Restore your heart-body-brain balance for optimal health
I finally put together a podcast. I decided to start with something that is a little complex called Epigenetics. Epigenetics is a new branch of science that looks at how our DNA function changes. DNA will change what it produces based on environmental factors. Diet is an important factor in epigenetics. In this podcast, I explain more about what epigenetics is and how diet affects us.
I see many people who want to lose weight. It’s something they feel is important for their health regimen. Several years ago, I started a 21-day detox program for these patients. It has been wildly successful. But the program is much more than just a weight loss program. It is a powerful detox program. You will lose weight with it. But the real benefit is that you start to detox naturally. It is a way to feel better and reduce total toxin load and lose weight. You’ll start to feel better, but even more importantly, you will start to learn how to better take care of yourself. Weight loss is great. But if you don’t feel good, what does it matter? Detoxing naturally is important. Let’s go through some of the benefits of elimination and detox.
Detoxification is the process of eliminating toxic substances in the body. Toxin accumulation in the human body can be harmful. Our bodies accumulate toxins through food, drink, and the air we breathe. The body also produces some toxins as waste products of metabolism and digestion. What are some examples? Eating fish larger than a salmon can lead to mercury toxicity. Tuna in particular are large and accumulate many toxins including mercury. If you eat a lot of tuna, these toxins enter your body, and if you cannot eliminate or detoxify well, they will be stored in the body. The FDA recommends pregnant women avoid eating large fish due to this very problem.
The air we breathe can also be an issue. Oregon Public Broadcasting highlighted the poor air quality in Southeast Portland. Monitoring found high levels of cadmium and arsenic. Air quality has been a problem in this area for some time, but levels were high of late. Heavy metals can be extremely toxic to the body. (You can find out more at Scorecard.org for your neighborhood.)
Exposure doesn’t mean you’re doomed, though. Why are some people so adversely affected by toxins? I have discussed epigenetics in a previous podcast. Changes in our DNA function change our capacity to discharge toxins. There are three body systems responsible for detoxing the body:
• Digestive System: We remove toxins through defecation
• Respiratory System: We remove toxins through breathing
• Urinary System: We remove toxins through urination.
I want to save the respiratory system for another article. It’s an interesting system for elimination. I will save that for a discussion about breathing and heart rate variability. But, if the other two systems overload, the lungs are affected.
Each elimination system removes different types of toxins. If one system overloads, the others try to pick up the pace. If they can’t do that, the body will send waste through the skin. This is why some people get rashes or acne unexpectedly.
When the body can’t reduce toxic load, it may store them in fat cells. Our cells may hold onto water to dilute the toxin. Some people will get fluid or inflammation in their joints. Other people start to have problems in their nervous system. There are patterns to this that are identifiable by trained professionals. I can distinguish the causes of subtle changes in the body. My patients may come to me noticing weight gain. They feel like they are bloating or retaining water. I notice subtle changes in liver and kidney function. Changes that can foretell more serious health issues. A detox can be a good place to start reducing total load so that those problems can heal.
Detoxing naturally isn’t about weight loss. My patients who have done the 21-day Detox and Weight Loss Program for home notice this. They feel lighter. It’s not just the number on the scale. Yes, they have lost 15-25 pounds in that 21 days. But more importantly, they begin to feel their nagging aches and pains lift. They stop having pain in the morning when they get out of bed. They feel their digestion improve. They start to sleep better. Their mental fog lifts. These are some of the benefits people notice.
Our bodies need to remove toxins to function properly. Our liver removes complex toxins and shuttles these waste products to the colon. If the body can’t remove them fast enough they will sometimes diffuse back into the body. This is why Naturopaths are so interested in bowel habits of patients. If the bowels aren’t working efficiently, the liver’s work is for naught.
The kidney performs some of the same functions for different types of toxins. It removes excess electrolytes such as sodium and water soluble toxins.
Supplementation can be helpful for detoxification too. There are many vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and botanicals that can improve elimination. Knowing the imbalance is important though. Giving something for the liver when the problem is in the kidney may not help the underlying problem. In most cases, this won’t hurt the person. One reason I practice natural medicine is because of the credo “do no harm.” Diluted botanical remedies, neurofeedback, supplements, and other natural supplements are generally very safe. But haphazard prescriptions won’t always help the patient. They can also be expensive. Understanding why the problems exists allows for targeting treatments that are safe and cost-effective.
