How Many Hats Have You Worn Already This Week?

 

My current count is about 13. Lucky for some? Patient advocate, referral point, primary prescribing practitioner, behavioural change motivator, wise business counsel, good empathetic listener, fearless myth buster, researcher, head chef to a group of nats…that’s the toughest hat right there, right?! 🤣 

While there is a concern in naturopathy and integrative health that we increase our own load due to our eclecticism – I see this as a strength & part of the appeal.

But it does warrant regular review.

I semi-regularly cry-out, “I just want a normal job, you know 9-5, clock on, clock off.”  To which anyone who knows me tends to drop to the floor in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.  They’re right of course, I do not have the temperament or the ability to be sufficiently single-minded to work at Coles. And the reality is I do feel privileged and satiated by wearing all my different hats bar just a couple…but this is par for the course and part of the important reflective process we should all continually undertake in our careers: Which hat no longer fits me?  Which gives me a bit of headache?  We can then re-orient our work and our businesses in a way that tries to reduce, or remove altogether, our time spent in these roles.

“I am completely over giving 101 dietary advice!”  I wish I had a holiday for every time I’ve heard a nat with more than 10 yrs experience say that!

“Oh the never ending story of answering my inbox!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” is another one on high rotation in our ranks.

These ‘lost loves’ and potential disproportionate time wasters should never be ignored & simply endured but should instead be met…head on.  The more I hear about different practice models & observe my own business over 20+years, the more I can see that when a practitioner is losing too much time or job satisfaction, wearing some of these hats that no longer fit, the less financial growth and sustainability their practice model holds. I know…them’s fighting words!  Anyway, I’ll be talking about this and the delicate balance of our mild super-powers V our soft underbelly at Vicherbs monthly meet-up Sept 26th if you live in Melbourne and want to come along the join in the conversation.  I think it’s a good one that we need to keep having. 

2020 Group Mentoring Program Applications Open in October!

The Group Mentoring program provides integrative nutrition practitioners with monthly sessions of the most accelerated form of post-graduate education and clinically relevant skill development. Join this online 12 month program of like minded professionals and work with Rachel through real clinical cases and questions presented by each member in a collegiate setting.  If you know you want in for next year already, get ahead of the queue and email us: [email protected]

“Rachel’s mentor program is something I look forward to each month and I feel very privileged to be one of her mentees (or mintees as she likes to call us). Each session is action packed with so much information shared that my brain gets a lot of dopamine hits! Rachel has a rare talent of teaching in a way that makes the most complicated information easy to understand, and even fun! The learning doesn’t stop after each mentor session. The group, including Rachel, will share research and continue to follow the cases shared. Amazing value for money. I know this is something I will want to do my whole career…there is always something more to be learned.”

VINKA WONG | Clinical Nutritionist, New Zealand

 

When the Body Attacks the Mind

 

Following an important weekend of discussing mental health from a more balanced perspective (that’s my new less provocative term for ‘integrative’ or dare I even mumble…holistic) in Perth for ACNEM, I remain alert but not alarmed of how much is still to be revealed in this area.   Recently, for example, in our mental health dedicated mentoring group, we discussed a case of a somewhat atypical schizophrenia presentation in a middle-age female migrant.  Fortunately, I co-chair these sessions with an incredible clinical psychologist who was quick to pick up that no CNS auto-antibodies had been tested, and given the peculiarities of the case they should have. This is a relatively new area, in terms of more mainstream acceptance of this as a differential in some psychiatric presentations and provision of these tests now through mainstream labs, but it would appear it is far from common knowledge.   Then I read this brilliant article and…well I think we all need to read it.  Here are some snippets…

Scientists had previously noted that certain autoimmune diseases, such as lupus, were associated with psychosis. And they’d begun to suspect that some infections might, by activating the immune system, contribute to psychiatric conditions. But Dalmau provided meticulous proof that the immune system could attack the brain. The development of a test for the disorder, and the fact that very sick patients could recover with treatment, prompted a wave of interest in autoimmune conditions of the central nervous system. In total, scientists have identified about two dozen others—including dementia-like conditions, epilepsies, and a Parkinson’s-like “stiff person” syndrome—and many experts suspect that more exist…

Robert Yolken, a scientist at Johns Hopkins University, estimates that about one-third of schizophrenics show signs of immune activation (though he adds that this could be related to other factors, such as smoking and obesity). And autoimmune diseases are more common among schizophrenics and their immediate families than among the general population, which could hint at a shared genetic vulnerability.”

There are some potent practical take-homes in this article embedded especially within the story of an 11-year-old boy who was admitted to hospital with profound psychiatric features – initially misdiagnosed and managed as BPAD and later found to have autoimmune encephalitis.  First and foremost: psychiatric conditions develop gradually.  When there is an acute onset in the absence of an acute trauma – the possibility of a biological (esp autoimmune) driver should be elevated in your differentials. And the mother of this boy, now aged 21 and having undergone 5 relapses and recoveries in between, virtually echoes the thoughts and findings of Carl Pfeiffer half a century ago, when she says, “Too often, psychosis is seen as the disease itself but psychosis is like a fever, it’s a symptom of a lot of different illnesses.” Important for thought.

Milk Madness – Is it a thing?

Could dairy intake in susceptible individuals be a risk promoter for mental health problems?  In addition to evidence of the exorphin derivatives from certain caseins interacting with our endogenous opiate system discussed in part 1, we now look at the evidence in support of other milk madness mechanisms.  Specifically, the IgG and IgA antibodies about what this tells us about the patient sitting in front of us about their gut generally and about their mental health risks, specifically.  The literature in this area dates back to the 1970s but the findings of more recent and more rigorous research are compelling. Find out more here.

Oxalate Overload? The next steps…

When patients present feeling worse every time they DIY a Green Detox, as the practitioner, you’re likely to be sniffing around reduced oxalate tolerance as a differential. Rightly so.  But what about the patient with joint pains and disproportionate fatigue who has baffled their rheumatologist, or the one suffering vulvodynia that baffles everyone, or irritable bladder symptoms, or….and they all eat an exemplary colourful high plant food diet, with their only self-confessed sin…darker than dark chocolate between every mouthful? Who doesn’t? While you may have a hunch, given the goodness of those foods, we should check these out objectively rather than unnecessarily restrict or limit someone’s food choices for the rest of their natural life! If dietary oxalate overload is now on your radar for these patients you need to move to the next step. Assessment. 

Spot or 24hr urine collection or plasma assay or OATS testing or imaging or joint aspirates? So many choices but which one has the greatest validity depending on your patient’s presentation? Ok how about the most general all-rounder that is truly an option in the real world? – always helpful;)   Yep, 24hr urine collection…agreed.

Ok, next step.

You need to wrap around that waist of yours one seriously heavy tool belt for accurate interpretation of their results. That’s right…those random ol’ reference ranges need a serious rethink! How much? Well, given the reference ranges every lab will give you for urinary oxalates typically fail to pick up up to 1/3 of patients with oxalate overload high enough to produce oxalate kidney stones…I think you get the picture.  I feel your trepidation now but can hear you  pensively ask anyway…next step? Management.  

Just google oxalate-rich foods, print out the list for your patient and tell them never to have these (or joy, laughter, sex or a healthy microbiome) ever again.

