Not your typical fb poke

As of late, my feeling is that these blogs have been a little heavy on the bodily functions, and a little light on the bodily therapies. While wildly important to get the deetz on how our bodies work, what’s maybe equally enthralling, is considering the things we use to get better, and especially those which have little-to-no scientific facts to support them (!) Aldous Huxley described the great tragedy of science as “the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact”. Maybe keep this in mind as we go forward…

The dominance and success of science in our time has lead to a widely held and crippling belief that no knowledge is real, unless it is scientific – meaning objective and measurable. Which if were true, would mean that acupuncture is unreal Which if you asked the urban dictionary to define would say was, “of a remarkably humorous, cool, or impressive nature”, which is totes tru.

Most NDs use acupuncture in a way that some Docs of Chinese Medicine would probably deem barbaric. The elaborate theories behind the treatment and diagnosis of disease from a TCM perspective is nearly unknowable. Unless you spend your entire medical training doing it, seeing it, breathing it, and then learning Chinese and moving to China. In the West, we’ve gotta get by with using what pieces fit, however awkwardly, into our current model of health.

Some of the earliest writings in China describe a system of medicine based on man’s place in the universe defined by the same law’s governing the world around them, and from this determine health. As lovely and poetic as this sounds, combining this way of diagnosing illness (finding patterns in people which correspond to the 5 elements of nature) with that of medical science, isn’t an easy task. For example, “Dampness in the spleen” actually translates into diarrhea (of course!), or the “San Jiao” being an energetic organ with no actual anatomic location in the body. Thus, trying to explain how “Liver yang rising” is behind the cause of your migraines, can be tricky.

mmmm Qi

Nonetheless, acupuncture needles do something. Even a Western medical doctor can’t deny that inserting a needle into the body can have profound effects on the nervous system, and especially our interpretation to pain. But a TCM Doc would consider whatever effects to be resulting from “The movement of Qi” (pronounced like chee-se), which can be difficult to locate in the index of most pathology texts.

So Qi. Qi is that feeling you lose when you’re ill. It’s a persons qualities of vigour, intensity, speech and action. It’s whatever that thing is that tells you (and others) that you’re alive. It’s “energy” in the crudest sense of the word. Qi is everything. The vital force. The life source. All that esoteric mumbo jumbo.

So Qi circulates around the body, through blood, through your organs, and along meridians – which are basically Qi conducting superhighways. Acupuncture points lie along the length of the main meridians in various carefully defined places which we can manipulate by poking you with a tiny lil .25 x .25 mm needle. It doesn’t hurt (much), and the benefits I’ve witnessed so far are pretty amazeballs. If you’ve got muscle & joint pains especially, trying out acupuncture may be just the ticket.

We might not know just how it works, but in medicine it’s common practice never to say “we don’t know”, it’s just that “we don’t know yet“. And thats okay for now. Just use common sense. If you’re heart feels like it’s going to explode, go to the hospital. But if your knee pain just won’t seem to quit, go get poked!

Ugh, isn't winter just the worst?

It’s hard to remember. It could have been 2, with the 3rd fragment just a flare-up following an interlude of illusionary health. I don’t remember anyone else around me being a germ-toting dirtbag. There’s always something “going around” this time of year, so to assign the source to somebody in particular seems unfair. Churlish, even.

This concept of contamination via others is something we take for granted in medicine. That we’re all germ-ridden cesspools of infectious entities, just itching to colonize another’s nasal passages, seems to fit quite neatly into our current model of health. We can’t be totally blamed for this kind of thinking. For a huge part of our history, the flu was mysteriously wiping out millions for no sound apparent reason. Then van Leeuwenhoek (the godfather of microbiology) took his nifty new microscope and saw for the first time, the unseen beneath his slide. Eventually thousands of bacteria & viruses were discovered, and we had a hoard of menacingly named microbial villains one could finger-point all our infirmities at with confidence. Germs were (and are) the enemy, and our only hope against death and infection is an army of chemical technology that enables us to keep killing them off.

This view of disease describes the work of evil germs, relentlessly attempting to attack us on all fronts. They are the inevitable enemy. An unavoidable part of our natural existence. Until soap came along and saved our lives, they would continue to consume us, taking over the world, one snot-filled sneeze at a time. This paranoid kind of thinking comes understandably from our past, and has taught us to attribute any and all ailments to them now. But are they truly so cruel? And who’s out for blood, really?

Currently, the bug in the human being has a higher chance of destruction than the bug who’s not. Few have an actual advantage in attacking us. Perhaps they’re all sick and confused, desperately pre-occupied with borrowing whatever molecules they can find to make energy and proceed through the motions of living. So instead of being mortally malicious, maybe disease just results from a misunderstanding? Or as Lewis Thomas describes it, “a biologic misinterpretation of borders”. Symbiosis gone to sh**. Sure they’re a nuisance and can make us feel yuck, but us leaping so readily into warfare winds up tearing us both into pieces.

We forget that it was hygiene that healed us back then, and instead credit our recovery to the meds that we’ve developed to destroy them now. Soap, showed us that having a killer offence isn’t necessarily as important as having one badass defense.

Though it may seen contrary to all practical medical theory, perhaps colds aren’t taken suddenly and from without, but from within. We’re all brimming with bugs. They live in our guts, on our skin, and in our mouths. They like warm, moist places most, like skin folds and mucous membranes. In health, everyone’s happy, but if our bodies are overloaded with waste, weak, and continuously overworked and over-stimulated, homeostasis gets seriously thrown out of whack. Then, the garbage that can’t find its regular outlet of elimination will try to escape through the mucous linings of our nasal passages, throat, bronchi, stomach, and bowels. This channeled waste removal causes irritation, inflammation, congestion, and translates into all of the delightfully familiar symptoms of sickness: snot, sneezing, phlegm (all the colours of the rainbow!), diarrhea, indigestion and straight up malaise. It would make sense then, that the greater the accumulation of wastes, and the lower the vitality of our bodies, the more susceptible we’ll be to “catching colds”.

Is it possible then, that a clean, happy, healthy body can catch a cold? Try it out on yourself. Next time you’ve got a bug, take a mental note of all the things that might have gotten you there (lack of sleep, lack of laughter, a foggy visit to the street meat stand). Sometimes your body might decide to take the vacation from life that your brain thinks you don’t have time for. Straightjacketing you into the bed- rest-kleenex-box-price-is-right-position.

So what’s the natural cure? Robitussin! (Gabe, that’s a link you should click on) Increase elimination through the proper channels, restore the natural activity of the skin, kidneys and bowels, rest, relaxation and a sprinkle of sun’ll do. Suppressing symptoms can interfere with nature’s efforts to purify and restore balance in the body. So don’t swallow your spit up, don’t quash your cough, and don’t go to work in the morning. These are healing efforts, courtesy of your body, to help get the sick out! It’s ok to get sick. It’s ok to feel sick. Sleep it off friends. Spring is 17 days away!

Please don’t sue me n’ stuff.

I’m not a doctor yet. And the internet sometimes lies. After board exams in August hopefully what I have to say will be legit.

Also, be advised that the following video contains profanity. Don’t sue me for that either?

Not cauliflower, but a bronchial tree

Readers, here comes the moment every blogger most loathes…the apology for being away. The one vile thing about blogging, is that each post is stamped with the indelible date of publishing. It mocks me.

So, I’m like, sorry. Really, very sorry. And I promise, to try to never to do it again. No, I’ll never do it again. Thanks for being here and not giving up on Peas with Honey. Goodness knows I haven’t.

