Navigating Multivitamin Madness
Fortifying Your Immune System This Fall
Trying to Focus at Home….School
How’s homeschooling going? How successful have you felt in your efforts to work from home? Does your child have attention issues that are making online schoolwork challenging? Have you also found yourself staring at your computer screen or re-reading the same sentence three times wondering how any of us are supposed to stay focused at a time like this? This working and schooling from home phenomenon is new to most of us and the experience may be highlighting focus issues in you or your family members. Even those of us without an official diagnosis of an attention disorder may feel similarly given that our body’s stress response can make it challenging to have the focus we have may have pre-pandemic.
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Last Minute Gift Ideas for the Health Nuts in Your Life
If you’ve left some of your holiday shopping to the last minute, here are some health inspired ideas!
One of my favorite healthy gifts is tea. There are so many different herbal combinations that can support a calm mind, a restful night of sleep or any other health concern for which your friend or family member might appreciate some botanical support. When choosing a medicinal tea, it is important to choose ones that are responsibly sourced. I recommend checking out Mountain Rose Herbs and, for a more local option, Harney and Sons. If you’re looking for a tea tasting outing, a trip to Harney and Sons’
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Treating PCOS Naturally ~ a naturopathic approach to a hormonal syndrome
I see a lot of women with a diagnosis of PCOS in my practice. Polycystic ovarian syndrome is an interesting diagnosis in that, because it’s a syndrome, there are multiple ways that a woman can end up with this diagnosis. Symptoms, lab tests, imaging or a variety of these can be what leads this diagnosis which one in ten women have been given. Women must have two of three of the following conditions to be considered for this diagnosis:
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The Top 5 Supplements You May Not Know You Need
As we prepare for a new school year, you may be looking at your family’s supplement regimen and wondering if it needs a re-boot. This can be a great time to see your local naturopathic doctor since NDs are experts at optimizing your neutraceutical and lifestyle routines to help you prevent and treat diseases you are most at risk for. But, until you take the most personalized approach, here are some supplements you may want to consider.
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Changing Our Understanding of Chronic Pain
Correcting Cortisol’s Curve
As a Naturopathic Doctor I work with patients on a wide variety of concerns from chronic pain to cancer to diabetes or IBS. But regardless of the presenting symptom, there is one hormone that underlies much of what I recommend and the questions I ask. That hormone is cortisol. Sometimes referred to as the “stress hormone”, cortisol is released from your small adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys. Cortisol is released in response to our daily circadian rhythms – ideally peaking first thing in the morning and lowering as we prepare for and fall into sleep. This is “ideal” because cortisol triggers metabolic activities that help us be active during our day and which are not necessary (even counter-productive) at night.
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Understanding the Epigenetic Influences on our Genes
In my last post I reviewed the basics of genetic testing and how the resulting info can help us better understand our health. But examined through lab work or not, our genes and their mutations only tell part of the story. The other, maybe more allusive, main character is what we call epigenetics. By definition this term refers to substances or molecules that turn your genes on and off. Essentially they are factors that are hanging out around your genes and help to inform when and if and how often those genes get coded for – and ultimately used to make enzymes and other proteins.
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What the MTHFR @#$%er Should You Know About Your Genes?
In between televised Olympic coverage this week, the commercial for ’23 and me’ has been one of my favorites. It starts looking all the world like a car ad; asking you what car you’d pick if you could only have one car for life. They then remind you, half way through romantic American landscape footage, that while you will likely have many cars in your lifetime, you will only have one body and it’s your job to take care of it. What a compelling explanation for exploring your genetic makeup!
Our understanding of genomics, or the study of our human genes, has accelerated quickly since scientists completed coding of the human genome in 2003. We now have many different genetic testing options to look at one or almost all of our genes and interpreting the results is rarely straightforward. While ’23 and me’ may be one of the most recognized testing services, it is certainly not the only one.
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