Getting Sick: A Step In The Right Direction

Why You Don’t Want To Suppress Your Next Cold or FluIt’s likely that you’ll get a cold or flu this year at some point.  How you choose to deal with it may actually be more important for your long term health than you realize.  As a naturopath, I think about these acute illnesses a little differently than you’re used to and I find it’s helpful for my patients to understand my thought process.  Hopefully this will help you take a new perspective on this year’s cold or flu.The body is smart.  This is the principle from which I operate.  When we get acutely ill, often this is the body’s attempt to get rid of something harmful.  The mucous produced in a respiratory infection helps to clear out infectious organisms (if we let it).  When we have food poisoning, diarrhea helps to clear out the organism.  When we sweat during a fever, we decrease our inflammation. Getting an occasional acute illness and then clearing it in a short period of time tells us that the immune system is capable of responding and is doing its job.  When I have patients who do not get acutely ill at all for several years, I begin to be concerned that they may not be releasing things from their body and may be building up inflammatory toxins, which can lead to more chronic illness.  I also wonder if the immune system is working effectively in these patients, which you need it to do in order to prevent long term issues like cancer.Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want my patients to be excessively ill or to be sick frequently or for long periods of time.  I just want to know that the body is getting rid of things every so often, responding appropriately, and recovering efficiently.  Ideally, my patients would have no more than 1 cold or flu/year and no less than 1 fever every 3 years.Finally, it forces you to slow down.  Let’s face it; many of you will only pause when you’re sick.  Often getting sick is your body’s way of telling you that something needs to shift.  Maybe it’s just that you need a break for a few days or it may be that there is a larger pattern in life that needs to be changed.Why Fevers Are Useful:A Fever is the body’s way of stimulating the immune system.  Many parts of the immune system are temperature activated.  Immune activity tends to be greater at higher temperatures.  Conversely, many bacteria and viruses do not replicate as quickly at higher temperatures.  By creating a fever, the body is able to stimulate its own defenses and slow down the infectious organism  in order to fight the infection more effectively.  By allowing the fever to run its course, you actually allow your body to fight the infection faster!  Many of the aches and pains we feel during a fever are actually caused by our own immune activity, not the infectious organism itself.  When we suppress the fever with Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, or Aspirin, we’re actually interfering with our immune system’s ability to fight.  Fevers are uncomfortable it’s true, but they do have a purpose. Decongestants:As I explained earlier, mucous is part of your body’s way of protecting mucous membranes and getting irritants out of the body.  When you take an over the counter decongestant that dries up mucous, yes you can breathe more easily for a few hours, but you are interfering with your body’s attempt to do its job.  In a way, it is keeping the infectious agent or the allergen in the body.  Many over the counter decongestants are also stimulants.  While this makes you feel like you’re more energetic, it ends up causing many people to ignore their symptoms instead of resting.  This means your immune energy is diverted to other things and you can end up both more tired and sick for longer than you might have without the decongestant.Antibiotics:There is a time and a place for the use of antibiotics, but that time is much less often than most people realize.  In this country, even according to most conventional medical specialists, antibiotics are prescribed far too frequently.  Often they are prescribed when there is no specific evidence of a bacterial infection.  They do not work against viral infections.  The more we use them, the more resistant bacteria become and the less effective they are when they are really necessary to save lives.  They also kill the good bacteria that you need in your digestive tract to support normal digestion, production of essential nutrients, immune system function, and nervous system balance, among other things.  Killing the bacteria in the digestive tract can have far reaching health impacts for years to come and is associated with many chronic illnesses.When You Get Sick

1. Instead of suppressing a fever (as long as it isn’t too high), let it be.  If it needs to be lowered a bit so that you can be comfortable enough to sleep, try chamomile ginger tea, which will help you release some of the heat without suppressing the system overall.
2. If you don’t have a fever at all, try the warming sock treatment, which can be found on our website.  This is used to increase body temperature and thereby stimulate immune response.  Do not use it when someone already has a fever, as it can raise the temperature higher than we would like.
3. Avoid sugar, alcohol, and coffee, which can interfere with immune function.
4. Hydrate well.  This is especially important if you have a fever and are sweating.
5. Eat soup!  Home-made soups can be immune stimulating and can help to replace electrolytes lost during sweating with a fever.  A home electrolyte broth can be made by boiling equal parts carrots, celery, potato, and onion in water.  If you eat meat, a bone broth with those veggies in it is even better.
6. Avoid dairy when congested.
7. Rest!  Really.  Many people try and push through being sick.  This not only exposes others to your illness, but takes energy away from your immune system and makes it harder for it to do its job.  Your body doesn’t really care what you were supposed to do that day.  You still need rest.
8. Specific herbs and vitamins can help to stimulate immune function, break up and move mucous to get it out, and kill infectious organisms without disrupting your good bacteria.  Homeopathy can also be very supportive.  Your naturopath can help you figure out which formulas are best suited for your individual health.

