What Counts as a Chronic Illness? A Practical Guide

Welcome to Season 4 of the Less Stress in Life Podcast.

This season, Deb Timmerman, registered nurse and board-certified reflexologist, and Lindsay Vertalka, master’s-level licensed physical therapist, are focusing on what it really looks like to live well with chronic illness.

Through practical tools, research-backed insights, fresh approaches, and honest conversations with guests who are walking this path, this season is here to help you feel more hopeful, more informed, and more supported.

In this first episode, Deb and Lindsay begin with a practical question: What actually counts as a chronic illness?

Is it only major diagnoses like autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, diabetes, or multiple sclerosis? What about migraines, chronic fatigue, digestive issues, chronic pain, or symptoms that never seem to fully go away?

Together, they explore what chronic illness really means, why symptoms are often more connected than they seem, and how stress, pain, nervous system patterns, and daily life can all overlap.

Whether you’ve been diagnosed for years, are still searching for answers, or are supporting someone you love, this episode offers a grounded starting point for understanding chronic illness through a more holistic lens.

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Website: LessStressinLife.com/podcast/

Stay tuned for more conversations to empower you to live well, manage stress, and build a thriving, healthy life!

Transcript

Deb Timmerman 0:05

Welcome to the Less Stress in Life podcast. I'm Deb Timmerman, founder of Less Stress in Life, registered nurse, and board certified reflexologist. I help people navigate the stressors of chronic illness and understand how stress can feed ongoing pain cycles and impact overall health.

Lindsay Vertalka 0:24

And I'm Lindsay Vertalka, a master's level licensed physical therapist. I help people move through injuries, disabilities, and chronic conditions using a holistic approach that blends movement with the mental and emotional side of living with pain. Between the two of us, we've worked with and experienced chronic illness, both professionally and personally.

Deb Timmerman 0:44

This season, we're focusing on what it really looks like to live well with chronic illness. We're here to bring you practical tools, research-backed insights, guests who are walking this path, and fresh approaches you may not have tried so you could feel more hopeful, more informed, and more supported along the way.

Lindsay Vertalka 1:28

Good morning, Deb. I feel exactly the same. It's we've got a lot of great information that I think is going to be fun to talk about and share with our listeners.

Deb Timmerman 1:38

So this comes out of Lindsay and I talking a lot about how to meet the needs of the people that come to see us with chronic pain, chronic illnesses, chronic management, and the information that they share with us and sometimes the frustration that they share with us about navigating the medical system, not knowing what to do, where to go, and they feel powerless.

Lindsay Vertalka 2:06

And I think we've learned through our own practice that there's a lot more people out there living with chronic illness. Many of them are invisible, and there's more people that can relate to each other than probably realize it. So, Deb, you want to start by defining what is a chronic illness?

Deb Timmerman 2:25

Yeah, so a chronic illness is typically something, a condition that lasts six months or more. But there's a caveat to that because if you receive a diagnosis of having an autoimmune disease, you have a chronic illness. And that starts with day one. And what I see is when folks get those diagnoses, they don't always get a lot of information. So they're left to find out and dig on Dr. Google and Chat GPT and try to figure out what does it mean? What is it gonna happen to me? What do I need to prepare for? How am I gonna manage? And a lot of times they're doing their own research before they go see a specialist, which might take weeks or maybe months to get in and see.

Lindsay Vertalka 3:16

Yeah, and I kind of have a love-hate relationship with Dr. Google because I've taught my patients that education is power, and for some people, they really need to understand what they're going through, and other people don't want to know, but knowledge is power, so using the internet is helpful, but often with chronic illness, people are craving a diagnosis or some answers, and it's unfortunately not always clear-cut when you're diagnosed with a chronic illness.

Deb Timmerman 3:50

I think that also is true when you're looking for a diagnosis and they can't give you a label to slap on it. There are so many times I see people who have this group of symptoms, and they've been to many different doctors telling their story again and again, typically to the MA or nurse that checks them in. And a lot of times they get really frustrated because they have to keep retelling the story and nobody is listening to them. That's what they tell me. Nobody hears what I'm saying, nobody cares, and here I am with 18 medications. Now I have side effects, and I don't know what to do.