Without being longwinded, I will attempt win you back with a joke…A girl walks into a Doctor’s office and says that she’s been having some trouble breathing. The doctor checks her lungs, looks in her nose and throat and tells her gravely…”lady, we’ll do everything we can to stop it.”

HA!

Laughing so hard you’re having trouble breathing I bet??

Well take a deep breath. Hooold it. Now let it out nice and slow. Now make circles on your tummy with your right hand, and pat the top of your head with your left…Still breathing? Phew! Looks like your lungs have got things under control! Thank goodness we don’t have to think about things like breathing when there’s bills to pay, a tummy to fill and a complicated combination of motor skills involving head tapping to attend to. However, the tediousness of our life lists that need checking do impact our breathing, and a lifetime of shallow, loveless breaths may eventually take its toll. Mouth breathers, chest breathers, breath holders, breath ignorers- this post’s for you. It’s time to take some big gulps of breath and fill that tummy with air!

Respiration is one of those peculiar functions that we can voluntary manipulate, while at the same time operate under unconscious physiological control. This pattern is divided into inspiration and expiration. Inspiration is a sudden boost of motor signals to the lungs via control of your brain stem. Our lung cells perk up to the sweet scent of oxygen with the enthusiasm of a Tony Robbin’s convention. Expiration is a quieter event, like the slow silent decline of a refrigerator’s forgotten carton of milk. Our brain stem breathing centers decide the timing and movement of the 2 fluxes of flow, and coordinate their transition based on the oxygen needs of our blood cells, and how much carbon dioxide needs to get poured down the sink.

Each in and out of your lungs is a gaseous exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Feedback control happens as your body analyzes how much oxygen it needs vs. how much CO2 needs to leave. If you hold your breath as long as you can (such a fun game), your body endures this lack of oxygen until it just can’t take it no more. Though it’s not a lack of oxygen that’s really the problem, it’s the poisonous carbon dioxide building inside your blood that’s needs out. Too much is toxic to our sweet cells, and it’s what will get you in the end if a breathless tickle fight turns sour. (I tried to find some research on whether it’s actually possible to be tickled to death. Unfortunately, these studies seem to be quite limited).

Besides for toxic gas building up from the inside, more than any major organ or detoxification system, our lungs are at the greatest threat of toxic exposure via our environment. Under normal conditions, breath comes in and out with such ease, that it can leave the front door wide open to whatever else may be trying to sneak inside. It’s one of the easiest accessed routes inside of the body, with little in the way of roadblocks. This means that toxins in the form of gases or germs or super small solid particles can enter our delicate lungs and cause damage with one unfortunate updraft of an infectious breeze. Though, “catching cold” is much more than what it seems (I smell a future post), and breath is just the beginning. Of everything really.

So til then then, consider your lungs the most dignified of doormen. They love to party, but also love to kick some turd to the curb if they’re getting too rowdy (Cilia say whaaat!?). The let us run and sing and laugh and sneeze, and allow us to make some of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

I’ll see you soon readers! But maybe don’t hold your breath

mmm medicinal

V-Day/Health tip for today: Eat Chocolate.

Aka the herb Theobroma cacao. The seed, as we know, is delish, and its full of flavonoids (antioxidants), minerals and endorphins (natural pain killers that exist in the body). The darker the better (70% and up).

Nibble or feast, a bar or a piece! It’s medicine! kinda

Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!

Food goes in here. (It Sure does)

Digestion begins with a thought, or a smell, of whatever it is that one happens to find mouthwatering. In fact 20% of the gastric juices our tummies make are associated with what’s called the Cephalic Phase of digestion. “Cephalic” meaning “head”, and “phase” meaning something you should probably grow out of. But this isn’t like bleaching your tips blonde, this is a neural pathway for which appetite centers in your brain have locked down pathways reaching straight to your stomach. To ensure that when you get what’s coming to you, you’ll have the enzymes available to metabolize it, you’ll salivate, your tummy rumbles, you lick your chops, and you masticate.

A “healthy appetite” means that when you’re hungry, you know it, and you act according to your biological tendencies, and you eat. It means that you have a sense of what your body likes, what it needs, and what to put in your mouth (or not) to provide for it, so that it can continue to perform the essential and everyday things that it does for you.

Ideally eating should be a matter of informed consent between brain #1 (the brain) and brain #2 (your gut). A few times a day hunger taps us on the shoulder as a reminder that eating is important and enjoyable and necessary for survival. After that, the rest is left up to us. What follows next has become a mind-boggling mess of nutrition research, “expert” advice, and of cheap and delicious convenience food. I don’t think I need to go into the mess of societal influences on our eating habits and its dark spawn of eating related disorders. Yes, obesity, anorexia, bulimia and body dysmorphic disorders, and now orthorexia (a fixation on healthy or righteous eating), an escalating offshoot of the foodphobias we’ve created.

We associate guilt with certain foods and vanity with certain diets. Columned lists of “Good” and “Bad” foods mix and mingle every which way depending on the source. We starve and stuff ourselves and still come out defeated at the end of the umpteenth diet that didn’t work.

I want to believe that there are some foundational tenets of how to eat, if not what to eat. We all know that emotional eating is a “no-no”. But heck yes have I been there. Bag full of Mickey D’s, a sweet and sour sauce (or two) for my fries, a DC, and a biggie sized serving of malcontent. “Today sucked and I’m starving”, is about all the justification brain #1 needs to pin my brain #2 into submission. The problem with this kind of eating, is fairly obv. Paul Pitchford’s book Healing with Whole Foods describes emotional eating as the result of “excessive and undifferentiated desire”. Whether it’s a bowlful of steamed kale or a log of raw cookie dough, he begins the chapter entitled Enjoyment of Food with:

“The way you eat is an expression of who you are. The enjoyment of food and company creates such an inner joy that it’s possible to taste the sweetest of nectar in even the simplest of foods. Without this joy, and with no blessing offered, the most wholesome, delicious food can seem tasteless and leave the soul hungry.

People who eat only for the taste or according to a diet or nutritional value often develop cravings for something they aren’t getting. They bring turmoil into their lives and homes in their constant search, and they eat to satisfy a misplaced hunger.

…A bad relationship with your food is more poisonous than one of grandma’s sugar cookies”

So forget calories and nutrients and fat content for a second and consider the meaning of the word nourishment. Because every time we eat we’re given the opportunity to either nurture our bodies, or just obliviously shove things in. Give attention to the quality of each food going into your mouth – the flavours, the smells, the sounds, the colours, the conversation…maybe turn off the TV? Set aside a time and space for food. Think about what it went through to wind up on your plate, and why it bothered to make the trip. Aren’t you glad it did? Wasn’t it awfully nice of it to do that?

Adore your food. Indulge in the disgusting now and then, just make sure both brains are cool with it first. In the words of the great food-guru Julia Child – “Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health.”

I like to think and write about the intricacies of how our bodies work, especially the systems and parts that have been neatly laid out for me by physiology texts. Pheromones though, are a somewhat mythical bodily function. We know hounds and fish and insects use’em, but accepting that we do too seems somehow beneath us, somehow less than human.

'Bout sums it up.

As if a population of primates with satellites in space still need the archaic anatomy of the nose to communicate to one another. As if we could compare ourselves to worker ants bumbling about on a hill, toiling together to achieve some unknowable life purpose.

Why would we want to release odours into the air to convey information about anything? We can bounce words off the moon!

Lewis Thomas’ “The Lives of  a Cell” is the book that showed me that scientific literature can be beautiful and poetic and informative and fun. He compares the dividing of a hive of bees between 2 queens, to the splitting of genetic information in the human chromosome. He does it with such elegance that it feels unethical for me to continue this post without quoting from his essay “A Fear of Pheromones” (1974):

“The messages are urgent, but they may arrive, for all we know, in a fragrance of ambiguity. “At home, 4pm, today,” says the female moth, and releases a brief explosion of bombykol, a single molecule of which will tremble the hairs of any male within miles and send him driving upwind in a confusion of ardor. But it is doubtful if he has an awareness of being caught in an aerosol of chemical attractant.

