Integrate Health DPC

Many Asian Americans grew up watching our parents and grandparents avoid medications whenever possible.

Instead, they often turned to traditional remedies, herbal medicine, supplements, diet changes, or simply waiting to see if things got better.

That skepticism didn’t disappear with our generation.

Many of us still carry it today.

As a physician, I understand where that hesitation comes from.

And sometimes, natural options do have a role.

Magnesium may help some people with anxiety and sleep. Fish oil has evidence for triglyceride reduction and certain mood disorders. Psyllium fiber (Metamucil) can improve cholesterol, bowel health, and blood sugar control. Even supplements like St. John’s Wort and saffron have evidence for certain mental health conditions.

But here’s the part that often gets missed:

Natural does not automatically mean safe.

And natural does not automatically mean enough.

St. John’s Wort can interact with antidepressants, birth control, and blood thinners. Magnesium isn’t appropriate for everyone. Even fiber supplements can affect medication absorption.

The goal isn’t supplements versus medications.

The goal is understanding which tool is most likely to help—and which risks are worth taking.

Sometimes that’s a supplement.

Sometimes that’s a medication.

And often it’s both.

Educational content only. This is not medical advice. Always discuss supplements and medications with your healthcare professional before starting, stopping, or changing treatment.

Boyle NB, et al. Nutrients. 2017.
Mocking RJT, et al. Transl Psychiatry. 2016.
Linde K, et al. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008.
Marx W, et al. Hum Psychopharmacol. 2019.
Brown L, et al. Am J Clin Nutr. 1999.
Anderson JW, et al. Am J Clin Nutr. 1999.
Kreider RB, et al. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2022.

Many of the health problems that harm people later in life begin quietly.

High blood pressure.
Prediabetes.
Sleep apnea.
Depression.
Burnout.

They’re often dismissed as “just stress” or “part of getting older.”

As a primary care physician, some of the most important visits I have aren’t about treating disease.

They’re about finding problems early enough to prevent them.

For many immigrants and children of immigrants, healthcare often becomes something we seek only when symptoms become impossible to ignore.

But prevention works best long before a crisis.

Your symptoms matter.
Your exhaustion matters.
Your health deserves attention before it becomes an emergency.

American Heart Association. 2024 Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics Update.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sleep and Chronic Disease. Updated 2024.
US Preventive Services Task Force. Recommendations for Screening and Preventive Care. Updated 2024.
National Institute of Mental Health. Anxiety Disorders. Updated 2024.
American Diabetes Association. Standards of Care in Diabetes—2025.

Men die earlier than women on average.

Most people assume that’s mainly because men take more risks.

Risk-taking certainly plays a role.

But that’s only part of the story.

Many of the leading causes of death among men are chronic diseases that develop over years or decades. Heart disease. Stroke. Diabetes. Many cancers.

These conditions often benefit from prevention, screening, and early treatment.

Yet men are less likely to have a primary care physician, attend preventive visits, seek mental health treatment, discuss emotional distress, or report symptoms early.

Mental health matters too.

Depression in men doesn’t always look like sadness. Sometimes it looks like irritability, emotional withdrawal, overworking, substance use, or increased risk-taking.

Chronic stress matters as well.

Over time, untreated stress is associated with hypertension, poor sleep, insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, anxiety, and depression.

Men’s Health Month isn’t just a reminder to avoid risk.

It’s a reminder that prevention matters.

A blood pressure check matters.

A colonoscopy matters.

A conversation about stress matters.

The earlier a problem is identified, the more likely it can be treated.







Courtenay WH. Constructions of masculinity and their influence on men’s well-being: a theory of gender and health. Soc Sci Med. 2000;50(10):1385-1401.
Galdas PM, Cheater F, Marshall P. Men and health help-seeking behaviour: literature review. J Adv Nurs. 2005;49(6):616-623.
American Psychological Association. Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. Am Psychol. 2018;73(9):1226-1261.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Men’s Health Data and Statistics. Updated 2024.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report. 2023.

Many Asian men were never taught how to talk about emotions.

They were taught how to survive.

How to work.
How to sacrifice.
How to keep going.

For many immigrant families, emotional language wasn’t a priority when survival was.

That doesn’t mean the feelings weren’t there.

Sometimes love became working overtime.

Sometimes fear became control.

Sometimes stress became silence.

Sometimes grief became anger.

Many children of immigrants grew up asking themselves:

“If my dad loved me, why couldn’t he say it?”

That’s a painful question.

And a common one.

Understanding where this came from doesn’t erase its impact.

You can have compassion for what your parents survived and still acknowledge what you needed.