A detox can help jump start the body in being more efficient in removing toxins by reducing load. This can clear away some of the compounding (or confounding?) causes of the problem. Just by eating properly, your body will have more space to remove things that are harmful to you. Supplementation can be helpful in suggesting to the body to release the toxins. After a detox, sometimes the underlying cause becomes more obvious. Treatment is then more targeted and effective.
While the 21-day detox for health and weight loss isn’t for everyone, it has helped many people. The results are astounding. My patients start learning how to eat better. They learn to make better choices, how to control portions, and which foods affect them adversely. I work with patients to help their bodies become more efficient eliminators. The detox is only one way that I do that. You can find out more about the detox here.
As a Naturopathic Physician, I get many questions about diet and detox. The most common question I get is around diet with autistic children and adults. Diet plays a major role in autism treatment. Why does this diet work with this child with autism but not this other one? The answer to this question applies to more than just autism. People are often confused about why a new diet may stop working after some time. When they first start it, they feel good but after some time, they notice that nothing changes. Or they tried it one time and it helped, but another time the same diet change didn’t help. What’s going on? In this post, I want to explore these questions and discuss the factors that may contribute to this.
I started working with people diagnosed with Autism a few years into my practice. Autism is either a series of conditions or one condition with different causes. It presents in many ways based on the person. I started using LENS neurofeedback in my practice in 2009. I had one child with Autism respond immediately to the treatment. After that, I had many children and adults with Autism come to see me. I ask all new patients about diet. With Autistic children, the parents had tried many different diets. Gluten-free, casein-free, specific-carbohydrate diet, phenol-free, and others were all tried by different people. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t. The Autism Research Institute has a chart that shows the efficacy of different diets. What was interesting to me was that some of the diets helped some of the people some of the time. There wasn’t any one diet that worked with everyone. And some people found specific improvements with one diet but not another. Some patients, for example, found that sensitivity to noises improved with gluten-free diets. But they saw no change in sensitivity to touch with the same diet. It was curious.
SIDE NOTE: If you look at the chart carefully, there is a column that shows the ratio of better:worse. The ratio on average is much higher for alternative treatments than for pharmacological treatments. The only pharmacological treatment that shows promise at this time is the IVIG therapy. It is a therapy used to boost the immune system. The chart doesn’t evaluate neurofeedback.
Dr. Kenneth Aiken, a nutritionist in the UK, has a theory that makes sense. His book, “Dietary Interventions in Autism Spectrum Disorders,” gives an excellent overview of the subject. Dr. Aiken explores the different diets and comes up with a few recommendations. It’s a good book about diets in general but he highlights that maybe autism is a series of disorders and not just one. This would explain why some people do better avoiding gluten but not something else. Dr. Aiken comes up with a more holistic dietary approach that is relatively easy for most families. He addresses the challenge that many autistic children don’t eat enough. (If you read the book and are still confused, feel free to make an appointment with me to discuss. I have many different approaches to the treatment of autism. )
What his book doesn’t cover in detail is epigenetics. I have created a podcast about this, but want to explain more here. Epigenetics is the science of how the environment affects our DNA expression. What we eat, drink, breathe, and experience changes how our cells turn processes on and off. There is a relatively new field called nutrigenomics that explores how what we eat can change our DNA function. Research suggests that diet has a big impact on the function of DNA. In mouse studies, researchers observe physical changes in mice with unhealthy diets. Traits like diabetes are then passed to successive generations. This transmission occurs even if the mother changes her diet back to the healthy diet. An intervention like supplementation can restore function. (this part is confusing) It’s amazing.
What does this have to do with Autism? Autism is most likely not a genetic disease but an epigenetic one. Dietary changes can reduce symptoms, but in most cases doesn’t cause a complete reversal. In general, I find that supplementation and dietary changes together are more effective. This could be why my patients of complain that a simple diet shift stops helping. They need more than just a shift in diet.
This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t change your diet if it’s not healthy! But we shouldn’t expect that by itself to always fix the problem. Other factors may be part of this situation and I will cover those issues in another blog post. For now, remember that diet is part of the solution for autism treatment and other issues. But there are other aspects that are important in total health. If you want to learn more, feel free to schedule an appointment with me.