When To Call Your Doctor:

1. You’ve been sick for more than 3 days and you’re not getting better.
2. Adults with a fever over 101.5, children with a fever over 102 (this isn’t necessarily a problem, but it’s helpful to get the doctor involved before it becomes a problem).
3. A cough or sore throat that is interfering with breathing and/or sleep.
4. A fever with a rash and/or joint pain.
5. You are lethargic.
6. You are concerned or not improving and just need someone to provide more specific advice and make sure there is nothing else wrong.

Dr. Erin Westaway, ND

Free Health Clinic at Key Arena this week!

Seattle/King County will be offering a giant free health clinic in Key Arena at Seattle Center from October 23^rd through the 26th. This is a four-day volunteer driven clinic that provides a full range of dental, vision and medical care to unserved populations in the region. This is not only an opportunity to address acute issues such as dental infections and the need for eye glasses, but also to provide medical screening exams. The free clinic plans to service over a thousand patients daily. If you or your loved ones have been delaying medical care for financial reasons this is a great opportunity. Please check out their website at http://seattlecenter.org/skcclinic/.Dr. Chad Borys

Free Self-Breast Exams!

As many of you may know our Commander in Chief here at Emerald City Clinic, Dr. Molly Niedermeyer, is a breast cancer survivor so this topic is near and dear to us.  Dr. Molly discovered her own cancer while doing a routine self-breast exam within months of a normal mammogram.  This is not necessarily an unusual story, which brings up the importance of self-breast exams.  Many medical doctors are no longer recommending self-breast exams; however we have seen them save lives. The most common reasons women don’t do them are that they don’t know how or they are afraid of what they may feel because they don’t know what normal is. Most women know that they are supposed to be looking for lumps, but become scared because breasts are often lumpy even when they are healthy.  A good solution to this is teaching women how to properly do a self-breast exam and to familiarize them with their own breast tissue and what normal lumps and breast changes feel like. So, in honor of breast cancer awareness month, we are offering:

Free 15 minute self-breast exam consultations on Wednesdays for the month of October!

These consultations will include training on how to do a thorough self-breast exam as well as help you familiarize with your own tissues.  No treatment or medical advice will be given during these free consultations.  Please call our front desk to schedule with Dr. Jenna Jorgensen at 206-781-2206.

Jenna Jorgensen, ND

The Naturopathic Model of Chronic Illness

Normal health is interfered with by a disturbing factor which the body then responds to (ex. inflammation, fever, etc.)  The disturbing factor can be emotional, physical or spiritual AND the response can also be manifested on those different planes as well.  Chronic illness arises when any or all of the following factors occur:1. The disturbing factor persists (ex. bad lifestyle habits such as poor diet, sleep, bad relationship) which continues to burden the body cumulatively.2.  The body's natural reactive mechanism is blocked or suppressed, usually by drugs, which interferes with the capacity of the body to process and remove its disturbances.3.  The vitality of the system is insufficient or has become too overwhelmed to mount a significant and sufficient healing reaction.As these factors persist the body slides into a chronic, weakened state.  The body is ALWAYS making the wisest choice each moment given the information and resources it has.  Ultimately as this condition persists the body becomes ulcerated or scarred.  (Once again these could be emotional and spiritual scars as well).  Reversal of this situation is rarely accomplished by medicating the pathological state which often mitigates or controls the situation but does not result in true healing.  Hence the Naturopathic approach which is a philosophy of looking at this as a process and analyzing and reducing the disturbing factors, supporting the body in its healing process and rebuilding the vitality.

