Dr. Beth Ricanati, Author of BRAIDED: A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND CHALLAHS
[0:00]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and this is Momstone Have Time to Read Books.
[0:12]This episode of Momstone Have Time to Read Books has been sponsored by Nini's Treats
[0:16]and E-N-E-S Treats, Nini's Treats.com, an amazing, family-owned and operated
[0:22]crumb cake business based in Charleston, South Carolina.
[0:25]You can buy their delicious crumb cakes at niniestreats.com or on goldbelly.com.
[0:30]Niniestreats, you won't leave a crumb.
[0:33]I'm thrilled to be here today with Beth Rickonati, MD, a who is a physician who built her
[0:38]medical practice around bringing wellness into everyday life, especially for busy women,
[0:44]juggling work, children, and their relationships.
[0:46]I don't know.
[0:47]I don't like that.
[0:48]Beth is the author of Braid at Journey of a Thousand Hollis, which is a memoir slash cookbook
[0:54]about her own quest for wellness.
[0:56]A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in art history, Beth earned her
[1:00]medical degree from Case Western Reserve University of medicine.
[1:03]She trained in New York City at Columbia Presbyterian, Columbia Center for Women's Health and
[1:09]the Women's Health Center at the Cleveland Clinic.
[1:11]She currently lives in San Monica right back here.
[1:14]With her husband and children, where she brings wellness to women wherever she goes, her
[1:19]website is house calls for wellness.com, her book is available for purchase on Amazon and
[1:24]wherever you find both.
[1:26]So welcome back.
[1:27]Thank you.
[1:28]I'm so excited to be here this morning.
[1:29]Thanks for doing the double podcast and filming, this is a new little high-rate experiment,
[1:35]so thank you.
[1:36]Absolutely.
[1:37]Taking part while our holiday is raising back yard, which is so fun to have made it a few
[1:42]this morning.
[1:43]So any introduction of Braid at Utah Rears that you've been baking, Paula, almost every
[1:48]Friday for 10 years, and in the book you answer the question why right away, and you
[1:53]say, because countless demands on my time and energy overwhelmingly, because as a physician
[1:58]I know all two of it's stress like this makes us sick, not just be readily sick, but
[2:03]actually sick, because I learned that they changed this pattern.
[2:06]And then you say this book is a recipe on how to make the bread and take the time you
[2:10]need to be truly well.
[2:11]So can you explain as long way of asking, can you explain how baking, how that can actually
[2:17]make people feel well both emotionally and physically?
[2:19]Yes.
[2:20]What I learned when I was making hollow, and it's not the reason I started to make it
[2:24]necessarily, but what I learned having now done this for 10 years, is that it's a moment
[2:31]in time every Friday that I can take to just stop, to just stop and be present with all
[2:37]the ingredients as we did this morning when you are a dancer in a bowl of flour, you can't
[2:41]be emailing, you can't be running the list of things to do, you're here, you're present.
[2:47]And for me, I have found that is the best antidote for stress and stress, of course, comes
[2:53]medical issues that has hurt disease, diabetes, cancer, you name it almost every illness
[2:59]I can think of.
[3:00]Is it exacerbated by stress?
[3:02]I guess it's kind of important to get it out of control?
[3:04]It's a big deal.
[3:05]It's a big deal.
[3:06]With 75% of all clinical disease lifestyle treatments, food, exercise, stress, et cetera,
[3:13]it matters.
[3:14]Early on, you've said a lot of your high school friend there yet, as a shaping event
[3:19]in your life, naturally.
[3:21]I was wondering how that and other losses, including the losses of many of your patients
[3:25]and your fellow long friend, Sherry, have made you want to live your life more to the
[3:30]fullest now.
[3:31]You actually said about Sherry, my kids, your kids ages, that was, pieces, just so,
[3:35]just had time so much for me, especially at this age of having young kids.
[3:39]She died much too young.
[3:40]She was no longer able to get up in the middle of the night when her children wakes.
[3:44]To this day, every single time a child wakes me up in the middle of the night when I
[3:48]know that I'll be ruined with the season next day, I think of Sherry, who doesn't have
[3:52]the opportunity anymore and it touches me every single time.