Both can be true.

Maybe your father wasn’t emotionally unavailable.

Maybe he was never taught the language for what he felt.

And those are not the same thing.

The good news?

Language can be learned.

“I feel hurt.”

“I’m overwhelmed.”

“I’m proud of you.”

“I love you.”

These aren’t signs of weakness.

They’re signs of connection.

You deserve relationships where feelings don’t have to stay hidden.







Felitti VJ, Anda RF, Nordenberg D, et al. Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. Am J Prev Med. 1998;14(4):245-258.

Yeh CJ, Inman AG. Asian American men’s help-seeking behavior: Cultural influences and implications for counseling. J Multicult Couns Dev. 2007;35(4):207-219.

Kim BSK, Atkinson DR, Umemoto D. Asian cultural values and the counseling process. Couns Psychol. 2001;29(4):570-603.

You know you’re a child of immigrant parents when a bottle of dầu xanh, Vicks VapoRub, ginger tea, turmeric milk, red ginseng, or a mysterious herbal remedy somehow became the first treatment for almost everything.

And honestly?

Many of these remedies weren’t harmful.

Some actually have evidence behind them.

Menthol can help congestion.
Ginger can help nausea.
Turmeric has anti-inflammatory properties.
Ginseng may modestly improve fatigue.

The lesson isn’t that our parents or grandparents were wrong.

Many immigrant families relied on traditional remedies because healthcare wasn’t always accessible, affordable, or trustworthy.

These remedies carried more than medicine.

They carried culture, resourcefulness, and love.

But no remedy should become the answer to every problem.

A family member once developed symptoms everyone thought were indigestion. Traditional remedies were tried first because that’s what everyone knew.

It later turned out to be a heart attack.

The remedy wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that heart attacks don’t always look like heart attacks.

Sometimes they look like:
• Heartburn
• Nausea
• Stomach pain
• Fatigue

And that delay can matter.

Good healthcare doesn’t ask people to abandon their culture.

It respects tradition while also recognizing when something needs more than a home remedy.

Some remedies heal through biology.

Some heal through comfort.

Some do both.

You don’t need to choose between your culture and evidence-based medicine.

You deserve both.







References:
Paul IM, Beiler JS, King TS, et al. Pediatrics. 2010;126(6):1092-1099.
Hewlings SJ, Kalman DS. Foods. 2017;6(10):92.
Lee NH, Son CG. J Ginseng Res. 2011;35(4):407-414.
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Traditional Chinese Medicine: What You Need To Know. Updated 2024.

A lot of people were never taught how to be vulnerable safely.

They were taught how to survive.

For some people, that meant:
No mental health days.
No breaks.
No room to fall apart.

Just:
Keep going.
Handle it yourself.
Don’t burden anyone.
“This wouldn’t happen to me.”

An important Men’s Health Awareness Month reminder:
a lot of men’s suffering begins with pride.

But this affects all of us.

Especially the people who grew up feeling like they always had to be “the strong one.”

And pride doesn’t always look arrogant.

Sometimes it looks like:
avoiding the doctor,
minimizing symptoms,
never asking for help,
or staying productive while quietly drowning.

Over time, chronic emotional suppression can contribute to anxiety, depression, insomnia, burnout, hypertension, and delayed medical care.

And delayed care can become devastating:
heart attacks,
strokes,
advanced disease,
preventable emergencies.

That’s why healing usually doesn’t start with confrontation.

It starts with listening intently.
Understanding someone’s story.
Assessing readiness for change.
Creating emotional safety.

Because sometimes pride was never arrogance.

It was survival.

American Psychological Association. Stress effects on the body. 2024.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mental Health and Chronic Disease. 2024.
Prochaska JO, Velicer WF. The transtheoretical model of health behavior change. Am J Health Promot. 1997.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services. 2014.

June is both Men’s Health Month and PTSD Awareness Month.

That overlap matters deeply.

Especially in immigrant families where many men were taught to survive quietly instead of speak honestly about pain.

A lot of men were never taught vulnerability.
They were taught endurance.

They learned:

* keep working
* don’t complain
* don’t burden others
* handle it yourself
* stay strong no matter what

But untreated trauma does not simply disappear.

It often shows up later as:
hypertension,
burnout,
insomnia,
alcohol use,
emotional shutdown,
chronic stress,
panic symptoms,
or isolation.

Many men delay care because they do not want to worry the people around them.

But sometimes staying silent can unintentionally hurt the people who love you most.

Not because you are weak.
Not because you failed.

But because your health affects your family too.

Your children.
Your partner.
Your future.

