, you know, you've got 10 body systems they weren't looking at. So if your digestive health is poor, if you got a problem with your your insulin and, you know, that and obviously you got diabetes, that's an issue.
Fiona Flaherty:If your digestive system doesn't work very well, so you're not producing happy hormones. All of that has a knock on effect, so it becomes a domino effect. So we've got to look at health for men as all of the systems important, not just the one. So to come to the top where you actually feel this desperate, putting people on SSRIs or antidepressants is just putting a cork on top of a bottle that's got gas in it. You have to go much deeper.
Fiona Flaherty:So I'd say men that I meet that say, you know, I'm just not sleeping very well, not this. To me, that's the slow burner. That's the things I need to address. And it could be you're not sleeping well because of your personal circumstances, domestic circumstances, working circumstances, or your digestive system is terrible, and therefore you're not putting in enough great microbes, and therefore your happy hormones never have a chance to surface. Mhmm.
Fiona Flaherty:Because stress and cortisol is, to me, that is the chimney on the top where the smoke comes out, which tells you there's something underneath that is still an issue, and you keep digging until you'd get to the bottom of it. We have 10 body systems. So I said, it doesn't matter what you brought or presented. We have to dig and look everywhere first.
Gary Johannes:So what I'm hearing because I deal and we deal with people who are generally in that challenge of they've identified a mental problem. Cortisol stress, all the different things there. But you're saying if they're going through a bad relationship or got a terrible job, they're eating badly because of that stress, and that is already the first sign. When you're not doing this right, you're not doing that right, you're then you're breaking what you know, you're getting that domino effect until you reach everything's going a bit pear shaped and your brain's going. The only way to cope is by not coping.
Fiona Flaherty:I see bodies very much like a house. So if I'm talking in clinic, if you're talking to me, I draw a house. I put a roof on it as if it's a child's diagram. I put a chimney on it, and I've got some smoke. And as you're talking to me, I'm plotting what you're saying.
Fiona Flaherty:So if you have a house and, structurally, it's not good because you've got damp, that's an issue. If you've got an issue where, I don't know, the heating doesn't work, that's gonna be another issue. If the wiring doesn't work, that's an issue. So that could be your nervous system, your digestive system, your endocrine system. It could be and your endocrine is everything from your thyroid.
Fiona Flaherty:So your generator is not working. Your heart's not working. It's not pumping. That's your boiler. Your kidneys aren't working.
Fiona Flaherty:That controls your blood pressure. That makes you feel grim. You've got no energy. And because of role denomination and it's not we adopt it. Sometimes we're given it.
Fiona Flaherty:You know? And I can say it's a female. The amount of females, I've said it myself and I hear women saying, let me do it. You don't know how to do it. I'll do it.
Fiona Flaherty:And it's engendered. So because of that, it's one thing at a time. So by the time I've done drawn your picture of your house for you, I've actually plotted that we've got a lot of problems. So before we actually address the damp that's going on here, yeah, or the fact that worrying needs doing, yeah, before we get to the top, which is the chimney, which is the cortisol and the stress and the anxiety, and you really don't know what to do. Am I gonna call the fire brigade to put the fire out?
Gary Johannes:Because everybody can see it.
Fiona Flaherty:Exactly. Yeah. Why don't we work with this first? So a classic for me with the guy that comes and said, poor sleep, fatigue, tiredness. And the first thing I say to them is, is erectile dysfunction a problem for you every night or just some nights?
Fiona Flaherty:And I'll start the conversation because I'm not gonna wait weeks until things have improved, and you say to me as you're going out the door, oh, I've got one fit more thing I want to ask you. Because I've asked it. Yeah. That then becomes the goal for, let's improve that first, and let's work on everything else at the same time. Work.
Fiona Flaherty:Mhmm. And, you know, it could be a combination of, okay, go to bed a bit earlier. You know, leave your you know, if there's already somebody in the bed with you, why on earth do you bring to need to bring the blue light to bed? I mean, you know where the bed is, so you don't need a mobile phone or an iPad or a telly on the wall. You You've got entertainment next to you.
Fiona Flaherty:You know?
Gary Johannes:So you're the cause of all this.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Well, I'm just gonna go get my other half here. Just can you repeat all of that?
Fiona Flaherty:It's your liver. It's your it's your garbage bin, your waste. It's the stuff that should have been got rid of. You know? So when we take our waste out, our household waste and our recycling, put it in the bin outside, it becomes the bin's problem.
Fiona Flaherty:It becomes the council's problem. It becomes their problem. If you live in the kitchen, you come down next morning, there's something smelling in here. So, you know, we need to open our bowels every day to get rid of the waste product. We need to flush all the time to get it out.