The yoga studio I go to has different teachers that teach classes for students of all levels. It is unusual, as there is a mix of advanced students and beginning ones in the same class. Last week, one of the teachers had us do a lot of planks. This is a core building exercise that requires the yogi to hold the pose as if doing a pushup – at the top of the pushup – sometimes for several minutes. After the class, I had a discussion with another student about all of the planks. “It’s not that the pose is physically hard to hold for that long,” she said to me. “It’s that my mind has trouble holding the pose.” It was a curious comment. What is it about doing something painful that is hard? Why do we have trouble pushing through the sensation?
In this post, I want to discuss how one holds emotions in the body. Emotional healing is an important aspect of physical healing, and an important part of my practice. But how do we release emotions? Why do they come out at times when we don’t expect them to appear? This is an aspect of my medical practice that fascinates me, and the answer isn’t clear. The simple answer is, when the person is ready. There are many techniques to release this storehouse of emotions, and we can explore some of them.
I think most people would agree that stress is held in the body. It’s something that one can feel and experience. Many people feel the effects of a long day at work in their neck or shoulders. But there is a deeper issue that can happen where trauma and grief are stored in the body. I have worked with many patients who have discussed this phenomenon as part of their work with me. Many report breaking down in tears while exercising as something shifted within their body. Emotions stored are released as part of the healing process.
How do we access these emotions physically? Candace Pert was a molecular biologist who studied the mind-body connection. She discovered that the body synthesized tiny molecules in response to difficult emotions. These get deposited into various places in the body. She and other scientists proposed that the body is a storehouse of unconscious thoughts and feelings. All of the things that have happened to us are stored in our bodies in response, regardless of whether we recall them or not.
Why is yoga so helpful for clearing negative emotions? Yoga, as an exercise, focuses on three things: movement, breath, and awareness. These three components play out in many of the techniques used to release emotions. When most people think of yoga, they are thinking about the exercise. Yoga is actually a series of practices that include Hatha Yoga, a series of poses. These poses are either done individually or in a sequence called a vinyasa. Each pose, or asana, has a specific breathing rhythm associated with it. The transitions between asanas also have a breathing pattern. There is a synchronization between the breath and the movement. The breath is part of the ritual and allows for a cleansing of the mind, body, and emotions. The practice requires awareness and focus. One may become aware of the places that are stuck and painful.
Many yoga teachers say that yoga begins when one wants to move out of a pose or quit. Bringing attention to the discomfort can help release the pain. The awareness requires non-judgement. It is what a Buddhist would call “Mindfulness.” Mindfulness is awareness without struggle. It is pure acceptance of what is. It is about being with what is true for you in that moment. You accept the feeling, the pain, the experience. And by doing that, the discomfort magically begins to soften. It is as if we have given our bodies permission to let go.
Yoga is such a wonderful metaphor for the process of letting go. I suspect that many people benefit from yoga because there is a visceral experience. You can feel where you are stuck and release that tension. You feel the struggle in your body. For example, let’s say you’re trying to stretch your hamstrings. There’s a quality of softening you must embrace to do so. Otherwise you are just tearing at the muscle fibers. You learn to let go.
Doing this on a psychological level, though, isn’t always as easy. This is because we have a different type of block called a “defense.” We still have the same struggle. It’s just happening in our minds. Psychologists tell us that we have defenses for a reason. We build defenses as a way to protect ourselves. They may be hiding trauma, abuse, or shame. We create them because at the time they form, we don’t have the emotional capacity to process what is going on. The defense becomes a part of us and we begin to identify with it. It is analagous to the tight hamstrings. We don’t remember when the last time the legs were loose.
To move around defenses, psychologists have created various methods. Emotional healing techniques allow us to access these parts of ourselves. Talk therapy helps us see our defenses. We gain greater awareness and can change our typical response. Other techniques focus not so much on the spoken word, but some sort of visceral release. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a technique that helps patients process trauma. Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT uses a self-tapping pattern while recalling a specific event. Both of these techniques appear to allow for the body to reprocess the events on a cellular level.
While we don’t always recall the specifics, release of the event is possible. These methods suggest that there is a connection between our minds and our body. Memories are stored in the body and accessed through the brain. But the use of these techniques allows us to move around our blocks. We don’t always have to recall a specific incident. (Although both the above techniques require one to do so.) A specific event isn’t always recalled while doing yoga. It arises out of the breathing and the movement.
In my medical practice, understanding this is crucial, as so many people come to me with anxiety. Very often, anxiety strikes and is free floating. There is no easily identifiable event or experience that one can identify. Focus on the past is less important. Focus on the present is key. It is where the defense lives. It is where the body lives.