Not.

The ‘low oxalate lists’ will lead you astray and the ‘high oxalate foods’ should not be tossed away!   The research has found greater therapeutic benefits from different dietary approaches, some nutritional supplements and most importantly targeted treatment of the cause…which is all about the…go on, try and say it without screaming…the GUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oxalates are present in many healthy foods and in all healthy people, but when ‘normal’ levels are exceeded they can spell trouble in a whole raft of different ways due to their extensive distribution across the body. Some tissues, however, have more problems than others, especially the urinary system and soft tissue and joints but now there are also questions about oxalates’ relationship with thyroid and breast issues.  We review the latest evidence about the health consequences, blow the lid on accurate assessment for oxalate excess and talk management in this jam-packed update

 

Hear all about it by listening to my latest Update in Under 30: 
For all Update in Under 30 Subscribers, it’s now available in your online account and if you are not a subscriber you can purchase this individually here.

 

This Brain’s On Fire

I was at the Medicinal Cannabis (MC) in Mental Health Conference run by GHI on the weekend and I have to confess, I inhaled.  Seriously, deeply, inhaled. Just as I had hoped, this was a very high level of information on this important topic, delivered by outstanding presenters: from authorised Australian MC prescribers, to the head American researcher of the largest MC trial to be run in psychiatry – from brilliant pharmacognosists whose every day is spent immersed in complex cannabis chemistry to our very own national (naturopathic) treasure, Justin Sinclair.  I left there with thousands of words typed into my laptop, and about a thousand more in my brain, spilling out onto anyone who stood still long enough. Ahem…thank you my dear tolerant family & friends 😉

Let’s be clear. I am not in a position to prescribe medicinal cannabis.  Nor do I want to, right now.  But like me, patient purchases off the green market in response to DIY diagnosis and prescribing are on the up and up. I have felt concern and apprehension about this but not known enough to engage in any conversation. Now, watch out… I’m finding my words!

I left the conference with a much clearer sense of the patients and presentations for whom it may prove medicinal – most obviously for those conditions outlined in the WHO review including nausea and vomiting in cancer and pain refractory to other analgesics.  In addition to this, we were privileged to hear from a mum and son who have had to employ cannabis for the last half a dozen years following his diagnosis of an inoperable brain tumour, that originally robbed him of his literacy, his joy of reading and his overall quality of life, with high frequency seizures and intractable vomiting etc.  MC has remarkably given much of this back to him.  And I remain optimistic about future potential uses in psychiatry – especially within certain PTSD cohorts thanks to this small but promising study by Greer et al in 2014. Inspired by this paper and her extensive experience treating war veterans with PTSD, Dr. Sue Sisley, who spoke at the conference, executed a similar study of 6000 veterans for a MC inhalation trial.  I’ve got a spoiler for you…the study failed – publication pending.

But before you add 1 + 1 and get 3.879…let me tell you, there is nothing as powerful and revealing as hearing researchers talk firsthand about their trials. When Sue put up actual photos of the medicinal cannabis they were supplied with for this study…the room collectively let out a giant Gasp!

It was brown, full of stem and…wait for it…mould. Yup.  But that is what they, and as Sue poignantly pointed out, & what every other group of American researchers who run studies on MC as opposed to synthetics or extracts, have to use.  So…are any negative outcome a surprise? No.  But it will no doubt be interpreted as a sign that we shouldn’t pursue research in the area of MC and PTSD. We should. Have I completely ditched my concerns about negative mental health impact from cannabis? Absolutely not.  And Professor Michael Lintzeris, the Director of the Drug & Alcohol Services South East Sydney Local Health District; Conjoint Professor, Division of Addiction Medicine etc., spoke eloquently & comprehensively to this inherent duality of this herb in this regard. Even the most isolated and lauded (non-intoxicating) constituent of cannabis can be both help and hindrance to anxiety and depression sufferers and most clearly, Michael warned us not to make MC the opiates and benzodiazepine panacea promises of the past, buying the rhetoric of ‘no tolerance, no dependence, no risk’. How each individual’s mood and mental state responds to MC, whole plant, extracts or isolated constituents, from anxiogenic to anxiolytic and from depressant to antidepressant, has been clearly demonstrated to differ according to genes, ‘endocannabinoid tone’, route of administration and dose.  Seems like all roads lead to an individualised health care approach & prescription…yet again 😉

Need a road map to think your way through the integrative work-up of your Mental Health patients?

In Mastering Mental health: New Assessments & Management Resources in your Clinic, Rachel introduces you to new clinical tools that she has been developing to help us all better master the maze of mental health. With so many possible biological drivers: from methylation to inflammation and from gonads to gut, these tools can help you quickly identify those most relevant to each patient and also outline the strategies necessary for redressing these. This presentation comes with an extensive library of resources including pdf of Assessments Tools and Case Study Notes.

 

 

There’s Someone Else

 

Breaking up is hard to do (sounds like the name of a song!) but it shouldn’t be! I got an email this week from one of my gorgeous long-term mentees in the vein of a ‘Dear John’ letter.  She carefully, beautifully gently let me know… “I’ve found someone else…” 

“This is not an easy decision as I have major Rachel Arthur FOMO and visions of my knowledge falling down a deep crevice and never coming back. My motivation for this decision is related to my strong interest in women’s health. I have an increasing number of complex cases around this topic and have sought extra mentoring and I am turning into a mentoring junkie. Now there is nothing wrong with this in theory and a recent post you did about all the mentoring you do and mentors having mentors I saw as  sign to keep on seeking mentorship but again that was the RA FOMO speaking… Anyway, I have struggled with the perception this might relay – that I think I’ve got it all covered and I simply don’t but I do think this is the right thing for me at this time.

Thank you Rachel for the exponential help you have provided me since I started mentoring in 2017 and for the level of knowledge and commitment you bring to our profession. I am truly grateful and proud to have been a RA mentee.”

This email really made me really smile – how can this not be good news??? This type of letter or break-up email can have the sender feeling a bit apprehensive about a possible negative response but as I read the email I couldn’t suppress a smile from ear to ear! Not because I’ve got one less person to mentor and more time for lazing around Byron’s beaches with all the instamummies 😉 but for me there was nothing but good news in this development… I love witnessing this practitioner’s growth, their movement into a new field of specialisation and I celebrate this decision. I still have my own mentors…and not just one by the way, but several due to the expertise of each – mental health; herbalist; heavy metals etc. It’s always about finding the best brain’s trust for the job at hand.

I want everyone to find their best mentors to support them in each & every stage of their career
as an integrative health practitioner.

Over the years I’ve received amazing feedback on my mentoring services and often the misperception that my knowledge infinite! Yes I am a journal junkie and I do have 20+ years practice under my belt but…I believe a good mentor has their own mentors. Your mentors may change over time to strengthen different muscles or skill sets and it’s knowing where to look for answers, how to always apply critical thinking and developing your own brains trust tha.

Rachel’s hugely popular New Graduate Group Mentoring, which launched this year, is designed to help anyone who wants support transitioning from student (or lapsed practitioner!) to Naturopathic or Nutrition clinicians with a difference! This online 11 month program is a great way to develop your confidence, skills and knowledge. The bonus with these sessions is you’ll find your tribe, gain support and radically build your toolkit.  Applications for 2020 open in October – you can put your name on our wait-list now for this and all other groups by emailing us at [email protected].