On the contrary, he probably finds suddenly that is has become an excellent day, the weather remarkably bracing, the time appropriate for a bit of exercise of the old wings, a brisk turn upwind. En route, travelling the gradient of bombykol, he notes the presence of other males, heading in the same direction, all in good mood, inclined to race for the sheer sport of it.

Then, when he reaches his destination, it may seem to him the most extraordinary of coincidences, the greatest piece of luck: “Bless my soul, what have we here!”

He goes on to say that if a single female moth were to release all the bombykol in her sac in a one time spray, she could theoretically attract a trillion males in the instant. But it’s not just sex. It’s directions about all kinds of things, like when and where to cluster in crowds, how to organize members of a society in the proper ranking order of dominance, how to mark out borders of real estate, and how to establish that one is, beyond argument, one’s self.

The research within humans though, has been scarce. The McClintock Effect proposed that pheromones are behind menstrual synchrony found in women who live together in dorms, prisons, homes etc. A more recent study took apocrine gland sweat-stuff from the underarms of men, then gave groups of ladies a whiff. Afterwards the women were given questionnaires on their impulsivity and romantic attachment characteristics. The ladies who whiffed the actual sweat showed greater motor impulsivity and modified levels of serotonin (a feel-good neurotransmitter linked to mood).

Myself, I like when mornings smell like coffee, weekends smell like cookies, and a man smells like a man. I don’t appreciate being cheated out of my humble sense of smell.

Maybe we’ve inherited only vestiges of what’s needed to talk pheromones to each other, and instead we get only traces of fragrance, and the memory of it’s meaning is forever gone. Though I like knowing that we are in posession of anatomic structures for which there is no rational explanation, except for sources of pheromones: Tufts of hair strategically located near apocrine glands and unaccountable areas of moisture. “Borrowing” your boyfriend’s hoodie and burrowing it in your nose when you’ve got a slew of your own at home.

I like imagining this tactile web of communication between strangers. I mean, I’m not saying you should go smell the girl’s hair next to you on the bus or anything, but breathe in the world around you now and again and you might find yourself saying, “bless my soul, what have we here…”

A group of organs that work together to perform a specialized function is called a system, like the cardiovascular or integumentary system, an infinity point scrabble word that includes the skin, hair, nails, and its specialized glands & receptor sites. The skin and it’s cronies provide a lot more for us than just a thin covering for the body. It’s the largest organ we’ve got, and we hate on it almost all of the time. We pick at it, smear it with cosmetics/toxic sludge, yell at it for being too greasy, too oily, too dry, or too pimply. “Stop growing hair here!”, “stop leaving sweat stains there!”, “why can’t you be more like that other patch of skin!”. And so on.

Sweatology

Incredibly, our skin has a bunch of other things to worry about beyond being called a pizza face. If Jerry O’Connell and the cool kids down at the pizza joint only knew…

Skin regulates our body temperature, provides protection from bacteria, dehydration, UV light and all things pointy tipped. Without it we wouldn’t have touch to sense pressure, pain or pleasure. No tingling warmth from the sun, no Vitamin D for our bones, and the worst part – we’d all look the same. Gooey-amporhous-ethnically indistinguishable blobs – shudder.

Skin also plays a key part as another organ of detoxification (!) Sweat is the excretion of water, salts, minerals, and other organic compounds derived from the blood. What comes out of our sweat varies with the person, their acclimatization to heat, what activity/kind of sweat it is, and the length of time spent, sweatin’.

Our skin also houses different kinds of sweat glands (small tubular structures that produce sweat). Apocrine glands are found mostly in armpits and palms/soles of feet. They produce a thicker, cloudier, potentially stinkier, secretion. They kick into gear at puberty and are also responsible for your personal pheromone-tinged fragrance. Eccrine glands are more concerned with cooooling you down. They’re the ones working overtime in hot yoga class when you start sweating out of places you didn’t know existed.

Both kinds are squeezed by tiny muscular cells surrounding the gland when your brain reads your that your body is under some kind of stress. Like, omg, if this yoga instructor makes me do one more downward dog I’m going to hurl or omg, Justin Bieber’s new pro-activ commercial is so flippin’ cute I’m going to hurl. Thus, your clever body cools the skin, and while its at it, removes wastes.

Girl, I wanna make you sweat. Once a day.

Exercise and Infrared saunas are great ways to keep this detox pathway open and clear. Remember that what goes in, must come out, so keep your water bottle close by, and watch the above link as needed.

Sunny D

15 million degrees and sizzling on the sun.

Acting in and through every atom, molecule and cell in the human body, the closest star to earth gives us, spring break, tan-lines and the ability to make our own vitamin D.

It’s been suggested by some researchers, that about  5–30 minutes of sun exposure between 10 AM and 3 PM at least twice a week to the face, arms, legs, or back without sunscreen usually provides sufficient vitamin D synthesis. The New Vitamin D Reference Values are a hot topic lately (as is sunscreen arguably).

Molecular Dominoes

Context, context, context of course. If your skin is super sensitive, or your serum levels are low this may not apply. But I can’t help but feel that the sun gets a bad rap sometimes, when it gives us so much. Mood can be medicine, and it sure knows how to make you feel warm and tingly, inside & out.

Our skin (the next organ of detox – post to come!), liver, and kidneys are set in motion to make Vitamin D by the whirling of the sun. Electrified ions that make up different atoms and elements of matter shake and dance and create life and all of the things life’s made of.

So in honour of the force that permeates, heats and animates the entire universe, salute the sun and go get outside today!

It seems unfathomable to me that, in a public health care system, something like KFC’s Double Down Sandwich can be available for mass consumption.* How is it okay to design, produce, market and sell a food product that is akin to having a grenade tossed into your left ventricle and then make it available to anyone who can find $4.76 in the couch cushions? Bacon suffocating in cheese between two slabs of breaded, deep fried chicken. It doesn’t come with a bun, thank goodness, carbs are so unhealthy. How about a defibrillator? At 540 calories, 32 grams of fat and 1800mg of sodium per sandwich, I thought this widow maker of a meal would easily beat most other contenders in an artery hardening competition. I was wrong. Astonishingly, there’s worse out there.

However I’m not here to vilify fast food restaurants by listing what I found. I figure if you have a pulse, you’re probably aware that such menu items are generally not good for you. I’ll leave my nutritional findings on the www where you may chose or chose not to look.

I will, however, strongly encourage you to have a look at this amazing article. Barbara Kaminsky, chairwoman of the BC Healthy Living Alliance and CEO of the B.C. & Yukon Canadian Cancer Society, does an excellent job of outlining our trajectory in British Columbia with respect to our health, or lack thereof, and the consequential crippling costs to our public healthcare system. It doesn’t look good, folks. We’re expecting almost half (HALF!!) of all government expenditure to go towards health spending by 2013 (2013!!!). Calm down. It’s reversible and preventable.

Kaminsky outlines sound political strategies to curb society’s indiscriminate gluttony. Strategies such as taxing trough-sized frozen sugar water containing enough high-fructose corn syrup to give a horse diabetes commonly sold at convenience stores. Which makes sense; our government heavily taxes tobacco because it’s use leads to poor health and directly increases health care costs, why not sugar? Other radical suggestions included exercising and eating right.