A method that I use in my office works on a different principle of mind-body connection. HeartMath is a form of biofeedback that uses heart rate to help the user relax. It’s more than relaxation though. It helps the person see on the screen how their body reacts to different types of thoughts. Calming thoughts help bring the body in a state of coherence or where different systems in the body work together. Negative thoughts bring the body out of coherence. Watching this on the screen allows the user to learn to breathe better to gain more coherence. HeartMath works by helping the user stay in the present and notice subtle changes in their body.
Emotional healing during yoga is a great illustration of a mind-body connection. The body remembers even if we don’t. But there really isn’t a distinction. Our body knows, and it keeps track. From the mild aches and pains we feel getting up in the morning to full-blown disease, our bodies remember.
Every year, the Holiday season seems to get more hectic. All the stores are having the best Christmas sale ever. There are magazine proclaiming how to make the holidays perfect. It’s a lot of pressure. Many of my patients ask me how they can manage stress during this time. They complain of fatigue, depression, insomnia, and feeling run down. The stress leaves them susceptible to colds and flu. Is there anything you can do to avoid this? The answer is yes. Let’s look at some tips to help you avoid the stress of the holidays and take better care of yourself.
The first tip has to do with diet. Right after Halloween, I walked into my local “health food” store and noticed something. There were holiday treats everywhere. Chocolate, cookies, and cakes were on every aisle. Patients tell me that from November until the end of the year everyone brings treats into work. There is temptation all around.
You can’t always avoid the treats at work. (Although you don’t have to eat them. ) But you don’t have to bring the sugar home. Instead of baking high-carbohydrate and sugary treats, try something new. These treats can give you the sweetness of this time of year in a healthy form. There are tons of blogs that have paleo and refined sugar free options for treats. (Big Man’s World and the Detoxinista are two of my favorites.) I suggest trying at least one new recipe this holiday.
Holidays have become a frantic rush to out do the year before. Magazines claim that we can make this years meal “the Best Holiday Dinner Ever!” But a simple refocus on the holiday from “best ever” to “let’s enjoy what we have” will help us reduce stress.
Here are a few tips to make the holiday meal less stressful:
• Think basics. If you want to do a holiday dinner, stick with the basics: meat and vegetables. If your guests have special requests, invite them to prepare that and bring it to share. You don’t have to do it all. The point is to express joy and love, not to spend your time and energy catering to a huge crowd.
• Draft help. Split up your task list and share it with the expected guests. Getting others involved will help them feel a part and allow you to enjoy the holiday more. Drafting help includes clean up and dishes. Set a rule that the TV doesn’t go on until the dishes are finished.
• Let go. If you’re the type that obsesses over details and needs things done just right, this is a good time to let it go. (Frozen song aside ). Remember that the dinner takes a fraction of the time to consume as it does to prepare. Let others help in their way so you can enjoy your guests.
Meals and sugar aren’t the only things stressful about the holidays. All the running around, buying the perfect gift, and parties can be stressful. Here are a few more tips to keep your mental health.
• Don’t be in a rush. Take time to enjoy each holiday celebration as it comes. If you don’t get everything done that’s OK. Be sure to enjoy the holiday yourself. If you like to give gifts, do so. But don’t at the expense of your own sanity and pocketbook.
• Drink Water. Drink enough water to stay hydrated. This will help your body detoxify. We tend to eat a lot of rich food this time of year. Water can help. It also helps decrease your chance of getting sick.
• Make sleep a priority. Try for 8 to 9 hours of deep refreshing sleep per night. This will recharge your batteries and helps prevent illness.
• Take Time for You. This is a social time of year. There are many parties and activities that people do in December. It’s easy to lose sight of your need to have some down time. Along with extra sleep, it’s a good idea to have some alone time. If you have people coming to stay with you, take a time-out before they arrive.
• Be Thankful. Many studies show that gratitude is a key component of health. The more thankful we are for things, the better our mental health. It can ward off depression and anxiety that could otherwise be a challenge this time of year.
I’m sure there are other ways to de-stress the holidays. These are just some simple ideas to get you started. Remember it is the season for sharing, joy, and love. If you can focus on those, you will be that much closer to staying healthy during the season.
Happy Holidays!
Dr. Gil
A Simple Infographic about the symptoms related to Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The symptoms can take 18 months to appear after the injury. I see Veterans without Naturopathic Insurance coverage free of charge for neurofeedback.