 

 

 

Lots to be Said for Boring Basics

Horses not Zebras.  You’ve no doubt heard me repeat that quote which is famous in medical schools, something to the effect of, “When you hear a herd of animals outside your door, think horses not zebras”…unless of course you are practising in Africa might I suggest 😉 This of course reminds us all in short to think of the most likely explanations not the most exotic first. Likewise with our case taking. The number of times I ask practitioners for the ‘boring basics’ and am met with an embarrassed silence.  Think:

Body Mass Index

There I said it…and yet these are like dirty words in integrative health.  Why? Because we’re starting to ignore the ‘boring basics’ in favour of getting ‘fancy first up’, as I like to call it.   Look I love a good bit of bioelectrical impedence assessment as much as the next clinician and I am not about to use this crude measure as replacement for that but I absolutely need to have these key landmark pieces of information to understand a very long list of things such as contribution to future health risks,  current burdens from literally the weight on those joints leading to knee pain, to the weight/mass not pulling on their bones and therefore contributing to lower BMD their whole life. Even their likelihood of a leaky gut today, right, Brad Leech, our colleague and impressive IP researcher?  BMI drives also the appropriateness and their capacity for any exercise interventions I might recommend, not to mention the frequently mentioned, accurate interpretation of their labs. 

For many many labs that we routinely see for our clients…the reference range should actually be a sliding scale that moves with BMI…what do we really ‘expect’ and what is actually ‘healthy’ is different at different weights. 

Like TFTs – this may be a big newsflash for most but I never want to see a patient with a BMI > 30 have a TSH anywhere < 2, unless they’re on replacement.

 Say wha? You heard me. I promise I’ll tell you more about that soon.

But again…let’s not get fancy first up especially not in any of our paediatric patients and in spite of what their words or ‘tude may be telling you, that includes all the way up to 18 in our books! Brace yourself, I’m going to speak that dirty word again…BMI..boring basics before all else. We need to review their height, weight and BMI against paediatric growth charts.  These oldies are goldies and can reveal so much about growth trajectories, puberty milestones when any other discussion is off the table,  type 2 nutritional imbalances (protein, zinc, potassium, magnesium, sulfur) and flag all other sorts of concerns or reassurance…and you haven’t had to steal a drop of blood or any much hard earned money off mum and dad to work a lot out. Anyway,  that’s my ‘boring basic beef’ for now…there’s a lot to be said for ensuring such ‘dirty words’ come before everything else.

Need help with wrestling all the most important patient information into a clear management plan?

As integrative health practitioners, we pride ourselves on taking in the ‘whole health story’ as a means to accurately identifying all the contributors & connections to each patient’s presenting unwellness.  In the process, we gather a wealth of information from each client  – pathology, medical history, screening tests, diet diaries etc. that borders on information overload and often creates so much ‘noise’, we struggle to ‘hear’ what’s most important. The management of complex patient information and the application of a truly integrative approach, requires due diligence and the right tools. Mindmapping and Timelines are two key tools to help you go from vast quantities of information to a true integrated understanding of what is going on in the case and the more time we spend learning and applying these tools, the more they will write the prescription for you. Not just for today but for the next 6-12mo for that patient.

 

Nutritional Medicine: A Place For Science Not Wishful Thinking

Show me a nutrient that doesn’t demonstrate a U shaped curve with our health (too little produces negative effects – too much produces negative effects)  and I’ll go ‘HE!’ Go on…try it now… But the way many have been taught nutrition has lead to some erroneous thinking, it would seem, about the inherent ‘safety’ of all micronutrient prescriptions.  To know these vitamins and minerals well is to respect their potency in every sense – from their incredibly positive application at both physiological doses, correcting deficiencies,  and in a small number of scenarios almost pharmacological benefits, when used at doses that are intended to exceed the natural physiological state (think IV vitamin C, or high dose B3 for lipid-lowering as two famous examples), to their potential for fallout when healthy levels are unwittingly exceeded, especially long-term.

Our risks of over-supplying individual micronutrients have arguably been amplified by the industry’s increasing promotion of nutritional formulas or complexes over the use of single nutrients.  How often do you go through and studiously add up all your cumulative totals for individual nutrients for each prescription? 

Especially those that tend to find their way into such a large number of formulas and have clear upper limits, such as Vitamin B6, Folate, Selenium and Manganese…to name a few of my (not so) favourites.

Many of you will know I am a fan of staying single 😉  I mean using single nutrients rather than all the ‘bells-&-whistles-formulas’ we’ve come to rely on so heavily.  This is one key reason.  But the other is that many of these formulas are someone else’s, perhaps a whole tech team’s, idea of what a ‘generic’ low thyroid patient, or an ‘average’  immune challenged patient needs. Not sure about you, but I don’t subscribe to ‘average’ and ‘generic’ when it comes to nutrition…that’s one of naturopathic nutrition’s key criticisms of conventional dietetics, right?  So where does this reliance on generic nutritional complexes comes from? Is it purely convenience -yours and the patients?

Or are we insecure in our confidence in creating our own crafted formulas? Is it a need to know our tools of trade better..because if we did, might we better realise the power and potency (positive or negative) of our own prescriptions? Especially in the realm of accurate assessment and individualised requirements.

The latter is my call to action on this, predictably! 😉

I am often asked about where my ‘nutritional nous’ comes from. Which magic journals do I subscribe to that fill my head so full? What non-existent-far-superior-course did I undertake?  The answer I give is the same every time. I had one solid nutrition teacher in my under-graduate across my 4 years of naturopathic nutrition at SSNT.  What made her so good and why has so much she taught stayed with me?  She simply taught me every single nutrient literally from the ground (soil) all the way up (human nutritional physiology) and everything in between.  Once you know each nutrient that well and the big concepts that are a truism in nutritional science…you can never go back and you will practice nutritional medicine at its best. My wishful thinking? I wish that for us all 😉

Mastering Micronutrients – 4 hours & clinical tools that will seriously change the way you work in Nutrition

Let’s make sense of the over-arching nutrition principles, that will profoundly change your understanding and application of this modality  Truly understanding the ‘big’ concepts, so often overlooked, or incorrectly taught, ensures you get the critical ‘small’ detail in your nutritional prescriptions right. In this 4 hour recording, together with key clinical tools, we talk about the tough stuff: dose-response curves, active versus passive stores and excretory pathways and ooh lah lah…the myth of taking ‘activated vitamins’.  Even those who feel satisfied with their original training – will find a lot in this critical review that is new, insightful and truly practise-changing!

 

 

 

 

A Low Oxalate Diet Is Not A Healthy Prescription

Until it is. Following on from my frolicking in frocks made of my favourite oxalate-rich foods around the Alps, let’s be clear these are great, healthy and health-promoting inclusions in ours and our patients’ diets. Until they’re not. Just like FODMAP avoidance is not, and should not, be generic dietary directive, nor a long term ‘solution’ to a digestive issue, oxalates are in fact, just like FODMAPS, great for our guts!  Your consumption of these oxalate-rich foods drives greater abundance of the key bacteria in your gut that subsists on oxalates alone, the very same bacteria that has recently been recognised as a very desirable diversity marker.  Unless you’re starting with zero.

