Recently, I posted about my very positive experience of the AIMA NZ conference, prior to that I was gabbing on about the upcoming ACNEM Brain Health conference in Melbourne in May and now I am going for the conference hat trick! I want to revisit a really impacting lecture for me at last year’s Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine (ASLM) conference, delivered by the Emeritus Professor Mark L. Wahlqvist AO, BMedSc, MBBS, MD (Adelaide), MD (Uppsala),on the relationship between ecology and human health.
Why did I find his talk so impacting? Why should every integrative practitioner take the time to watch this?(more…)
I know you’re out there. Reading a recent news article I had instant flashbacks of being a young, big-eyed, rosy cheeked naturopathic student of 20+years ago. While my career since may have taken me in somewhat of a different direction, I know many of my colleagues have stayed true to their roots (both weedy and herbal) and love nothing more than a bit of urban foraging. Sometimes even sharing their bounty with me, much to my delight. I salute you!(more…)
This week I must have spent more than my daily time allocation (5mins) on Facebook and as a result I stumbled across an article I actually read from beginning to finish! The title called to me, “Bad Parent, Hey Bad Parent”…it works every time right? Anyway, once I started reading it I thought, no this is useful, we all need that manual that everybody talks about but nobody seems to own and I know this relates to not only the way I am bringing up my teens but I can pass on its pearls to my patients who are parents of teens as well.
My kids have been teens mathematically speaking for 3.5 years now, but I’m pretty certain, the metamorphosis happened just last Tuesday for one and a couple of months prior for the other.(more…)
Ask me to name a lymphatic herb other than Cleavers and Poke Root and I might struggle (sorry Sue!) but some other things stay with us forever.One of my stayers pops into my head every time I eat a carrot. Every time I make my partner or my kids eat a carrot. Every time I see those kids in shopping trolleys slurping on those awful yoghurt squeeze pouch thingamabobs and I want to ask their parents…does your child have teeth? Well when was the last time they ate a carrot?!. A whole carrot. Yup.
The other night my 16yo daughter was reading through bits of reading matter that had made it home from the recent ASLM conference – one in particular was all about contrasting dietary guidelines of key western countries and comparing these using a more naturopathic lens. The materials were glossy, gorgeous in their design and quickly conveyed some basic truths about healthy eating. The fact that she picked it up and voluntarily read the thing attests to it’s aesthetic! Anyway, about 2 minutes in she says, “Eat a rainbow of colours!” [snort], “Seriously? Are you really supposed to do that?!” Like either these naturopaths have been munching on the wrong kind of mushrooms or, even more outrageous, I had forgotten among my mother duties to mention this quintessential truth…either way she was momentarily taken aback.
Let me just give you some context, unless I’m assuming too much. (more…)
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. Check out my fridge. These ‘buckets’ can keep a family of up to 6 or 7 (yes my family size changes at each meal) going for almost a week. There are additional buckets of main meals (soups, slow cooks, curries) waiting in the wings in our freezer for when the shelves start to look bare.
Our ‘buckets’ mean that our kids, who don’t really ‘do’ snacks or a lot of (ab)normal processed foods, can see the menu for breakfast (yes, their absolute favourite breakfast is soup), self-serve leftover options to take to school and satiate themselves during the after school feeding frenzy! Gold.(more…)
Howdy practitioners – I’ve had an inspiring month of clients. Not because I cured anyone, answered some major riddle previously unsolved by modern medicine or any of these enormous tasks we or our patients often set ourselves but rather because I got back to basics. Many of you will know that I spend most of my practice time working at the pointy end of complex chronic multi-system disease and while it is deeply satisfying when you have a breakthrough with someone’s health, it is challenging. Often I am the last bastion, my clients have been referred to me and therefore typically have already addressed their diet and other health behaviours to a certain extent. So unlike perhaps many naturopaths, I don’t spend most of my time in practice talking about food and doing the grassroots education that is at the core of naturopathic medicine (in my humble opinion) 😉
This month was different. I had a bunch of clients who, while they did have pointy end (that’s a technical term!) multi-system disease, e.g. one client alone had retinal detachment, coronary stents, a genetic bone disease, NAFLD and a liver abscess, they clearly hadn’t been educated about food in the way that we do so well and which can make such a huge impact on a person’s life and health.
When was the last time you drank or ate something that contained an artificial sweetener (AS)? I remember it well and my most striking recollection was the way it ‘hit the spot’ just like I would have expected sugar to, making me immediately suspicious of the effects it would have on my body. It seemed implausible that it could mimic the taste/the sensation/the mood effects of a major sugar hit but not evoke any of the physiological responses of sugar…whether that be in my brain, my pancreas, my whatever! We’ve been sold the concept that AS offer the western world an exit point from our collective march towards metabolic syndrome for decades but sweet relief (pardon the pun ;)), new scientific studies are piecing together the real impact of AS consumption.
“‘We found that artificial sweeteners may drive…an exaggerated elevation in blood glucose levels, the very same condition that we often aim to prevent by consuming them,’ Eran Elinav, MD, PhD, from the Department of Immunology at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, said at a press briefing.” Medscape(more…)