Tammy, not her real name, came to me 10 months after a car accident. She was having trouble with school. She couldn’t focus for longer than 15 minutes at a time. That’s difficult when you are attending a top-ranked liberal arts university. Her medical doctors had told her rest would make everything better. Her mother searched “concussion treatments near me” to find me online and made an appointment for her daughter to see me for treatment. Six weeks later she was back to her regular self. School was going well, sleep had improved, anxiety disappeared, her headaches abated. Recovery from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) is possible without pharmaceuticals. How do you treat concussion? How do you see so much change without drugs? To understand this, it is important to explore more about TBI. What is it? What symptoms arise from it? By answering these questions we begin to get a better idea of how to treat.
Six years ago, I wrote an article about concussions and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The statistics were sobering; they still are. A recent study in JAMA says TBI strikes 1 in 8 elderly Americans yearly! But it occurs in all ages. TBI affects not just the brain, but physical, emotional, and cognitive problems. Many people don’t even realize that their health problems may have started with a TBI. There are many ways people get injured. Falls, sports-related injuries, motor vehicle accidents, and being struck in the head by an object are some of the leading causes of TBI. Some researchers believe the number may be as high as 55 million per year!
What these numbers don’t tell are that many people live with the consequences of a TBI long after the event. Between 3-5 million Americans live with an impairment related to a TBI. Concussions can create long term problems. Cognitive issues, including focus, concentration and memory are associated with concussion. But most of the people who come to see me don’t even recognize that there was injury such as Jessica. Depression, anxiety, insomnia, headaches, migraines, and fatigue may all start with a TBI. Most people come to me because of one of those problems, not because of a concussion.
There are other health risks associated with TBI. Not long ago, the idea of TBI or concussion was such that it had to be severe to have any long term consequences. We are learning that even a mild concussion can create long-term severe consequences. Head trauma, even from minor incidents, can cause a wide range of mental, emotional, and/or physical ailments. Dementia risk appears to be greater as well even if the injury is considered “mild”. Living with the effects of a TBI can be devastating. Shocking stories abound of how former professional football players and veterans take their own or others lives. Millions of others live with the long-term effects without any of the fanfare. I (and others) have helped people recover from TBI. And that recovery is safe, effective, inexpensive, and non-invasive.
How do you treat a concussion?
I am working on a more detailed article to describe treatment of these problems. For now let me give a brief overview. Treatment comes in two different modalities, supplementation and biofeedback. Supplementation can handle some of the symptoms and may reverse the damage. Vitamin D, magnesium, zinc, Vitamin B6, and Omega-3s are all helpful for post-concussion syndrome. Long-term supplementation may be able to reverse the damage of the TBI. I use supplementation with most of my patients with TBI. I may also use specific supplements to treat specific problems related to the TBI, including sleep issues or anxiety. This allows for symptom relief while unwinding the damage related to the injury. (Quick note: if you are elderly have your B12 levels tested. You may not be absorbing as this is a function of the aging process.)
Biofeedback though provides a more direct approach to helping TBI and treatment concussion. Neurofeedback measures the brain waves of a person and allows the brain to, in effect, see itself to recognize that there was an injury. A brain injury can result in the brain not recognizing that it has an injury. This is why I often see patients who don’t remember they had an injury but have many of the problems associated with a TBI.
Neurofeedback appears to turn back on the brain’s own repair mechanisms. Studies show that neurofeedback is effective treating TBI. And it can also be helpful for anxiety, depression, migraines, insomnia, ADHD, and other conditions. We do not completely understand the mechanisms of this, though there are some different theories.
Neurofeedback is only one treatment for TBI. New research is showing that Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Training can treat TBI. HRV training is a form of biofeedback. HRV is the measurement in subtle changes in heart rate between beats. Our heart beats at a different rates from moment to moment when we are resting. HRV is an excellent health assessment tool. Some researchers suggest that HRV may be the single biggest predictor of health in a person. Our HRV tends to decrease as we get older with a large drop as one nears death.
Furthermore, HRV may be a way to calculate the progress of treatment of the TBI. HRV seems to change after a TBI. HeartMath helps reduce emotional symptoms related to TBI. There is a home version of the device that allows patients to use on their own. I can review the data and assess their progress.
