Category: Articles

As Naturopathic Doctors, we deal with a lot of chronic issues. You know–the stuff that’s been hanging around for years, such as:

• Joint pain and muscle aches,
• Skin problems – like acne, eczema or other inflammations.
• Fatigue
• IBS
• Heartburn and other tummy troubles
• Headaches
• Mood problems
• Post nasal drip

The list goes on. They’re the frustrating symptoms that aren’t always life-threatening, but they certainly affect quality of life.

Many of these symptoms can be a result of what you eat–we’ve written about this many times before:

• Food Allergies vs Food Intolerances
• 5 Weeks to a Happy Stomach
• Inflammation: How to Think Like a Naturopath
• Preventing Allergies Before They Happen

It’s surprisingly simple, in theory. Food really is medicine, and often our patients get a food intolerance test, go on an elimination diet and feel sooo much better.

But then months or even years later, I get a visit like I had last week.

A patient I haven’t seen in a while arrives with list of problems:

• An injury is not healing properly after months of therapy.
• His body is aching all over.
• Sleep is difficult, broken, and just doesn’t seem to refresh.
• A skin problem, once under control, is starting to be a problem again.

On top of it all, he is just SO tired all the time.

Now, I know this patient. I know that he has many significant inflammatory reactions to food. His response, though, is, “I don’t understand. I haven’t changed anything. What happened?”

What happened was the slow creep of living life in North America. The diet change that was adhered to at the start is slowly becoming more and more lax. The odd intrusion of an inflammatory food every four or five days has become more like a little bit every day. As a result, the inflammation begins to accumulate and the symptoms slowly creep back in.

The solution? I remind this patient about the impact of his diet on his health. We review his food intolerance test results and discover that many of his reactive foods are getting into his diet far more frequently than thought. He resolves to change.

Four weeks later we follow up and he feels great. All of his symptoms have resolved, some within the first week.

The story here isn’t one of extremes and diet “nevers”. It’s about being aware that change–both positive and negative–is a slow process and one that isn’t always easy to spot.

Your health is a moving target, and your life is an ever-changing playing field. Sometimes, our role as doctors is to capture snapshots along the way so that, like a time-lapse video, you can see a change that might have been invisible while it was happening.

After receiving a food sensitivity test result and being told that he couldn’t eat gluten and dairy for a while, one of my younger patients emailed me to ask:

How does someone become sensitive to foods?

I thought it was a good question, and I thought it would be worth posting my reply for anyone who might have wanted to ask a similar question but never did…

Our immune system is meant to be reactive to strange proteins–things that are not “us”. For example, when you are infected with a bacteria or virus, those invaders are made up of proteins that are dissimilar to our own body proteins. Our immune system sees those proteins as a problem and reacts to them. That creates a lot of inflammation (things like fever and other signs of getting sick) which kicks that invader out of the body.

It’s a great system, but guess what? Foods are also made up of proteins that are not us. And because we have a very strong immune system in our digestive tracts to deal with any nasty little critters in our food and water, our bodies need a way to be able to swiftly act against any bacteria or virus in our food while at the same time NOT reacting to the proteins in the foods we eat.

Enter the microbiome–the “good” bacteria in our guts. We also call them our “gut flora”.

The good bacteria who live in our digestive system (there are between 200-300 different species) do many important things for us. One of them is to train our immune systems to not react to food proteins.

When our gut flora is working properly, it packages up the proteins in our food in a way that says to our immune system, “I know this is a protein that doesn’t look like YOU, but don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”  The immune system then ignores it and waits for something more interesting to react to.

When the gut flora is not balanced properly, it doesn’t do this job. When that happens, our immune system can start to see our food as a problem, creating chronic inflammation every time we eat. That, in turn, can lead to all sorts of health problems.

How does the gut flora get imbalanced? Exposure to drugs like antibiotics and steroids, and other chemicals. Parasitic infections. Being born via c-section. Poor diets. All of these things contribute to good flora going bad.

