Pollen-Food Syndrome
Though pollen is often blamed for allergies, and while it plays an undeniable part, it is unlikely that pollen alone should cause otherwise healthy people to suffer such misery.
Blog
Vitamin Support for New Year's Resolutions
Encouraging patients to make healthy lifestyle changes is integral to the practice of holistic medicine, since so many modern diseases relate directly to modern lifestyles. The new year provides a perfect occasion to prioritize this with patients, since so many people spontaneously resolve to relinquish old habits around this time, or begin new ones, often with the specific goal of improving their health. But we all know from experience how many of these people are likely to fail, and wonder perhaps if there are natural means to assist patients in keeping their new year’s resolutions to become healthier.
A Case for Homeopathic Singles
As a healthcare provider, there are few things more satisfying than watching a patient's condition improve or resolve completely with a single treatment. Among the many holistic treatment modalities, homeopathy is one of few that targets the vital force directly, and has been the agent of some of the most dramatic natural cures, in some cases the sole agent. In some cases, it is a single dose of a single remedy, and these cases are perhaps the most satisfying although more often, it requires repetition of the remedy or multiple remedies to achieve a satisfying result, as anyone who has worked with homeopathy knows.
From Russia with Stress Relief: Current Value of Eleuthero
It is ironic that just as the world seems to be emerging from one global catastrophe, as if on cue, another one comes along to take its place. The war between Russia and Ukraine has become a significant source of stress for many people around the world. In this case, the stress as well as the conflict's geographic and historical associations may call to mind a specific herb, known for its role in stress relief.
The Link Between Mercury Toxicity and Hypertension
Sodium is an essential constituent of every tissue in the body, whereas mercury is a toxin with no known role in physiology. Salt is so crucial to physiology that many mammals will actively seek it out in the form of salt licks and so important to humans that it was once used as currency, whereas mercury exposure is associated with neurodegenerative disease and is widely feared. But if a patient suffers from hypertension it is likely to be salt they are told to avoid, even though a drastic reduction in sodium intake has been shown to have only a minimal effect on blood pressure, resulting in average reductions in the order of 5.5/2.8 mm Hg .
Strategies for Detoxifying Excess Linoleic Acid
It's hard to think of a chronic disease that has not in some way been associated with excessive inflammation and/or excessive weight gain. It's also hard to think of a more elegant way to naturally address both of these concerns than by correcting the ratio of omega-three to omega-six fats in the body since a preponderance of omega-six from consuming diets high in linoleic acid is now thought to be a major contributor to both.
Natural Support for the Olfactory Nerve
Anosmia, or loss of smell, is a common symptom of numerous upper respiratory infections, and in some cases can persist long after the infection resolves.
The Case for Solomon's Seal
While science can discover new uses for plants, and prove what we already know, it often seems that in the realm of botanical medicine, there is tremendous pressure to use science from a defensive position, to justify the new “alternative” practice of continuing to do something that has worked for generations. From a world-historical perspective, the bizarre modern experiment of not using plants as the primary source of our medicines is in fact the alternative practice.
Seasonal Transitions - Mood
The seasonal transition to autumn brings with it cooler days and darker nights, but while some relish this change it can also wreak havoc on patients with certain mood disorders. The remarkable association between winter darkness and depression has been termed seasonal affective disorder, but the onset of autumn can affect other mood disorders as well. Less well-known is the autumn spike in manic episodes for patients with bipolar disorder, a condition increasingly recognized to follow complex seasonal patterns.
Are New Plant-Based Burgers Causing Digestive Problems?
Sometimes, treating digestive disorders can require unraveling a complex tangle of interrelated psychological, immunological, and gastroenterological factors. It can involve identifying and addressing such problems as hypochlorhydria, histamine intolerance, hiatal hernia, microscopic colitis, ileocecal valve dysfunction, or a microbiome devastated by multiple rounds of antibiotics. Other times, the most intractable digestive disorders can be effectively addressed by simply eliminating one particular food trigger from the diet.
What’s Causing the Myopia Epidemic?
The prevalence of myopia, or an inability to see distance objects clearly, has skyrocketed in young children over the last year. After optometrists noticed an alarming increase in the number of children needing corrective lenses, a study published by the American Medical Association found that myopia has doubled and in some places
Taurine’s Underappreciated Role in the Nervous System
Given the rapidly aging population, there is an increasing demand for methods to support healthy brain aging and address the changes in cognitive function often associated therewith.