Or your oxalate threshold is dramatically reduced for other reasons like leaky gut, fat malabsorption, renal impairment and so on.

Over and over again we speak to practising ‘individualised’ medicine – but do we know when our favourite healthy inclusions are another’s downfall? Can we spot the individual who oxalate susceptible, sensitive or actively challenged?  And more to the point do we know how to navigate around this in the short term (food choices, preparation and combinations) and most importantly, start to actually increase tolerance in the longer term? Because oxalates are not the baddies, they are the messengers. As are FODMAPs and amines and and and…remember not to shoot the messenger!

This is a big topic that is important to be across and much more complex than a quick google search or some wellness blogger’s misleading ‘Low Oxalate List’…but given most of us hold the position of loving all things food and have a strong grasp of science this is one we can master, given the right reading, resources and up-skilling.  Cue…a succinct entertaining audio summary of the true science and sense on this topic, clocking about 29 mins of your time, plus a couple of key full text and very readable articles for those with a desire for deepening and a PT ride to fill.. and you have our latest Update in Under 30 Oxalate Overload 😉

Oxalates are found in high concentrations in many of the ‘healthy food choices’ we promote and are even higher again when these are organically farmed!  Given the importance of individualising therapeutic diets are we able to quickly recognise those who need to lower their low of these naturally occurring plant products? Who shouldn’t be drinking green juices?  And which of our patients might benefit from being educated about different food combinations and preparation to lower the oxalate load from these otherwise fabulous foods?

Get the latest Update in Under 30: Oxalate Overload here

 

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things…

Beetroot & Spinach & Lovely Bright Berries

Rhubarb & Buckwheat & Baked Sweet Potato

Black Tea & Green Tea & All My Dark Chocolate Sins

These are a few of my favourite things!!

Sounds like a kitchen roll-call at my house…how about yours?  And your patients?!! You see I’ve been working away researching Oxaluria – a condition whereby individuals end up with too many oxalates in their body and ultimately their urine – which can be a problem in a proportion of people suffering with kidney stones, vulvodynia, joint pain etc and anyone with CKD and on my travels I came across this article on how the regular intake of green smoothies could in fact turn someone with normal oxlate levels and handling, into someone who has an acute induced Oxaluria. Yup.

Nobody panic.  Remember this is not going to be problematic in all patients but just might be in some.  But it left me wondering if we ‘clean-diet-prescribing-practitioners’ know all we really need to about, who not to prescribe green drinks to (or beetroot juice for that matter) and cap ‘ye olde’ dark chocolate quota for! 

Or…keep them eating all these fabulous generally healthy foods but mitigate any elevated oxalate risk through correct food preparation & combinations?

There’s so much more to this topic than meets the eye.  Because on top of what you eat, there’s the huge variability in terms of what you absorb…think it’s as simple as, whether someone has Oxalobacter in their bowel or not? Nope.  Oh…and then there’s the 3rd element: how much you make yourselves…that’s where we need to have a serious chat about collagen, high dose turmeric & vitamin C supplements in susceptible individuals, people. Want to read more yourself?  Here’s somewhere to start on the giant pile of papers here

Want to take a walk down Oxalate Boulevard with me, as we make our way back to talking about Getting to the Guts of Women & Joint Pain... well, check this out…

Oxalate Overload

Oxalates are found in high concentrations in many of the ‘healthy food choices’ we promote and are even higher again, when these are organically farmed!  Given the importance of individualising therapeutic diets are we able to quickly recognise those who need to lower their low of these naturally occurring plant products? Who shouldn’t be drinking green juices?  And which of our patients might benefit from being educated about different food combinations and preparation to lower the oxalate load from these otherwise fabulous foods?

 

Hear all about it by listening to my latest Update in Under 30: 
For all Update in Under 30 Subscribers, it’s now available in your online account and if you are not a subscriber you can purchase this individually here.

It’s Not Rocket (Dental) Science!

With the increasing weight of evidence pointing to a potent pathogenic portal between our mouths and every other part of the body, whether that be in terms of cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis, appendicitis, even a growing case for Alzheimer’s disease, we need to ensure we’re not overlooking the condition of each patient’s oral cavity.  I got very excited about the recent Medscape article: A rapid non-invasive tool for periodontitis screening in a medical care setting. It’s true, I live a quiet life 😉 But seriously, a validated tool for all non-dentists to accurately pick up on the likelihood of this condition would be a nifty little thing indeed, so we can narrow down just who we quick-march off the dentist as well as understand their whole health story. But then I read the 8 actual questions which included gems such as: Do you think you have gum disease? and Have you ever had treatment for gum disease such as scaling and root planing, sometimes called “deep cleaning”? I thought, ok, this is not rocket (dental) science.

But that’s the point, I guess, right?

So while I encourage you to check out & employ this screening tool by all means, we can also be reassured that just by ensuring that when we ask about someone’s digestion (and when don’t we?!) we start at the very top of the tube, we’re doing a good job!! As my new grad mentees learnt this year…following the patient’s GIT from mouth to south anatomically, is my rather simplistic way of guaranteeing I cover everything digestive..without using formal consultation script. So in the case of the mouth, my questions include things like: last trip to the dentist; any prior dental diagnoses, number of amalgams, implants, root canals etc & their routine dental care techniques, any signs of bleeding on brushing & all foods they avoid for dental or oral reasons? Look, it hasn’t undergone the rigorous validation that the Self-Reported Oral Health Questionnaire has..but I think it’s a good start.

Whether we’re being picky about pathogens and exactly how they got access to the rest of the body (and gums make a great entry point!!) or just concerned about chronic low level inflammation, a ‘gurgling’ CRP between 1-5 in an otherwise ‘healthy adult’, picking up on periodontitis is a pivotal.

Oh and if you’ve ever wondered about possible health implications from mouth metals other than amalgams…don’t worry, soon I’ll be getting to that with a forthcoming UU30.  

Want to hear more about how certain microbiota (from the mouth to the south) are being implicated in joint diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis and how we can investigate these individuals? Getting to the Guts of Women with Joint Pain is a recent UU30 instalment that gets down & dirty on the detail. 

You Say Tomatoes I Say…

Histamine, Oxalates & Nickel…any of which may be at fault when your patient reports they experience adverse reactions from eating them.  The same can be said for legumes, with a few extra contenders thrown in like oligosaccharides for those farty on FODMAPs.  Additionally, in either case, there could be a bona fide allergy (IgE) or an intolerance (IgG) at play.  Tricky, right? 

I hear from practitioners often, though, that their interpretation of food reactions like these are at risk of being 1 dimensional, like a food word association game: tomato = histamine; legumes = FODMAPS; gluten = NCGS.   

The labyrinth of possible pathways for food reactions is just that, a labyrinth!!  So, we have to always be on our toes and try and approach each case methodologically. 

I outlined how to approach this in clinic in A Guide to Investigating Food Reactions, released earlier this year.  We cover a lot in this 2hr recording, but let’s face it, it’s an area that needs yet more time and a field that we never stop learning in. Next week, as part of our UU30 series on Getting to the Guts of Joint Pain, we need to take a little scenic detour along Oxalate Boulevard!  Keep your eyes open peeps, because our very own food prescriptions tend to be full of them!! Not naming any names….berries, green smoothies, sweet potato &…

Need to catch up on investigating adverse food reactions??

