I was in Toronto last weekend teaching a course to students that attend the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. It was a treat to meet so many future naturopaths and get to talk about a topic close to my heart and the heart of my practice. The group had many good questions and seemed eager to learn more about what I consider the mostly truly “holistic” therapy in natural medicine, homeopathy. Of course, no therapy is more controversial by many people’s standards. The notion that infinitesimal amounts of a substance could have a significant effect on a person’s health is a hard thing to swallow for many people, not least of all medical doctors (M.D.s) trained in the kind of mechanistic medicine that comprises our “mainstream” medical system. Of course there is validity to the way medical doctors practice and I, for one, have never been looking to replace anyone’s M.D. But we naturopaths understand the body differently and this was the main point I tried to impress on the students in Toronto last week.

Naturopathic physicians should always respect physiology. We strive to understand the thousands of mechanisms that are constantly adjusting to the changes in our environment and even to our mental state. We strive to individualize our interventions, respecting the fact that no two people are exactly alike but may share some characteristics with others. We want to find the safest, least invasive way to address the patient’s complaints and we should be continual students ourselves, considering how complex the physiology of the human body is. This essentially gets us away, as practitioners, from focusing on symptom management and gets us closer to the goal of healing the pathology.

Yes, pathology is important to understand as well–in as much as it describes what imbalances the body is succumbing to and how it is trying to cope with the breakdown in healthy function of tissue. I don’t care much for the name of the disease but rather I want to understand how I can best harness the body’s inherent ability to return to balance and to heal.

Homeopathy provides one way to do just that, especially the kind of homeopathy I practice. One might refer to this as complex homeopathy. Contrary to classical homeopaths that give one single substance to the patient and then wait, sometimes many weeks or months, I give complex remedies based on the idea that no one single substance will have the ability to enhance cellular function, address imbalances in the temperament and heal the essential root imbalance. Eventually we may be able to employ a single homeopathic remedy in this service but not without systematic application of multiple substances that will first clean out the cells and tissues to allow for a deeper action of a single homeopathically-prepared substance, or “constitutional remedy”.

Unfortunately, people are just too sick and toxic these days to routinely get a sense of the core problem at the 1st or 2nd office visit. Cleaning up the diet, addressing organ systems that are calling out for help by way of symptoms and looking at the amount of stress a person is dealing with, gives a practitioner more than enough to work with at the start.

There are many resources to explore if one wants a deeper understanding of homeopathy. Dana Ullman’s site and columns on The Huffington Post are excellent. Here are a few samples I’ve found most interesting:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/disinformation-about-homeopathy_b_952967.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/luc-montagnier-homeopathy-taken-seriously_b_814619.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/disinformation-homeopathy_b_969627.html

If you would like more information about “complex homeopathy” and the specific products I have used for 15 years, please visit the Seroyal website. They distribute the UNDA homeopathic medicines I use in my practice.

http://www.seroyal.com/

Lastly, the notion of hormesis is intertwined with the potential efficacy of homeopathy. To learn more just google hormesis and homeopathy. One of the leading researchers in this field is Edward Calabrese and he has written several articles that are available for free. I encourage you to delve into a type of therapy that has helped hundreds of people in my practice alone. And of course homeopathy is popular world-wide for it’s respectful way of addressing health and healing.

How many patients have I treated with thyroid problems? A lot! I’d say almost every day I practice I see a patient where at the very least I have to consider if thyroid problems are there, even if the patient has not been diagnosed. An under-functioning thyroid is more commonly found in women and many women do have the standard thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) checked. Often the levels are not technically out-of-range but the patient is definitely struggling with signs of sub-clinical hypothyroidism. In fact, normal ranges for TSH were changed in 2002 but many doctors are still unaware that a value above 3.0 for TSH is now considered hypothyroid. The labs I use still have the old reference ranges listed, unbelievable! The main symptoms of an under-active thyroid are fatigue, weight gain, intolerance to cold, dry hair/skin/nails, constipation and low-level depression. As you might guess from this list, a properly functioning thyroid is essential for overall metabolic function. The thyroid controls temperature inside the cells and therefore effects the cells ability to carry out it’s basic functions. The thyroid is intimately related to mineral metabolism as well. This is why at menopause when the thyroid is often compromised women lose more bone or develop osteopenia/osteoporosis.