Fiona Flaherty:So sometimes somebody giving you permission to go to bed between ten and 11:00, and if your liver can't do its job, it saves that waste until tomorrow. And then because you're putting today's waste in, it can't get rid of that much.
Gary Johannes:Pete Peter's gonna be giving us the wind up sign of a moment, but, again, it's one of those things we could talk all night in this. And and but it's like everything you've just said, but, again, for me, it just makes common sense. Ben's nodding away. Everybody's nodding away. He so but then I've got loads of different ailments.
Gary Johannes:I've got seven I've got four or five different autoimmune issues. I've got this. I've got that. And they've just given me loads of tablets, all of which have
Fiona Flaherty:to be
Gary Johannes:processed by
Fiona Flaherty:my They they're all synthetic.
Gary Johannes:Yes. Okay.
Fiona Flaherty:So you've got what's called a polypharmacy, which is five. So on top of chlamydia, boys, the other thing you got to remember is most pit men and women, but over the age of 50 are on five prescribed medicines from the doctor.
Gary Johannes:I'm only on four.
Fiona Flaherty:One to go. So on top of that, you know, think about the lives we live, the environmental pollution, really hard to get. Drinking out of plastic bottles, heating up in plastic containers, eating food that is probably not as clean as we'd like it to be because you're buying from outside a shop with the diesel fumes and buying your tomatoes from the shops. So if you add all of that toxic load on top, the liver's thinking, oh, golly. What should I do first?
Fiona Flaherty:And so it has to do the first trigger, which is alcohol, get it out. But some of those synthetics get left behind because the body will say, oh, I'm not too sure how to get rid of these. So you get a cumulative effect. So it that sometimes taking our medicines for a reason can make us feel grim. Mhmm.
Fiona Flaherty:They just can make us feel so grim. So it's about looking at you've got all of this going on. How long we're gonna spend together? Which ones we work on? These are the quick wins.
Fiona Flaherty:Let's get these ones. Get you to bed a bit earlier. Give you a liver a chance.
Gary Johannes:So I'm gonna ask one last question. I'm gonna shut up. But how you're you're saying to all the men out there who hopefully listen to this podcast, one of the ways you can stop yourself getting into that place where you're thinking about you know, you're having that thought process of is it worth it anymore is to change their health, their physical health.
Fiona Flaherty:Mental health is part of physical health.
Gary Johannes:Yes.
Fiona Flaherty:Not until we hit crisis do we actually identify it because that's when we have to get other services involved and your colleague would know as a former police officer. That's when it then becomes a legal issue as a part as a health issue. So the only way we're ever going to address it is sit draw yourself a picture of your own house and work out where your biggest issues are and go where you feel that you're gonna get the best support, whether it's a talking therapy or a physical therapy or a screening program, whatever. Start with where you think the gap is, and a good practitioner will say, I'm not the person for you. This is your starting point.
Fiona Flaherty:You know, I meet a lot of people who say, come to me and I can sort out all of your issues. If you make those promises, it's frightening. And yet people have relationship with the health service for all of their lives hoping for it to be sorted out. It can't
Benn Baker-Pollard:Yeah. I really love the house idea. You know, that's just gone in the chat as well, and I think that's brilliant. Particularly for me, my mind's gone like, if you did that in the IC when we speak to our clients, if you take that information and plot your house, then, as you say, you're laying it out and you're starting to begin to see where things are having problems and where we can go with it.
Fiona Flaherty:Yep. So if I draw something here, and I know it won't be seen, but there's my house, which I'm just showing you here. Yeah? See? It's got
Peter Ely:your blurry background. We did catch it a little bit. Yeah.
Fiona Flaherty:Alright. Fine. But just draw a simple child's house.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Yeah.
Fiona Flaherty:And if somebody came and they were talking to me and they're talking about everything's going on up here, I write in the chimney. If it's the roof, it can be. I've got tightness in my chest and cardiac. If it's the windows and the doors, I'm looking at digestion. I'm looking at this looking at the spleen.
Fiona Flaherty:I'm looking at the liver. I'm looking at the pancreas working. If it's down here, it's the garden. I'm looking at the waste pipe, so that's passing urine, passing stool. And I actually start plotting where they're going and say, great.
Fiona Flaherty:Is there any point in us addressing the garden first? And unless we actually look at the structure, why don't we look at the door first and agree where we're going to go? And it worked.
Gary Johannes:Yeah. I like it a lot.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Where does your sexual health bit come in? Is that the back door?