[3:55]So beautiful.
[3:56]So tell me how these losses and years have shaped your life and your pursuit of wellness
[4:02]and happiness.
[4:03]I realized ultimately that we have a choice and we can go through our daily activity
[4:11]mindlessly or we can actually live with more intention and I have had loss in my life.
[4:16]And when that happens, it's a really poignant reminder that I have this choice and I can
[4:22]make a different choice and I can be more mindful and I do think of my mom friend when
[4:27]the kids thankfully now they're older and they're not getting up quite as much.
[4:31]But it really is incredible.
[4:32]I think about her when I'm up in the middle of the night and I think about her as
[4:36]a mom and I think about her kids who can't go to her during the night.
[4:41]So I really am much more, I'm choosing to be more intentional because they're not here
[4:46]and it's almost like it's a way to honor them and honor their life and their memory.
[4:50]I like how you say in the book and if you did this morning that each time you make
[4:54]holiday you say it in the area of someone or an honor of someone.
[4:57]I feel like these people in your life and I have lost people as well.
[5:01]It's nice to have a way to remember them and we provide them in a formalized way with
[5:08]them.
[5:09]It's so important to do that and when you just put it out there in the universe it just
[5:12]brings it home in a way that might it may not otherwise.
[5:16]So you wrote your first book for the blind when you were 15 years old, that's the crazy
[5:21]story line here.
[5:22]What happened?
[5:23]So I was in high school and the backstory to that is that when I was in elementary school
[5:28]we read the story of Helen Keller and I was blown away by that and I wanted to learn
[5:34]Braille, which I did and at that time and then flash forward now I'm in high school
[5:40]and I had been doing some volunteer work.
[5:43]We lived in Cleveland and the Cleveland Society for the Blind and they had a mock kitchen
[5:49]and so I was with some of the clients and watching and learning how they were learning how
[5:54]to navigate in the kitchen and talking with them about the foods that they eat and most
[5:59]of them were because they couldn't see and because it was hard to navigate in the kitchen.
[6:04]Foods like baloney and white wonder, white bread and all these things that I really didn't
[6:10]think were so healthy and good for them but they're easy and so we were really fortunate
[6:15]that Stopers is headquartered or was at that time heavier nearby in Seoul, Ohio and
[6:20]I was at a school that was also at those five and so I went to both the sites in our
[6:26]Cleveland Society of the Blind and to Seoul to Stopers and wanted to modify all of their
[6:31]recipes into a new cookbook that would be in large print and Braille so that hopefully
[6:37]they could at least if they were going to be using quick easy convenient food at least
[6:42]they could have the vegetable design for example as opposed to a baloney sandwich.
[6:47]So it was a fun project.
[6:48]I did.
[6:49]I worked on it during high school.
[6:50]That's amazing.
[6:51]And that's a great sort of stay away into your new cookbook.
[6:54]You mentioned my marriage.
[6:55]It's amazing.
[6:56]If you talk about eating disorders a little bit in the book and how you kind of slirted
[7:01]with one for a little bit but avoided it, you also say you were very focused on your
[7:06]way for years and that you could tell anyone what you went on various key days in your
[7:09]life from starting ninth grade to studying for college finals to following a love for the
[7:14]first time which when I read it was like I totally know it away from the game.
[7:17]So I totally know it.
[7:18]I had those numbers in my head and also I relate when you said but fortunately I could
[7:25]no longer tell you what I wait now having children change that journey overnight I think
[7:30]a new perspective.
[7:31]I am also like not going to be on the scale anyway just probably not good but how has having
[7:35]children changed the way you feel about your body?
[7:38]It's an incredible experience to first be pregnant and I was fortunate to have three
[7:45]children and then I nurse them their first year and now take care of them and when I was
[7:51]pregnant and then when I was nursing to have to be really mindful of what I was eating
[7:55]for their health and so it didn't matter anymore about me and on a dime it just didn't
[8:00]matter which was great and then after I had them it was this incredible realization
[8:06]of what we can do what our lives can do as women and we can bring these these children
[8:12]into the world and nurture them and nourish them.