There are two other types of testing that I routinely run, tests for “thyroid antibodies” thyroid peroxidase and thyroglobulin (AbTPO, AbTG). Often times I will pick up an auto-immune aspect to the thyroid condition. This condition is called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and it means that your body is making antibodies that are affecting the ability of the thyroid to do it’s job. It is estimated that 90% of all hypothyroid conditions are caused by this autoimmune type of problem.

What does all this have to with wheat? Well, there have been a number of studies over the years that show a connection between Hashimoto’s and Celiac’s Disease.1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Celiac’s disease is the most extreme form of gluten sensitivity where the body is forming antibodies that do much damage to the lining of your intestinal tract. In fact, babies exposed to gluten-containing grains before 3 months of age are 5 times as likely to develop Celiac’s Disease. So there is a commonly observed connection between people who make gluten antibodies: they often make thyroid antibodies as well. Routine blood testing for Celiac’s Disease should always include testing for autoimmune thyroiditis. Unfortunately, testing for Celiac’s Disease is far from reliable and you will often get false negative results in patients who have some issues with gluten intolerance. But more often than not, people with Hashitmoto’s will have problems digesting wheat and other gluten-containing grains. This may be due to genetic connection. People with genes called HLA DQ genes are more likely than the general population to have autoimmune disease, celiac disease and gluten intolerance. One lab is now offering a stool test for gluten sensitivity which can pick up problems more easily than waiting for antibodies to show up in the bloodstream. Preliminary research shows that up to 80% of Americans may have one of these gene types.6

Which brings me to the idea that they are not really two separate conditions at all. There is an overall problem with the immune system, creating antibodies that cross-react with our own tissue. A recent study found that many times more thyroid medicine was needed in Celiac’s sufferers to bring thyroid function back to normal than those that did not have problems with gluten.7 And when gluten was taken out of the diet the thyroid hormone levels could be regulated more easily.

Gluten and it’s main damaging constituent, gliadin, are only part of the problem for many people. Those individuals who are Blood Type O are especially sensitive to the wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) lectin that has an affinity for the carbohydrate structure of the Type O antigen (fucose). Dr. D’Adamo has been writing for over 20 years about this phenomenon. In addition, he noted that research found Celiac’s patients had a deficiency of a certain enzyme that rendered them more genetically prone to WGA binding on the intestinal cells. So, the take home is, it’s not just the gluten and the glycoprotein gliadin that are the problem, the lectin in wheat is also problematic for many individuals. If you are Blood Type O it only makes matters worse. The likelihood of thyroid problems is more prevalent in Type Os eating wheat as well, further indicating a connection between the bowel and the thyroid gland.

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19324373

2.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18716873

3.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20103030

4.http://www.eje-online.org/content/130/2/137.abstract

5.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15244201

6.https://www.enterolab.com/

7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Atypical%20Celiac%20Disease%20as%20Cause%20of%20Increased%20Need%20for%20Thyroxine%3A%20A%20Systematic%20Study

8.http://www.dadamo.com/science_lectins_mitogens.htm

As part of a naturopathic curriculum I studied basic physiology and completed 4 semesters of a class we referred to simply as “CPD”, clinical and physical diagnosis. CPD is a cornerstone of any training to become a physician, introducing you to the majority of clinical situations you will encounter. I remember feeling like the kidney was an enigmatic organ to me then, and it has remained so, by and large. Lately I’ve been working with 2 men both with chronic kidney failure. One man has been “stressing” his kidneys for years with high blood pressure, poor diet and moderate use of ibuprofen and aspirin. His nephrologist has estimated he has about 20% of full kidney function which gives you an idea of how important it is we have two of these puppies and that we can survive with a fraction of their full function. The other man has a strong genetic tendency for kidney problems and is generally a much healthier individual. Nonetheless, both men are struggling to keep their kidneys from failing completely.

To oversimplify greatly, the kidney is a blood filtration system. But the kidney also performs a host of other critical functions including the absorption of nutrients, balancing blood sugar, regulating electrolyte balance (without which your cells would stop working almost immediately), producing some hormones and activating Vitamin D. Last but not least is the complex mechanism of regulating blood pressure and the essential relationship between the kidney and other vital organs like the heart and liver. From the perspective of my homeopathic training the kidney is the final site of eliminating many toxins from the body, especially crystalline-type toxins that cause arthritic pain. Often times when I treat the skin I treat the kidney, as skin breakouts are reflective of a sluggishness either in liver or kidney function, or both. Chinese medicine devotes a huge amount of emphasis to kidney function (less an organ than a general area and concept), as it is responsible for maintaining the deep essence of energy in the body, called jing. In fact, many of the best remedies for supporting kidney function come from the Chinese use of herbs. See several studies listed below.