It’s important that we start acknowledging that the choices we make about what to stuff in our faces don’t only affect us as individuals. The newest generation learns from our example, the unborn generation will only be as healthy as the bodies from which it was conceived and we’re all forced to chip in to cover the medical bills resulting from our dietary indiscretions. Of course getting everyone to put down the Big Gulp and go for a jog isn’t going to be easy. But I have faith.

Remember when no one recycled? It wasn’t that long ago. Amazingly, in only half a generation we’ve been indoctrinated with a sense of responsibility when it comes to saving the planet. Which is awesome. How weird is it to throw a glass bottle in a regular garbage? Can you even do it? If you’re like me, you will stuff that bottle into your purse/murse/satchel and carry it around for hours until you find someplace appropriate to drop it off. If you live in Vancouver, that’s any surface capable of holding a bottle upright. This proves our capacity to change as individuals, reframe our attitudes and behaviours  for the purpose of benefiting ourselves, future generations and the greater good.

High five.

*I know it’s no longer available in Canada, I used it to highlight my point for lack of a more outrageous example. It was introduced last October for less than one month before ending it’s run. Over 1 million were sold during that time. The Double Down is still readily available in America.

beans to bladder

Urine is generally easier to liberate from our lips and from our lower regions, than the brown bulky stuff. Not as naughty a topic, but I will endeavor to make this post as vulgar and suggestive as possible.

Tinkle, is a streamlined erotic eruption of bodily wastes, held captive within a near bursting bladder, until a climactic flood of fluid surges forth (!) into a crescendo of ground-swelling release! (too much?) Let’s de-sexify…

Your kidneys are bean shaped (or are beans kidney shaped?), with one on each side of the body, and they are FULL of blood. Kidneys have a higher blood flow than your brain, liver, or heart, which means they’ll get major exposure to whatever happens to be floating around in it (the good and the bad). They reabsorb and redistribute 99% of that blood back to the body, and 0.1% will eventually become urine.

The physiology of these seemingly simple beans is just silly, and not really worth going into here. But in reference to the pee-making part: imagine you took all of your blood and decided to pass it through a sieve with holes so tiny, that it separated each of it’s constituents out. Simultaneously, the kidneys are deciding what it wants to keep and what it wants to whiz. Things to keep: water, electrolytes, some proteins. Things to lose: excess H2O & waste products from metabolism. Thus, another way we de-tox.

But this route does things a little differently from our bowels. With a little less “umph” and a little more “ahh”.

Mainly it’s concerned with removing the things from your blood that are small & soluble (can dissolve in water). Proteins (like some hormones) and blood cells are usually too big to get through the sieve, and mostly what gets dumped are the end products, or little cellular scraps, of metabolism. A ba-jillion chemical reactions happen as this filtered fluid navigates its way through the winding rivers of your kidney nephrons before settling in the calm cool pool of the bladder. The bladder is like a rubber water balloon. Flat and folded when empty and bulging and inflated when full. It connects down to the urethra, and under conscious control, we relieve ourselves.

All totally filled with Pee

What’s amazing about this whole process is that the body is using the kidneys to continuously auto-regulate our cellular activities and gage our happy little lives accordingly. Beyond making a piddle, the kidneys monitor blood pressure – a task usually entirely accredited to the heart. Remember the sieve? Remember all that blood flow? All of the blood going through those tiny little spaces creates a size-able and monitor-able amount of pressure. They can detect how low or high your BP (blood pressure) is, and then make hormones that tell the blood vessels and heart to either relax or buck up, or else to lose some H2O or retain it. Our bodies are ridiculous.

So the kidneys know what’s up.

Not only do they filter and drain wastes, they regulate pH balance, calcium metabolism, extracellular volume (the fluid outside of cells), vitamin D metabolism, and blood pressure while persistently eliminating foreign chemicals from the body. And if you wanna get crazy (which I do), in Traditional Chinese Medicine the kidneys are viewed as the foundation for all of the yin & yang energies in the body. ALL of them!

Water is what makes them the happiest. It’s their energetic soulmate of sorts. Too much will tire them out, and too little will leave them dry, so for most people 1-2 liters a day is about the right amount. Of course, the more you drink, the more you pee, the more you pee, the cooler you’ll be!. Pay attention to your thirst. Leisurely sips of warm water, away from food are the easiest for our tummies to integrate.

Was there enough smut in this post? Just to be sure…

When most people first learn that I study naturopathic medicine they immediately begin to fumble awkwardly with the following internal conflict: wanting to be genuinely open minded to my chosen profession while diplomatically expressing skepticism to my kind of voodoo medicine.  If you asked Google to explain naturopathic medicine it would give you about 1.6 million answers in 0.10 seconds. Not especially helpful. Please, allow me: go here or here if you’d truly like a comprehensive description.

herbal goodness

I suspect, however, that when people politely express interest in hearing an explanation what they really want to know is whether or not naturopathy is a pile of witch poop.

The answer to that question is no. Although most naturopaths do have an above average interest in poop.

If you walked into a naturopathic office and expected to find countless glass jars full near-extinct animals bits, bubbling cauldrons and pointy hats you’d probably be pretty disappointed. What you might find instead are jars full of weeds, boxes of long needles and bottles with terrible tasting stuff in them. You’d also find physicians with 8 years post secondary scientific and medical training in using said weeds, needles and pungent liquids. Naturopaths have a different approach and utilize different tools, that’s why they’re called alternative health care practitioners. They offer an alternative to the current model of healthcare.

From my perspective naturopathy doesn’t take away disease, it adds back the health you once enjoyed. The vast majority of us are born fully able to digest food, fight off nasty bugs, be free of pain, feel refreshed after 8 hours of sleep, maintain a healthy weight and feel happy most of the time. What a time that was! What happened to that?

Our lifestyles evolved too fast for our physiology to keep up. The burden of modern life attacks our weak link, which is different for everyone, and steals our super powers. Naturopathy aims to give us our super powers back by coming up with strategies that jive with who we are and how we live. There’s no magic pill, in fact naturopaths don’t use any magic at all, but contrary to what you might be thinking adding health back into your life doesn’t mean giving up on fun. It’s about finding balance between the things that are good for your body and the things that are good for your soul and recognizing that these may be completely opposite from one another.

Alternative paths to feeling your best are out there and the choice is entirely yours. Go ahead and let yourself feel warm and fuzzy about that

So in approaching my last 6 months of med school, you can imagine that things have gotten mighty hectic. To boot, the last draft I wrote to post today – was lost – due to interweb errors of some kind. The worst kind. The kind that make me question ever writing again…sigh However, my voice is only one among many, and I am super duper excited to begin sharing my small slice of the www with other writers & friends, to keep bringing interesting and informative blogi-ness to the masses! If you have articles you’d like to see on PWH, let me know and I’d love to share the…love! The more styles and substance the better.

First up, meet ND-to-be angele besner http://about.me/drangelebesner, who will be posting regularly on PWH (I hope!). She’s a babe, and a brainiac, and we share a deep love for balanced living & funny cat videos. Happy reading, reader!

But not all poops are evil! Yes some are rotten. They can drop in a little less or a little more than we’d like. They can show up at the worst of all times (what is it with broken toilets & bookstores?). They can glop and hurt and bleed and stink. But goodness gracious, when you’re lucky enough to be blessed with a good one – it sure can make you forget all the others.

I heart your guts.

It amazes me how separately we perform this single bodily function. Feces comes in many forms and each brand speaks volumes. In keeping with the theme of detox, I want to use the next few posts to outline our major organs of detoxification. We’re all walking around, full of crap. But when your elimination routes/garbage chutes are open and strong, you’re more free of the junk, and can better focus on other things – like life – and all of your favourite things to do in it.