Naturopathic Philosphy Revisted

I am team teaching the first year Naturopathic physicians philosophy class this year.  I am on vacation reading texts that I never read because they were not in the curriculum at the time I graduated.  I am having a great time taking a fresh look at the philosophical basis of Naturopathic medicine and thought many of my clients would enjoy the journey with me, so I thought I would make a few blog entries as I make this journey.Historically, in 1940  30% of all states had licensed Naturopathic physicians,  a number of colleges, and 3000 actively practicing NDs.  By 1957, the year I was born, there was only one Naturopathic medical school left, 8 states that were licensed (6 by 1979) and 175 licensed NDs.  The decline was caused by an internal strife in the Naturopathic profession about the philosophy of including or NOT including the new arising mechanistic/reductionist approach by the then "new kid on the block" of allopathic or medical doctors. There was a lot of mistrust by many in the Naturopathic profession to the role of science and research and its application to medicine. The other component to the decline of Naturopathic medicine was the discovery of effective antibiotics which elevated the standard medical profession to a dominant and unquestioned stature by the culture that turned to mechanistic science as unquestioned authority. It was not until the 1970’s and 80's that people started to question this culture as chronic illness arose, destruction of the health of our environment, etc. that lead people back to a more holistic/systems approach to health and well-being. Just for your information, there are now 5 Naturopathic colleges in the United States, over 5000 NDs, and 20 states licensed at this time. Stay tuned for more info.BTW I consider myself a member of the new ND profession that has one foot firmly planted in Naturopathic medicine and one foot planted in allopathic medicine and I shift weight accordingly, using the best of both worlds.  Dr. Bastyr always said "do what works.- Dr. Molly Niedermeyer

As we move through each day, we’re constantly responding to our environment (both internal and external).  When these responses become patterns, we can take them out of context in ways that don’t always serve us.  For example, if I twist my body to avoid being hit by something coming at my head, this is initially a very useful response.  If that twist becomes a subtle pattern that I’m not aware of and hold onto over time, it can cause pain or could continue to trigger the fear response related to that moment.  There are many other examples of unconscious patterns that we carry in the body and often they can interfere with our health and our ability to be truly present in each moment as a new experience.  Biofeedback, body work, meditation, and working with the breath are all tools that can help us become aware of and break these patterns.  Several of my patients have found quite profound shifting of patterns leading to significant healing through the Grinberg Method.  Personally, I have found it to be quite useful in my own healing process.  Grinberg practitioners work with you through the body in a hands-on way to help you become aware of the patterns getting in your way and to learn tools to break those patterns.  It is a learning process, not an instant fix, but it can be incredibly rewarding.There are a couple of Grinberg Method practitioners coming to visit us from Germany this month.  They have been coming a few times per year and I always look forward to their time here, both for myself and my patients.  If you are interested in breaking out of a cycle, decreasing your pain, or gaining more self-awareness and emotional freedom, I recommend giving it a try.  I recommend starting with at least three sessions to be able to give yourself a sense of the work as a process rather than a one-time event.  For more info, please contact Barbara Droubay directly at barbinberlin@hotmail.com, and visit our facebook page for dates and times https://www.facebook.com/emeraldcityclinic.

DHEA and Your Health

DHEA is my hands-down favorite hormone our bodies produce. In recent years I've been learning more and more of the widespread effects it has on not just hormone regulation but mood, energy, muscle strength and memory.

DHEA is primarily produced in your adrenal glands alongside cortisol, but it's also produced in your brain and gonads (Ovaries, testes). I like to think of DHEA and cortisol's side kick, there to help buffer the negative side effects that stress hormones have on your body.

Physiologically, DHEA turns into testosterone  (to help you fight the bear) and in times of plenty will produce estrogens (allowing for reproduction). It's a very smart hormone pathway. the more stressed you are the more testosterone you will make to fight, but when your adrenal glands crash you will be unable to make enough estrogens to replicate. Inherent genius in our physiology every time!

I check DHEA and DHEA-S on routine panels to assess not only how tired you may be but also for prevention.  If your testosterone and estrogens are about to tank, declining DHEA may be the reason. Adrenal support, relaxation techniques, healthy diet with cholesterol (YES, eggs, fish, meat and dairy contain healthy cholesterol which helps you make DHEA and all your other steroidal hormones), and sometimes supplemental DHEA can really turn someone's declining energy and mood around!

And lastly, there's great research on diminishing ovarian reserves being stimulated by large doses of DHEA in the aging reproductive female, allowing for successful pregnancies into the late 30's and beyond.