[8:14]Fortunately it's just not an issue for me anymore as a result of that.
[8:19]So back to the book so you explain in detail how to actually make the haul it which is
[8:24]really helpful for anyone who wants to start out.
[8:27]Each chapter is very clear on what you do and like just great detail directions and then
[8:33]you actually put fun at yourself at one point about your loved-in stoop experiment with
[8:37]the recipe.
[8:38]Even though you say it's forgiving you say it's not like I'm solving the air of this
[8:41]really conflict.
[8:42]It's just for it.
[8:43]So how about you're afraid to experiment is this recipe just the best or I mean I know
[8:48]at times you have but so it would make you more willing to do that.
[8:51]I was never a baker and I was really nervous to mess with success if you will.
[8:58]It worked the first time it worked it is a really forgiving recipe that I talk about
[9:01]in the book and it worked and it was so great that I was afraid I thought well but if I
[9:05]don't want to ruin it right so for a long time I didn't touch it at all.
[9:08]I have recently started to try and manipulate it a little bit sometimes I actually recently
[9:15]tried and made the dough the day before and put it in the refrigerator which I actually
[9:19]never done.
[9:20]I have friends who do that and it told me about it for years and I'll throw in an ingredient
[9:24]to me now that I had the new year we had Apple some honey and I didn't do that for a long
[9:28]time.
[9:29]Again I didn't want to ruin it but now it's okay.
[9:32]I find that extends to other things in life too where I maybe really hesitant to try and
[9:36]do something different because if it works I'm afraid to rock the boat but it's okay.
[9:42]And trying things is a good thing.
[9:44]I know how you feel.
[9:45]Something's finally set.
[9:46]I don't know.
[9:47]I'm afraid.
[9:48]Okay so many times I can talk about how food is medicine and obviously we've heard this
[9:55]theory tell me your interpretation of that.
[9:57]How is food medicine?
[9:58]Oh I'm upset.
[10:00]So doing food is medicine.
[10:01]I think that what we can really affect our health
[10:05]and it can affect our health in so many ways.
[10:08]So I think, for example,
[10:09]there's been a lot of research around cruciferous vegetables,
[10:13]broccoli, sauerkraut, brussels, brussels, kale,
[10:16]all of that.
[10:18]They can turn on and off genes in your body
[10:20]that can literally promote disease or treat disease.
[10:24]So cancer comes to mind.
[10:25]And if you have breast cancer or colon cancer
[10:28]and any of that type of cancer
[10:30]and you eat more cruciferous vegetables,
[10:32]they have found it to help.
[10:33]Or spices, I now clip a lot with turmeric, for example,
[10:37]because the reason I like it and the research shows
[10:40]that it's such a powerful anti-inflammatory.
[10:43]I think that's so cool.
[10:44]That what we eat today can help with our disease.
[10:47]And back to a comment I said earlier,
[10:50]where chronic disease is 75% life-dollar driven,
[10:54]and that's food, exercise, and stress management.
[10:56]I now add in things like tobacco and sleep,
[10:58]but focusing on the first three.
[11:02]If what I eat can help protect or prevent
[11:05]or treat a disease, why would I try to do that?
[11:08]So I talk about that with my patients.
[11:10]I talk about that with my kids.
[11:12]I'll basically talk about that with anybody,
[11:13]because I think that's a really powerful concept.
[11:16]I feel like food also can make use of sick.
[11:18]Not just the preventative, but some of the,
[11:20]you know, the corn syrup and some of these,
[11:22]like the canned frosting that I like.
[11:24]It came in the only thing about putting on my kid's cake
[11:26]in the line, oh gosh, I've got to do this.
[11:28]This is not gonna be good.
[11:30]Some like spooning in that, but anyway.
[11:32]So when you were talking about how long
[11:34]to meet the hall of four,
[11:35]which we did earlier today, which was so fun.
[11:38]And you're asking people like me,
[11:39]I think, who are saying exactly how long
[11:41]do I need to do this for?
[11:42]Are you saying, well, how do you know?
[11:44]How do you know anything?
[11:45]You just know when it's ready,
[11:46]which I really liked.