Elimination of suspected food culprits in most situations is only a short term reliever, not an appropriate long term solution, so to optimise results we need to know the real mechanism of action.  The majority of these, of course, stem from the gut, but being able to elucidate exactly which of the many things that can go wrong there, is going wrong and therefore what foods are problematic until we address this, is the key. This 2hr mp4 is all about the bigger picture and helping you find method in the madness that can be the adverse food reactions landscape. 

Thank You (ACNEM), Next!

Integrative Psychiatry is an inspiring area to work in & its evidence base, acceptance and recognition of potency is rapidly growing & offering more patients, more.  Going beyond the ‘neurotransmitter imbalance model’ for each presenting diagnosis helps us to see the unique mix of biological & psychological drivers in each individual who presents seeking our help. However sometimes  I believe, we find ourselves falling into looking through the lens of just another short-list of alternate models: What kind of methylation imbalance does this person have?  What sort of Zn, Cu issues?  

While I am so grateful for having learned these tools and watched them be very successful in a portion of my mental health clients, they are simply not the answer for everyone.  We need to keep our thinking and practices dynamic and up to date, to reflect the incredible increase in research in new areas of integrative psychiatry, such that more of our patients can benefit and that we can continue to think beyond the box…even if that box itself was originally so progressive!

What do you know, for example, about abnormal purine metabolism in mania and using serum urate as a BPAD prognostic marker in depressed patients?  Think you can simply be guided by the reference range provided, think again. What could good old LFTs reveal about our patient’s mental health vulnerabilities and what have we potentially misunderstood about copper in this area, particularly in children?

I appreciate Zinc’s role in mental health as much as the next integrative practitioner. Okay, given my 20K word thesis manifesto, more.  But increasingly I am seeing mental health patients who need treatment with different tools.  This upcoming ACNEM Mental Health Module in Perth is on point: thinking outside of, outside the box!

While the above only speaks to what I’m presenting, I know Dr. Sanjeev Sharma will also be sharing his wealth of individualised management insights and he’s a big fan of addressing Chronic MIld Metabolic Acidosis as an early treatment objective. Maybe we all need to hear why? And I am so looking forward to getting a PTSD update from Christabelle and hear all about the research into therapeutic keto-diets in psychiatry from Cliff Harvey…haven’t read all those papers to know which conditions and when this approach shows merit?  No, most of us haven’t. That’s the point of outsourcing our up-skilling to colleagues who we know are across these more than us and to boot have the clinical experience to ‘make real the research’.  As I’ve said before, given the content of this upcoming ACNEM Mental Health program, I wish I wasn’t presenting really, so I could just kick back and take it all in, uninterrupted.  But alas, I have some important new information on reading basic bloods through a mental health lens to share!  I really hope to see you all there.  Let’s get out of the rut of 3-4 nutritional approaches to mental health and make the most of the explosion of research and shared clinical experience.

ACNEM Face-to-Face Training
Fremantle, 27-28 July 2019 at the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle by Rydges
https://www.acnem.org/events/training

Oh and while you’re here…did you know the research into both beta-casomorphins and IgG casein reactions in relation to certain mental health diagnoses has taken some giant steps forward in the last couple of years?  You should.  Milk Madness is back and it’s via two distinct mechanisms – identifying which might be at play in your patients & correct management is now clearer than before.  Want to get up to date in this area of mental health – check out our UU30 recordings: Milk Madness part 1 & part 2

 

 

 

You Might Want to Write This Number Down

No you’re right, it’s not long enough to be a Hemsworth’s mobile number but actually it’s more sought after 😉 If you’re up to date with reading & recognising all the different patterns of Iron Studies & the stories they tell, which is a daily business for most of us, then you will know by heart the striking pattern we call, ‘Pseudo Iron Deficiency’. You know the one where your patient’s serum iron & transferrin saturation are mischievously trying to trick you into thinking you need to give this patient iron…when in fact this is absolutely not what they need! 

This is of course the result of the redistribution of iron during inflammation – iron is actively removed from the blood and  sequestered in the liver instead.  It’s designed to protect us from bacterial bogeymen, which is how our stone-age bodies interpret all inflammation of course. 

Doesn’t sound familiar? Ok you need to start here or even embrace a full overhaul of all things iron here.

But for those of you nodding so hard you’re at risk of doing yourself an injury, this number is for you.   We’ve often talked about the redistributional increase in patients’ ferritin levels in non-specific terms: it goes up..but by how much?  Of course we would like to know because no one is fooling us with this transiently inflated value…but can we make an estimation as to what this person’s ferritin will drop to once this inflammation is resolved? Yes.

X 0.67

Write it down. Consider a tattoo, perhaps?

This glorious magic number comes from Thurnham et al paper in 2010 who did the number crunching on over 30 studies involving almost 9,000 individuals to determine the mathematical relationship between inflammatory states & markers and the reciprocal increases in ferritin.  Their work is exceptional in that it also differentiates between incubation (pre-symptoms), early and late coalescence periods (if you want to differentiate your patients in this way and get even more specific then you need to read the paper), however, overall when we see a patient who has a CRP ≥5 mg /dL , we can multiply their ferritin by 0.67 and get a lot closer to the truth of their iron stores. Oh and another important detail they revealed, this magnitude of ferritin increase is more likely seen in women or those with baseline (non-inflamed) values < 100 ug/L..so generally more applicable to women than men. Thanks Thurnham and colleagues and the lovely Cheryl, my previous intern who brought this paper to my attention…you just took the guessing out of this extremely common clinical scenario 🙂 

We’re not deaf…we heard that stampede of Iron-Inundated Practitioners! The Iron Package is for you!

Our recordings and clinical resources for improving your skill-set in all things iron including, your accuracy of diagnosing deficiencies, pseudo-deficiencies & excesses, plus radically rethinking the best treatment approaches for each scenario…have been some of our most popular. Because nailing iron (pardon the pun) is harder than we were all lead to believe and at least 1 ‘iron maiden’ or ‘iron man’ walks into our practice every day, right? So we’ve brought together 5 extremely popular UU30’s on Iron into one bundle for the price of 4! So if you’re more than ready to graduate from ‘iron school’, now’s your best chance!

 

 

 

ACNEM Goes West

 

In July I go west again (seriously any excuse…love the place!) and fly over to Perth for the ACNEM Foundations (formerly known as Primary Modules) training course that ACNEM have been rolling out this year around the country. If you haven’t seen it already I’m presenting my hot favourite talk on Micronutrients.  But wait….. there’s more… in the Mental Health module that runs concurrently with this, I’m presenting my newly developed: Mental Health in General Practice: The Hidden Clues in Pathology. Which delves into reading regular blood work through a ‘mental health lens’.  Fancy, expensive testing need not apply 😉

The highly-regarded psychiatrist, Dr. Sanjeev Sharma, is presenting on Addiction as well as a case study on schizophrenia, Dr. Christabelle Yeoh will speak to better PTSD management, our lovely naturopathic colleague, Susan Hunter will talk on the relationship between diet and paediatric mental health, Cliff Harvey on keto-appropriate diets in this context…and many more. 

