I had a patient a couple of weeks ago tell me something that might be very helpful to others on Detrol or other anticholinergic drugs that give them an unbearably dry mouth.  Biotene Dry Mouth Gum is a wonderful way to help you produce more saliva and is worth a try!  Plain ol' xylitol gum might also be helpful for this side effect, too.  So don't just live with it, take care of it because it's not only an annoying side effect, dry mouth also leads to dental cavities and gum disease...

The Waterleaf Wellness Center, together with the Matt Dishman Community Center sponsors the first spring wellness and fitness fair at the fabulous Matt Dishman Community Center.  If you haven't visited this community center, you really MUST come out and participate in this event!  They're launching their newly renovated fitness facility and increasing awareness of the resources and services they have to offer to the NE Portland neighborhoods, from swim classes and personal training to physical therapy and Zumba classes.  Come meet naturopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, diet transition specialists, yoga instructors, massage therapists, Feldenkrais method instructors, and dieticians from your neighborhood.  We even have a designer of energetic jewelry to share his wearable stones.  This is a day of education, question-answering, health screenings and hands-on demonstrations and we want to meet you!

When: Saturday, April 3, 2010

Where: Matt Dishman Community Center
77 NE Knott Street

What Time: 12 noon - 4 pm

Who will be there?
Dr. Allison Smith, Naturopathic Doctor

Durga Fuller, Kitchen Yogini and Diet Transitions Coach
Dr. Noe Flores, Chiropractor
Potentials Yoga Studio
Dr. Tony Murczek , Naturopathic Doctor, Licensed Acupuncturist
Hartline Creations, Natural Jewelry Designs

Come with your questions and prepare to learn how good health leads to great living!

            

               For an afternoon of free massages, health screenings, great food
         and better company at the Potentials Yoga Studio located 2 doors down
                                 from our office in Suite 160!  See you there!

                                                         200 NE 20th Ave
                                                        Suites 160 and 220
                                                        Portland, OR 97232

                   We are all offering special prices on services for our guests,
                                      so pop by between 11 and 2 and say hi!

Fiber.  When you say the word, what does it bring to mind?
Visions of broccoli, pinto beans, and apples may dance in your head.  If the mainstream media has had any impact on you, you may drudge up an image of a cereal box, Metameucil, or rabbits gnawing on celery and carrots.  Originally from Texas, and this is no slight on Texas or the slice of it I came to know, there were 3 main food groups: meat, cheese, and bread.  I surmise this isn't too different from any other town, USA given the climbing breast and colon cancer rates, the number of people losing their gall bladders each year, diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and on cholesterol-lowering drugs.  So very many (and maybe ALL) of our treatable chronic illnesses are first preventable.  How we feed our bodies every single day makes up the primary step in preventing any disease.

What does fiber do besides keep the ol' pipes a-flowin'? 

1.  Bowel regularity, number one in our thoughts of fiber, means less time for feces to sit around in your intestines which leads to less likely food allergy reactions, less constipation, hemorrhoids, and healthier mucosal lining of the colon.  Maybe most importantly, it decreases your risk of colon cancer.  Colorectal cancers are always in the top 5 leading causes of cancer-related death in the U.S. 

2.  Improves absorption of nutrients and decreases inflammation in the GI tract. 

3.  That fiber sponge in your intestines helps eliminate excess cholesterol and helps decrease your risk of gallstones.  There are even more cholesterol-lowering benefits of fiber than just the "wicking effect" in the GI.  Fermented soluble fiber may also inhibit an enzyme in the liver that promotes cholesterol synthesis.

4. In the absence of adequate fiber, estrogen cannot be properly eliminated through the feces and builds up putting us gals at risk for menstrual irregularities.  Proper estrogen metabolism and excretion is also imperative for preventing breast cancer and other estrogen sensitive cancers.  

5.  Our immune system is LARGELY headquartered in and around the GI tract.  Fiber feeds our healthy gut bacteria/flora and improves our immune function.

6.  Fiber helps regulate your blood sugar by preventing big insulin spikes and decreasing your risk of Type 2 diabetes.

7.  More bulk in your meal helps you feel more satisfied and thus, has the lovely side effect of healthy weight loss.

So, how much fiber do you need each day?  I like to see people eating 1-2 servings of high fiber foods with each meal.  It's hard to think in terms of grams sometimes and if we all just get in the habit of incorporating fibery foods into breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, we won't ever have to count grams at all.  For minds who crave numbers, the average American diet contains less than 15 grams of fiber each day.  Some nutritionists recommend 30 grams daily to prevent colon cancer.  In reality, you can safely eat 50 grams of fiber each day as long as you don't have any underlying propensity toward intestinal obstruction. 