Both of these men had a finding of 300+ protein when we did our routine urinalysis at the clinic. This means the delicate architecture of the kidney filter is being damaged and larger molecules of protein are being lost through the urine. This is a sure sign that aggressive measures must be taken. Well, aggressive from a naturopathic perspective. I have both men on diets that will attempt to reduce any further damage to the organ by strictly reducing foods that contain lectins, proteins that may adversely effect sensitive tissues by making cells stick to one another. In addition, each of them is taking a combination of herbs that should help reduce kidney inflammation and lower the creatinine clearance which reflects the kidney’s ability to filter the blood plasma.

I have both men on a protocol that includes Chinese herbs but I will only list some references from the scientific literature rather than mentioning them by name. This is because herbal medicine must be administered by an expert that understands the physiological effects. Some herbs can cause kidney problems if applied incorrectly and in the wrong population. So I caution readers not to think they can treat this issue on their own. I could make that argument for every condition I discuss, but kidney failure is one of the more difficult things to treat.

There is one substance I am using that is extremely safe and also has some benefit for the kidney. That is arabinogalactans from the Larch tree. Dr. D’Adamo answered a question a couple of years ago about the effect of Larch reducing the ammonia-producing bacteria of the gut and that having an indirect benefit on kidney function. See here:

Larch for Kidney Failure

The following links are a small sample of published research using various herbs for kidney function.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21842633

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21043035

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21691763

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1421972

Yesterday was a day of body work in my New Haven office. Craniosacral therapy (CST) is a form of body work that uses light touch to address two major “systems” in the body. The first system is the network of connective tissue that surrounds muscles, tendons, ligaments and many of the major organs of the body. It is called fascia. CST attempts to realign these structures to allow for better circulation of blood and nerve conduction, essentially re-integrating the part into the whole. As this happens, both patient and practitioner may detect signs of tissue release: softening, changes in temperature, twitching in the tissue or a pulsing sensation.

depiction of fascia by Robert Schleip

The second system that CST addresses is the flow of cerebral spinal fluid from deep inside the brain through the meninges that surround the brain and spinal cord to your sacral area in the lowest part of the back. Cerebrospinal fluid is pumped out from the brain into this semi-closed hydraulic system and a CST practitioner is trained how to find (or palpate) this rhythm and evaluate it for signs of restriction in certain areas of the body. The return of normal “flow” of the rhythm is another way we assess the efficacy of treatment and the resolution of the session.

There is both a physical and energetic component to craniosacral therapy.

I realize this may all sound completely nonsensical to someone who has never experienced, or registered the experience intellectually, energy flow in their body. For thousands of years every healing tradition across the globe acknowledged the existence of an energetic aspect to our bodies have manipulated it through acupuncture, qi gong, tui na, shiatsu, ayurveda, and many other systems of healing. To other readers this may seem like the most normal thing in the world.

As a first-year naturopathic student in 1994 I received my first cranio-sacral treatment from an excellent fellow student, Barbara MacDonald. I will never forget the feeling of, well, feeling. My sacral area got all tingly and I could feel a sense of movement, even though Dr. MacDonald (as she is now known) was barely applying any pressure to the area. Right away I knew this was the form of body work I wanted to study amidst the many options we were exposed to throughout the course of our naturopathic education.

I’ve written about cranio-sacral therapy before and presented on this treatment for seizure disorder at NYU many moons ago. It is a difficult topic to discuss because the effects can be both subtle and totally profound. A longer, more informative piece, including history of this method, can be found on my website here:

Craniosacral Therapy

My personal experiences with craniosacral have helped me with musculoskeletal pain and stress-relief. Over the last 15 years of practice I have seen some amazing results from this treatment. I’ve worked on more people than I can remember but some of the more dramatic experiences I recall were a Vietnam veteran that had had lower extremity nerve irritation for many years as the result of a gunshot injury. After 3 0r 4 CST sessions a constant tremor in his lower body had dissipated. Another patient had a head injury and subsequent hemorrhage that resulted in her losing all sense of smell. After her first treatment she experienced some pain in the area where the hemorrhage was and after several additional treatments she recovered her sense of smell by approximately 90%. I’ve treated many people with migraines, low back pain, seizure disorder and various aches and pains. I would have to say the most consistent thing patients report is a deep sense of relaxation. And who among us couldn’t use a bit of salutary relaxation from time to time?