To be honest, I’d like to not be presenting so I can just sit back & listen to this entire mental health program uninterrupted!! 

In terms of ACNEM Foundations, I am really pleased to be one of the presenter/practitioners to help ACNEM deliver their new offering, with a renewed focus on delivering independent, unbiased and high quality training. The modules being offered over the training period are the Foundations (formally Primary Modules) of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (2 days), Metal Health (2 days) and Sports Medicine (1 day). Here’s a little bit more detail about the training…

PRIMARY MODULE

The Primary Modules in NEM, designed for GPs, registrars and other graduate healthcare professional, are ACNEM’s foundational training in post graduate Nutritional and Environmental Medicine. The modules will be delivered over 2 days face-to-face, plus equivalent of 2 days online (4 months online access) to view the lectures and to complete the required learning activities.

These modules provide an introduction and overview of NEM within primary care. Each major biological system is explored covering the key nutritional, environmental and biochemical factors affecting health and disease. Through case studies delegates will gain practical tools to aid integration into daily practice. The Primary Modules enable practitioners to begin practising NEM confidently and safely.

To enhance your education and reinforce what you have learned, completion of each module requires pre-disposing and reflective activities and an online quiz.

MENTAL HEALTH MODULE

This module will address a number of the most common functional mental health conditions that present to clinic.

Conditions to be covered include depression, anxiety and addiction. Our highly regarded presenters will bring their clinical experience and knowledge on the application of nutritional and environmental medicine in collaboration with conventional medical practice. Current scientific evidence for the effectiveness of treatment modalities will be presented including nutraceutical prescription, dietary manipulation, lifestyle modification and environmental factors, alongside the range of available testing and investigation options.

Our speakers will explore:
– The contributing NEM factors to common mental health conditions including depression and anxiety
– The investigative methods for assessing mental health from a NEM perspective
– The role of specific dietary and environmental approaches for the management of anxiety
– Evidence-based lifestyle interventions that can assist in the management of addictions
– Nutritional treatment and management of mild-to-moderate depression

When you get clinicians with extensive real-world experience talking about the things they know best, not just academically but also clinically…then you’re in for a very practical & clinically impacting learning opportunity.

ACNEM Face-to-Face Training
Fremantle, 27-28 July 2019 at the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle by Rydges
https://www.acnem.org/events/training

Getting to the Guts of it!

 

I’m calling this one early. The presentation with the most dramatic rise in incidence this year is women aged 20-50 with ‘atypical’ joint pain.  Probably good I don’t have a betting account, hey, but in all seriousness I am struck by the increasing familiarity of this story: previously well woman, develops significant joint pain picture, sees rheumatologist who says; ‘don’t know’, ‘not bad enough yet to call it’, or ‘could be fibro?!’ But if we listen closely to these patients, we will typically hear another symptom story running parallel: ‘my gut isn’t right’.  Often vague in nature with all the usual non-specific features: bloating, self-reported food reactions, changeable stools and has frequently had thrown at it the IBS label…but is it?  Or are we staring in the face of the key to these women’s musculoskeletal woes?

At it’s simplest, systemic inflammation (including joints) opens the tight junctions in the gut.  Consequently we know these women suffer from increased intestinal permeability – but could the relationship between their gut and their joints be more sinister than this, with GIT abnormalities not purely as a consequence but actually as a cause of their chronic, for may patients life-long, disease?

Ah yes, the elusive ‘environmental trigger’ ingredient in everyone’s (not so) favorite autoimmune recipe. Patients who have drawn the short straw genetically (family Hx of rheumatoid arthritis or the HLA B27 antigen) may never develop the joint diseases that this makes them susceptible to…if only their ‘environment’ hadn’t pulled the trigger. Now the possible ‘environmental offenders’ make up a long list of candidates, from smoking to vitamin D deficiency, infection and trauma but what are the chances and where is the evidence at, regarding very specific bacterial culprits?  And is it possible, that the identification of these in action in your patients doesn’t just have historical value, ‘ok…this was the wrong turn your gut took back there that lead you down this awful alley of ailments’, but rather equips us in the here and now to target our treatment and improve patient outcomes today? You know the answer is yes, right?

Whether we’re talking about Rheumatoid arthritis (both seropositive and negative) or Ankylosing Spondylitis or Reactive Arthritis…or…or…or… this woman’s gut may have a huge case to answer! But do your current lines of investigation, lead you to the pathogens and processes that the scientific community are all pointing at?

There are many reasons why these women are falling through the cracks in mainstream medicine in spite of the growing body of evidence (molecular, animal, human, in vitro, in vivo, dietary intervention studies) that at the very least, leaves us in no doubt about the reciprocity of inflammation & disruption in the two systems of many of these patients.   Want to read some great articles on this to bring you up to speed?  Start with Rashid et al 2013 and Lerner & Mathias 2015Want to hear my summary of these and about a dozen key others on this topic, gently mixed with some real world spotting tips from clinical experience?…then check out the latest Update in Under 30: Getting to the Guts of Women with Joint Pain.

There’s a significant increase in the number of women in their 20s to 50s presenting with ‘atypical’ joint pain, that seems hard for specialists to diagnose and therefore, hard for any of us to know how best to treat. If we listen closely to these patients, however, they are often telling us that their, ‘gut isn’t right’. It doesn’t tend to grab so much attention but maybe it should! We examine 3 ‘atypical’ arthropathies that can have GIT symptoms and arguably may represent a key driver of their joint pain. The different clinical pictures & targeted investigations for these big 3 together with some key papers are covered in this audio.
Hear all about it by listening to my latest Update in Under 30: 
Getting to the Guts of Women with Joint Pain
For all Update in Under 30 Subscribers, it’s now available in your online account and if you are not a subscriber you can purchase this individually here.

Sharing the (Medicinal) Cannabis

 

I’ve been asked to speak at the Mental Health, Medicinal Cannabis & Other Nutritional Medicine Conference, on the 20th July in Melbourne, organised by the Global Health Initiative for all health professionals primarily wanting to learn more about this therapy, not just for pain but also psychiatric presentations. Now I reckon a lot of people might have thought this was right up my alley considering I live in the Byron Shire and in such close proximity to Nimbin, but I’ve some news for you, on the recreational side, I’m not a fan!  And I have seen firsthand the unfortunate fallout on people’s mental health.  But I am seriously keen to get up to date about this emerging area, from experts in this field. I’m like the moth to the mental health flame – anything that offers some hope – I’m keen to get close-up.

This one day conference explores the evidence base for using medicinal cannabis in treating a variety of mental health & neurological conditions such as PTSD, depression, Alzheimer’s and more, plus a review of the endocannabinoid system, the delivery methods, pharmacokinetics/dynamics & safety of various forms. All the while, not losing sight of its potential for harm via precipitation of psychosis in the vulnerable.

It sounds like a fascinating examination of the inherent complexity and contradictions of Cannabis. 

I’m hooked already!  Not on cannabis people – but rather, on this topic in terms of the likelihood of it teaching me much that is new and challenges my assumptions.  And what, I hear you ask, is my contribution? Relax, the sativa side of this story is being presented by an impressive list of experts such as Dr Sue Sisley MD, US medicinal cannabis expert,  Prof. Nick Lintzeris, Dr Genevieve Steiner PhD (NICM), Justin Sinclair and GPs with firsthand experience of prescribing for these presentations.  I am in my sweet spot, talking about the role for nutritional medicine in Mental Health management…and I’ve put together a super strength strain just for this conference.