Your gastrointestinal tract (GIT) has a mind of it’s own. Literally! This guy has a nervous system to himself – the enteric nervous system, sometimes referred to as “the second brain”. Rich in serotonin (a feel good neurotransmitter) and equipped with more neurons than there are in the spinal cord, the ENS is often largely ignored. It operates best off the grid from our conscious selves, and chooses to shine most brightly when we turn the go-go-go’ness of being human, off, and turn our “rest & digest” or Parasympathetic mode, on.

Your GIT is a tube that begins at your mouth & ends at your rectum, and its main function is to take what we put into our mouths, and process it into something that our circulatory system can use throughout the body. What you put in gets chewed up, slides down the esophagus, pulverized in the stomach, alkalinized in the small intestine, concentrated in the large intestine, and finally pushed out through the anus and into a ceramic bowl.

Poop mostly gets made in the large intestine, where its stored and acted upon by our intestinal bacteria. Here water is absorbed back into the body and out of the bulk, firming up our poop into something pass-able. When it’s feeling robust enough to stretch the rectum a touch – a reflex occurs (“gotta poop!”) and then we poop (hopefully). The bulk of what comes out is actually intestinal bacteria and a small amount of undigestible or absorbed food. So the greater size to our stool (more undigested fiber & bacteria), the more likely that reflex will happen and we’ll have a nice-looking, well-timed, congenial defecation.

the good guys, chilling on your colon wall

Millions of bacteria populate the large intestine. Most are helpful, but some can definitely harm. Beneficial or “Good” bacteria help us metabolize foods & chemicals, give us some bulk, and act as protective barrier to anything nasty trying to get through to our bloodstream. “Bad” bacteria excrete their own wastes (poop upon poop!) that can create a breeding ground for more of their kind and eventually to an imbalance in the gut flora (called dysbiosis). We create this imbalance by overusing antibiotics, or having a consistently crappy diet. Probiotics have taken off as of late because of their ability to re-seed our gut flora and level out the playing field – but in LARGE amounts – not the measly bits found in your yogurt unfortunately.

So some rules of thumb for a happy colon: BMs should happen at least 1-3 x per day. Generally, however many meals you’ve had today, you should form a BM for each of them tomorrow. They should be about the size, shape & consistency of a ripe banana and the colour should be a nice medium brown. There shouldn’t be blood, mucus, or large amounts of undigested food. It shouldn’t float, look greasy, or come out piece-y. You should feel good after, like you just said so long to a bunch of negative sh** in your life – because you did. Exercise! becuase your bowels won’t move unless you do. Eat more fiber & drink more water! It will make your poops larger, softer and easier to pass (grains, bran, fresh fruit (with skins), raw vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds). Also, removing your shirt, can help.

Skip to 1:05

JERRY: (watching George buttoning his shirt) What is this?

GEORGE: What, I’m puttin’ my shirt back on.

JERRY: (stares at George, incredulous) “Back on”? What was it doing off?

GEORGE: I take it off when I go to the, uh, y’know, to the “office”.

JERRY: (laughing) What for?

GEORGE: Well, it frees me up. No encumbrances.

JERRY: Unbuttoned, or all the way off?

GEORGE: ALL the way, baby!

JERRY: Of course.

I counted 23 references to poop in this post (24!) and it’s only left me wishing there were more. Taste the forbidden fruit. Try bringing up the subject of poop to someone you know this week, and experience the purifying gift of relief

So the holidays have stuffed you with sweets (and stuffing), and new years was a blurry brimful of endless bubbly and bite sized finger foods. You didn’t ask what was in that pocket of pastry being passed around, because frankly, whatever dipping sauce went along with it was delicious, and after your third glass of wine, such things become trivial. In the morning though, your vice gripped brain’s only solace seems to come in the form of whichever greasy spoon diner will feed you grilled cheese & bacon as a 3pm “breakfast”. An average of 4 hours of sleep per night x 7 days leaves you with a tickle in the back of your throat each morning, that if you ignore earnestly enough, seems to subside by noon. You’ve put on a few pounds, you’re sure, because you’ve sampled nearly every cookie/chocolate in earthly existence and your sitting to moving ratio is at about 20:1. Oh, Happy Holidays!

Half of my "breakfast"

BUT, Jan 1st brings a new year and a new YOU, amiright? NO cookies, no stuffing, no sugar, no coffee, no snacking, no drinking, no passing out with the lights on and waking up in your shoes, no all night dance parties, no boozy booze, no fun at all…and this is going to make you feel so. much. better.

In response to this sentiment, here is an excerpt from an open letter I wrote to the last detox program I did: “Dear Detox, Why do you SUCK?! Regrettably yours, – M.”

Because for me, it was the wrong time for the wrong cleanse, and I suffered horribly for it. It was snowing in Vancouver, and I had signed myself up for drinking 3 cold green smoothies a day and eating just fruit & veg though every cell in my body was screaming (and I think shivering) for a warm hearty soup and a coffee. I felt decent when I was done, but not really alive. My vitality was shot, and the moment it was over I resented the whole thing and was so sour that I believed I was indebted to myself to guzzle and eat whatever I wanted from thereon in – which I then did.

I so often get asked for advice around cleanses/detoxes, and it’s one of the hardest things to recommend because they are so individual and there are so many different strengths and flavours to try. Also, you really have to be ready to take out the trash, and then sort through the recycling, and then sweep and dust, and then watch how inevitably everything eventually just gets all dirtied up again. It can feel like a lot of work for not a lot of satisfying or sustainable reward. And then you’ll be mad at me. And then I’ll be sad

So before you ruin your year and your life, ask yourself a few questions first:

1) Why are you doing a cleanse? – Did somebody or some magazine article “should” you into doing it? Are you actually just hoping to lose some weight? Do you want to be less reliant on coffee/sugar/television to get through the day? Are you a sadomasochist? What are you getting out of the deal?

2) How deep do you want to dig? A detox can be dangerous territory if you unload too much too quickly, and especially if it’s your first time. Imagine dusting a room that’s never been dusted and neglecting to open a door or a window, so that the dust just dances around and then settles in somewhere else. In your body you’re dumping the ‘dust’ out of your cells, but if your liver and your bowels and your skin and your kidneys aren’t in good enough shape to handle removing it, it’ll stew about in the body and muck up all of your hard work.

3) How much work are you willing to do? For some people, cutting down to 1 can of coke a day from 4 – is a cleanse. For others, 2 weeks of eating apples (only apples) – is a cleanse. For the majority of folks, a pricey kit filled with goodness-knows-what-herbal-stuff from the local health store – is a cleanse. Each of these asks different things from your psyche, your physiology and your ability to function as a human being. Remember how you’re special? (see previous post) Your detox experience is likely going to be different from anyone elses. So ask yourself, what is realistic, reasonable, and attainable for you?

I know that the concept of “toxins” & “toxicity” may sound quaint, unscientific and unconvincing, but we know chemicals can damage the body. Whether insidious & cumulative like pesticides or xenobiotics from our food and environment, or as a swift moving & menacing wave of caustic sludge!

Maintaining a happy detoxification system is important for everyone and giving your body a little break from the constant harassment is an excellent idea. Even if you’re a marathon running vegan who only shops organic at whole foods, abstains from smoking, drinking, drugs, caffeine, sugar, or sinful pleasures of any kind, our modern environment can still tend to overload our lovely livers.

So in summary, give those Q’s a think and then talk to a ND about doing a detox right before wasting your time, money and sanity on something that may wind up making you miserable or apathetic towards them forever. And pat yourself on the back for stepping up to making your health a priority in 2011! If you’re into that sort of thing…

Now let’s decode…

"Natural Po-lice."

