I am often asked what I personally take for supplements, and what I give to my kiddos.  Sometimes people are surprised by my answers, for a number of reasons.
A main one is that many people still hold the belief that if one eats relatively well, they shouldn’t have to take any supplements.  And people believe me to be healthy and one of those people.  Which, well, I am!  I do consider myself healthy, largely because I take really good care of myself.
I practice self-love in the forms of daily prayer and meditation time.  I engage in daily physical activity from a place of self-kindness.  I try my very best to get a minimum of seven hours of sleep a night, preferring to hit the 8 hour mark where I can, and making up the difference when I have the opportunity to have a bit of a sleep-in or a nap on a weekend, on vacation.  I eat well, smoothies every morning packed as filled with nutrient dense foods as possible, including several scoops of various “superfoods” as I will discuss in a bit. READ MORE

So interestingly enough last month when I set out to write my blog post article, which you can read here, about what you can do to support yourself should you happen to come down with COVID, little did I know that just shy of a week later I would test positive myself!
Seriously!  I had just finished saying to someone earlier that week that I thought I must have some sort of natural super-immunity because no one in my family had tested positive or come down with symptoms and truth-be-told, our lives were more or less unchanged since the early days of the pandemic, relatively speaking anyway.  Both my husband and I have jobs that take us outside of the home and myself as a Naturopathic Doctor who prefers in-person to telemedicine consultation, and he, as a chiropractor, quite obviously cannot do his work virtually.  We chose to send our kids to school as long as in-person learning was available.  We kept my parents in our bubble since March 2020.  I would meet with friends for long walks outside in order to maintain my community.  Once gyms opened up I resumed workouts outside of the home, following protocols and keeping responsible with hand-washing, masking and appropriate physical distancing.  I did have the first two vaccines back last spring, but opted not to get the booster. Truth be told hoping for the opportunity to gain some natural immunity.
READ MORE

My blog post this week isn’t an original, that is to say much of what I am including is from one of my teachers and mentors, Dr. Lissa Rankin MD. She wrote this great article a couple of weeks ago that I felt very much worth sharing with you all, as I value her perspectives and suggestions very much and they echo my own personal and professional sentiments.
And, well, they are just really well articulated and evidence-based, while still keeping at the forefront of our minds that one of the biggest viruses is fear and divide and that if we fall victim to the tug-of-war going on in the world rather than settling into listening to others, attempting to gain understanding and compassion for all, and working on our own fears, well we are contributing to the fear, violence, disease and unrest.
In any case, you can read her full article here
and are some key points I pulled from her article, in the hopes these will be empowering to you and assist you in making some love-based, responsibility-driven choices for yourself, your family and our community:
READ MORE

You may or may not be aware, but good health starts in the gut!  It is a wee bit more complex than that, due to the intricate connection between the gut and the brain/ nervous system, but essentially if we do not have a healthy digestive system, it is really tough to have healthy hair, skin, nails, joints, immunity, energy, vitality, cardiovascular health, etc.
We have all heard “You are what you eat…”, which is true and I would add to that “… and absorb.”  In short, what we put into our bodies matters, as does what our bodies are able to do with these foods: how well we can pull nutrients from the foods through the small intestine and release waste products through the bowel.  So, what are the elements involved in the digestive process and what can we do to support ourselves?
Components of digestion:

• Gut: mouth, throat, stomach, intestines: small and large (colon), rectum, anus
• Accessory organs: liver, gallbladder, pancreas, appendix, omentum
• Nervous system: brain, vagus nerve, enteric plexus, migrating motor complex
• Microbiome: micro – tiny; biome – living… the tiny living creatures in our gut (bacteria, yeast/ fungi, viruses)
  

READ MORE

My personal health journey has seen me labelled with conditions such as “anxiety” and “depression” by incredibly well-meaning and knowledgeable health professionals.  At the times when I was offered these diagnoses, in my early 20s when my path of healing really began, I had the where-with-all… shall we say inner wisdom? To desire to reject these diagnoses.  Not to say that these symptoms I was experiencing were not real and often quite debilitating, which they very much were!  And as far as these professionals were concerned, I absolutely fit the criteria that they could access through their large volumes filled with psychiatric conditions.

Somehow, though, I couldn’t quite connect with their belief that because I was having these symptoms meant that I was “broken” and needed “fixing”, be it via proffered medications or the promise of cognitive behavioural therapy to “fix” (get rid of, banish) these troublesome thoughts that would cause my being to go into fight or flight or freeze.  The result of which, in my case, would be anxiety and panic or if that got to be too much, freeze: depression.  For me it was never quite the “satiation depression” that we often hear about, where both serotonin and dopamine are lacking and one can’t get themselves out of bed, can’t eat, loses interest in life, etc.  For me it was more of an “arousal depression” that resulted in low serotonin but reasonable dopamine so that no matter what I could push myself through and robot around through life, feeling flat… but still getting stuff done: therefore on the surface looking totally put together and ‘normal’ (incidentally, what even is normal??).
READ MORE