Lindsay Vertalka 4:39

Yeah, it can be very frustrating, very frustrating journey. And we've seen that as healthcare providers ourselves and personal experience as well. And I think too, even though it's nice to have a label or a diagnosis, I think there is a common theme with chronic illness that there's several, and we're going to talk about kind of the diagnoses that might fall under chronic illness, but there's several themes for people, you know, chronic fatigue or exhaustion from advocating for themselves, frustration from navigating without answers, the the maybe the medical system, and just adapting to how a chronic illness affects their daily life and changes what they can do, and maybe that's different than how they used to be able to do things. Yeah, so I'm kind of a nerd about statistics. And when you're talking, uh my mind goes to two separate places. One, the old statistic of 75 to 90 percent of all visits to the doctor are related to stress. Okay, so that's a biggie. And there is research proving that stress is the root of many of our chronic illnesses and even some of our acute illnesses. Do you get a cold when you're more run down? Of course you do, because your immune system is trying to keep double time. But then there's that whole pot of statistics. I can't say that word, statistics, about how many people have a chronic condition. So three out of four US adults have at least one chronic condition. And what's even more than scary, because I'm in this population, is that more than 90% of adults over age 65 have at least one chronic condition. Yeah, and that's pretty profound. It makes a real effect on people's lives and our healthcare system. And I think, I mean, we could talk about that in a whole different podcast.

Deb Timmerman 6:46

Yeah. And then what's changed, I think, as I've been a nurse for 20-something years now is the number of young people that are being diagnosed with a chronic condition. So here's what the stats say about that 60% of adults age 18 to 24 already live with at least one chronic condition. So our population is aging, our population is, according to the statistics, less healthy than it used to be. So, what are we doing? How do we manage this and how do we get hold of this?

Lindsay Vertalka 7:25

Yeah. So our goal is really to empower you with lots of information, lots of guests that are sharing in some of these conditions that you might relate to over the course of this podcast season. Because what happens is that when you're frustrated and you don't know where to go, you feel really alone. And that contributes to the mental health challenges that we're all seeing. Yeah, really complex, isn't it? It's very complex. And I think people just want help and want to feel better. And that's, I think, our goal in coming together is to bring our background and our perspective and share hopefully some practical tools. And like Deb said, I'm excited we're gonna have guests that actually have some chronic illnesses to hear from them, and maybe you can relate. Um, Deb, what are some examples of chronic illness? Do you mind?

Deb Timmerman 8:21

So, some of the easy ones that we think about are diabetes, fibromyalgia, any autoimmune condition, maybe even obesity could be a chronic illness. It certainly has been for me my entire life. I struggle with thyroid issues, I have celiac. So I am a person with chronic illness. And yes, it's very frustrating to manage from a lot of perspectives. But I guess this is a good setup for a question for you, Lindsay. When people have chronic illnesses, what kinds of things do you notice when they've been dealing with chronic pain as it relates to their ability to move through life with ease, get regular exercise, and do their activities of daily living?

Lindsay Vertalka 9:17

And we're gonna talk more. I have a specific interest in my background and working with people with chronic pain. Um, and I there's kind of a cycle that you see, and we'll talk more about that probably in future episodes, but living with a chronic illness is exhausting. Sometimes the symptoms just cause exhaustion. Sometimes the exhaustion of trying to manage maybe your work life with your social life, with getting to doctor's appointments and scheduling, you know, that's a cognitive component too that goes into managing your life every day. It can affect relationships with even your spouse or your work relationships. Does your chronic illness interfere with your attendance at work? And it can be embarrassing for people, or they have a lot of guilt, maybe, from canceling out on even social plans. And then there's a huge emotional component of maybe being disappointed because you have to cancel plans, or you're really looking forward to going on a trip that you end up not being able to go on because you're in a flare, or you know, your symptoms have worsened. And kind of all of these things combined, like you said, it's it's very complex. And kind of all of those emotions can affect your mental health. And a lot of people who have chronic illnesses, not everyone, but can become depressed. And then when you're depressed, that can affect your maybe motivation to exercise and to move, and maybe even do those regular activities that you're used to doing. And then from a physical therapy standpoint, not moving and not exercising leads to a whole bunch of other things like obesity and actually exercise, you release feel-good hormones or feel-good chemicals in your body. And so if your illness is such that you don't feel like moving, you see where you can get into the cycle of not being able to help yourself.

Deb Timmerman 11:29

Yeah, there's a war that goes on. I've had times in the last couple of years where I was on a thyroid medication that had gluten in it, didn't know it, and my knees were absolutely killing me. Like it hurt to move. So you know you're supposed to get up and get going, but you know it's gonna hurt. And at some point you go, I'm not gonna do that because I'm miserable. And it takes you 15 minutes after you move to have it calm down. So I could certainly understand that whole cycle very well. One of the things that I see a lot in my practice is how much anxiety people have about going places or traveling. For example, my clientele tend to be older and managing chronic illnesses, a lot of arthritis, a lot of diabetes, that type of thing. And they want to go enjoy their grandchild's game, but they're worried about where they're gonna park, how far they're gonna have to walk. Uh, so there's a lot of stress and anxiety around living a normal life and being able to enjoy the things that they thought they were going to be able to enjoy, and now somehow they can't do that.