S, stands for subjective, which is everything you tell the them about how you’re feeling (eg.”I feel like someone is hitting me over the head with a 2×4″). O, stands for objective, which is everything the doc observes about you (eg. pain on palpation of the lateral side of head where patient has been hit with 2×4). A is for Assessment (this person has been hit over the head with a 2×4), and P is for Plan (refer for X-ray of head, control pain with anti-inflammatories, recommend abstaining from people wielding 2x4s).

Naturopathic medicine and homeopathic case taking especially, take a special interest in S, and more specifically to the Totality of your S. So while you may come to the Doctor to deal with your head pain, we also want to know a lot more. We might ask you how many bowel movements you have in a week, or how your sleep has been. Why do you think you keep getting hit over the head with 2x4s? Are there any other strange/seemingly unrelated symptoms you’ve been having besides the head pain? And so on…

When we do this, your full story begins to unravel. Maybe the real reason for your head pain is that you haven’t pooped in 2 weeks and all the muck that should be exiting your body is instead floating around your bloodstream and causing your headaches. So the more information we can collect, the better detectives we’ll be. Can you imagine Jimmy McNulty & Co. jumping on the stash before The Wire is up? You might make some quick busts, but you’re not gonna reel in the target without collecting all of the facts first. Unfortunately, more and more medical clinics are posting “one problem per visit” signs in their offices, but F the chain of command! NDs want more than 10 minutes to talk, so give us all the symptoms you got.

But know this, as tempting as it may be, NDs don’t necessarily want to treat your symptoms. This sounds weird, I know. We think symptoms are super important, but they’re generally just glimpses of what is actually the cause of your migraines, knee pain, or insomnia. So by identifying and then removing the underlying cause of these things (eg. food sensitivities, muscle imbalance, horror flicks before bed) we can actually eliminate the symptoms so they’re less likely to come back rather than suppressing them to stew inside the body until they return or express themselves in a new, and sometimes more serious, way.

So the last Naturopathic Principle is to Treat the Cause of Disease. And the only way we really get to know the cause, is to get to know you. This takes time and effort on both sides, and in truth, isn’t for everyone. NDs will help you on your way to real health, but we can’t do it for you, we can only guide you on your way. We have lots of curiously strong “natural” treatments to help alleviate your vexing ‘dis’-ease while uncovering The Cause. For example, this amusing video of the Charlie Brown Christmas Dance is, I think, a good place to start…

Happy Holidays everybody! I’m headed back East for some family fun but will be back in the new year with lots more Peas & Honey to come! It’s been such a joy so far and I want to thank everyone for their positive feedback and encouragement. Much love, dear readers!

The Canadian Medical Association has launched an initiative that I think is pretty neat-o. They’re planning on making some “transformational changes to our health care system” and asking for our feedback (*cough – Integrative Medicine! -* cough cough) as patients and people facing the upcoming challenges in health care. Canada’s Health Act may be getting a facelift, so how would you like it to look?

Give it a think, and give’m your voice!

http://www.healthcaretransformation.ca/en/

Special shout out to cephalexin (my antibiotic) for his fierce combat skills in the realm of dermal bacteria. He sure helped put out the fire, but he’s not the only reason why I’m typing with all 5 of my fingers again. While viciously tearing down bacterial cell walls and stopping their replication in its tracks – another often overshadowed disease fighting hero was also being deployed. Something bigger than a 500mg capsule, slower than an IV drip, and cheaper than your health plan! Its! The Healing Power of Nature! Conveniently, my next Naturopathic Principle to unveil…

ah, the wisdom of nature. http://yourcorpuschristi.blogspot.com/

This theory can often be presented in a bunch of different ways, some more new-agey and obscure than others. Personally, I like the image of “Supporting the Vital Force” (which is that thing homeopath’s go on about). The Healing Power of Nature and your Vital Force are super in love and kind of inseparable. They’re the reason why bracing a broken bone will help it build itself back together, and why the nicest thing to bring someone when they’re sick, is flowers. It’s also why ND’s focus on removing the obstacles to your health and recognize the importance of the vital force phenomenon. It’s the intangible dynamic drive that does more in life than keep you healthy, it keeps you happy

However, Nature comes with a caveat. If you stimulate your vital force, your vital force is going to stimulate you. So if your spirit is sore, your adrenals are sad, your nutrition is lousy, and you generally hate everything including your stupid body…the likelihood that your vital force is going to be strong and protectant, is pretty slim. There are lots of ways to keep your vital force primed (e.g freezy ocean dips, fulfilling relationships, adding butter to things) and playing defence against illness, instead of waiting until you’re sick and then gearing into attack mode. Modern medicine combats disease extremely well this way and it’s role is hugely important, but maybe, maybe? it can share the spotlight with your sensational self and give some credit to your personal superpowers of healing.

Dr. Henry Lindlahr’s book “Nature Cure” was published in 1913 and like The Organon, it’s another foundational piece of Naturopathic history. He describes this kind of awareness as a complete revolution to the art and science of living:

“It’s a system of building the entire being in harmony with the constructive principle in nature, on the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual planes of being”.

To me, “the constructive principle in nature” is one of the best descriptions for Vital Force there is. It speaks to the tenacity of nature, its intelligence, and its infinite perseverance to adapt and to mend. Like how a dying forest’s floor sprouts new buds of life, that “thing” that animates your body to move you through your day, is always working to maintain the best terrain it can for your health to flourish (metaphors! everywhere!). No Doctor “gets” you better, only YOU get you better, it’s just that all of us – even superheroes, even mother earth herself – gets to ask for help once in awhile. So give flowers and go swimming, and make room for nature in your body and in your life – and may the force be with you! (HA! so bad, so good).

My condition has compelled me to consider the Naturopathic principle “Treat the Whole Person” because currently I am at odds with myself and wanting to surgically remove my hand at the expense of the rest of my body. Just one quick chop, and see ya later distal phalanx! Although I’m in unabated pain with each pressing of this keyboard, each undressing of my raincoat, each respiration of my lungs…I haven’t reached the point of mutilation, yet.

Armless Adventures from http://yourcorpuschristi.blogspot.com/

Because deep down, hidden beneath the throbbing pain, I know that I am more than just my finger. My finger is attached to a hand, with 4 other fingers working extra hard to compensate for their fallen friend. My hand is attached to an arm, which is attached to a torso, which contains my heart – faithfully beating blood 72 times a minute to the site of the inferno. My brain rests atop, perceiving the pulsing beat in my fingertip as my nervous system signals “PAIN” with flashing lights and fireworks igniting up my spinal cord. Finally my immune system works tirelessly around the clock to contain the mess this microbe has made while maintaining a level of health that still gets me up and out the door in the morning.

Treating the whole means observing more than just my finger pain. It means that instead of cutting the problem out or zapping it where it lays, I want to recognize the intelligent organization of my body, then strengthen it. Nature (a community of which you are a card-carrying life member) builds stuff to function optimally based on its structure. From DNA to opposable thumbs, each part of your body is purposeful, dependent, and inseparable from one another.

You are more than your body. You are more than your mind. Dare I say that YOU are a one-of-a-kind human being with unique physical, mental, emotional, genetic, environmental and social contributions that create everything you are. Your mama was right – you are special! Like a caterpillar into a butterfly, the way you digest food is as unique as the way it forms into poop and decides whether to sink or float in the toilet bowl. Illnesses are diverse and their treatment protocols should be too. Hippocrates, some ridiculously long time ago summed it up as:

“It’s far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has.”