I’m really looking forward to listening to these international speakers and learning myself so I can share this new information in my future blogs & resources with you… Like some other cannabis products, it’s good to pass it around 😉

If you’d like to know more about what is being offered at this conference visit www.globalhealthinitiative.life

Where Do All The Nutrients Go?

Those ‘still-believers’ look away now.  One of the great myths, misconceptions and misunderstandings in nutritional medicine is that supplementation with specific nutrients will produce change specifically in one system, or pathway, which just happens to be the one that the practitioner has determined would benefit most/is targeting.   Let me explain myself a bit better. When we give patients any nutrient, in the cases where it’s not simply to correct a global deficiency & therefore improve levels all round, it’s typically on the basis of a specific desirable therapeutic benefit, e.g. some magnesium to help their GABA production…, additional B3 would improve their mitochondria.  Beautiful on paper…but like sending a letter to Santa in reality (I did warn you!)

Truth Bomb No.1: There are nutrient distribution pecking orders that have nothing to do with who you ‘addressed’ it to

This dictates that when something is given orally, for most nutrients, the gut itself has first dibs.  So the cells of your digestive tract meet their needs before any other part of your body gets a look in. Sometimes the digestive system’s needs can be quite substantial and leave little for any other part of the body…not mentioning any names (ahem) Glutamine!

Truth Bomb No.2: En route to the ‘target’, these nutrients get delivered and distributed to many other tissues – with possibly not so desirable or intended effects!

You may determine that a patient needs iron because their ferritin hasn’t got a pulse…so you keep giving them daily high dose oral iron to ‘fix’ this…not realising you’re making their GIT dysbiosis and gut inflammation worse in the process.  Or you feel their mysterious ‘methylation cycle’, happening predominantly in the liver and kidneys, could do with a folate delivery…perhaps ignoring the very worrying fact that their colon may have already had a ‘gut full’. Literally.  Hence the concerns and caution against supplementing with folate in patients with established colorectal cancer.  So is bypassing the gut via IM or IV nutrients the answer…well yes and no…but mostly no. Read on…

Truth Bomb No.3: Those pathways that use the nutrient you’re supplementing, that are most active in the patient’s body currently – which is determined by many factors  (genes, physiology, feedback circuits, pathophysiology) and rarely simply by the availability of nutrients – will take take the next lion’s share of that nutrient

Wanting to nutritionally support someone’s thyroid, you know tyrosine is the backbone of the thyroid hormones, so you include this in the hypothyroid prescription. Will it help?  Who knows? Being a non-essential amino acid the body exhibits very complex regulation of its distribution and use – with thyroid precursor availability being only one job on a very long list! And if this was in a patient who is regularly smoking cannabis, due to upregulation of the tyrosine hydroxylase enzyme – there is likely to be more of the supplement headed for even more dopamine production and very little or none reaching in fact your intended target.  And don’t get me (re)started on Glutamine – supplements of which in an anxious and glutamate dominated patient will make…G.L.U.T.A.M.A.T.E…right…not GABA! 🙁

Sorry, I know, it hurts right? But these are essential teachings, that tend to have been over-looked or under-played I find, in nutrition education, regardless of training: nutritionists, naturopaths, IM doctors, dual qualification practitioners remedial therapists.  Nutritional medicine is a wonderful and potent modality when it’s done well…but we need to revisit some core truths and principles that many of us have missed out on, to ensure we’re not writing letters to Santa.

Want to revisit your core nutritional knowledge which will cover this and much much more? 

Let’s start with Micronutrients. Let’s talk make sense of the over-arching nutrition principles, that will profoundly change your understanding and application of this modality  Truly understanding the ‘big’ concepts, so often overlooked, or incorrectly taught, ensures you get the critical ‘small’ detail in your nutritional prescriptions right. In this 4 hour recording, together with key clinical tools, we talk about the tough stuff: dose-response curves, active versus passive stores and excretory pathways and ooh lah lah…the myth of taking ‘activated vitamins’.  Even those who felt well trained – will find a lot in this critical review that is new, insightful and truly practise-changing!

Time for Some Tipi Talks?

I’ve had a bit of ‘a bee in my bonnet’ this year. I heard that! Ok, arguably it extends a little further back…like my whole career! But if you’ve seen the topics I’ve been speaking on at conferences in recent months, you’ll know exactly the soapbox I’ve climbed up onto.  Inter-professional communication & collaboration. My particular focus (naturally 😉 ) has been current issues regarding the sharing of, and access to, pathology results for our shared-care patients. However, in the face of several distinct threats to the practise of both naturopathy and medicine in Australia of late, especially in the form of anti-collaborative rhetoric/push affecting both professions right now (read PHI reforms, promptly followed by proposed MBA review..if you haven’t read this regressive and repressive set of recommendations you seriously must), the question of how to improve collaboration in order to ultimately serve our patients better, has never been more urgent.

Last week, at the ICCMR conference, I outlined the current barriers for naturopaths to accessing patients’ pathology results (current and historical) and the heightened risks that this results in, either because of incomplete information or because of the subsequent direct pathology referring by naturopaths. Yes, bypassing the GP and another set of trained eyes on your patients labs comes with risks. I also spoke to the opportunities that await us if we can overcome this: in terms of improved patient outcomes, reduced risk, more economically responsible public health budget spending etc. etc. need I go on?!  In the Q & A following my presentation,  a doctor in the audience made two very important contributions, which deserve some additional air…she said:

“Shouldn’t the patient ultimately own their own pathology results?  Then it would be a case of them electing who has access to these: their GP, their naturopath, their osteopath. Rather than the other way around – after all, we are all supposed to be members of their health care team, right?”

She said it.  Not me. But I applaud her. She’s right of course. Right now, under the current proposed changes, we and integrative health care delivery and patients’ right to choose and self-direct their healthcare and public health budgetary burden…are all under threat of de-evolving. Right at the time when, with the current chronic disease burden and predicted public health budget blowouts,  it should be all hands to the pump!  Who has ever conducted a cost-benefit analysis of what integrative health care (successful patient sharing between naturopaths and GPs /specialists) saves the government?  No one is my guess and when I proposed I do exactly this for my PhD on a particular parameter some years back, I was not so subtly told, that in spite of a great application, given the primary funding of the research group was from government, and a clear conflict of interest with the head researcher who was also a government advisor, ” my proposal was not in line with the current directives”.  Yep.

Last week, a dear mentee of mine mentioned that a GP one of her patients sees responded to her respectful correspondence regarding their shared patient with absolute terror, citing possible de-registration if they are seen to be collaborating or interacting with her in any way…assuming the MBA changes go through.  This doctor then decided the lesser risk, was to cease communication with this other key member of the patient’s health care team, not refer the patient for any follow up investigations (including those representative of basic duty of care) and certainly not enable access to any pathology results for this patient from the past or in the future.  My mentee’s exemplary response to this doctor:

“My apologies for placing you in an uncomfortable position. I do understand the restrictions and guidelines GPs must work within for Medicare and AHPRA and understand that as you are the requesting practitioner you are liable for any pathology referred for.  I make this clear to all my patients and that my referrals are on a request base only and it is up to yourself or the requesting GP for the final decision. I only try and request pathology through a GP or other medical practitioner to try and minimise both risks (of only myself viewing these labs) and unnecessary costs to the patient.