By Dr. Rachel Erickson, ND

Rethinking Receipts

By Jessica Bernardy, ECN InternReceipts seem harmless enough. A little piece of paper telling you what you bought, how much you spent, etc. However, recent pilot study at Harvard showed evidence that handling receipts can increase your blood levels of harmful chemicals. Some types of receipts, thermal receipts, contain high amounts of bisphenol A (BPA). BPA is part of a class of pollutants we refer to as POP’s, or persistent organic pollutants. They are persistent in our bodies and in our environment. BPA in the body has been linked to an increased risk of diabetes, some cancers, cardiovascular disease, reproductive and brain abnormalities. In the study, while the levels did increase by 300%, the increase in BPA while handling receipts was not at dangerous levels, being 1/7^th what you would get from eating soup from a can.  However, all of our exposures to POP’s are additive, in our bodies and in the environment. It makes us at ECC think how we can avoid excess BPA when possible.How do you tell if your receipt is printed on thermal paper? It has a sheen to it and when scratched on a hard surface will leave a black mark.Here at Emerald City Clinic we are looking into ways to get away from handling these thermal receipts. If you don’t need your receipts to balance accounts, say no when asked if you want your receipt. Thermal paper is also found in airline boarding passes, tickets for movies, sporting events, and amusement parks tickets. Many smart phones have the ability to store these tickets in digital form, allowing us to avoid touching the thermal paper copy. We recommend that if you will be handling receipts for extended amounts of time, like when balancing bank accounts or if you work as a check out clerk, that you wear nitrile gloves.There are things that the Doctors at ECN can recommend to help your body process and excrete BPA. Make an appointment to find out more. 

Keeping Bones Healthy and Strong as We Age

Have you ever pictured your body without bones? Bones are incredibly important and much like a building with reinforced concrete they allow us to stand upright and support the latticework of our inner workings. Without bones, likely you would just collapse into a heap of skin and organs.  Additionally, bones are also a reservoir of minerals for the body to use. They continuously lend out minerals to the rest of the body and then replace them when we eat and stores are plentiful. This allows bones to repair themselves when injured, or build stronger bones when stressed by physical activity. It also allows the many cellular processes that depend on calcium for proper functioning to draw from the bone storage pools when needed.This process of building and tearing down bone is called remodeling and happens regularly throughout our lives. Initially, as a growing child, this process involves more building than remodeling. Then somewhere around the age of 30, the body reaches its peak bone mass, which the body will hopefully maintain at a fairly constant level throughout our lives. In females, bone mass tends to decline much more quickly at the onset of menopause. At this point, the rate of bone loss is out pacing bone building due to hormonal shifts in the body. This is a critical time for the body because if it is not monitored properly the bones can become too fragile and porous, possibly contributing to the formation of fractures. This process of bones becoming weaker and brittle is called osteoporosis. This process also occurs in males but often at a much more gradual pace.At Emerald City Clinic, we utilize several tools to help minimize osteoporosis including encouraging a proper diet and exercise routine, proper bone density monitoring, and proper supplementation.When discussing bone health, we are most concerned with weight-bearing exercise, which is any activity where the body must bear its own weight. Weight-bearing exercise is paramount for healthy bones because it stresses your bones to work against gravity and to maintain or even improve their strength. That said, before starting an exercise routine please discuss this with your Emerald City physician, as exercise recommendation vary depending on your bone and cardiovascular health.Dietary-wise, foods that provide good sources of calcium include leafy greens, like kale and spinach, whole grains, nuts and seeds, legumes, fish, and organic dairy products. The leafy greens also have the added benefit of providing vitamin K which also plays a vital role in keeping bones healthy.  In addition, we also recommend proper vitamin D supplementation, which especially in the northwest is critical due to our lack of sun exposure. Vitamin D is important because it plays a role in helping your intestines to absorb dietary calcium.For more information, please look over our Osteoporosis handout in the handouts section of our website and discuss specific recommendations and concerns with your Emerald City physician.

Curious About Acupuncture?

Emerald City Clinic is now offering monthly community acupuncture the 3^rd Saturday of the month (*note August date change).