SUPPORT AFTER CORTICOSTEROIDS
Although corticosteroid withdrawal is a verified phenomenon, and has been reported in some cases to persist as long as 6-12 months[i], patients are not supposed to be experiencing side effects years after discontinuing their medication. Yet, sometimes patients report stubborn weight gain, beginning while taking a course of corticosteroids, which never went away and seems to resist all efforts to reverse.
Is Choline Truly Essential?
Known at one time as vitamin B4, before being stripped of its essential status, choline is a molecule required by every cell, being especially important for mitochondrial energy production, fetal neurological development, and healthy liver function. It also plays an underappreciated role in the methylation cycle, which bears upon everything from gene expression to cardiovascular health. So it seems inexplicable that such an important molecule could lose its vitamin status.
Detox Paradox – from St. John’s Wort to Grapefruit
The herb St. John’s wort is shrouded in folklore. Its very name is a reference to Saint John the Baptist whose feast day was chosen by the early Christian church to replace Litha, the pagan festival of midsummer. This figure likely became the herb’s namesake due to the ancient magical belief that, as a source of solary virtue, it was best when gathered at noon on midsummer’s day when the sun’s influence is at its strongest.
INTACT LUNG: A NATURAL SOURCE OF VITAMIN C AND COLLAGEN
From its humble beginnings as the basis of glue and gelatin desserts, collagen is rapidly becoming one of the most promising food-based dietary supplements. Research has already shown that oral collagen supplementation is effective to support wound healing and healthy skin aging with a capacity to increase skin hydration, skin elasticity, and dermal collagen density . Because collagen plays an important role in maintaining the elasticity of the skin, collagen support has become one of the cornerstones of anti-aging medicine.
Webinar 1/21/21 Stress and Blues
Begabati Lennihan, RN, CCH will discuss how homeopathy can enhance your practice by often providing faster relief than supplements can; both modalities work well together. Stress from our world situation is colliding now with wintertime blues. Learn tips from an experienced homeopath – how to simplify the choices, demystify the myths, and more easily get good results for your patients.
Webinar on Demand Now
Our own in-house naturopathic doctor, Dr. Laurell Matthews, ND has created an immune products spotlight presentation about some of our latest products to come out. It is on-demand now for a limited time if you would like to watch.
Guarding Against a Zinc-Copper Imbalance
With zinc supplementation on the rise - driven by an interest in immune support - it is important to keep in mind a potential downside of taking excess zinc which is copper deficiency resulting from a zinc-copper imbalance. Copper deficiency is relatively uncommon and is typically only seen in conjunction with genetic disorders of metabolism and certain malabsorption syndromes but it can also be induced by overly zealous zinc supplementation.
Weight Loss Tips
The winter holidays are a time when many people gain weight, shortly after which many people will make resolutions to lose weight. To this end they may consult the medical profession, and unfortunately conventional medicine’s approach to weight loss is as misguided as its approach to most health matters.
LIVER’S MYSTERIOUS ANTI-FATIGUE FACTOR
It tends to be taken for granted that all of our vitamins have been discovered, and yet the entire notion of vitamins is a relatively recent phenomenon. Perhaps because diets were once held relatively constant over generations by their tradition of proven effectiveness, and were comprised of foods much less processed and tampered-with than many of today’s, it seemed that all you had to do was eat the very same foods that kept your parents alive and healthy enough to produce you, and everything would be fine.
Brief Guide to Monolaurin
In essence, monolaurin is a concentrated form of the immune-supporting elements1 of coconut oil. Native cultures in the tropics have long since recognized coconut oil not only as a healthy food, but as a beneficial topical application as well.
Vitamin A: The Forgotten Key to Immune Support
As we move into autumn, seasonal allergies will once more rear their ugly head. While the seasonal pattern of allergic rhinitis is well-known, autumn can also be a time of aggravation for patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Interestingly, IBS is reportedly more commonly in patients with allergic symptoms
Vitamin E: An Underappreciated Tool to Support Men’s Health
It has been known for quite some time now that testosterone levels in modern men are falling, a phenomenon which, while unexplained, still has important implications for men’s health. Despite the fact that testosterone replacement therapy remains a controversial subject in medicine, men’s health clinics are popping up everywhere that do essentially nothing more than prescribe testosterone to aging men.