Category: The doctor’s approach to ailments

I have been asked recently, “What can I do for a cold to decrease the severity and duration of it?”  So, here are a few tips that you can try that I like to do at home for myself and my family.

1. Drink the juice of a fresh squeezed lemon and orange daily. It’s a bit tart, but a wonderful source of vitamin C and helps to make your body more alkaline.
2. Eat garlic as often as possible. Raw garlic is best, but hard to do.  Sometimes, I crush it and mix it with raw honey, or I eat roasted garlic and cook with it. Ideally, you want a few cloves per day.
3. Eat Manuka honey. Manuka honey is honey from New Zealand that has powerful antimicrobial properties. I aim for 1 TB per day.  It is especially soothing in tea.
4. Drink teas to boost your immune system. Pau D’arco is a favorite of mine, but I also make teas from Traditional Medicine’s Seasonal Sampler that I bought from the local health food store.
5. Take extra vitamin A, C, and zinc. For infections, I recommend Vitamin A 50,000 IU twice per day for 3 days, then once per day until symptoms reside. Vitamin C 1000 mg every other hour or so (too much can cause diarrhea, so be careful). Zinc 30 mg with each meal (It must be taken with food or it may make you feel nauseated).
6. Increase probiotics and fermented foods. Good bacteria helps to fight off the bad.
7. Drink fresh green juice daily.
8. Rest as much as possible.
9. Take hot showers to clear congestion.
10. Add eucalyptus oil to boiling water and breathe it in to reduce congestion.
11. Rub menthol over your chest.
12. Cook with lots of herbs, especially curcumin (curry), ginger, parsley, oregano, and thyme.
13. Consume lots of homemade chicken soup.

Hopefully you don’t get sick, but now you have some tricks up your sleeve too.  Enjoy the holiday season!

Infertility affects about 10% of couples trying to conceive and if you happen to be one of those couples, you understand how devastating and stressful it can be.  Of that 10%, 1/3 of the problems are linked to the woman, 1/3 to the man, and 1/3 of the cases have problems that are unknown.  Conventional treatment often uses hormones or invasion procedures. While this may be helpful for some, there are many options to explore to treat infertility naturally.

Like anything, it is important to have an understanding of what is going wrong, if that can be determined. In such cases, natural treatment may be rather straight forward in the sense that if we know the women is not ovulating, ovulatory support in the form of herbs, nutrition, and acupuncture can be very beneficial.  If we know that the sperm are low in number or quality, we can use the same forms of treatment to support healthy sperm.  However, from a naturopathic perspective, to treat infertility naturally, all of these issues will be addressed simultaneously. This is because the naturopathic approach focuses on building the health of both the female and male, egg and sperm.

Often times, to restore fertility, especially the 1/3 of cases with an unknown cause, other factors need to be addressed first.  Several of these factors are addressing underlying adrenal or thyroid abnormalities, sleep disturbances, blood sugar irregularities, and digestive issues that may be impairing absorption. All of these issues throw off proper hormone regulation.

Stress is known to throw off a women’s menstrual cycle and affect her fertility.  Naturopathically, there are many ways to overcome the burden of stress on a women’s body.  First and foremost, identifying and addressing the underlying stressor is important; sometimes this is easier to identify, such as work or relationship stress, but it can also be nutritional stress such as a gluten intolerance, chronic infection, or inadequate sleep. Beyond identifying and addressing the stressor, several herbs can be beneficial to support the adrenal gland’s response to stress, reducing the overall load and minimizing the negative effects.

Optimizing nutrition is extremely important. Not only does it help to regulate hormones, blood sugar, stress levels, and digestion, but it also creates an optimal environment for fetal development.  The 6 months or so before conception is the most important time to build up nutrient stores that the fetus will use in the early weeks to months of development.  Without proper nutrition, if conception does happen, development will be impaired, as well as the health of the mother throughout her pregnancy.  Optimal nutrition can and does prevent abnormal weight gain, pre-eclampsia, swelling of hands and feet, and excessive fatigue.