Lindsay Vertalka 12:54

Yeah, and that kind of comes back to the exhaustion I'm talking about is it takes a lot of planning when you're living with a chronic illness, like you just said. Like, think about where am I gonna park? Do I need to pack a chair that I can sit in? And am I gonna be able to walk as far as I need to to get to the soccer field? And it's a lot of planning ahead and thinking ahead, and that can be very exhausting.

Deb Timmerman 13:20

So, one of the things that Lindsay and I have chatted about often is how some of these chronic illnesses can be invisible. Want to chat on that a little bit, Lindsay?

Lindsay Vertalka 13:32

Yeah, a lot of them are invisible. You know, if somebody has cerebral palsy, which is a chronic condition, it's sometimes more obvious because their gait pattern is different, how they walk. Maybe they're using a wheelchair or a walker. But Crohn's disease, for instance, is an invisible chronic illness. A lot of times no one else knows that you might deal with chronic diarrhea or just don't feel good because sometimes people with invisible illnesses that we're referring to are good at hiding their symptoms because they don't want other people to know. But that can lead to misunderstanding, I think, and sometimes stigmas.

Deb Timmerman 14:21

Yeah, there was a post on our local chatter yesterday of someone who parked in a handicapped spot, had a placard, and she had her elderly mother with her who has dementia. And so the mother had taken the placard off and was fiddling with it while she ran in to get whatever she needed. And somebody called her out publicly there, saying, Why are you parking in that place? And then went on the chatter and basically complained about her parking in that and told the whole town. Okay, so we're making these assumptions of things that we really don't know a lot about. So it is such a complex so complex.

Lindsay Vertalka 15:14

And you know, I know oftentimes patients are told by their doctor or maybe their physical therapist, you know, you need to think about how far you're walking. So I will try to convince people to get a handicapped parking sticker so they can conserve their energy and be able to, you know, walk shorter distances so they can do more throughout their day. But I have patients who are very resistant to getting a handicapped parking sticker because there is a stigma and they don't want people to make judgment, pass judgment about them. And then that affects somebody's mental health. They're torn, you know. My doctor and my PT say I should do this, but I don't want to do it because people are gonna judge me. And then the other piece is, you know, I'm admitting a little bit that I I need to change how I do things, and that that is hard.

Deb Timmerman 16:06

So if we were to sum up this whole conversation into one sentence, managing chronic illness can feel like a full-time job. Because it is a full-time job.

Lindsay Vertalka 16:17

Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, you don't get paid for it either.

Deb Timmerman 16:24

So in closing, Lindsay, what is it you want people to know about our future podcast? I think we covered a lot of things, but do you have one maybe tidbit for today that you can give them?

Lindsay Vertalka 16:40

Yeah, so take-home message I would like you to think is you're not alone. And we're here to give you some hope through, I guess, the information and experience we're gonna provide, but also hopefully from the guests we're gonna bring in uh that maybe you can relate and have a little hope that there are some things that I can do to help myself or learn to accept this is my new normal. How about you, Deb?

Deb Timmerman 17:05

And I would say the only other thing is we will give you tools whenever we can. Yeah. Um, because if you have a toolbox filled with different tools for different things and you know how to use them and are comfortable using them, it sure makes navigating the process a lot easier. And I guess I can liken that to putting in an address car, your navigator, as a tool. 20 years ago, we had those little Garmin things that we put in our cars and it would tell us where to go. Things have improved a lot, and now we punch in an address and it gives us step-by-step directions. So if you have a lot of tools in your toolbox and you know what to do on any given day, it really does help you feel better mentally, physically, emotionally, and it gives you some control or a feeling of control over managing your disease process. And I think that's what all of us want. We want to feel like we are our own agents. We are empowered to do things with the knowledge that we have, and we don't have to sit around and wait and hope for somebody to give us something to get us through.

Lindsay Vertalka 18:27

All good points. Because chronic illnesses they don't have to define you. And there are things that you can do to help live day to day with a chronic illness.

Speaker 1 18:38

Okay, so until next time, it's Deb and Lindsay signing off. We'll hope you join us again. The Less Stress in Life podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Listening does not establish a provider-patient relationship. Always consult your physician or qualified health care provider with questions about your health or before making changes to your care. Do not delay seeking medical advice because of something you heard here. If you are experiencing a medical emergency, seek immediate care or call 911.