Rachel's Blogs
Helping Patients Achieve Their PB
Listen to me, I'm sounding all sporty 😂. I'm not though, just in case you suffer misguided visions of my virtues! But it's not just the self-declared serious athletes that we need to have on our radar in relation to optimising their oxygen carrying capacity...
what we CAN do
It is a challenging and confusing time for everyone. Yet, as healthcare practitioners, we are needed more than ever, by our clients and our community, to do what we do best *educating *advocating * providing access to medicines * supporting Our friends and esteemed...
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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...
The Guts of the Problem
Felice Jacka is onto something. You might know her as the daughter of Judy Jacka (naturopathic trailblazer who established the SSNT), you might know her as the Australian researcher who really started the bigger international scientific conversation about diet and...
NONZ/NZSN 2017 Conference
Kia ora tātou! Yes, that's right! I’m heading off again to the land of the long white cloud. I’m very excited to be part of the Inaugural Conference that the New Zealand Society of Naturopaths and the Naturopaths of New Zealand are hosting 9-10th September in...
This is Why I Love My Job!
On Sunday there were deafening bells going off in my brain. By Monday they were going off in 11 others. Alessandra: "Holy s#*t this has just ticked so many boxes for a couple of Rx resistant patients. Thank you!" Tess: "Me too – finally the gut and pain connection...
Let’s Stop Normalising Abnormal Breasts
Let's play a little word association game: I say 'Fibroids' - you say, 'Oestrogen'. I say 'Cyclic Breast Pain' and you say, 'Ouch!' [because it just slipped out] but then you say, 'Prolactin', right? Me too. Prolactin driven breast pain's most characteristic form...
Who Me….Ageing???
My partner and I have a well rehearsed script whenever he is suffering from man flu, he says, "Am I going to die?" and I say "Yes, just not today." First world peoples tend to specialise in the denial of several absolutes: like time & death. As Professor David...
Seriously..this $%*# is still happening
Setting: Local cafe Scenario: Run into friends of friends who join us in the sunshine for a cuppa & we're discussing the finer details of chai (western version V the real streets of Delhi stuff), tumeric lattes etc etc. as you do. I comment on how unpleasantly...
Can You Diagnose This Deficiency?
While I did diagnose this one correctly, I didn't get 100% in this quiz - Can you? Speaking of the devil, Medscape, has this great little visual quiz to test your knowledge about physical signs & other hidden clues of nutritional deficiencies. While we all know...
‘Take Me To Your Master!’
I am frequently asked what scientific journals I subscribe to and often by the same practitioners over and over, because they can't reconcile my answer: "None". Yet I constantly have my head in the scientific literature, right? The two are not mutually exclusive,...
‘Sup with Zonulin?
Watch the gap! You know I love a good diagnostic test probably (way!) more than the next person but I am slow to come around when there's suddenly a 'new-kid-on-the-block' that every functional testing company wants to offer you. This is how I felt about serum...
When it Quacks like a Duck…it Could be a QIR!
Yet another sensational week of group mentoring last week. Holy guacamole...these cases just get more and more tasty! So much to talk about on every case presented, we all learnt buckets from a smorgasbord of conditions including: sudden onset thyroiditis (with a T4...
Money V Meaning
At the end of last week I spent 3 days engrossed in intensive ANS planning for 2018. As you can probably imagine these planning days are incredibly exciting, creative, stimulating processes. If everyone involved had brain PET scans performed during these discussions,...
Taking a Stand!
This year I've given up sitting & I couldn't be happier or more annoying. I've become one of those evangelical people that wants to now spread the word as far as possible. I bought a standing desk and it's radically improved my energy at the end of every work...
Working on the Edge
May was the month of teenage girls presenting with severe digestive problems, especially 'food intolerances', leading to avoidance of specific foods and at times significantly reduced food intake overall. As integrative health practitioners, validating and creating...