People who love you would rather support you early
than lose you later.

You do not need to wait until crisis to deserve care.

And asking for help is not weakness.
Sometimes it is responsibility.

“You do not have to earn care through collapse.”

References:
Yehuda R, Lehrner A. Intergenerational transmission of trauma effects. World Psychiatry. 2018.

Felitti VJ, et al. Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many leading causes of death. Am J Prev Med. 1998.

Courtenay WH. Constructions of masculinity and their influence on men’s well-being. Soc Sci Med. 2000.

American Heart Association. Psychological health, well-being, and cardiovascular disease. Circulation. 2021.

McEwen BS. Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. N Engl J Med. 1998.

Many AAPI families did not develop their parenting styles in isolation.

War.
Colonization.
Migration.
Displacement.
Economic survival.
Western geopolitical influence.
Collectivist survival cultures.

These histories shaped how many immigrant families learned to express:
love, stress, sacrifice, protection, emotional survival, and parenting.

That does not mean our parents did not love us.

But it does mean many families were carrying nervous systems shaped by survival for generations.

Sometimes that contributed to:
• emotional suppression
• hyper-independence
• perfectionism
• pressure to succeed
• difficulty expressing vulnerability
• the mother wound
• the father wound

History can become biology.
Culture can shape stress responses.
And emotional patterns can echo across generations.

Healing is not about rejecting our culture or our families.

It’s about understanding the deeper story compassionately enough to help it evolve.

Shout out to for suggesting this topic idea!

What other AAPI mental health or immigrant family topics would you want us to talk about next? Drop them below.







Yehuda R, Lehrner A. Intergenerational trauma effects and implications for society. Front Psychiatry. 2018;9:420.
McEwen BS. Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation. Physiol Rev. 2007;87(3):873-904.
Felitti VJ, Anda RF, Nordenberg D, et al. Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many leading causes of death in adults. Am J Prev Med. 1998;14(4):245-258.
Kim SY, Chen Q, Wang Y, et al. Culture, family processes, and distress among Asian American adolescents. J Youth Adolesc. 2009;38(3):342-354.
van der Kolk BA. The Body Keeps the Score. New York, NY: Viking; 2014.

AAPI Heritage Month is often reduced to food, culture, and success stories.

But for many families, there’s also a deeper history behind why we are here.

Yes — for many immigrants, coming to the United States offered more safety, stability, education, and economic opportunity. That part is real.

But immigration also did not happen in a vacuum.

Across many parts of the world, powerful nations competed for resources, trade routes, military influence, labor, and political control for generations.

Colonialism.
War.
Cold War intervention.
Foreign-backed coups.
Sanctions.
Economic restructuring.
Military occupation.

Those forces reshaped entire countries and displaced millions of ordinary families.

Many immigrants did not leave because they hated their homelands.
Many left because survival became harder.

And even after arriving in America, many families carried the aftermath with them:

hypervigilance
scarcity mindset
overwork
anxiety
silence
burnout
survival mode

Sometimes the downstream effects become physical too:
high blood pressure
poor sleep
diabetes
depression
substance use
chronic stress

The body remembers survival.

That’s why culturally informed healthcare matters.
Because health is not just biology.

It’s also history, migration, trauma, economics, family systems, and survival.

AAPI Heritage Month — and immigrant stories everywhere — are about survival, rebuilding, adaptation, and healing.

Our families are here because history moved people across the world.
And now many of us are trying to heal the mental, physical, and emotional aftermath — for ourselves and for the next generation.

Citations:
Britannica. O***m Wars. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed May 2026.
Britannica. Vietnam War. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed May 2026.
Britannica. Korean War. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed May 2026.
Britannica. Philippine-American War. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed May 2026.
Britannica. Partition of India. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Accessed May 2026.
Gee GC, Ford CL. Structural racism and health inequities: Old issues, new directions. Du Bois Rev. 2011;8(1):115-132.

Not many people talk about the overlap between AAPI Heritage Month and Memorial Day.

But many Asian American families have histories deeply tied to war, displacement, military service, survival, and rebuilding.

Some fought for freedoms abroad while still being treated as outsiders at home.
Some served while their families sat in internment camps.
Some carried trauma home that was never fully spoken about afterward.

And many immigrant families still carry the emotional and physical echoes of those experiences today.

This Memorial Day, we remember the lives lost.

And during AAPI Heritage Month, we also remember the generations of Asian Americans who helped build, defend, and reshape this country — often while struggling to belong within it.

Asian American history is American history.

References:
National WWII Museum
Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
JAMA Psychiatry