I’m excited to have another tool for treatment and assessment in my practice. If you or someone you know has had even a mild knock to the head, have them evaluated. Even if you don’t remember having a concussion but have some of the symptoms, get checked. A qualified healthcare professional can help. Concussion treatment via neurofeedback and supplementation may be able to help the problem that you are having.
Once again I am offering concussion treatment near me in Honolulu. Feel free to call my office for more information.
In the last blog post, we discussed fevers and suggested there was a connection between fevers and mental health. Many factors exist connecting mental illness and fevers but today we will explore one of them. The connection between inflammation and depression is important to understand so that we can better understand how to treat depression naturally.
Depression affects almost 15 million people in the United States. Symptoms can include changes in mood, behavior, sleep disturbances, changes in appetite, weight loss or weight gain. A loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyed is often seen with depression. Below is a list of problems that arise and while most people don’t have all of them, many people have some items from one or more of the categories below.
Mood: apathy, being bored or discontented, guilt, hopelessness, inability to feel pleasure, loneliness, mood swings, sadness, or emotional distress
Cognitive: lack of concentration or focus, slowness in activity and thought, or thoughts of suicide
Behavioral: agitation, excessive crying, irritability, self-harm, or social isolation
Sleep: early awakening, excess sleepiness, insomnia, or restless sleep
Psychological: depression, anxiety, or repeatedly going over thoughts
Whole body: excessive hunger, fatigue, or loss of appetite
Weight: sudden weight gain or weight loss
Now that we have some understanding of what depression is, let’s look at some of the causes. Why is this a big problem in the US at the moment? (As a side note, depression and anxiety are extremely prevalent in many countries including England and Australia. It is believed that Australia has a rate of depression of at least 20%. For the purposes of this article, though, I want to narrow the focus for a moment. )
Let’s ignore socio-economic factors for a moment. Clearly that plays a factor in people’s mood, and I will explore that in future articles. I’m a physician, and as such, start at the physical level. I want to share my expertise of holistic medicine to help you and your loved ones if possible. I wish to bring to light other factors that can affect someone such as a challenging boss, marital problems, and so forth.
Getting back to the body, correlations exist between obesity and depression. This connection gives us a clue as to one of the possible causes of depression. Depression may be related to a chronic inflammatory state. The result may be a low-grade fever. The process, though, could be making you feel sick and more importantly for the purposes of this article, depressed.
When we discussed fever in the last blog post, I didn’t go into the details of what a fever actually does. Fevers are a result of the inflammatory process. Fevers are generated because the immune system recognizes something that is not you. Each cell has a tag on it that lets other cells know that it belongs in the body. It’s sort of like an ID that we carry to let it be known we are citizens. We have cells called macrophages that circulate in the body trying to figure out if there is a problem. If there is one, they send out signals in the form of something called cytokines. There are many kinds of cytokines, each being a different type of signal that cells use to communicate with one another. Cytokines have different functions and one of them is to raise the body’s temperature. They also make us feel achy, tired, and slightly depressed. This is a protective mechanism so that we slow down and rest so as to not expose others. These are some of the signs of inflammation. The body uses inflammation as a way to fight disease and/or heal wounds. But the mechanism that helps the body fight disease may be responsible for all kinds of illness including depression, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, heart disease, and many other conditions.
When we feel depressed, it is often because of these signals that have been turned on but haven’t been turned off. It is believed by some clinicians that depression is the first sign of many diseases because of this mechanism, and in fact that many diseases are caused by chronic inflammation.
Understanding this one cause of depression helps us treat it. Reducing inflammation is very important as part of this treatment approach. It will also help improve other symptoms and reduce our risk of other ailments. Omega-3 fatty acids may be a very important part of reduction of low-grade inflammation causing depression. In my Naturopathic practice, I recommend 3 grams of Omega-3s to patients per day. That is to be distinguished from 3 grams of fish oil. There are other constituents in fish oil that are not omega-3s. Lower doses don’t have the same effect.
Curcumin (turmeric) is another excellent anti-inflammatory. Using turmeric in your cooking can be really helpful as well. An anti-inflammatory diet is also something that can help. Bromelain taken away from food can help reduce inflammation. It comes from papaya and helps with digestion when taken with food. Finally, I recommend testing of copper, zinc, and possibly for heavy metals if the problem persists. Often times depression arises from an imbalance in metals in the body.
There are many ways to treat depression naturally at a very low cost. I have worked with many people to help depression and get them enjoying life again. Please contact me to schedule either in-person or an online doctor consultation.
