Rachel's Blogs
Another Iron Question For Us All
What level of Serum Ferritin represents 'empty'? As in complete depletion of iron stores? Is it any value below the minimum of the reference range? e.g. < 30 mcg/L Or does the bottom of the reference range allow for a buffer and 'empty' is substantially lower than...
Everyday Q&As – HPA and Sleep Disorders
Practitioner: I haven't yet done the MasterCourse II in Thyroid & Adrenal Diagnostics but I want to better understand the HPA of that patient we discussed with significant sleep disorders. Waking blood? Saliva? Urine? Which one? Rachel: Well, you've heard me say...
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Talking Turkey About My Pet Hate
Let's talk turkey about our pharmaceutical Pet Hates, mine are Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs). They irk me more than any other drug class. It's not entirely rational. Let's face it, they have some stiff competition but for some reason, in my mind, they almost always...
No. 1 If You Are a Parent, Get Yourself a Team
Hear Hear...on all levels, right. But this is actually the first recommendation of an easy to read patient resource for families dealing with adolescent depression, that you and your patients can access here. As lovely as the picture above makes parenting look, the...
ACNEM Training Revamp
My second speaking gig for 2019 is approaching at a vertigo-inducing speed (hey...wait..someone stole January??), heading to Hobart as part of the NEW primary training course that ACNEM have created and will be rolling out this year around the country. I am really...
Let There Be No Bad Blood(s) Between Us
So you've gone to all the effort. Be that writing referral letters suggesting some pathology investigations might be warranted or you've coached your patients endlessly to get copies of ones done elsewhere so that you may be privy to their findings. Worse still,...
Wind: Could You Define Excessive?
While we're on the topic...I tend to think, that as good as we are at asking a lot about a patient's health, we can always do better. One of the classic pitfalls for practitioners is having to rely so much on patient self-reporting: Is your period heavy,moderate or...
An Eye for An Eye &…A Stool for A Stool
How long? How long must we sing this song? I'm feeling a bit 80s anthemic and righteous. It turns out that patients' bowel movements could be improved by using a foot stool?!! Who said that?? Only every naturopath, ever. Right? But now medical researchers...
Let’s Get Real (& Up to date!) About Food Allergies and Intolerances
Remember the good old days when we understood everything about food allergies and life was simple? IgE was the culprit - short and sweet - which made patient assessment (SPT) & management (never eat this again, never feed it to your infants if you don't...
Rethink the Ink?
Virginal skin, as my sister calls it, is on the endangered list. She also predicts that as a result, it will be a highly sort after commodity in the future and I agree but our reasons are a little different. Hers are aesthetic and mine are well, health-based. I...
Beware the Silent ‘M’
Did you read something fabulously non-work related over the break? I did. Basically opening any book by Isabelle Allende evokes a Pavlovian relaxation reflex in me - ok admittedly some salivation as well! Then I decided to seamlessly segue into some work-related...
Rachel has left the building…
Relax, no one is leaving RAN central - they've deadlocked all the doors (!) but I’ve left another online abode I built and time-shared in last year….The Worm Whisperer…which is exclusively focused on educating the public about worms. Not the compost ones, but...
Keen to Catch the Early Worm in 2019?
Sheesh...who turned down the music and turned on all the lights...are the holidays seriously over??! That’s right, pack away the Christmas tree (somehow), drag yourself away from your (endless tennis/cricket watching) meditation practice and start looking at...
Oh No…Not Her Again!!
Oh no, it's her again 🙁 I mean the chick in the photostock image not the other 'her', me. I know. It's the end of another mammoth year, you're tired, worn out, used-up all your brain-power quota (a little projection?) and I can hear you begging for mercy when I start...
All I Want for Christmas…Is Some Recognition & Respect
Yes them's fightin' words. It's 6 days til Christmas and we've all got way too many things to do before Santa visits, right? But this will take you 1 minute and takes precedence over finding excuses not to attend Christmas parties, half-crazed-mad present...
Are You a Quercetin Queen (or King)?
Did you and all your patients survive Spring? Have you had a chance to restock the shelves with all the big-gun-Quercetin-products for the next allergy onslaught...or maybe for patients presenting with other conditions that respond well to this, like leaky gut,...
Someone’s Lost Might Be Your Found!
As Britney so famously put it, 'Oops, I did it again!' I remember the actions on my to do list but not the intended recipients! D.O.H. I was talking with a practitioner the other day who lamented that she had never really learnt about stats nor how to assess...
Melatonin…Making Sleep Not Babies?!
Never say never, right. Back in my old uni teaching days, I scorned the very notion of treating someone with 'actual melatonin'. Always in favour of upstream approaches over downstream, I was keen instead to give patients the 'ingredients & cofactors' so they...
Should We Tell Them About The Sugar?
Well who'd have thunk?! I had no idea cigarettes contain sugar and turns out about 95% of smokers don't either, according to this recently published article! Now while we're not purporting this is going to be of caloric significance enough to prove a deal-breaker for...
Don’t miss out…there’s one week left!
Don’t find yourself sad come November 15th when we close applications for Group Mentoring in 2019!! You still have a week left to to jump in! (if you haven’t already) and make this investment in building your incredible naturopathic skill-set and subsequently, your...
Spotting an ‘Off’ Claim in Record Time
While this ABC article is written for the public it's a great checklist to have written up somewhere to prevent against placing your confidence in the wrong sources of info. Just recently, I had a practitioner ask about the 'risks' of B12 dosing...& while B12 is...
Ready, Aim…Don’t Fire!
Oral sex. There I said it. Last month when I talked about Helicobacter pylori and where people might 'catch' this - if they didn't inherit the little critter from their mum or family as an infant - we thankfully were able to rule out kissing as a source of...
Antidepressant Withdrawal is a Worryingly ‘Normal’ (Severely) Abnormal Experience
Finally a systematic review puts paid to the nonsense that 'withdrawal from antidepressants' is problematic only for a few, is 'mild' & 'lasts only 1-2 weeks' with no treatment necessary other than reassurance, which is still being perpetuated by current...