Even when stress and nutrition has been addressed, balancing blood sugar and fixing impaired digestion cannot be forgotten.  We’ve all heard, “You are what you eat,” but in reality, “You are what you digest and absorb.” While it is possible to get pregnant with a digestive disorder, it is not optimal for fetal health.  Of course getting adequate nutrients are key, but as more and more research is proving, having optimal gut flora is paramount to the proper development of the baby’s immune system affecting things like allergies down the road.  Similarly to what you absorb is how your body reacts to it, namely by maintaining a healthy blood sugar.  Abnormal blood sugar is known to throw off insulin and subsequently the thyroid, adrenals, and reproductive system, all wreaking havoc on fertility.

While the journey to treat infertility naturally may seem unrealistic for some and too difficult for those who do not want to, perhaps, drastically change their life style, it is important to do so for the health of your child. Healthy parents produce healthy babies, and natural fertility is a sign of health. With proper guidance and changes, natural fertility is obtainable for most couples and there is no greater reward for all the hard work than to hold your little baby!

Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, or PCOS, is a complicated diagnosis with conventional medicine offering little hope; however, a naturopathic approach to treat PCOS naturally offers much hope. PCOS affects between 10-20% of women of childbearing age. It is a syndrome that affects the entire body, especially the endocrine system.  It was once thought the PCOS must have cystic ovaries, hence the name, but in reality, women can get the symptoms and have the hormonal imbalance without having cysts at all. Symptoms include abnormal menses and anovulation, often going several months to years without getting a period.  This, in turn, effects their ability to conceive.  Women often experience acne or an increase in male pattern hair growth, such as facial hair, hair between their navel and pubic bone, and perhaps their chest or low back. The more classic presentation of PCOS is that of overweight women, but there is a smaller percentage of thin PCOS women.  Although the presentation is similar, the underlying cause of the hormonal imbalance seems to be slightly different.

While they both generally have high androgen levels, in the overweight PCOS women, insulin resistance and possibly thyroid abnormalities tend to be the driving force behind the syndrome.  In the thin women, stress and elevated cortisol is more likely to be the underlying cause. Addressing these issues through diet, appropriate exercise, stress management, and targeted supplementation are very successful at restoring hormonal balance.

The dietary approach for the classic presentation verses the thinner subset is different. One focuses on reducing insulin, while the other is focused on decreasing cortisol levels. Various foods can either contribute to perpetuating or minimizing the insulin resistance and cortisol levels, as well as making sure certain nutrients necessary for biochemical functions are not lacking. In both situations, eliminating food sensitivities will be necessary to decrease the overall inflammatory load. As always, a whole food approach will be best.  Optimal nutrition is also important to restore fertility, which is often a goal for many women with PCOS.  A fetus cannot grow if the necessary nutrients are not abundantly available.

Exercise is crucial for balancing hormones.  Again, the types of exercises will vary depending on the underlying cause.  For insulin resistance type PCOS, high endurance cardio may be better. But for managing cortisol, and possibly even enhancing thyroid function, calming, slower exercises, such as yoga or hiking would be more beneficial. Balancing exercise with proper nutrition is important to keep in mind as well.  Over exercising of any sort throws off the endocrine system, especially the reproductive system; too much exercise is perceived as stress and the body shuts down reproduction during stressful times.

Stress management is key for PCOS patients. Reproduction is one of the first things to go during stressful times.  With elevated cortisol levels, blood sugars go up, androgens elevate, and progesterone and thyroid production go down. Being aware of stressors and taking steps to reduce them or deal with them better is helpful. Mediation of any kind is great.  Stress also depletes nutrient stores, thus nutrient replenishment can help mitigate the detrimental physiologic effects of stress. Herbal medicine provides many options for stress management and decreasing the overall cortisol load.

As already discussed, targeted nutrients may be necessary to help restore proper blood sugar and insulin response, and maintain cortisol levels.  There are also great ways to support the reproductive system itself with key nutrients and herbal support.  Finding the right combination of each is important for supporting each individual’s body.

All in all, naturopathic medicine provides many great possibilities for treating Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.  First and foremost, it is important to treat the individual and not give every patient diagnosed with PCOS the same medications, herbs, or dietary guidelines.  Each person’s biochemistry is unique and needs to be treated as such. With the use of a proper naturopathic evaluation including a detailed history, comprehensive physical exam, conventional and functional lab testing, and a unique holistic protocol, PCOS can become a thing of the past.