Rachel's Blogs
Ever Met A Set Of Thyroid Results You Didn’t Like?
Ever met a set of thyroid results you didn't like? Because you couldn't work them out? Because they defied your expectations, & therefore your understanding, of how they should look in this patient given their weight, nutrition, meds, diagnoses? Yeah - me too. In...
Thyroid Health in a Time of (& after) COVID
Did you know that your thyroid expresses more ACE 2 receptors than your lungs? So while there is nothing new about the potential for a virus (or indeed even a vaccine against a virus) to impact thyroid form and function, the particular predilection this recent virus...
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We’ve Got Spots!
Following a huge co-ordination and curation effort we have finally confirmed all of our group mentoring positions for 2018 EXCEPT: Tuesday 10.30am (AEST) Group has 3 positions left!** Tuesday 1pm (AEST) Group has 1 position left! Wednesday 10.30am Group has 3...
Two Women Over 70 Walk Into A Room…
No this is not a joke. The room they enter happens to be the clinic space of a practitioner I mentor. The older women are friends, both originally from the UK and they sit in on one another's consultations sharing many of the same experiences: grief over loved ones...
![It’s Landed At Last! Aka ‘Kids’ Guts Can Be Mental’ [ft. Threadworm] Recording](https://rachelarthur.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Paediatric-Digestive-Issues-510x510.jpg)
It’s Landed At Last! Aka ‘Kids’ Guts Can Be Mental’ [ft. Threadworm] Recording
Standing at the podium, I looked down at my notes & slowly read out the title of my presentation to the hundreds of people attending, 'Paediatric Digestive Issues & Neurocognitive Abnormalities' and briefly froze thinking, Holy Heck (!) this is someone else's...
Sunshine Doesn’t Come In A Capsule..Last Time I Checked
Have you been a bit vitamin D trigger happy? Does a patient's low blood 25(OH)D test result have you reaching for a vitamin D supplement like the rest of us? Yes...you might need to listen up then. Sunshine doesn't come in a bottle. That's right, if your patient's...
Is there an integrative doctor in the house?
We’ve got a Brand New Specialist Mentoring Group starting up in 2018! This new 1hr our monthly online meet up with like minded doctors across the globe to go over cases, offers us an opportunity to meet your mentoring needs in the best way possible and truly accelerate your knowledge and skills in integrative medicine.
This Is Not Going Away
PPIs are one of the prescribed medications in Australia but the concerns are escalating. Not just from a naturopathic or nutritional perspective regarding the extraordinary concept of lowering gastric HCl by approx. 80% but much much more worrying concerns. I talked...
Could it be Reflux?
Chronic coughs, rhinitis, postnasal drip or even asthma? Have you ruled out silent reflux? Aka laryngopharyngeal reflux. Patients experiencing silent reflux don't present with heartburn or any typical GORD features but ultimately suffer from a similar failure...
This is the Threadworm Answer You’ve Been Asking About..I repeat
I had the privilege of presenting at the Integria GIT Symposium last weekend. For those of you who attended, you've gone back to your clinic with a bunch of new ideas and inspiration I hope...oh and a new respect, terror and watchfulness for threadworm thanks to...
Can You Help Me Out Here?
Can you help me out here? My memory has failed me. Someone, somewhere (Mel? Syd? Auckland? Online during a mentoring session? In a Mullumbimby supermarket?!), in the past month asked me for this paper documenting the increased pain perception reported by subjects...
The Vindication Vibes
I've been known to give calcium more attention than most and now I feel vindicated. Serum calcium, of course is not a reflection of your calcium intake, calcium losses nor overall calcium status. In this regard it is totally useless. But my fixation is about what...
It Won’t Happen Overnight but it Will Happen
...Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) that is! That's the ad we really need broadcast on prime time tv. On par with osteoporosis and other conditions that 'seemingly appear out of nowhere' in people's 60s and beyond, there's a potent combination of ignorance (patients) and...
Hypothyroid Without a Trace?
Another young female presents in my clinic with a newly diagnosed thyroid cancer and has been recommended urgent thyroidectomy. Her story is increasingly common. If you're not seeing it in your clinic, you will, because thyroid cancer, and almost exclusively...
We Have A Winner… Among Many!
Last week I threw down a challenge. Following on from the ruffling of many feathers regarding Jason Hawrelak's report that dietary saturated fat increases uptake of endotoxins from the gut, I provided his reference list in support of this claim, effectively saying,...
Don’t get me started …
Ever wondered where on earth (or Mars?!) I came from? As much as I can't keep quiet on some topics, my personal journey to here has been a bit of closed book to many. Recently during an interview with Andrew Whitfield-Cook from FxMedicine, which was...
Does Saturated Fat Increase the Uptake of Endotoxins?
In an ASLM Tweet I shared this weekend, I mentioned our own 'Gut Guru', Jason Hawrelak reported dietary saturated fat (including coconut oil) increases GIT endotoxin uptake and boy did that stir the pot! The social media switchboard lit up! It's ok I know there isn't...
1 Egg, 1 Banana
I've been travelling a lot for work lately, so in my absence my teens have been under the influence of others and as a result they've returned with new & improved habits. This one is gold: 1 egg + 1 banana beat egg & add to mashed banana pour into a hot pan,...
Are you feeling your AGE?
Ever got to the end of a day or a week and felt like this? Or woken up to find your skin looking like this?! Just quietly, me too. When my son was about 3 he was sitting in the back of my car with my mum (she would have been in her early 70s) and he asked how people...
It’s the Additives, Stupid!
Ever wondered what Dr George Lundberg, professor of medicine, past editor of JAMA and current editor in chief of Medscape thinks about the relationship between food additives, your digestive health and your overall mortality? Me neither!! But this is worth the 7 mins!...
Two Half-Price Tickets to Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine!
One of the many perks of my job is getting to attend the wonderful conferences I am lucky enough to speak at ... and something even more special right now and totally unexpected, is that I have been given the opportunity to share half price (!) ASLM tickets with two...
The Naturopaths are Coming!
Scrolling through the extensive list of speakers for the upcoming Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine conference, I see many familiar names and faces … impressive researchers, academics, health specialists, writers, business leaders … and I’m just talking about...
Is This You?
When I was studying my undergraduate I sat at the front of the class, especially for the medical sciences. My chemistry lecturer tried to talk me into transferring to chemistry. My biochemistry lecturer tried to convince me to become a biochemist. But what I loved...