…’X’  has currently been seeking medical and alternative treatment for over 2 years and yet has had no change, if not a worsening of his condition and when I saw them 2 weeks ago, it was my understanding that not even basic assessment of full blood count, liver function and other general health markers had been completed. I had advised X that not all pathology may be covered under Medicare, and to come back to me so I could send him privately for those tests not able to be completed under Medicare. My apologies this was not made clear to you at the time of his appointment.

I take pride in my evidence-based approach to nutritional health in my practice, and work frequently with other patients’ medical practitioners in supporting their health. Thank you for your time and I appreciate your thoughts on this matter”

If the patients’ best interests are no longer the primary goal, as decided by bureaucrats, both government and organisational, is it time to ask the actual health professionals to please stand up?! Is it tipi-talk time for practitioners from all disciplines?  Growl over.

Want to ensure you are writing professionally to other health care practitioners?  Then our recording and resource Dear Doctor, is for you!

In this 45min podcast Rachel succinctly covers the serious Do’s and Don’ts for your professional letter writing. Rachel gives step-by-step instructions and examples for key phrasing and clear medical justifications, what terms to use when in order to come across respectfully, and how to present urgent red flags without sensationalising. This podcast is will  help your professional letters improve collaboration for you and your patients need.

 

Secret Weapons for Integrative Practitioners

 

 

What makes integrative health professionals stand out is that we take the time and have the attention to detail to capture the ‘whole health story’ of each patient.  As a result, however, we  tend to end up with vast amounts of information for every client: detailed medical histories, broad systems-reviews, condition specific validated screening surveys, in-house physical assessment data, not to mention a pile of past pathology results…and that’s before we start our own investigative path!

So as you sit at your desk with a plethora of information in front of you, you’re probably thinking, ‘Great, so much valuable information – Oh dear…so much valuable information!’ and struggling to separate the critical narrative from the noise. 

Plagued by circular questions:  ‘Where do I start?’, ‘What needs to come first?’, ‘Which treatment objectives will pack the most punch for this patient right now?’, ‘What really requires further investigation and what can wait?’  … your thoughts jump around, from one shiny thing to the next…you can ‘see’ so many of the connections… but can you see them all, the whole interconnectedness, and therefore the prescription, laid out in front of you like a road map to follow?

Introducing the two essential tools (aka secret weapons)…

MindMapping & Timelines

… the actual practice of gathering vast amount of a patients case onto one piece of paper.
Yes, that’s what I said ONE PIECE of paper!

Sounds too good to be true?? Well, they don’t quite give you super powers but they will help you write the patient prescription for you and not just one prescription but typically, for the next 12 months.  These tools can turn good clinicians into great ones and, once you master them, save enormous amount of your time on your patient work-ups.  Relevant to all health professionals who use an integrated approach, the utilisation of these tools, will also reveal to you much about what you know, but didn’t immediately realise (e.g. the means by which gut dysbiosis contributes to impaired oestrogen detoxification), and just as importantly, highlight your knowledge gaps & therefore opportunities for further growth along the way (e.g. how do inflamed joints disrupt GIT tight junctions?).

As ‘whole picture people’ we bite off a lot!  It’s these systems, timelines and MindMapping, that Rachel has found help her, and so many other clinicians, truly ‘digest’ the case, optimising our understanding and management.

“I loved this session and think it’s very relevant. I have used these tools before, but never mastered them or used them regularly. I have mostly used mind maps for study, so I love this application and with practice, think I will get used to using them for every case.”

“AMAZING!!! Fantastic health links that I did not know and really consolidated my knowledge on how to produce a Mindmap and how to be better at it! Fabulous session. Thank you”

“Most difficult is challenging existing patterns of thinking around mindmaps and training my brain to approach it more effectively (plus getting faster).  This will come with practice.  Most satisfying is seeing how useful they can be when done well at the start in terms of time saving in the overall case (across years) and getting to the core (s) of the case. Great session!”

MindMaps & Timelines – Effective Integrated Patient Work-Up

In the Part 1 Video, Rachel teaches you how to effectively perform a case work-up that does justice to the holistic framework and model. At the end of this presentation there is a practice run for you to create a MindMap and Timeline. PDF sample case notes, MindMap and timelines are included.

In the Part 2 Video, Rachel demonstrates in detail how to put a MindMap together from case notes. You’ll be able to see ‘in action’ how to apply all the information from Video 1 and have all your questions answered. PDF’s of both slideshows are included.

and watch this presentation now in your online account.

 

Wondering Who Shouldn’t Fast?

 

 

Remember biochemical individuality folks? That great core underpinning principle of naturopathic & integrative nutrition. We should always keep this in front of mind, when something utterly fabulous for absolutely everyone pops its head up.  Like every month or so, in the area of health, correct?

Fasting, in all its forms, is having a lot of time centre-stage right now. What a novel & truly prehistoric notion in this era of food 24/7! I get it and I agree, most of us would do much better by regularly moving out of the top paddock.

BUT…and there has to be a but…or we are no longer treating the individual…

Some of whom, due to specific conditions or biochemical tendencies, do utterly horribly with any sort of prolonged periods between feeds.  I already have a hit-list of conditions where fasting and food restriction is a no-no…then I saw a set of labs the other day from a patient who self-initiates regular, 4-6 day fasts during one of said fasts,whose alarming results jumped out in bold, italicized CAPITALS, illuminated itself in neon pink and reminded me to remind you!  This patient’s (extended) fasting labs went a little like this… total bilirubin 48 (normally 15 umol/L),  bicarbonate 18 (normally 26 mmol/L), corresponding anion gap 20 (normally 12), uric acid 0.62 (normally 0.4 mmol/L). Are you thinking what I am thinking B1?

So here’s my hit-list of ‘fasting = foe’ for – still subject to case by case assessment (of course!! because we treat the individual, right?!)…but

  • Any individual with a history of, or currently risk factors for, disordered eating, e.g. orthorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, anorexia
  • Gilbert’s Syndrome
  • Low T3 – thyroid ‘hibernation’
  • Hypocortisolemia
  • Anxiety and PTSD
  • Drug addiction
  • Children, pregnant women, the elderly…of course!

In short: any patient whose condition or biochemistry may be too negatively impacted even in the short term by any of the following: higher cortisol release, significant slowing of phase II detoxification, or radically elevated acidosis, should step away from the fast and towards the fridge!  🙂 🙂

Got any you want to add to this list?

What’s this you say about a hibernating thyroid?

Thyroid hibernation produces a low T3 value coupled with a ‘lowish’ TSH  and typically a clinical picture of hypothyroidism.  As the practitioner we are faced with the conundrum of how to effectively ‘wake up’ the pituitary which appears to be sleeping on the job.  This audio connects up the dots between this type of thyroid dysfunction, dietary patterns, restrictive eating (including a history of eating disorders), carbohydrate intake and disturbed iodine nutrition of the thyroid gland.  This pattern is increasingly seen in practice and this audio is a must for anyone working in the area.