[11:47]It's sort of this, like, you have to trust yourself,
[11:49]and I feel like you put that a lot of this recipe.
[11:52]But how do you really know what it's done?
[11:54]Like, giving the, I saw how we made the little bit of it.
[11:57]For example, right.
[11:59]The original recipe said to me for 10 minutes.
[12:02]And I didn't know I have never needed anything.
[12:05]A, I didn't know how to eat.
[12:06]And B, I didn't know what I was looking for.
[12:08]And do I just stop at 10 minutes?
[12:10]I mean, is that magical?
[12:10]Is it done at 10 minutes?
[12:12]And what I have found is that you really do just know.
[12:16]And it's the, how the dough feels.
[12:19]You don't want it to be too sticky.
[12:21]You don't want it to be rock hard.
[12:23]So you're looking for a consistency
[12:26]that where it forms a nice ball and has a little gift.
[12:29]So I poke it and has a little gift.
[12:31]And some weeks, I had more flour.
[12:33]And some weeks, I don't.
[12:35]And that's where I want to talk to you about how you,
[12:37]you just kind of know.
[12:38]You have to go with the flow a little bit.
[12:40]And how much effort are you putting into it?
[12:42]Maybe one week you're pummeling it.
[12:44]Right.
[12:45]And then we're getting really gentle with it.
[12:46]But it works.
[12:47]It just works.
[12:48]And with me doing, we talked about this earlier.
[12:50]Also, I'm talking about how, but you say,
[12:52]I need for my needs, which is one of the best lines
[12:54]in your book.
[12:55]Need K and K for your needs.
[12:58]Tell me more about that and how it meets your needs.
[13:01]I realized that for me spending the time
[13:04]making the dough is a way to be mindful.
[13:08]And it's my meditation.
[13:10]I don't do a lot of other meditation on crime.
[13:13]But it's really my time to just work out whatever
[13:17]I need.
[13:17]And some weeks, I spent maybe five minutes
[13:19]is eating, and some weeks, I spent more.
[13:21]Because things are different each week.
[13:23]And I need something more.
[13:25]And how much do you think the community aspect of making
[13:28]hollow-ups?
[13:29]I know you said in your book about how
[13:31]you like to bake with other women.
[13:32]And that's in part what inspired me to want to bake all of it.
[13:35]This morning, well, why not be here?
[13:37]I mean, Friday morning, you know, let's do it.
[13:40]I think the community aspect is probably
[13:42]one of the biggest lessons I've taken away
[13:44]from this whole experience.
[13:46]Because making hollow, it builds community.
[13:48]It sustains community.
[13:50]I think it's tremendous.
[13:51]So I do try and make hollow now with women.
[13:53]Some women are my tears friends.
[13:55]And they know I'm in the hollow.
[13:57]They come over.
[13:57]It's a thing.
[13:58]Other times, I've never met the person,
[14:00]witnessed us this morning, or all coming hollow
[14:03]with a group of women.
[14:04]But I think it's tremendous to gather around a table
[14:06]and to get messy and a bowl full of dough.
[14:09]It's just an incredible thing.
[14:11]So that is the aspect of building community.
[14:13]And then when I think about sustaining community,
[14:16]what gets me about this bread is the history.
[14:19]And it has been made for thousands of years,
[14:21]which they are super cool.
[14:23]And to be, it's been made all over the world.
[14:25]So we're making bread here today in LA.
[14:28]And there are people making bread in New York
[14:30]and in Washington and Chicago and in Europe
[14:33]and in Israel and, oh, I think that's so great.
[14:36]And it just brings us all together a little bit more,
[14:38]which I love.
[14:39]Hey, Green, something.
[14:40]Tell me a little more about the process
[14:42]that you're writing this book.
[14:43]So you're a doctor, you've got three kids.
[14:45]You're busy, you're all over the place.
[14:47]And now suddenly you're writing a book.
[14:48]How does this come about and take me through that?
[14:50]About five years ago, I actually was working on another book.
[14:53]Oh, it didn't work.
[14:55]It didn't happen.
[14:55]I had spoken with a bunch of people about this.
[14:57]And I had this story brewing in me that the hall of story.
