Category: Naturopathic Medicine

As of November 1st, 2020, we continue to provide care for our patients. During this time, with the updated Safer at Home Level Orange order in effect in our state, we plan to conduct care for patients with heightened awareness and best practices. We are closely monitoring the recommendations of the Boulder County Public Health Department, and also looking to our colleagues at Boulder Community Hospital for guidance. We care about your health, both physical and emotional, and we will continue to provide an outstanding level of service during this time. For the time being and until further notice, we will continue to offer in person appointments for those patients who find an in person appointment more beneficial for them. Wearing a mask is mandatory, and the use of hand sanitizer upon entry to the building and entry into the office will be required as well as temperature checks prior to entry. Many of our patients are now preferring to conduct their sessions over video chat, facetime, or phone call. Facetime is temporarily allowed by DORA as a telemedicine option during the COVID-crisis. The current order encourages us to consider that it is physically safer to stay at home. However,...

Want more energy? Turn to your mitochondria! Want to age more slowly? Turn to your mitochondria! Want to perform better? Turn to your mitochondria! Want to mend the damage you have caused to your body and brain? Turn to your mitochondria!   Yes, that's right, our mitochondria are the powerhouse of every cell in our body. It is the mitochondria that determine how your DNA is repaired. It is the mitochondria that produce energy in the form of ATP in the body. It is the mitochondria that we cannot live without. Preserving our mitochondria and optimizing their function is the true fountain of youth and life. I believe that attending to our mitochondrial health enhances hormone balance and response in women. What is Mitochondria? Mitochondria are organelles in our body that are actually descendants from bacteria. At some point in time, they found their way into the primordial eukaryotic cells and established a symbiotic relationship where they became the energy source of the body, while the body provides the organelle with substrate in which thrive and survive. The mitochondria takes the energy that we get from food and turns it into energy that the body cells can use to function....

Weight loss programs and diet plans are a dime a dozen! And there is a reason why the diet industry is worth $72 billion in the US: statistics show that nearly 95% of those who go on weight loss diets will gain weight back within one to five years! There are amazing diet programs out there and there truly is something for everyone, however, why can’t people keep the weight off? I was taken aback recently when reading, The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Van der Kolk. In chapter 9 he talks about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study and its relation to health. What struck me was learning that obesity/disordered eating (and other lifestyle adaptations such as drinking, smoking and drug use) are often the underlying solution that people use to escape the pain or trauma in their life. Challenging Patients to Examine Life Stressors Discussing trauma and life stressors is not something that primary care doctors touch on or ask about when seeing patients. Dr. Felitti himself (author of the ACE study) discovered that of the thousands of patients with detailed medical records at Kaiser, few had ever been asked or had documented the trauma...

The future for naturopathic medicine looks bright. While I don’t necessarily see anything dramatic happening, there are a number of factors that ensure a steady flow of patients for naturopathic doctors. In this post I'll discuss why a patient would choose a naturopathic doctor, the difference of naturopathic medicine vs. the traditional medical system, common myths, and the overall approach taken with naturopathic medicine. Who Chooses a Naturopathic Doctor? Patients seek naturopathic medicine for a number of reasons and they come from different ethnic, racial, political, and socioeconomic backgrounds. One thing they all share in common is the desire to find the cause of their problem and fix it rather than taking a prescription that just addresses the symptoms. These patients also tend to be the type of people that like solving problems as well as preventing them. One issue with our medical system here in the United States is that health care workers are overworked and in many cases underpaid. I recently spoke with a primary care doctor here in Colorado who sees between 30 and 40 patients per day. I do not know how anyone could stay fresh and excited about patient care with that type of patient...

Insomnia, defined as the inability to fall or stay asleep, can be so debilitating. It affects people to varying degrees with about ten percent of the population suffering from mild or acute insomnia. Short term insomnia, which is the inability to have quality sleep for a duration of 3 months or less, affects 20% of the population. Chronic insomnia occurs in about 10% of the population and is defined as at least 3 episodes a week for longer than 3 months. Sleep is a main pillar of our health and without consistent quality sleep our body and mind can become dysregulated. The impact that sleep has on the body is so significant, that sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture in some countries. In sleep studies on mice (poor little critters),  32 days of sleep deprivation caused death. For a healthy adult, a normal amount of sleep is between 7-9 hours per night. Insomnia in History Did you know that medical doctors back in the 1800’s were writing about insomnia? They wrote about the following types: Dyspeptic or that related to digestive problems and food Toxic type which was related to alcohol consumption Neurotic type related to the...