I believe one of the biggest challenges our profession faces is educating the public about what it is that we do. Even people who have heard the term “naturopath” or “naturopathic physician” often times have no idea what our training entails and what our practice looks like on a day-to-day basis. And it is a challenge to know exactly what we do since naturopaths can employ a variety of therapies.

I thought it might be useful to spell out a day of practice for me–the patients I saw today and a brief listing of the therapeutic modalities I recommended, or performed, for each. Having been off for almost 2 weeks I was eager to get back to seeing patients. All 8 of them were return office visits starting off with a long-term patient who I’ve been working with for years on her Celiac’s disease and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. This 41 year-old woman went undiagnosed for a long time and therefore her entire endocrine system was tremendously off balance when we met. Now her thyroid is well-controlled, her digestive system is in great shape because she is diligent about avoiding all gluten and we are mainly working on her sluggish metabolism. She has been trying to lose weight for a number of years and recently has begun to shed several pounds doing a genotype-modified “Paleo” diet and working out 5-6 days a week. She is also on a number of nutritional supplements to improve fat-burning and sensitize both insulin and leptin receptors. Today we determined she is over-training and not eating enough carbs. So, somewhat ironically, I was telling her she needed to eat more and cut back on all the heavy-duty cardio to lose more weight!

Next up was one of my super-women patients, a highly accomplished college president with way too much on her plate and hypertension to prove it. She comes in for regular acupuncture which has helped prevent her from needing additional medication. This patient is also taking some herbal medicine to help relax the blood vessels and de-stress the nervous system.

Patient number 3 hasn’t been in for a year. I was originally treating her for fibroids and subsequent anemia due to hemorrhaging. The fibroids were too large to control with natural methods and she had surgery to remove them about a year ago, preserving her uterus. Today she wanted to reconnect with me due to circulatory problems she’s having. Her hands and feet are extremely cold, her legs get “all tingly” and “weird” when tries to exercise and she has occasional heart palpitations. She has seen 3 different cardiologists. Raynaud’s, lupus (SLE), cardiomyopathy and mitral valve prolapse have been ruled out and she has no definitive diagnosis. Although, one cardiologist said she has a mild arrhythmia which I suspected as well. At different points she was diagnosed with each of these conditions. She reported that she was unable to have blood testing done due to excessive clotting in the tube. I will treat her with a variety of things to support proper circulation. Infrared sauna, homeopathics for arrhythmia and proper cardiac support (there are a number I have used successfully) and lemon juice in water to thin the blood. Hopefully, within a few weeks we can get labs done to look at clotting factors and the possibility of too much fibrin in the blood. At that point I can hone in further on the root cause of her problems.

The next 3 patients were an amputee I am treating for reduction of pain meds and phantom pain, a man with Meniere’s that was coming down with an acute upper respiratory infection and had a spike in ear pain, crackling and fullness and return of vertigo after being totally asymptomatic for many weeks, and a woman with bronchitis post-flu–the same thing I had 2 weeks ago! Each of these patients received acupuncture in conjunction with herbal and homeopathic support. My patient with Meniere’s usually gets craniosacral therapy for his condition but today I wanted to clear his sinuses and stimulate the immune system.

After lunch I saw a 13 year-old who said there was absolutely nothing wrong but her mom had told me she was getting frequent cold sores, acne, and having irregular menses since starting her period this past summer. This is not unusual for a year or so after menarche. I told the mom one of my favorite lines about hormonal health. Puberty is menopause in reverse, or menopause is puberty in reverse, however you want to look at it. Since mom is also having hot flashes, skin break-outs and mood swings, she totally got it! With this patient I made some basic dietary recommendations, mainly about restricting simple sugars, and gave her a probiotic and some B-vitamins. She had tested positive for the Methylenetetrahydrofolate Reductase (MTHFR) polymorphism which meant she needed to take the active forms of folate found in certain dietary supplements.

My last office call of the day was my beloved hairstylist. When I first started my practice someone gave me a piece of business advice that I followed and it has worked out beautifully. Find a hairstylist and take her out to lunch to explain what you do. After introducing her to the magic of craniosacral therapy to reduce musculo-skeletal as well as nervous system tension, she has been coming in religiously every 2 weeks for 12 years, not to mention referring many other people my way. And she gives a great haircut as well!