[15:01]And so we just shifted gears completely.
[15:03]I put that book aside and started this book
[15:06]because I really wanted to share the story of,
[15:09]not only my journey, but some of the lessons
[15:11]that we've learned that I learned and the history
[15:14]that I hadn't appreciated at all about hall of.
[15:17]And I didn't know that growing up
[15:19]and I wanted to talk about that.
[15:20]And some of the health and wellness pieces.
[15:23]So it all really came together around the book
[15:26]that has some history and it has some food
[15:28]and it has some mom and medical around it.
[15:31]How do you never read the book?
[15:32]And not knowing anything about that.
[15:34]I thought, okay, we're gonna do this
[15:36]during the calendar year.
[15:37]Kids went back to school in August,
[15:39]and I wanted to have a manuscript in June.
[15:41]The good news is that happened.
[15:43]The longer, more difficult stories,
[15:45]it was a painful year because first I thought,
[15:48]okay, I'll just read a memoir.
[15:50]So I did, and it wasn't complete.
[15:52]It didn't really work.
[15:54]So then I thought, okay, this is,
[15:56]it's a book, it's about hall of,
[15:58]I'll write it as a cookbook.
[15:59]Well, there's one recipe.
[16:01]So that doesn't make for a good cookbook.
[16:03]So then I thought, okay, I'm gonna talk to her,
[16:06]I'll write a sub-help book, isn't that what doctors do?
[16:09]So I restructured the whole thing
[16:11]and it was really boring to write
[16:13]and it was really boring to read.
[16:15]And so that didn't work.
[16:16]And what I finally realized was it said,
[16:17]it's all about that.
[16:18]Yeah, and it was really fun to sort of take some
[16:21]of the memoir and take some of the cookbook
[16:22]and take some of the cell-help and sort of
[16:25]pull it all together in the manuscript.
[16:27]I think that's what makes it so great to read
[16:28]is because as a reader, I'm getting so much out
[16:32]of your book, not to say it's not just fun to read books,
[16:34]but I actually can take away all these tangible
[16:37]read pieces of advice both for my own.
[16:40]Like how does she care about myself?
[16:41]You know, my old wellness, the food aspect,
[16:45]the medical aspect, I can learn and rest me.
[16:48]It's like, it's great.
[16:49]There's like a lot of takeaways.
[16:51]And it's like, it's perfect.
[16:52]It's like a great foot for moms in that other busy people.
[16:55]And I think it's really great.
[16:57]You are a busy juggling mom still.
[17:00]What are your tips aside from making Paula
[17:03]and reading this book for moms
[17:05]to make room for mom lives in their lives,
[17:07]even if they can't bake each week
[17:09]or if they're not into color?
[17:10]Yeah, absolutely.
[17:11]I think that it is absolutely essential
[17:15]to have a meaningful ritual in your life.
[17:17]And it is not to be baking at all.
[17:19]It can be gardening.
[17:21]It can be emitting, it can be salsa dancing
[17:23]as someone just told me recently.
[17:25]It can be, I mean, it doesn't matter.
[17:27]And I also think that looking for the perfect thing
[17:31]is not probably the best way to go about it
[17:33]because you'll spend all your time looking for it.
[17:35]But just as you are doing what you enjoy doing
[17:38]and realizing that we need to wrap self-care
[17:41]into our behavior, it's like when you get on an airplane
[17:44]and the shortest so it says to you
[17:46]when they're sitting at the front of the plane before we take off,
[17:48]in case of emergency and the oxygen mass falls,
[17:51]be sure to put it on yourself first.
[17:53]And then if you're traveling with small children
[17:55]and people that they've helped, then put it on them,
[17:58]I think so often as busy, particularly moms,
[18:00]but really all of us, we tend to take care
[18:03]of everybody else first.
[18:04]And we forget, I forgot for a while
[18:07]so I was not in a great place
[18:09]that we have to take care of ourselves.
[18:11]And then we can take care of everybody else.
[18:14]So I don't really care what you choose.
[18:16]I just want you to make sure you have some form of self-care
[18:19]in your practice.
[18:21]Okay, I'll try.
[18:22]But one other question about the book ready process.
