THE CURIOUS MINDS CLUB 
Just back from my 6th...🤔 or 7th... trip to Vietnam. But this one was different - made all the more special, as I was visiting family🤗 Which meant I got to eat and enjoy things, I myself, despite being there so often, was never previously game to try mostly due to the...
Not just differently in terms of how we view other peoples' success but also how we recognise it within ourselves, or where we perceive ourselves to be in relationship to that 'goal'. Our 'identifiers' will be as unique as we are. What we've had modelled within our...
This year I heard a great quote that hit the spot for me: anyone who offers you a simple solution to a complex problem is lying or misguided, the solution to a complex problem will inherently be complex. Dang! I'm frequently reminded of this in relation to many...
Remember the days when we had the brain all back-to-front & upside down? Anatomy & physiology told us it was an island, completely protected by the blood-brain-barrier from pathology in the rest of the body, that it was incapable of regeneration after damage...
When I returned to seeing clients after my stint working in the pharmaceutical world of antidepressants & antipsychotics I was truly excited by the potential in our dispensary. 18 years later I remain just as excited. But what I hadn't yet understood was just how...
Assessing Adrenals can be hit and miss, especially given that even more so than other labs, timing is everything. That's why endocrinologists typically won't look at anything less than a 24hr urine collection. If the total output is deemed to be high = Cushing's and...
Did someone explain the kidneys are like a really important, not to be forgotten, under-estimated, ignored or under-valued kind of organ in your training as a naturopath? No, me neither. I mean I know Buchu and Uva and Zea (on a first name basis only, clearly!) and...
Yet another super-helpful part of Iron-Land has been mapped!! Ever struggled to correct chronic iron deficiency in athletes or even just weekend warriors? Yep, me too. One of the key barriers being the 2-3 fold rise in hepcidin in response to exercise. Hepcidin...
What's the most common thyroid disease you're seeing in practice? Nope, try again. I'm serious. There would be very few of us who'd get this right without cheating. It's nodules. Current figures suggest 1/2 of all us middle-agers have them and by the time we're 80...
Having just spent the last four days in Sydney delivering education at ACNEM to doctors, dentists, pharmacists and other medical professionals, I am reminded afresh about what we all share: a passion for problem solving and a diagnostic detective determination! ...
I had to say to a mentee just yesterday, "You're going to see the topic for the Update in Under 30 this month and think it's inspired by your patient but it was actually about the 3 other cases I'd seen this month, before yours!" Yep...I'm talking about thyroid...
This week's wonder-full paper and light-bulb discovery was prompted by a 34 year old woman with a history of Depo Provera injections over several years to control unruly menstrual bleeding and pain. She was subsequently diagnosed at 28 with osteoporosis. That's not a...
Stop press. No, seriously. This new research warrants the attention of every practitioner working with children & teenagers. In the largest paediatric study of its kind to date, which included 2,480 children aged 10-18yrs diagnosed with hyperthyroidism (Grave's...
https://youtu.be/sN-sel64IGc For all those Mentoring Virgins 😇 out there wanting a clearer understanding of what it's really like to be part of my group mentoring, this video is a little snippet from a session with one of my groups. This year has flown...
Behind their deceptively-dated inkjet printing and boring black and white font (punctuated occasionally by a comparatively thrilling red H or L) mainstream pathology results actually offer a goldmine of information and insight about your patients....if you know...
Sometimes timing is everything. I recently FINALLY had my (almost) lifelong dream come true, installing a self-care-haven-outdoor-bath and guess what, a few days later I stumbled across an exciting study talking about the benefits of baths! But it's not in the...
Our knowledge is subject to constant change, and it is oh so necessary to stay up to date in our field for a bazillion reasons, give or take a few 😉 So sometimes we can feel like we need eight arms (for the visual amongst us) to manage and keep up with it all....
Remember when I said you say tomatoes... equal histamine but I say, well maybe oxalates, maybe Nickel? So in the UU30 released just last week How Noxious is Nickel we get down and dirtily detailed with just why Nickel, which is almost ubiquitous in soils and therefore...
Forehead USB not required. Phew. All that is required, is a real thirst for new knowledge, rapid development of your diagnostic skills and a willingness to commit an hour every month to tap into your new Brain's Trust: Rachel and a collection of colleagues with a...
Kupfernickel. It's the original German name for Nickel and it literally translates to 'Copper Nickel' which inferred it to be the 'Copper Nickel' aka 'Devil's Copper'...because each metal can masquerade and be mistaken for the other! There's an interesting story...
There I said it. It was always going to happen. I'm ok, thanks for asking. This week we had a case of a woman diagnosed with MS in her late 20s. That was 5 years ago and she's been medicated ever since with an immunosuppressant and she is understandably very nervous...
Tonic. Homeostatic modulator. These terms and concepts, which have a long tradition in herbal medicine (and let's be clear, were considered yet another example of the wishy-washiness of the modality) are being appropriated by some areas of mainstream medicine right...
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...