Before going home I phoned 3 patients to discuss their progress, or lack thereof. One patient has post-surgical paresthesia, one is a chronic Lyme patient suffering tremendously with gastro-intestinal problems and the 3rd is a woman with a mysterious kidney disorder causing elevated BUN and creatinine levels in the blood.

Needless to say, my work is never boring and I am often humbled by who walks through my door. There’s always lots of research and lots to learn. Training in any program is only the beginning of mastery in any particular field. And human physiology is quite a vast field of study. Please visit any of the accredited naturopathic college websites to see a full description of our curriculum. Below is a link to my website and a list of those schools:

http://www.gingernash.com/link.html

Happy New Year, everyone! I have no doubt 2012 will bring more challenges and hopefully more understanding.

I’ve been absent from blogging because I came down with the flu 2 weeks ago and then was traveling for the Christmas holiday. Yes, doctors do get sick but that is a topic for a different post. The day I was being overcome with the virus I was driving home from work and stopped at my local convenience store to get a bottle of ginger ale which I always crave when I am sick. For the next 2 days all I consumed was Canada Dry and water, both with lots of ice. As I lay there feverish I wondered why I craved ginger ale and why it seemed to have lost it’s power of making me feel better? I never drink soda anymore. I mean, never. But I seemed to recall that ginger ale used to have some spiciness to it? And now all it was was SWEET! And it had a distinct chemical flavor as well. So basically, it was sweet and gross.

When I was able enough to get out of bed I looked at the ingredients: high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was the first one listed. I didn’t know all that much about HFCS but certainly enough to know, as someone who gives nutritional advice on a daily basis, not to consume much of this so-called food. So I did some research and now I would have to say it’s the number one ingredient I would recommend people avoid in their diets.

I had known for years that HFCS has been associated with diabetes and obesity more than any other single food additive. It is implicated in higher rates of heart disease, kidney problems, fatty liver, dementia and generalized inflammation. Research from 2011 shows near immediate increases in uric acid, triglycerides and blood pressure. None of this is good.

The food industry insinuates that all research suggesting negative effects of HFCS is spurious. The main author of articles stating the concerns about HFCS are overblown is working for the Corn Refiners Association. The food industry is making millions off of HCFS therefore there are powerful incentives to keep it in our food. It is ubiquitous in soda and many other processed foods. 1

HFCS is far cheaper to produce, due to subsidies to the corn industry, than regular “table sugar” or sucrose. This despite the fact that HFCS is much more complicated to produce and takes a far greater toll on the environment. In Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Almanac he writes, “The environmental footprint of HFCS is deep and wide. Look no farther than the dead zone in the Gulf [of Mexico], an area the size of New Jersey, where virtually nothing will live because it has been starved of oxygen by the fertilizer runoff coming down the Mississippi from the Corn Belt.”

Another concerning aspect of HFCS is it’s addictiveness. You may not be surprised to hear that it may be more addictive than many other addictive foods like regular sugar, salt and chemical additives like MSG, aspartame, nitrates, etc. Furthermore, evidence mounts that the production of HFCS contaminates it with toxic levels of mercury and glutaraldehyde, a toxic chemical used in industrial water treatment systems.

I can’t say I go in for bumper stickers much but when I saw this one in Madison, Wisconsin a few days ago, I appreciated the sentiment enough to purchase it.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/032948_high_fructose_corn_syrup_glutaraldehyde.html#ixzz1iGNm9CQv

http://www.naturalnews.com/025442_HFCS_Corn_Refiners_Association.html

1. http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2005/06/09/foods_and_products_containing_high_fruct

Some studies about the deleterious health effects of HFCS:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22152650

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19956074

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16366738

You cannot be a health practitioner in Connecticut without recognizing that Lyme Disease and other tick-borne illness is becoming more and more common. It’s a rare day these past 3 years that I do not see a patient struggling with tick-borne disease (TBD). Initially, one of the most challenging aspects of treating these patients is convincing them that what they have is real. Of course, some patients, and some practitioners, will see Lyme disease everywhere they look. That can be a problem.