My onychocryptosis is not the same as your onychocryptosis. Because you don’t have my nervous system – and if you did, you’d probably be brave enough to get this thing lanced already. In the meantime my individualized treatment involves taking my antibiotics (gasp!), alternating them with my probiotics (huh?), boosting my immune system naturopathically, and diligently observering my right to sulk….works for me!

My 4th grade teacher Mrs Heffler inspired me to want nothing more than be a 4th grade teacher myself. Teaching, she made abundantly clear, was about as fun and rewarding as it gets for a grown up. If knowledge is power, it’s also story telling and silly voices and laughter and awe and profundity and devotion and a mutual enhancement of mind for both student and teacher. I was young (and a total teacher’s pet) but I was pretty much sold.

Until 8 grades later, I got sick. Nothing too huge, but a lil’ meningitis scare in high school was enough to induce auditory hallucinations that whispered sweet nothings of becoming a Doctor in my ear. I remember getting blasted with the worst headache of my life, not being able to move my neck, and that these signs would illicit serious and concerned looks from the Doc followed by some hurried directives to my mom and the attendees. I blocked a lot of that hospital experience out I think, but whats stayed super clear is the nurse that came to my house everyday afterwards to admin my IV antibiotics. She was rad – as in radiant! luminous! A ray of GD light! I had an hour everyday with her to talk about what happened to me, what meningitis was, what kind I had, and what the treatments were aiming to do. I feel now that it was the Doc who probably saved my life, but it was that nurse who brought me back to life. So I became convinced that I wanted to work in healthcare and was understanding that teaching was as inseparable to recovery as were the drugs.

“Between two evils, choose neither. Between two goods, choose both.”

I choose both! The latin root of Doctor (doctoris) literally translates into teacher, so really, neither dream had to die. Now I get to teach my patients one-on-one about the healing power of nature and our individual inherent capacity to heal. For instance, how our body turns an open wound into a scar which eventually regenerates into brand new skin, without our conscious selves ever being the wiser.

Sharing what I’ve learned about the body with my patients in an accessible way encourages a two-way responsibility and I think helps things happening in the body feel more real. By far my favourite moment of the past 4 years of school and/or clinic was teaching an 8 year old boy how to find his radial pulse and that it was an easy and fun place to listen to his heart beat. Placing his three little sticky fingers, covered in magic marker on his wrist and holding it there with him I witnessed the most meaningful moment in my professional life so far. His eyes lit up, his pulse drummed a little louder, and he thrillingly proclaimed that that was something he felt get faster in gym class My own heart nearly exploded.

Mark Twain warned not to let school intefere with your education. So here’s a big shout out to all the teachers from the school of life – sisters, friends, kitties, family, loves, songs, sunsets, failures, successes, 8 year old boys and pints of ice cream. The roles of teacher and student are turned around on us indefinitely and NDs aim to be just one of the twists involved in strengthening your vital force – that thing that makes you, you. The healthy you. NOW, imagine me saying all of this in a silly voice…

In an ideal world people would visit their doctor before they got sick. Much like bringing your car in for an oil change before it implodes mid-commute, an ND will help you lay down the basics of a healthy lifestyle so that your body is less likely to spontaneously combust (“Ablaze!”). NDs will look at what conditions you may be more at risk of getting down the road and then tailor those suggestions specifically to your needs. There are continuums of health. You don’t generally go from roaring engine to rusty radiator overnight. We wanna catch things early and optimize what is running smoothly already. Think of it like coming in for an oil change and upon leaving we’ll have just seriously pimped your ride.

Pimp my Ride (slash bowel movements)?

Truthfully, the word ‘Prevention’ can raise a minor rebellion within even me. It seems to evoke the wisdom I’d hear from a parent/teacher before half-knowingly doing something foolish and then hearing “didn’t I tell you?” in a tone so shrewd I’d spit through my two front teeth (if I only knew how to). Why do I eat a pint of ice cream before bed when I know I’ll have a tummy ache all night? I mean, I know better, but really it’s not until I feel better by removing the pint before bed that the lesson seems to stick, and often, I just don’t want to do that. This brings me to an Eckhart Tolle quote (would this be an alternative health blog without one?):

“Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally.”

In the case of the ice cream scenario, given those options to work with - thankfully – I went with change slash removal (sad but true. No more pints before bed). However tempting as it may be to choose bad ass option 3 and accept chronic nocturnal gut rot for 20 minutes of cool creamy bliss, I am under the suspicion that after a few too many of these poor decisions one gets swiftly swept out of the gene pool. Accepting what is is awesome, unless you’re just being an idiot (harsh?).

So Naturopathic Medicine will support you through making these kinds of choices while always keeping Prevention in mind. If natural selection exists (see ‘Darwin’s Black Box’) and you’re reading my blog, then I wholeheartedly hope to see your genetic code carry through to the future So please, think prevention, and if not, let a ND think it for you!

Naturopathic Medicine also honours some principles that attempt to keep patient care as pristine as possible. They appear time and time again throughout school and are even written along the borders of our charting paper in clinic as a constant reminder of our purpose in each patient visit. I attempted at first to fit them all into one post, but I am acutely aware of the reality that reading the unrelenting ramblings of the blogopshere (my mac tells me this is not a word) is not megafun (also not a word). So I’ve decided to split them up and give each one the love and attention they so deeply deserve.

Without further ado…

1. First Do no Harm – To me this means choosing methods of healing or “medicines” that eliminate or reduce the risk of any harmful side effects.

A relevant example for my presumed reader demographic is the popular use of tylenol to treat headaches and the generally debilitating pain involved in PAD (post alcohol depression – aka hangovers). As the fashionable fb status touts on numerous Sunday mornings that so and so is “In need of a liver transplant”, binge drinking hurts liver cells. Likewise, tylenol (acetaminophen) is one of the most toxic compounds you could introduce to your long-suffering liver. While being metabolized it stresses out liver cells by creating a highly reactive molecule in the process that needs to be detoxified by coupling it to another molecule called glutathione (a major antioxidant produced by the body). So your glutathione concentrations drop each time you take it and glutathione is exactly what you need to help flush out and detoxify that bottle of Sailor Jerry’s you just devoured. This is harm, and it makes your sad liver become your angry liver, and your angry liver is inevitably going to lead to more headaches.

Does he look pissed or what?

So when treating any condition you want to make sure you’re not making that condition worse or causing a whole other mess all together. The next ND principle I’ll write about will be Prevention. So that hopefully the next time you reach for a whole bottle of sailor jerry’s, you might think about only drinking 1/2 the bottle instead

No Harm done here Kenny Powers…work drugs.

Crystalogy 101 is NOT a Naturopathic major. Though they're awfully pretty...

This is where I go to school: www.binm.org. It’s one of 2 medical programs in Canada (and a handful in the states) to be accredited by The Council on Naturopathic Medical Education (CNME) which is the only government-recognized accrediting body for naturopathic medical schools in North America. I state this first because it’s a natural reflex as a ND student to get on the defence about our education. No, I do not take online classes from the “School of Holistic Learning” or “The College for Nutrition and Crystal Therapies” and I don’t get a diploma in the mail in 6 weeks. I sit on my butt with 35 of my peers for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 4 (interminable) years, coupled by 2 years of playing doctor in a student teaching clinic for umpteen hours, on top of over a hundred hours of internship with Doctors and healthcare practitioners. Look – we learn a ton of shiz. The sciences are all there (no need to list them – check out ‘curriculum’ on binm.org) but the things that make us special are homeopathy (schmomeopathy?), traditional chinese medicine (acupuncture!), botanical (plant) medicine, psychology & counselling, manipulation (mini chiropractic cracks), a ton of nutritional education, and really, oodles more. These are each blogs in themselves (and will be!) but for now, that’s a decent overview of what’s in our toolbox.