Fiona Flaherty:Sexual health, that's all the time. Depends, doesn't it? I mean, it can be don't forget your top and bottom.
Peter Ely:Well, there we go. Chris, any final thoughts from you?
Chris Johannes:I think I've covered most of the things that I again, it is one of those, Fiona, we could talk to you for a while. Everything you're saying makes so much sense. I just wish that we could all have somebody like you on rooting in our corner when we need just that first place to go, you know, when we don't know where to go. I wish there were more of you accessible to more people. I think it'd be lovely to get you back on at some point, Fiona, because one of the things you mentioned right at the very beginning that we haven't even touched on, and I think it could be a podcast on its own, was the lack of purpose men have now because of other I'd say I'd say other people, women, taking on some of the roles that were used to be for men and that how that's affected men's mental health.
Chris Johannes:But I think that's a whole new podcast in itself. So it has been lovely to meet you, Thiola.
Fiona Flaherty:Thank you. Thank you. And you. Love it. That's why I spend time in company of men because, you know, like, just keep it simple stupid, his principle.
Fiona Flaherty:You know? Don't complicate things. Life is life is too busy to complicate things.
Peter Ely:So one of the things that we always ask before I hand over to you to tell us all about what you you medicate and your business and how you support people, One of the questions that we always ask is about solutions. We're solution focused in what we do, and I think you talked a little bit about being solution focused and helping people to be solution focused. If I asked you to boil down advice to maybe one or two sentences, what would you say to all the men listening out there about looking after their or how they can look after their mental health and move forward?
Fiona Flaherty:Oh, that's easy. Start with the end in mind. You're not going back to who you were, but this new person that you're gonna meet, which is your future self, is so much better. It's so much better because you've got a handle on it. You knew what you want to do with it.
Fiona Flaherty:Anything is possible.
Peter Ely:Fantastic. So give us a couple of sentences about Meducate, where people can find you, how they can find you, and how you can support and how you do support your clients?
Fiona Flaherty:Oh, it's simple. First of all, you can go and find lovely Peter Ealy because he'll tell you where to find me. But, secondly, Meducate Healthcare is my second company. I set up in 2010. It really is about educate me.
Fiona Flaherty:That's why we chose the name. My husband chose the name for me. And quite simply, we do health screening, nutritional planning, and lifestyle changes, which is easy. We run our clinic in South Woodford in East London, Harley Street, clinic down that way, and we've got a small premises in Victoria. But we do pop ups in the workplace, so we bring our clinic to you.
Fiona Flaherty:There are three of us all together now. And we also go into gyms, opticians, and dentists because you can't just fix somebody's eyes and teeth unless you look after their entire body. We run our clinics by two appointments, an initial and a follow-up. And we do functional testing for everybody, which means that if I can find some pathology, I always test, which means I will not guess. So if I feel that your issues are digestive, it's just dorking.
Fiona Flaherty:If I feel that your issues are around mood or energy, I'll do blood testing. I have the advantages of, one, I can access testing. Two, I do it in clinic when you're with me. Three, we use private laboratories. You are quicker, faster, and easier, which means we can get the results back within four hours, twenty four hours, but you're never waiting weeks.
Fiona Flaherty:Because you want results as quickly as we do. And you can't work unless you've got facts and data. It's simple.
Peter Ely:Fantastic. Thank you so much, Fiona. That's been a really engaging and wonderful chat, and I really appreciate you spending the time to talk to us. I want to say goodbye and thank you, Chris, from you.
Chris Johannes:Yeah. Again, a big thank you, Fiona, and a goodbye from me.
Benn Baker-Pollard:Lovely. Fiona, really loved it, and some kinda key moments come out of there for me to take away and reflect to think about the way we do our practice. Brilliant.
Fiona Flaherty:And you'll help other people so easily.
Peter Ely:And finally, Gary.
Gary Johannes:So it's been amazing and, as always, so enlightening. And I've gotta say, I'm gonna steal that stat about one in four men don't make retirement because it's just mind blowing.
Fiona Flaherty:Well, Pete has met me at meetings, and that's always my standing point. I start with that. I like shock tactics because the bottom line is it has
Gary Johannes:to change. But this is someone who knows all the stats. Never heard that one, so I'm stealing it. So thank you so much for that gift. Everybody listening takes on some of the information that you've shared today, so thank you.
Fiona Flaherty:You're welcome.
Peter Ely:So thank you very much for listening to another episode of Inspired Men Talk. We hope you've enjoyed listening in with us and listening to Fiona. And please feel free to reach out to us on our Facebook page, which is also inspired men talk. And talk to us, tell us what you thought, and reach out. Thank you very much, and goodbye.
