Rachel's Blogs
The Ferritin-Fun-Bus Of Pregnancy!
Key texts tell us, 2nd trimester Serum Ferritin may be between:...
The Temporal Tap On Thyrogastric Autoimmunity
I love a little temporal lobe tap. Especially the kind patients provide. This week mine came from a mentee's patient who, while presenting with concerns about possible perimenopause, was found to have radical shifts in her thyroid hormones, largely thanks to a...
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Creatine Supplements: Brain Over Brawn
I think I'm finally able to put my 'late-90s-Creatine-frontline-trauma' behind me. Back then, like many good nats in training, I was working the trenches of the health food stores and was faced on a daily basis with two types of men with two types of Creatine...
To All The Believers…You Might Want to Read This
I didn't catch that Zonulin wave that hit Australian integrative health practitioners a few years back. I think it might have been after Dr. Frassano himself, made an appearance at one of our big conferences. Like the true bloody sceptic I am, I stayed dry on...
TSI* – Not the Car Kind!
No doubt you've heard me refer to the thyroid Abs by their nicknames, TRAb is one I mention often, or Thyroid Receptor Antibody, as its mum calls it, when it's in trouble. And it's always in trouble! But TRAb is actually the collective name for several flavours of...
Why Iron? Why Us???
Did I mention my mentees ask the meanest (!) & most meaningful questions? Especially those early career practitioners engaged in our New Grads program! And it's been almost a whole month minute since I've talked about iron, so I wanted to share this gem from...
Hanging Out For The Histamine Handshake?!
Recently a mentee reported that when attending an in-person training event (remember those, everyone?!) she approached a sponsor’s stand, promoting practitioner training in the nutritional management of mental health, based on the pioneering work of American...
Have You Met Your Hype-Guy?
About 15 years ago I was introduced to histamine, the neurotransmitter. Before that, I only knew him (come on...it has to be, right? Histamine) as an immune molecule, an allergy mediator, a chemotactic agent of chaos! Given my interest & previous work in mental...
It’s True
I've a confession to make, I took the batteries out of our smoke detector in our kitchen. Why? You know why. Because it went off all the time, with what I like to call, friendly fires...you know, heating oil for poppadoms, a rush of steam upwards from a hot pot on...
Where Could Should Would All the Iron Go?
I love a good iron question. It makes me emit a sound like Jack Sparrow might, when faced with something pleasingly piratey 🏴☠️ Lucky because I am asked SO MANY GOOD ONES, SO OFTEN!! Being one of the earliest minerals discovered to be...
SSRIs – A Weight On Some Patient’s Minds
Given 1 in 8 Australians right now are taking an antidepressant, chances are you're seeing a lot of clients on these, especially the SSRIs. Erica McIntyre (fellow naturopath) and colleagues, found that in fact, mental health diagnoses affect about 43% of individuals...
Walk Towards The Light!
Now find a comfy spot everyone & I'll tell you a story...'Once upon a time, a long long time ago, we lived our days out in the dark, regarding potential calcium dysregulation!' But ever since serum Calcium has become a standard lab included in most routine...
Trends not Truths
Trends in mineral supplements are like music genres, you can pick which 'decade' they were formulated very quickly. But instead of going by clothes, hairstyles or even the style of accompanying music video, it's all about the form - the 'thing' the mineral is bound...
Is This You?
Gotta love all the clever inquisitive minds among our integrative health practitioner community. I think each of us, as children may have been that one kid who just never stopped asking questions. What a great quality to have because it prompts us to think outside...
Balancing Protein With Personalised Requirements
You guys know I can't help myself. For the last year or so I've been immersed in developing and redeveloping and redeveloping 🤓 [ahem apologies to my team!!] teaching tools for all practitioners to better understand what the routine renal markers can offer us...
A Nifty Tool (for non-Neanderthals)
The walls of books you can see behind me in my office, during webinars etc are not stage-props. Not a single day would go by without me pulling multiple core texts down off these shelves to caress their paper pages. I recite the most often used ones: Shils Shike,...
Calling Out The Conspiracy
I don't know about you but I don't count myself among the conspiracy theorists. While I may have been partial to the occasional one over my lifetime, you have my word, I never inhaled. Or at least not since I learned the practise of scientific enquiry and the...
No One Does Nutrition Like We Do Nutrition
A 26 year old woman suffering years of fatigue from 'persistent iron and B12 deficiency' repetitively treated with both oral and IV, walks into a compounding chemist and finally meets her match 🐱🏍 A naturopath with years of experience working...
When Your Day Ends On A Happy Note
A conscientious early career practitioner digging deep into GS research and upskilling, recently sent me a message to ask if I knew that the correct pronunciation of the condition was 'Zheelbairs'...as in..imagine you're French and say the word through a pencil...
Ever Wondered How Much D Will Get You There?
I used to all the time. Especially when I noticed the Niagara-falls-sized gap between the doses I was using compared with my mainstream medico mates. I thought, hang on, for a patient with a baseline blood level of 40nmol/L, they're recommending <1000 IU per day,...
Are You Thinking What I’m Thinking?
🍌 'Are you thinking what I'm thinking, B1?' 🍌'I think I am, B2! It's time to separate the B12 from the B*S#!' Ok, if you're reading this and you're not from around here you have reasonable grounds to conclude I'm the one who's gone 🍌 but if you...
The ‘Perfect’ TSH?
Have you been told somewhere by someone that the 'perfect' TSH is 1.5 mIU/L? This is a wonderful, terrible & wonderfully terrible example of 'magical numbers medicine'. As a push-back against the published reference ranges we're given, that are so wide you could...
Putting Our Health On Hold
I wanted to pass on this image (from Twitter by Victor Tseng) that was shared with me by a medical colleague - it's important. Many of us are thinking ahead now in terms of the 'coming waves' of COVID. I have certainly been very mindful of a future wave of mental...