Which brings us back to your food sensitivity. To get your system back on track, we start by removing the food that you are reactive too. This decreases the inflammation in the digestive tract, allowing it to heal. To do that we want you to do things like eat good food (lots of fruits and veggies), take a good probiotic, and TRY to avoid antibiotics and steroids when possible. 

– Dr. Tara 🙂

I visited with a married couple recently, and was reminded of this famous clip from the Monty Python movie, The Quest for the Holy Grail. (Warning: the clip is a bit graphic in a 1970’s bloody kind of way.)

In practice, I find men are often more prone to disregard symptoms. Perhaps for them it feels like the right thing to not complain, but it makes it a challenge to get them to fess up when they aren’t feeling well.

So…if you have a brave knight or pathological non-complainer in your life, here are 10 symptoms that you should INSIST he (or she!) take seriously.

1. Chest pain. A squeezing, pressure or tightness in the chest that may also include pain in the arm, nausea, vomiting, sweating or difficultly breathing. This symptom can be caused by something as benign as reflux, but it can also signal a heart attack.

2. Shortness of breath. This can be a symptom of something as benign as an anxiety attack, but it can also be a symptom of a blood clot or embolism in the lungs, which is very serious.

3. Sudden intense headache. This is the type of head pain that far exceeds the average headache. It could signal a burst blood vessel in the brain, which is very serious.

4. Unexplained weight loss. Losing more the 5% of your body weight in less than six months without trying is a troubling symptom. Many cancers present in this way and need to be ruled out.

5. Unusual bleeding from any body part. This can be a result of a simple, easy to treat infection, but it can also be a sign of something more serious, like cancer.

6. High or persistent fevers. High equals anything over 103 degrees. A fever of around 100 degrees for several weeks is also an issue. This means the body is fighting something–you want to make sure you use all the tools available so it wins.

7. Sudden confusion. This symptom could be as simple as low blood sugar, or as serious as a stroke or brain tumour. Checking it out quickly is important.

8. Swelling in the legs. Can signal vein problems or thyroid issues, but can also be associated with heart failure.

9. Sudden and severe abdominal pain. Many people with irritable bowel syndrome can have this symptom and it is not life threatening. It can, however, also signal very serious issues like abdominal aneurysm, a perforation of the intestines, or loss of oxygen supply to the intestines.

10. Flashes of light or other visual disturbances. This symptom could be a sign of a migraine, but it can also be a symptom of a retinal detachment that needs to be dealt with immediately to prevent permanent vision loss.

Any one of these can be no big deal, but they can also be signs of something serious. Don’t let the people in your life fall for the “flesh wound” syndrome. If they’re not going to take a symptom seriously, that doesn’t mean you can’t!

In 2012, a study was published that followed over 1000 individuals for over 30 years to look at the impact of persistent cannabis use on the brain.

Based on IQ tests, blood samples and interviews with parents and teachers, here is what the researchers found:

• Those participants who used pot regularly before age 18 saw significant drops in IQ from childhood.
• Those who become regular pot user after the age of 21 did not get the IQ drop at all.

The scariest part? IQ’s in the kids who stopped regular use never recovered. The brain damage was permanent.

This piece of research created a lot of buzz, but a lot of controversy, too. Was the IQ loss really because of pot, or some other socio-economic factor? Many scientists weighed in calling the results of the study into question.

A follow-up study looking at twins and cannabis use showed that there was no evidence of cognitive decline in teens. However, the data was collected only by questionnaire and the questions lumped kids who only tried pot once in with those who smoked daily.

So which piece of research do you believe?

When research disagrees, I find a good starting point are these two questions:

1. If the research isn’t clear, what’s the smart bet?
2. Are we asking the right question?

1. The Smart Bet: Teen Brains Are a Work-in-Progress

As any parent of a teen can likely describe, the brains of teenagers are actively developing. This is particularly true in the frontal cortex, an area of the brain involved in memory, executive function and impulse control. Brain scans have shown that this is actively changing in the teen years and doesn’t fully mature into the early twenties.

