Rachel's Blogs
Thyroid Health in a Time of (& after) COVID
Did you know that your thyroid expresses more ACE 2 receptors than your lungs? So while there is nothing new about the potential for a virus (or indeed even a vaccine against a virus) to impact thyroid form and function, the particular predilection this recent virus...
Weight Issues & Thyroid – Are We Asking The Wrong Question?
If I wrote down these 2 elements on a MindMap: Thyroid dysfunction and Adiposity, how would you connect them? Would you reflexively draw an arrow from the former to the latter to flag that the thyroid underpins the weight management issues? My arrow would be the...
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Finding Your Why
As an organiser of the Australian Naturopathic Summit I wasn't immune to the content. In fact, like so many other practitioners we keep hearing from, I think I am forever changed...and that's not just my adrenals talking!! All the speakers' insights continue...
Uncovering Unhealthy Bones Earlier
Recently, while I was touring around the country talking all things Acid Base (!), I spent a bit of time talking to practitioners about the limitations of our current protocols and assessment tools for detecting 'Bad Bones'. I was surrounded by a sea of nodding heads...
My Masterchef-free Kitchen
Anyone who knows me will tell you that unlike many praccies, I don't double as Food Diva. I cook yes...in abundance and I have been told on may occasions my food is 'delish' and no one leaves hungry but I focus my energy on preparing food that is super easy, highly...
Don’t Focus on Solving Your Problems
The structure of the recent, wonderfully received, Australian Naturopathic Summit came to me when I was riding my bike along one of the beautiful back roads of Mullumbimby, freewheeling downhill in the glorious sunshine. Like the cartoons, the format of the...
Are You Questioning CoQ10?
I like to fancy myself as a bit of Supplement Sleuth! I love working with herbs, nutrients and nutraceuticals but I am not blinded to the fact that manufacturers and suppliers, whatever their form of medicine, are large competitive businesses that ultimately need to...
Buckets of Busy Mums
I know my busy mum patients think I am probably not to be taken literally when I say, 'Cook buckets of extras every time you step foot inside the kitchen', but I am. My slow cooker and my 'buckets' are two of my favourite kitchen resources I couldn't live without....
Are We Setting Patients Up to Fail?
Fresh faced students, new graduates and seasoned practitioners alike, are forever reminding me of the challenge we experience as practitioners when it comes to instigating real change in our patients health related behaviours ... the change we KNOW will make a...
The Bugs are Biting Back!
All health professionals are aware of increasing resistance in bacteria as a result of our overuse of broad spectrum antibiotics in both prescriptions and our livestock industry but increasingly we're hearing about evidence of resistance in microbes of a variety of...
With or Withania You?
Cheesy I know! 😉 However, recently the issue of knowing when to use Withania somnifera & when not to, came up again in mentoring so I thought it's probably a good one to share. Withania, aka Aswagandha or Indian Ginseng, has become a favourite adaptogenic...
Retinol – Feared or Forgotten?
I've always been a bit of a fan of Vitamin A but this has grown again in the last year or so, having seen some great responses to short term high dose treatment during active infections or when trying to break a cycle of chronic reinfection. For me, and I...
Eating Disordered Patients – But Not As You Know Them?
I think most of us visualise the clearly malnourished young woman, when we think of eating disorders however, while anorexia nervosa is something to be on the watch for, our patients are presenting increasingly with more unusual, atypical patterns of disordered...
There’s Nothing Alive in this Kitchen!
From the giddy holiday highs to the lows! As you know we kicked off these school holidays with a birthday celebration at Stradbroke Island...time travel forward just a short distance to the end of school holidays and you'll find us we've now taken up residence in the...
Microbial Madness
The understanding that certain infections produce mental health presentations is not a new one. However, based in part on observations of some of the features of tick borne diseases (TBD) such as Lyme like illness, a reawakening of the role for infection in psychiatry...
Just Do It! (Motto for Successful Teen Feeding)
Question: What has 22 legs, 11 mouths, sounds like your tv, radio and CD player are all playing at their loudest deafening volume together and an appetite like a small army? Answer: the 11 teens I took to Stradbroke Island to celebrate my twins 16th birthday! Yes,...
Closing the Gap on Coeliac – Why a GF Diet Shouldn’t Come First
A patient walks into your client and reports that they think they might be reacting to gluten. Happens every week, if not every day, right? Awareness about potential negative health effects from gluten is exploding and often patients present self-diagnosing and self...
A Disclosure
Robert Bransfield MD DLFAPA likes to start off his presentations with a full and frank disclosure about potential conflicts of interest. After all, he is a well known psychiatrist and Associate Clinical Professor at Rutgers-RWJ Medical School, who is...
Sorry if I've been quiet for while but I promise have been very very busy! The Australian Naturopathic Summit is getting tantalisingly (& frighteningly!!) close, and I'm just back from a great Aus/NZ tour with Professor Vormann talking my heart out about Acid...
10 Top Tips to Improve the Accuracy of your Patients’ Blood Test Results
If you’re reading this you already know how much I love a good set of blood test results, right? It’s always (tragically!) a bit of a high point of my day when they spit out of the fax machine or become available through some other more modern little IT...
A New Mental Health Education Initiative in July!
“Access the Experts with Rachel Arthur” is a month long intensive webinar series focusing on the best of Mental Health Education. Every Thursday night for the month of July, Rachel will be interviewing a hand-picked guest speaker about a particular area of expertise...
Drop in for a Chat Tomorrow?
The New Practitioner Drop In Class is a monthly drop in class that focuses on providing an easy to access drop in opportunity for integrative health practitioners to participate in some of the most accelerated form of post-graduate education and clinically relevant...
Emotional Pain…Pop a Paracetamol?
During a mentoring session this week a practitioner asked me, 'How could paracetamol relieve anger?'. After the initial, 'What the..??.' reflex, I thought well the placebo response is really a wonderful thing, the potency of which should never be under-estimated. I...