There exist professions that specialize in each of these (eg. homeopath, nutritionist, counsellor), but naturopathic medicine is all of them – plus and minus some. No ND is quite like the other. The art of this medicine is to be able to pick what colours to paint with, and our pallet is a spectrum of double rainbows (ha!). Yes, we preach prevention and lifestyle change and think organic food is fab but what I think the best thing about us is our ability to choose our weapons. Menstrual cramps? We’re not going to default you on birth control for the rest of your life. One ND might teach you about how herbs can relax the muscles of your uterus.  Another might show you how castor oil packs soothe and smooth out hormone imbalance and your tummy spasms. Another could assess your diet and realize that maybe a little more Magnesium or B vitamins could address things cellularly. And what’s especially cool about all of this is that you have a choice, you have a voice and you have options in your healing process.

A soon-to-be-blog will lay down the 6 principles of naturopathic medicine in a little more detail. Like the word of Gaia these were blasted onto tablets of stone from a mountaintop and act as the commandments of care for NDs worldwide (not actually true). But they are what sets us apart and joins us together as medical doctors and health care practitioners. NDs offer alternatives, empathy and a chance to hear your health story in full. Your stomach pain and your pain-in-the-ass partner are both equally important (and probably connected). Exercise your right to more than one medical problem and more than 15 minutes in an appointment with your doctor. Go Naturopathic!

So without further ado…meet your adrenals! Two friendly folks atop each kidney and snuggled cozily within a fibrous and fatty cushion. Each is composed of a cortex (outer layer) and a medulla (inner core) with both areas responsible for spewing out different bodily hormones and participating in the harmonious gong show that is your endocrine system.

Aren't they cute?

Now, the endocrine system is only a slightly more ambiguous gadget than adrenal glands themselves, and especially to a first year ND Marisa. So don’t be ashamed (nor will I) if you need a lil refresher on just what hormones are and just how they work…

Your endocrine system is a stupidly complex and brilliantly orchestrated symphony of chemical messengers that communicate throughout your entire body. Some of these guys you’ve definitely heard of before. Some are steroidal (like estrogen and testosterone) and others are peptides (their A-lister is probably insulin, a kiiinda important regulator of blood sugar). This whole crew of hormonal homeys are called into action in response to various stimuli, are secreted into the blood, and then pummel towards their destiny at effector cells to do little things like, oh, orgasm? (among others).

Ok, so back to adrenals…cortex + medulla = hormone making machine. Specifically, a stress hormone making machine. Think of all the sensations that stress creates within you. Heart starts racing, skin begins to flush, pupils dilate, and any chance of a satisfying poop has all but receded. This is largely because of the adrenal medullary hormones epinephrine (better known as adrenaline) & norepinephrine literally cascading throughout your cells.

Stress can be good Stress can be bad Basically its up to you. Adrenal hormone release is promoted by other hormones sent down from your hypothalamus (aka your BRAIN! – just a gentle reminder of your inalienable mind-body connection). Your steadfast adrenals will keep making the hormones you need, when you need’em, as long as you need’em, until it just can’t make’em no more. And theres your trouble…

Take cortisol. This guy gets a bad rap for lotsa things. Made in the adrenal cortex he’ll activate cell receptor sites all over the body. He has extremely diverse effects, but mainly he’ll suppress your immune function and cool off any sites of active inflammation. Cortisol helps provide the body with an internal resistance to stressors and under normal conditions will help your body adapt to being hassled by your jerk-face boss. However, when being chased by a fire breathing dragon a dramatically higher output of cortisol will be released to help the body handle the crisis. So if you keep encountering fire-breathing dragons or letting your boss bully you around, your adrenals are going to be sad. They’re going to be weak and overworked, and when push comes to shove and you need them to help you out of your eczema, or your cardiovascular disease, or even your depression – they’re not going to be left with much love to give.

So in conclusion, be kind to these incredibly hard working lil fellas. There are lots of great ways to prevent adrenal burn-out and keep them healthy and happy. Mainly, don’t sweat the small stuff so much, and knowing they exist is a start

The tragic story of one man's adrenal burnout.

“The look” of unintelligible voo-doo nonsense I now know so well is one I remembering giving to my first year homeopathy teacher fairly aggressively.  How could something with no traceable amount of a substance possibly create any kind of physiological response?

Following several hours of lecture and debate the best answer I got in the end was that “it just does”. And started to feel a little queasy…

This was starting to feel like an enormous act of faith. Instantly I built up all the walls around me that I’d used in the past to defend against previous attempts at conversions to christendom. Was naturopathic school just a strange cult disguised as a medical school, recruiting and converting missionaries for its cause? How could I accept such a thing? My little bit of queasy was rapidly evolving into full blown nausea…

So I decided that to calm my tummy the best thing I could do was turn to Samuel Hahnemann’s “The Organon of Medicine”. Good ol’ Hahnemann.  The “ founding father” of homeopathy, so I’d been told.  The Organon is the first published work proclaiming the good word of medical indoctrination.  Published in 1810 and  segmented like psalms, it even reads like a bible. This wasn’t easing my concerns… and then, like the beauty of King Solomon’s finest verse, it began with: “The physician’s highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy-to heal”.

With that I allowed my guard to drop, just a little bit. It was as if he’d read my mind before I knew I was even thinking it. Before I could turn a single page I needed to confront why I was resisting homeopathy in the first place. Hahnemann reminded me that the whole reason I was investigating this “pseudoscience” was solely for the future good of my patients, and not so I could build another brick wall of reductionist thinking wrought with extreme and extensive criticism (something a good undergraduate education excels at indoctrinating). There is a place for facts and a place for faith, and here I was in the abyss.

Written 200 years ago, this call to action is still relevant today.  And this is not a harp on conventional medical doctors (Hahnemann was an MD himself), this is a call to any and all whose calling has brought them towards enabling true health in a person instead of ego and accolades. However, in context poor Hahnemann was dealing with the fire and fury of his colleagues at the time. The Organon introduced in the long story of man’s struggle against disease a successful system of medicinal therapy that radically contrasted everything previously taught and practiced. Even 2 centuries later, conventional medicine has been unable to assimilate his ideas or refute them.  When you can’t understand something the fear of the unknown will often compel you to defend your pride with ridicule, hence, “Quackery”, or the always efficacious “yo mama”.

So he won me over with the simplicity of his statements. In medical school we learn how to be detectives when it comes to disease. Most of our searching is an endeavour to find the label for the pathology, cross our fingers we nailed it, and let our trusty textbook treatment protocols do the work. This labeling of illness is hardly an ideal form of treatment, but it’s what doctors are trained to do so they can compartmentalize their knowledge and validate treatments in the short time there is do so, while also creating a common language and communication between health care providers. This is a good thing of course, but what Hahnemann is suggesting is that for true healing (not just the masking of symptoms) to take place, we must go beyond the label. The practice of medicine is of course a science, but also an art. We all have have a tendency to stop at science and forget that a human being is more than the sum of its parts.

“A single symptom is not more the whole disease than a single foot a whole man”.

So my turning tummy was starting to settle. Which got me thinking…if the churning in my stomach could be activated and arrested by changing the state of my mind, why wouldn’t another subtle energetic force (a thought) produce other bodily responses? Something as (arguably) intangible as nausea from a perturbing thought can be similarly compared to a manget’s invisible pull, or an intention’s cascade of attraction.

Bruce Lipton PhD. is a the face of the epi-genetics movement and he sums up much of the disparate ideas around health, quantum physics and in a roundabout way, the major principles of homeopathy. He does this rather eloquently in about 8 minutes – here .

Mumbo jumbo? What do ya think?