Community acupuncture is a great way to experience acupuncture for the first time, an affordable way to receive more frequent treatments as a return patient, and an excellent compliment to your naturopathic care plan. The open atmosphere of community acupuncture allows for multiple patients to be treated at the same time. This allows for treatments to be provided on a sliding scale ($20-$40, pay as you can) making acupuncture financially accessible to most patients. Due to the group setting, treatments are generally provided using points on the limbs and ears, rather than those on the trunk or core. Since acupuncture meridians traverse the whole body connecting multiple areas, your acupuncturist can easily select distal points to treat a complaint by placing needles in distal areas. The benefits of acupuncture are cumulative, so the ability to receive more frequent treatments contributes a greater and more sustained effect.

Acupuncture has demonstrated positive effects for a wide variety of different pain conditions including acute and chronic injuries, low back pain, knee pain, dysmenorrhea, and headache, as well as endocrine disorders, irregular menses, menopause symptoms, fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, anxiety, depression, smoking cessasion, and multiple other complaints. Feel free to contact us with any questions regarding other complaints that may benefit from acupuncture.

Join us for the next community acupuncture date…

Saturday, August 23^rd from 9am to 12pm

Please call Emerald City Clinic at (206) 781-2206 to schedule your community acupuncture appointment.

Come relax, bring a friend, and rest in the comfort of a group…we’d love to see you!

No Amount Of Alcohol Is Safe

A recent report by Medscape reads:"Responsible drinking" has become a 21st-century mantra for how most people view alcohol consumption. But when it comes to cancer, no amount of alcohol is safe.^[1] That is the conclusion of the 2014 World Cancer Report (WCR), issued by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).Declared a carcinogen by the IARC in 1988,^[2] alcohol is causally related to several cancers. "We have known for a long time that alcohol causes esophageal cancer, says Jürgen Rehm, PhD, WCR contributor on alcohol consumption, and Senior Scientist at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, "but the relationship with other tumors, such as breast cancer, has come to our attention only in the past 10-15 years.

Our Next Community Acupuncture is on July 19th!

Emerald City Clinic is going to begin offering community acupuncture at least one Saturday per month, and is open to adding more days with its success! Our first Saturday will be July 19th from 9am to noon. Dr. Jaime Ralston-Wilson, and Dr. Chad Borys are welcoming anyone in the community to come work them. You can find more information about each of these practitioners on our 'About Us'Community acupuncture is a great introduction for new patients to the experience and benefits of receiving acupuncture. It can be beneficial on its own or in conjunction with regularly scheduled private acupuncture treatments. Most acupuncture treatments are received in private, however during community acupuncture, patients are treated together in the same room. While all attempts are made to respect patient privacy while speaking, privacy is somewhat limited due to the close nature of the community acupuncture setting. Please keep this in mind and feel free to contact the clinic or your provider prior to your appointment if you are not sure that this would be the best environment for your treatment. There are many benefits to community acupuncture; friends and family are able to come together for treatments, many people find it comforting to have the support of others, and a collective energy is formed which helps support the healing capacity of individual treatments.Our community acupuncture appointments are offered at a sliding scale rate: between $20-$40 per treatment, as you can afford. One of the goals of community acupuncture is to make acupuncture more accessible and affordable. Acupuncture is often most effective when received frequently for certain conditions and we understand that this may be challenging. The purpose of the sliding scale is to separate the issues of money and treatment. We hope that you can come as often as you’d like to achieve your goals of good health, happiness, and well-being. Acupuncture is a process. Many times symptoms or complaints are not resolved within one treatment. Although this may happen, it is a rare occurance. Treatment protocols often involve weekly or bi-weekly treatments for one to several months. We hope that community acupuncture is a great resource for you!Please call the office to schedule your appointment: 206-781-2206. 

Does your family need physicals or well child checks?

The summer is a great time to come in to see how your health is doing. Fall sports are going to start just around the corner and your child is more than likely needs to see a doctor before they can begin. Dr. Chad Boyrs is going to be offering $50 well child checks and physicals on Saturday, July 19th, 2014. Please contact our front desk at (206) 781-2206 or frontdesk@emeraldcityclinic.com to get your family on the books!

Are you on Molly's waitlist?

We know how hard it is to get on the schedule to see Molly. We also understand that things come up at the last minute and people need to cancel. We will place you on her waitlist if you are hoping to get in to see her sooner than your scheduled appointment. If she has a cancellation within 24 hours of the scheduled appointment and you are willing to fill that spot, we will give you 20% off the cost of your appointment!Feel free to call the front desk at (206) 781-2206 or email them at frontdesk@emeraldcityclinic.com and they can get you on the list. 