Conversely, I have found that many people have fallen victim to the traditional medical view–staunchly promoted by Yale/New Haven infectious disease doctors–that chronic Lyme disease does not exist and that anyone that thinks they have chronic Lyme is crazy. This is somewhat of a mind-blowing assertion to me. Once you have seen personally the ravages of TBD, it is no small matter to deny that these infections can affect not only your musculoskeletal system (I have had a number of patients arrive in wheelchairs) but your brain and neurological system, your heart, your digestive tract, your kidneys, your skin and your endocrine organs.

I’ve seen patients diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, irritable bowel syndrome, bradycardia, multiple sclerosis, idiopathic migraines, panic disorder, bipolar and learning disabilities when the actual root of the problem is an infection with one or more pathogens carried by ticks. The effects of global warming, the explosion of deer population and the variability of the bacteria have all contributed to increasing rates of this disease. To top it off, testing methods are often inaccurate and a diagnosis must sometimes be made on clinical information alone. Only 30% of patients remember being bitten by a tick and even of those many do not go on to develop the hallmark “target lesion” of Lyme disease.

when a tick is this small, it’s no wonder people don’t realize they’ve been bitten

The organism that is responsible for Lyme disease is Borellia burgdorferi, part of the phylum spirochete. This is the same phylum as Treponema pallidum, the organism that causes syphilis. In the heyday of syphilis it was called the “great imitator” due to it’s many manifestations in the body and on the skin. Lyme too can look like many other diseases. Also like syphilis, Borrelia can go latent, form “cysts” or “biofilms”, and go undetected by your immune system only to wreak havoc later when your stress levels are high or you have an injury. I’ve heard many a story along those lines.

The use of antibiotics is a controversial topic because many chronic patients cannot tolerate the side effects of the drugs. In acute or sub-acute phases of TBD I often do recommend that patients use antibiotics to reduce the bacterial load. But in every case, the true meaning of treating Lyme disease is to help rebuild the tissues that the spirochetes have invaded and damaged. This can take months and even years in some cases. I use herbal anti-microbials (to kill spirochetes) but also attempt to disrupt the bacteria’s ability to communicate with one another, to break down biofilms, to rebuild various tissues depending on the symptom picture of the patient and which area has been most affected. Sadly, many chronic patients have multiple systems involved.

A homeopathic rubric, or heading, is used to find the right medicine to address any imbalance in a patient. They are essentially short descriptions of symptoms that allow the practitioner of homeopathy to group together different medicines. In other words, if a patient comes in with splinter-like pains in the throat you can find all the remedies that have that characteristic under the rubric, “Throat, pain, like splinter” Rubrics are listed in a homeopathic repertory, a large compendium of hundreds of different remedies.

In the past week I’ve seen two patients each with the complaint of “never been well since.” The first is a 34 year-old female that has been sick for 4 months. Alexis (not her real name) was stung by a bee in July and had a severe allergic reaction. She was rushed to the hospital and treated with injection of epinephrine (adrenaline), steroids and anti-histamines for several days. After being released from the hospital Alexis has been suffering with terrible anxiety, insomnia, heart palpitations and a constant feeling of despair. She burst into tears in my office as she began to tell her story and proclaimed that I am last doctor she will see. If I can’t help her she’s just going to give up. No pressure, right?

The other patient is an 11 year-old boy that has had developmental difficulties since age 6. I will call him Nathan. A few days into the 1st grade his teacher reported to his parents that he had not met any of the criteria necessary to continue in his class without extra tutoring. They recommended testing by the school and the boy’s mother told me they couldn’t even complete the testing process because he couldn’t follow the testing instructions. This was a boy who had been “normal” and had been monitored by some of the same teachers he had known for 2 years. Nathan’s mom said he had had a bad case of Lyme disease when he was 4 and had been treated with antibiotics for 6 weeks. The boy had been unable to walk he was in so much pain when he was first diagnosed. Then, over time, he regained his strength but his mother said he never seemed quite as lively or inquisitive as he had once been. A few weeks before he started school his mother took him for a physical and Nathan received a vaccine (his mother doesn’t remember which one) that hurt so badly when it was being injected Nathan pulled at the needle and bent it to get it out of his body. To make a long story short, Nathan’s mother eventually began cleaning up his diet and did a number of standard naturopathic treatments for mild detoxification and balancing his gut flora–each essential to the beneficial changes he made over the next 5 years. But there was always this sense on his mother’s part that he had never fully recovered from the insults of Lyme disease or this painful vaccination.