Using any chemical on a daily basis during this period that might disrupt that seems like an idea that is really not worth banking on while we wait for scientists to figure out who has the best research.

There is no value in a normal, healthy teenager using pot regularly. So incurring the risks of using it, even if not fully proven, seems like bad bet. There’s no strong upside to regular teen use that I can see, so why argue about the science?

2. A Better Question: Why All the Pot?

Harmful or not, however, telling kids, “It’s bad for you,” doesn’t have a great track record for changing teen behaviour.

As is so often the case in medicine, sometimes it’s asking the right question that leads to a solution.

Instead of asking “Is regular pot use bad?”–which doesn’t work great for modifying teen behaviour–why not ask, “Why is my kid smoking so much pot?”

There’s no question that cannabis creates a state change. But what’s going on for teens who feel they need that state change every day? 

While that alone won’t change behaviour, it might be a step toward something that can.

“Confessions of a Naturopathic Doctor” might be a better title, for as I come up on my 45th birthday it’s time to accept that my hormones are not at all what they used to be, and to confront the following truths:

• Throwing the covers off at night is NOT because of the flannel sheets.
• Wiping sweat off my upper lip on the drive to work is NOT because of the heated seats.
• My crabby attitude is NOT because of my family and the shoes at the door.
• The surge of heat followed by a slightly nauseous feeling is NOT a “flu” coming on.

Yep, it seems that peri-menopause is upon me. And yes, the naturopath who “should know how to avoid this stuff”, is suffering with hot flashes, night sweats, no sleep and plenty of crabbiness.

In my younger years, I was always sympathetic to the plight of my peri- and post-menopausal patients. I would recommend herbs and diet changes, and counsel patients to be patient. “It’s a natural change,” I’d say. “It will run its course in good time.”

And if that didn’t do the job?

“Embrace it,” I’d suggest, “as a powerful time in a woman’s life.”

I can’t believe I didn’t get stabbed.

Because in the middle of a third night of no sleep, after changing my shirt yet again and resisting the temptation to choke the life from my happy, deeply-sleeping husband, I know with certainty that if one of the other ND’s in our office suggests I stop drinking wine the next day, I will strangle her with my own sweaty hands.

But, I digress. (Because I’m tired, okay? Do you really want to mess with me?)

The short story is this: The transition from our “reproductive” years to our “post-reproductive” ones is not a straight line with consistent symptoms. It’s tricky to manage, and tricky to treat. But I can give you some solid advice based in my experience as both a doctor and a sweaty, homicidal woman. 🙂

My Best Menopause Advice

1. Get real about the mood changers. Coffee starts my engines and a glass of wine is magic by the end of the week – but how much is really in my head and is it too much? The hot flashes may be a sign it’s time to take an honest look.
2. Take care of your adrenal glands. Not surprisingly, after moving StoneTree Clinic to it’s new home, my adrenal glands have taken a bit of a hit. Lots of 7-day weeks, problems to solve, and money for renos, makes for a very stressed Tara. The adrenals are responsible for helping transition gracefully to our post-reproductive years. Lots of support with herbs, natural hormone replacement, and IV therapy are in order.
3. Make sure you keep moving. Exercise is shown time and again to help manage menopausal symptoms. Every day I commit to finding time to make my 10,000+ steps happen.
4. Learn to enjoy the heat. My 30’s were years in which I was constantly cold. It is actually lovely to be able to have a window open in my room in the winter. I love the fresh air!

So, to all the women who have come before and all of you coming after – enjoy this powerful time of transition in a woman’s life…

…and hide the knives!

• Make diet changes moderately. Suddenly deciding to starve yourself is a good way to either fall into either or both traps above. Make changes steadily and gradually.

• Eat complex carbs. Don’t confuse low carb with NO carb, or simple carbs with complex ones. A chocolate bar has a lot of carbs. A salad has a lot of carbs. But they’re different kinds. When you think “low carb” think “low SIMPLE carb”. In short, don’t give up vegetables. They work wonderfully to create fuel for your brain.

• Eat healthy protein. Protein works wonders to keep the “hangries” at bay!