The Grocery Dilemma: Some tips from Dr. Erin Westaway on how to shop healthy!

1. Shop around the perimeter of the grocery store.  This is where you’ll find whole foods that are less processed and contain fewer chemical additives.
2. If an ingredient was never alive you might not want to eat it as it’s not actually a food.  A general rule here is that if you don’t know what it is or what living thing it came from, don’t eat it.  This includes food dyes, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, etc.
3. If you can’t pronounce it, you might not want to eat it either (quinoa is the exception here J).
4. If you’ve never read ingredient labels regularly, you will be shocked at how many foods have sugar added.  Assume there is added sugar unless you’ve checked.
5. When buying animal products, buy grass fed or organic whenever possible.  This is probably generally more important than organic produce if you have to choose.
6. When possible buy organic produce, but if you can’t, pay attention to the Dirty Dozen list to see which produce is most important to buy organic. www.ewg.org
7. If you can, buying local seasonal food is also a really great way to increase the nutritional value of your diet, support your local economy, and decrease your negative impact on the environment.
8. Keep in mind that your food is your first medicine and that the quality of what you put in your body will be directly reflected in the health and quality of each of your cells.

Community Acupuncture at Emerald City Clinic!

Emerald City Clinic is going to begin offering community acupuncture at least one Saturday per month, and is open to adding more days with its success! Our first Saturday will be May 17th from 9am to noon. Dr. Jaime Ralston-Wilson, and Dr. Chad Borys are welcoming anyone in the community to come work them. You can find more information about each of these practitioners on our About Us page: http://emeraldcityclinic.com/about-us/practitioner-profiles/.Community acupuncture is a great introduction for new patients to the experience and benefits of receiving acupuncture. It can be beneficial on its own or in conjunction with regularly scheduled private acupuncture treatments. Most acupuncture treatments are received in private, however during community acupuncture, patients are treated together in the same room. While all attempts are made to respect patient privacy while speaking, privacy is somewhat limited due to the close nature of the community acupuncture setting. Please keep this in mind and feel free to contact the clinic or your provider prior to your appointment if you are not sure that this would be the best environment for your treatment. There are many benefits to community acupuncture; friends and family are able to come together for treatments, many people find it comforting to have the support of others, and a collective energy is formed which helps support the healing capacity of individual treatments.Our community acupuncture appointments are offered at a sliding scale rate: between $20-$40 per treatment, as you can afford. One of the goals of community acupuncture is to make acupuncture more accessible and affordable. Acupuncture is often most effective when received frequently for certain conditions and we understand that this may be challenging. The purpose of the sliding scale is to separate the issues of money and treatment. We hope that you can come as often as you’d like to achieve your goals of good health, happiness, and well-being.Acupuncture is a process. Many times symptoms or complaints are not resolved within one treatment. Although this may happen, it is a rare occurance. Treatment protocols often involve weekly or bi-weekly treatments for one to several months. We hope that community acupuncture is a great resource for you!Please call the office to schedule your appointment: 206-781-2206.

Are You Exhausting Yourself Unnecessarily?

By Dr. Erin WestawayTry this.  Close your eyes.  Check in with your body.  Notice your back, your abdomen, your face, your neck, your knees.  Note anywhere where you are holding your muscles.  Notice where your breath feels tight or difficult.  Now think of a situation that stresses you out.  Did you tense those areas more?  Did you tense new areas?  Playing with this simple exercise is one way you can start to identify where you are losing energy through the day. Many of us hold muscles unnecessarily all the time.  We do it instinctively, usually when we are trying to protect ourselves from something real or imagined.  We do it even when we don’t realize we’re doing it; even when we’re not conscious of being under stress or feeling anxious.  It turns out that holding those muscles doesn’t actually tend to protect us from most of the situations we do it in.  It doesn’t even make those muscles nice and toned.  It mostly just compresses, shutting off the flow of blood, breath, and energy through our bodies and to our vital organs.  It sends more signals to our brain that we should be stressed or anxious.  It’s pretty much just a literal waste of energy.  Imagine what you could do with all the energy that goes into holding those muscles all day long!Building awareness is part of breaking the patterns of how we lose our energy.  We can’t change the pattern if we don’t know it’s there.  You can work with simple exercises like this at home.  In person bodywork and biofeedback can also be a nice complement to help you become more aware of patterns you can’t even see yet.