I hadn’t felt very well for a few days but one morning I woke up and could barely move. Every muscle in my body was screaming on fire. I had a fever. About 104 degrees F. I wasn’t going anywhere that day, I felt terrible but I was excited. My cat, Hickory, came to lay on the bed with me while I sweated there. He was new to the family and looked at me as if to say, “now you get it human, hang out and relax. You don’t need to work so hard.”
My fever was so high I was not thinking clearly. I knew there was a homeopathic remedy that would help me but I couldn’t remember which one in my state. I thought of something Dr. Thom said one day in class. “An acute illness is one that you either recover from on your own or you die.” I felt as if the latter would happen at any moment.
Eventually my fever broke and I not only started feeling better, I started feeling the best I had felt in my life. It wasn’t just the juxtaposition of the illness though. I felt as if something deeper had cleared within my body and soul. I knew that something had shifted in me.
Many people with a fever that high would have called the doctor, or taken something to bring the fever down. But fevers aren’t necessarily a bad thing and it seems as if the wrong lessons may have been learned about fevers. And aspirin may have had something to do with it. Let me explain.
World War I from 1914-1918 became the bloodiest conflict to that point in human history. The combination of modern technology with battle tactics from the 18th century proved to be extremely deadly and indecisive. Soldiers would charge positions with machine guns only to be slaughtered senselessly in moments. At the first Battle of the Marne, over 10,000 French and British soldiers were killed in approximately 30 minutes. During the retreat, the German soldiers didn’t even fire upon the enemy they were so sickened by the slaughter.
Needless to say, when the armistice came on November 11th there was much celebration. People would go out and see their friends and family. Soldiers started returning home too. But as the soldiers returned some carried with them influenza. People started feeling feverish and achy. Aspirin had two different names on either side of the Atlantic Ocean and two different uses. In the US it was mostly used for pain. In Europe it was used to lower fevers. The soldiers learned the fever reducing usage from being at war in Europe and told family members to take some to reduce their fever. Of course, when they did that they felt better but they were still sick. Not only that, they were still contagious. They would increase infection rates during the celebration as they were seeing people exposing them to the virus.
Now this strain of influenza was particularly virulent and probably would have killed a lot of people. At that time, however, aspirin was considered a wonder drug and the dosage rate of aspirin was extremely high. When aspirin is combined with a viral infection it can cause a very deadly side illness called Reye’s Syndrome. Many people are believed to have died from that. The aspirin was given to lower the fever but with Reye’s syndrome it doesn’t work and people can hemorrhage as a result. Of course, doctors didn’t learn that fact until many years later. They thought that the cause of death was the high fever. The lesson was that high fevers are deadly and we should lower them as quickly as possible. This was standard practice in medicine up until recently and paranoia of fevers continues to this day.
Fevers, though, allow our bodies to tune up. Fevers help the body fight off infections. The fever is caused by an immune response in the body and allows it to discover and fight invaders appropriately. Immune cells work more efficiently and make the viruses and bacteria less efficient. Our bodies clean out cells that have been taken over by viruses. The fever redistributes metals in the body so that two things happen. One, bacteria can’t feed on the metals to make themselves stronger and two, the excess metals can be eliminated by the liver. Not only does this help fight infection, it helps with mental health too as we will see in later blog posts. Fever is a good thing for the body.
Fortunately this lesson is slowly being unlearned. In fact, many medical schools are now teaching otherwise. The Yale School of Medicine recommendation for children is that you can wait out a fever up to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s high! But our bodies are designed to do that although it is generally not a very comfortable experience. As I lay there that day, Hickory next to me, with the 104-degree temperature, I felt I would die at any moment. But I didn’t and I was stronger for it.
Note: As a general rule, I ask patients to call me if the fever goes over 104 degrees Fahrenheit. I like to have a plan in place with them in case it spikes quickly but I’ve not had to intervene in over 10 years of practice.
How to stay healthy and fit in mind & body? That’s been a question for the ages. Why do some people get sick and others don’t? While I want to discuss mind & body, (and spiritual healing too) in this blog, I want to start with a simple example that is more relevant to most people as we head into fall and winter. How do we avoid colds and flus? If we get one, how does the body recover? Answering this question may be important to better understand the balance between mind, body, and spirit and why some people end up with depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions.
