THE CURIOUS MINDS CLUB 
I should have known. Right after I wrote my most recent blog on two essential updates in adolescent health - HealthEd released a podcast on Spotting Eating Disorder Red Flags in Children that lit my brain up like a pinball machine! Because I know for many it's hard to...
I have a voracious and varied appetite for medical research but two things came up recently that I thought I just had to share: Energy Drinks Increase Suicide Risk Under the heading of, 'New Red Flag for Mental Health' Medscape reported on a meta-analysis involving...
...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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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!...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...