Almost everyone has imagined what they would do if they had the ability to travel back (or forward) in time. Personally, I have always imagined what concerts I would like to attend; Thelonious Monk in the 50s, James Brown in the 60s, David Bowie in the in the 70s. I could go on and on. But imagine if you had a time machine of sorts that could take a person’s body back to a place of health before they encountered the offending insult?

When the right combination of nutritional support and homeopathic medicines are applied in the right manner, that’s exactly what you can do. For both of these patients I am aiming to find the combination of things that will restore their systems to balance by undoing the offending insults. My teacher Dr. Gueniot used to say that homeopathy is the “medicine of memory”. As I discussed in a previous blog, peeling back the layers is like going back in time. I start with where the person is at presently but try and stimulate the body to re-create a former version of itself. Dr’ D’Adamo and I have also been talking about this with patients suffering with cancer. There are a number of ways we attempt to make this happen.

Most people are now aware that there are billions of bacteria that live in our digestive tracts. In fact, there are more bacteria in our gut than there are cells in our entire body. Some estimates have stated that the biomass of these bacteria weighs close to an average of 10 pounds! The balance of good and bad bacteria amounts to an ecosystem that lives inside you. Naturopathic doctors often use the term dysbiosis to refer to imbalances in the bacterial content of the gut. Dysbiosis can lead to any number of health problems; not just intestinal disorders like irritable bowel syndrome and colitis. The health of the gut can impact any auto-immune condition, allergies, headaches, hormonal health, mood and the skin–virtually any system in the body.

the good guys in your gut

The functions of beneficial gut bacteria, or probiotics as they are commonly called, are numerous. Just to name a few, beneficial bacteria keep the bowels moving regularly (essential for eliminating toxins), protect you from certain infections, enhance the absorption of many nutrients, increase the production of most B-vitamins, enhance enzyme activity to metabolize food and probably most importantly, regulate immune function and inflammation. This is accomplished by a number of different mechanisms. If you’d like more specifics, see here: http://www.dadamo.com/media/blood_type_probiotics.html. In addition, this article written by Drs. D’Adamo and Kelly will explain why your blood type matters when it comes to which probiotics one should ingest.

Some recent research has explored the makeup of the digestive tracts of different people and the effect diet can have on the kinds of bacteria that grow in the intestines (i). It is fascinating to me that there have emerged 3 distinct “gut enterotypes”, at least with the limited amount of research into this concept. Meaning, 3 different types of bacteria dominate the intestinal tracts of people in the study regardless of race, sex, geography and age (ii). There are a plethora of factors that influence the composition of the bacteria inside us but undoubtedly diet can play a role. Understanding the reasons why certain bacteria will grow in certain people, based on their diets, their blood type and other genetic markers and/or other environmental influences like toxicity and stress, is an area that needs much more investigation but could lead to profound consequences for treating disease. Probiotics are probably the single most commonly recommended supplement in my practice.

i. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2011/08/31/science.1208344.abstract

ii. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7346/full/nature09944.html

Today is a day that we acknowledge, more than most days, all the things that mean the most to us in our lives. Of course I am thankful for my dear friends, my amazing son, my wonderful family and my super-fantastic boyfriend. It’s interesting timing, beginning a blog last week, because it gives me the opportunity to say how thankful I am for my work as well.

Firstly, I think many people are thankful just to have work these days. So many people around us are struggling to find or keep a job and I get to do something that I love and that brings me tremendous gratification. I am so grateful to all of my patients; for entrusting me with their well-being, for teaching me about both health and illness and for being open to the process of addressing themselves on many different levels. I have learned so much from my patients and from the way they interact with their communities and the world.

In addition, I am extremely grateful to my two main teachers of natural medicine. Gerard Gueniot M.D., who was a force of nature, taught me about the complexities of homeopathy and how to apply this incredible healing modality to help hundreds of people (so far) over the course of my career. He taught me how to use homeopathic medicine in such a sophisticated manner, always with the utmost respect for the patient and their healing journey.

Peter D’Adamo, N.D. is the other person that I will forever feel unable to thank adequately. He has become a true mentor to me, sharing his insights about more fields of science than I can list here. Getting a glimpse into the thought processes behind the most creative mind in naturopathic medicine is thrilling and I cherish the days that I get to work alongside of him at the clinic.

I hope all of you reading this are having a wonderful holiday, surrounded by love and healthy food!