There are many theories proposed to answer why some people get sick. My focus has been more about mental/emotional health and most of the time that’s what I write about too. But as we’ll see in future posts, there are layers and layers of complexity to answering this question. So let’s start with why people get a cold or flu. Modern medicine believes that we get sick because of a virus or bacteria that invades and overwhelms our immune system.
Colds and flu represents the number one reason for office visits to the doctor and the cause of the most days of work missed. Buzz Aldrin is quoted as saying, “we can put a person on the moon but still can’t cure the common cold.” Science thinks they know how and why people get sick but there is still no cure, interestingly enough. The theory, as it is understood in the mainstream, is that a pathogen (either a virus or bacteria) invades the body (an outside force) to cause an infection in the body and create the disease. (For a moment, turn the clock back 500 years and replace “pathogen” with “evil spirit” and you have a disempowering model once again. As an interesting side note, many of the texts showing pictures of evil spirits look a lot like the electron microscope images of viruses. I’ll save this discussion for another article though.)
The theory is a little more complex than that although it still isn’t completely understood. It is believed that a pathogen disrupts the balance in the body somehow. See, it’s not so much about catching a cold or flu, as most of the viruses are likely living on our body much of the time. It is only when they overwhelm our system for whatever reason that there is a problem.
Without getting overly political, I describe to patients that our body is kind of like the United States. There are citizens, documented aliens, and harmful undocumented aliens. (At the time of writing this, immigration is a hot political topic so patients can relate to this analogy. I don’t generally like to discuss politics with patients). There are 30 trillion human cells in the typical human body. Each cell has a particular function and specialty. We also have countless other documented aliens – mostly bacteria – that help protect our skin, help with digestion and so forth. The last group is the pathogens that we don’t want in the body. The reality is that there is no way to really keep them out 100%. Somehow though, our immune cells circulate through the body and keep the undocumented aliens (pathogens) in check most of the time. Every once in awhile they fail to do that and an outbreak occurs in the body. When this happens, our immune system sends out a larger alarm in the form of inflammatory cytokines (hormones that communicate to other parts of the body) to mobilize other parts of the immune system to fight the infection. This process is what causes us to have symptoms of sneezing, aches, chills, and/or fever. We’ll see in another post why this is key to understand some mental illness and chronic disease.
There is likely something to this theory as well. Washing hands, not picking your nose, and staying away from people who are sick definitely helps decrease the spread of disease. Other theories abound that are equally and maybe more plausible including a disturbance in Qi (from a Chinese medicine perspective), disruption of mental/emotional balance (Louise Hay and others), spikes in inflammation or detox reaction (many researchers), and a host of other possibilities. (Maybe washing hands is a form of psychic purification for example).
But let’s turn the current disease model on its head for just a moment. What if one of these other theories is correct? What if the Qi is disturbed, or there is a mental/emotional imbalance that causes illness? A different way to look at this is that a cold or flu represents a disruption of the balance or homeostasis in the body. On his deathbed, Louis Pasteur is said to have recanted his theory to say that Antoine Béchamp (his main rival) was correct. Béchamp proposed that illness is about the terrain and not about the pathogen. His theory is that the pathogens are typical inhabitants of the body and for the most part he has been proven correct. In other words, we don’t get ill because of the pathogen necessarily but rather that there is an imbalance in the body allowing the pathogen to take advantage of the body. The pathogens are already there. So could washing hands be a placebo?
Another possibility is that the body has too much toxicity (think heavy metals, too much sugar or alcohol, or breathing in soot when there’s a nearby forest fire) and it wants to purge that to bring the body back into balance. It isn’t uncommon for one to feel like one is getting sick after this and have all of the same symptoms (including fever) as if one has a cold or flu, but a pathogen isn’t the culprit. Rather, there is another imbalance in the system.
From this viewpoint, the treatments that we think of to prevent a cold or flu, Echinacea, zinc, vitamin C, and so forth may not be the best approach. Immune boosting vitamins may not have the intended effects that we want. Rather we may want something that helps the body better recognize toxicity so as to facilitate removal of those toxins. Or we may want to help the organ systems that remove waste be more open and efficient. This slight shift in paradigm changes the approach to disease and illness.
If the problem is mental, emotional, or spiritual then treatment and prevention must focus on those factors to heal. Maybe this is why the placebo effect may be helpful. Or why there are so many anecdotal stories of faith healers, spiritual healers, spontaneous healings, and so forth. Of course, there is still something happening at the biological level, but maybe we can see a connection between the realm of the seen and the unseen.