[18:26]So you spent the kids' school year writing your book
[18:29]and making it all work.
[18:31]You ended up deciding to self-publish.
[18:33]It's actually hybrid publishing.
[18:35]Right, okay.
[18:36]Okay, so let me explain to you, I'm an editor.
[18:37]So I did want to do traditional publishing first.
[18:40]And I thought that would be fantastic.
[18:42]And we went down that path.
[18:43]And it didn't work out.
[18:44]And it was really such an interesting life lesson.
[18:48]I got the agent in New York, we pitched it in New York
[18:50]and it didn't happen.
[18:51]And I thought, oh, how did that happen?
[18:54]But it didn't happen.
[18:55]And I put it away for a little while
[18:57]because it just, it was really painful.
[18:59]And I loved the book and I didn't want to alter the book.
[19:01]But I was going to have to alter the book
[19:03]if I was going to go that route.
[19:05]So fortunately in the intervening time,
[19:07]publishing world has really changed.
[19:09]And you can self-publish literally today
[19:12]if you want to put a book up on it,
[19:13]Amazon based, you can do that all the way through
[19:17]to traditional publishing.
[19:19]And so I did a lot of research
[19:20]and I was really fortunate to find a publisher
[19:24]that was sort of in the middle.
[19:26]Because what I wanted was traditional distribution.
[19:28]I want the book out in the world.
[19:30]I want people like you to find it,
[19:31]which you did, which is so exciting.
[19:33]And what I liked about this process was
[19:35]I could have a lot of control and a lot of say.
[19:37]We wound up changing the title.
[19:39]And I probably, that wouldn't have happened
[19:41]that I'd been in a traditional path.
[19:43]What was it?
[19:44]Like, they got all I call me a morning.
[19:45]They made Holland and combing the morning
[19:47]a physician's simple recipe for healthy living.
[19:50]And I was so set on that.
[19:52]And everyone around me was, no, you have to change this.
[19:55]And I wouldn't, for years.
[19:57]I mean, I think I unlocked that for multiple years.
[20:00]I just thought that was the best thing, and it's not.
[20:02]It's not a great title, and it took me a long time,
[20:04]but I was able to, in this process,
[20:06]I was able to change it, which was fantastic.
[20:08]But it was late, late, late in the game,
[20:10]so we actually interviewed the cover.
[20:12]It was a late change, and so I'm really grateful
[20:14]to have been on a publishing path that'll enable,
[20:17]allow me to have that flexibility.
[20:19]And do you have any advice, let's say there's somebody else
[20:22]out there hoping to write some sort of a book
[20:24]that maybe doesn't fall on such a specific category?
[20:27]What advice would you give them?
[20:28]Start writing.
[20:30]Start writing.
[20:31]I think we all wait for the perfect time.
[20:33]There isn't a perfect time.
[20:35]I had to just make time.
[20:36]But I think that in terms of the writing process,
[20:39]just get down and do it.
[20:40]Even if you write for five minutes a day,
[20:42]just get a practice going.
[20:44]And then in terms of the overall
[20:46]of mindfulness piece of it, the having a meaningful ritual.
[20:50]Again, don't worry about what the perfect thing is.
[20:52]Just make sure you start something.
[20:54]It'll probably come to you later, as it did.
[20:56]I realized multiple years into this that, oh,
[20:59]making bread every Friday, it's become a thing.
[21:01]I rearranged my whole life for this.
[21:03]And that's when I realized, actually,
[21:05]the power of what I was doing.
[21:08]Well, thank you, Beth, for sharing all your stories
[21:10]in the static, for sharing your time with me,
[21:12]for those news of mom's time to read books.
[21:14]And the came out to teach our holo, I'm like,
[21:17]I know me too, I'm excited.
[21:18]And you so much.
[21:19]Thank you.
[21:20]This episode of Momstone Have Time to Read Books
[21:22]has been brought to you by Nini's Treats.
[21:24]Nini's Treats.com, available also on goldbelly.com.
[21:28]Thanks to Ryan and Steve at Texture Sound
[21:30]for the audio editing and mixing.
[21:31]Thanks for listening.