Insomnia: What's your cause?

Typical types of insomnia include sleep initiation and early morning waking. I generally see early risers waking between 2-4am and struggling to fall back asleep. Prior to initiating sleep treatment I like to unravel the cause of the insomnia.Difficulty Initiating Sleep:Ideally you fall asleep within 20 minutes of head on the pillow and lights out. For some folks that can take upwards of 3 hours! What is going on here?There are two major events I see regularly that affect sleep initiation:-          too much caffeine-          too much light exposure too close to bedtimeIt’s surprising how a little too much caffeine or coffee too late in the day can wreak havoc on your ability to fall asleep. Try cutting down to 1 cup in the morning before 9am as a trial to see if that does the trick. I’ve had some patients be intolerant to ANY constant use of caffeine as well. It’s dependent upon your body’s metabolism and sensitivity.It’s not so surprising with the increase in amazing serial TV shows how many people are watching a LOT of TV, often in their bedrooms. Or staying up late looking at their phones, iPads or computer screens. It can take up to 2 hours for some people after turning off the screens to fall asleep properly. Light stimulates circadian phase delay and melatonin suppression, the natural hormone that makes you sleepy.Major events that cause early waking:-          High stress causing adrenal overload-          Anxiety or depression, neurotransmitter imbalancesAdrenal overproduction increases cortisol (and DHEA but that’s another story) to mitigate the damaging effects of stress in the body. Chronic high unrelenting stress can cause an early rise in cortisol levels around 2-4am instead of around 6am, leading to early waking. This feels like waking up and feeling wide awake and calm but knowing you are still tired and needing to sleep. Often times sleep is difficult or light after this point.Mood disorders are more complicated but regularly affect sleep in a variety of ways. Typical experiences are a feeling of “monkey mind” or anxiety while lying awake. Excessive worry. Other times it’s alongside a landslide into a depressive episode or an extended phase that’s more manic or obsessive. Can you correlate your insomnia to mood shifts? This gives great insight into your sleep disturbances.There are definitely other causes to sleep disturbances not covered here. A lot of people suffer through their insomnia and never think to look for answers or have no idea what to try. Please contact your naturopathic physician if you struggle with your sleeping, we have lots of tricks up our sleeves!

Breast Cancer Screening: Are Mammograms the way?

A recent study published in the British Medical Journal questions the utility of routine mammograms. The study suggests that mammograms routinely detect cancers that might not progress to more serious cancers if left alone and may be better left unfound. Although we feel this article does need to be acknowledged, we also wanted to recognize that there is lots of research on the benefits of routine mammograms, and no divisive evidence that it does more harm than good. At Emerald City Clinic we routinely recommend regular breast screening to patients, such as mammograms, breast thermography, and ultrasounds. However, it is the opinion of Emerald City Clinic that the best ongoing prevention is an awareness of your own body and discussing any concerns with your physician. This means doing regular breast self-examinations (BSE). The American Cancer Society has a good tutorial on BSE at: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/breastcancer/moreinformation/breastcancerearlydetection/breast-cancer-early-detection-acs-recs-bseWhile mammograms and other screening options may help detect cancers, they are not perfect and in no way replace the knowledge of your own body. Please talk with your Emerald City physician to discuss specific options and recommendations for breast screening.We also have a comparison chart that you may peruse located on our website here: http://emeraldcityclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/breast-imaging-comparison.pdf.Reference: BMJ 2014;348:g366 (Published 11 February 2014)

The Liquid Diet

For a sundry of reasons, you may be asked at some point before or after major medical intervention to be on a liquid diet. Don't let yourself succumb to the choices of jello, pop, gummy bears, Popsicle, coffee, and peppermints (a diet recently recited to me by a family member!). Even "food" items with some slightly redeeming qualities such as chicken and vegetable bouillon cubes and something called "resource breeze" which is like an Ensure product, can be tempting but easily avoided. These will NOT encourage the preparation/healing process. This is the year 2014 when we have choices like miso soup, vegetable broth, kombucha, and fresh vegetable juices.  There are so many options for healthy clear liquid diets that could assist the healing process-- make the right decisions!Respectfully,Dr. Molly Niedermeyer