I have been in practice for almost 17 years, and life for over 46, and the longer I live and work the more strongly I believe in the importance of whole health healing, particularly digging deeper to the true causes of poor health.  So much so that this past summer I enrolled in the Whole Health Medicine Institute, a program for healers that was created by Lissa Rankin, MD over 6 years ago.  This program is based on the 6 steps to healing, as outlined in her first book, Mind Over Medicine: The Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself and on the concept of the Whole Health Cairn, a visual model to describe the key components of health, where each stone represents a component and that the stones are placed in a particular essential order onto the cairn, with the most foundational aspects forming the base of the cairn.
I invite you to take a look at the stones of the cairn and do a gentle and curious inventory of how firmly placed each stone of the cairn is in your life, and how you feel about the order of importance placed on each stone.  Many people are often surprised to see the foundational stones including things like: creativity, spirituality and sexuality, with the physical health stone resting on the top.  This isn’t to say the physical health stone, nor the mental health stone, also precariously near to the top of the cairn, are not of vital importance, they are! But what this model describes is that in order to have health in these areas, one must have the underlying stones in place.
How many of you have struggled with focussing mainly on your physical health? Pushing yourself to exercise more, eat cleaner, take more supplements, etc.? or concerned yourself of your mental health and taken supplements or pharmaceuticals to support you through anxiety, depression or insomnia?
And how many of you find these may have benefit but their benefits don’t last?  Or are hard to sustain?  Or maybe don’t work at all?
If this feels familiar, ask yourself if you have a relationship with the other stones of the cairn?  Do you have a relationship with your “inner pilot light”?  This is Dr. Rankin’s term for intuition/ inner wisdom/ our wise inner being/ the voice of our soul?  Or does hearing this question send you reeling into confusion?  Which can often be the case as we are not taught how to discern the voices of the programs that run in our heads from the wiser stiller voice deep within.  Are you doing work in your life that brings joy and meaning to you?  How healthy are your relationships?  Do you engage in creative play?  What is your spiritual orientation?  All of these have a significant impact on our physical and mental health as they dictate how settled we feel within our bodies and our environments.  This causes a corresponding shift in the flow of energy out of the fight or flight nervous system and into the rest-digest-heal-libido nervous system.  And from this latter nervous system activation, healing can actually take place.  From here the food choices we make, the supplements we take, how and when we move our physical bodies all have a greater impact.  We make choices that are aligned with our inner wisdom, making them that much more nourishing for us.
READ MORE

I often hear people claim that “there is nothing left to eat!” when it is suggested to them that they remove refined foods, wheat/ breads, sugar, dairy, etc. from their diets and move to a more whole foods diet. Another common concern is that it takes too much time, effort and planning or is more expensive.
However, I want to assure you that it is possible to eat healthfully and conveniently!
If it weren’t, I would be in trouble!  As my life is rich and full and I do NOT love spending time in the kitchen, meal planning or grocery shopping!  The bulk of my planning goes to ensuring that we have enough healthy foods and ripe produce for the week.   And the bulk of the effort is in the wash and preparation of it, however honestly it can end there for difficulty.
Often my meals are fast and easy as life doesn’t allow me, due to the choices I make, to cook fancy meals from a recipe every day or even on a semi-regular basis.  So I have a “toss together” strategy when building my “healthy plate” for myself and for my family.
Breakfasts are often smoothies packed full of goodness. A handful of greens, some diluted oat or coconut milk, frozen berries, a half an avocado, a heaping spoon full of almond butter or hemp hearts for protein, a couple hearty scoops of ground flax seeds (the best medicine!), some sort of super food: cacao nibs, maca, or lucuma and a chunk of banana or drizzle of maple syrup for some added sweetness, are my favorite things to toss in my blender.
READ MORE

I like to say “change is good, it is the transition that is difficult.”As humans we are incredibly adaptable creatures.  We are, after all, a part of the ever-changing, constantly in flux, natural world, as much as we try to deny, fight against and try to control this reality.  If we look to nature, we see examples aplenty of adaptability and the creation of resiliency through devastation.  A fire rips through a forest and after the burn the vegetation returns, growing healthier in the compost created by the flames.
A wind storm uproots trees and, in the process, offers the opportunity to smaller plants in their canopy to now experience greater light and oxygen and grow up to replace them.  Animals experience sickness, death and surrender to the cycle of life.
All this to ask you to look back on your past couple of years.  This period of time since March 2020 and the coronavirus turned our world upside down.  Think of all of the things that you felt you weren’t going to be able to handle, and that you did!  Working from home, taking an online yoga class (and actually enjoying it!), learning to visit from 6 feet away, having to wear a mask every where you went.  This is evidence of how adaptable we are and how we can healthfully move through any situation we are faced with when we can adopt a mindset of surrender.  This is not to say that on the road to acceptance of our new reality there might not be the need for some (or lots) of sadness, fear or anger (or a wild combination thereof), as healthy transition does necessitate the honoring of the natural normal feelings of grief as we let go of the old in order to be able to welcome the new.  Working through the stages of grief, as identified by Elizabeth Kubler Ross (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression & finally Acceptance) are instrumental on our passage through to change.  In this way we can greet change without the resistance that causes us to suffer.
READ MORE