Foods high in fiber: All the beans, cooked spinach, cooked kale, all the greens (Turnip, Collards, and Mustard), Swiss chard, brown rice, quinoa, broccoli, celery, carrots, lentils, ground flax seeds, walnuts, and lots more!  Exhaustive lists are available online, just have a look at your favorite source.  I really like www.whfoods.com.  If you need any help incorporating fiber into your diet, call our office for some ideas!  And if you have any easy high fiber recipes, please feel free to post them as a comment to this entry.  Let's improve our odds with foods, not drugs!!       

Well, one thing is clear after living in Portland for a few years now.  You can't call yourself a business unless you have a nifty A-board sign on the sidewalk in front your place.  We have a lovely parking lot in front of our business for our patients and we love that, but it also means we're not as easy to see from the road if you don't know we're here.  So, here's a little helping hand!

                                                   

Come and visit us for a preventive program to scare that flu away this year and get your health on the right track for the new year!                                                                              See you soon with the help of our new sign!

Are you looking for a safe and effective way to raise your HDL (good) cholesterol?  How about reducing triglycerides and improving your heart and liver function?   Can’t or won’t take statin drugs due to the side effects?   High cholesterol and triglycerides are strongly correlated with atherosclerosis, which we know leads to strokes and heart attacks.  This is why your doctor may be encouraging you to take a drug to lower them.  It’s a rather difficult challenge to prevent what ends up being the #1 cause of death in the U.S., heart disease.  Sure, we’ve been prescribing statin drugs like Lipitor for the past, roughly, 30 years to stop the liver from making cholesterol, but the fact is the #1 cause of death today is still heart disease!  We can do better.  Naturopaths may prescribe Lipitor in some cases, or red yeast rice in others (a naturally occurring statin), but intravenous infusions of phosphatidylcholine might just be the key to improving your coronary risk ratio, all the while nourishing your liver and improving your vasculature, decreasing your risk for a heart attack. 

Phosphatidylcholine is a lipid molecule found in the cell membrane of every cell in our bodies that declines in ratio to cholesterol as we age and has been studied for years in the treatment of a myriad of liver and circulatory conditions.  At Waterleaf Wellness, we follow up each phosphatidylcholine drip with a glutathione push.  IV glutathione is well studied for its ability to improve micro and macrocirculation, liver enzymes, detox pathways, and Parkinson’s symptoms, to name just a few. Along with a healthy diet, plenty of exercise and adequate stress management, this strengthening and nourishing treatment series may not only help get your labs in order, but will most importantly keep your heart and liver in order!  Aren’t options wonderful?  Exciting stuff!

I'm sure you've heard nutritionists say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, that its consumption sets your metabolism at a higher level, and that skipping this important meal may actually make you retain more and more fat over time.  Why is this the case?  It seems, logically, that skipping a meal would help you avoid calories which would in turn, help you LOSE weight, right?  Unfortunately (or fortunately), and resoundingly, wrong. 

Always driving at a "healthy" set-point based intimately on how we feed ourselves everyday and how much we move, our bodies take in fat, protein and carbohydrates and convert them into energy for use (especially if you're someone who exercises regularly), or potential energy for storage (especially if you're a person who sits most the time).  A mixture of hormones from many different organs in our bodies tell us how to handle our calories (store or use).  You've heard of insulin and cortisol, but there are also countless others that direct different phases of fat metabolism, some I'm sure scientists aren't even aware of yet.  When we go all night without eating as we sleep, our bodies are hard at work rebuilding and healing from the day before.  When we have a proper Circadian rhythm, that is sleeping at night and up during the day, our cortisol levels begin to rise early, early in the morning and peak between 5 and 8am, causing us to wake up.  Cortisol helps us in the mornings after our long overnight fast by working with other hormones to tell our livers to dump sugar into the bloodstream to feed our cells until we can eat, preferably sooner than later.  As we eat, cortisol is regulated down and put to rest for the time being, and other hormones, enzymes and pathways are turned on to help us deal with our meals.  Well, what happens if we ignore the need to eat?

Your body, in its infinite wisdom, adapts.  Think of the first day you decided to skip out on breakfast.  What actually happened?  Cortisol helped you regulate your blood glucose until you could eat.  Then you didn't eat, so it had to stay around.  You had to make more and more cortisol to liberate more and more glucose to feed your muscles and brain just to function normally.  It's perceived that you're starving.  Insulin receptors on the cells start to increase in anticipation of a meal so that it may be stored as fat to avoid discord in case you're ever "starving" again.  As soon as you eat, all those extra insulin receptors do their jobs to help your cells take up all that glucose from your meal and store everything it can as fat.  If your first meal after skipping breakfast is a scone or Diet Coke or some pretzels or some other simple carb, it's ALL going to become fat.

So, imagine the 7th or 10th or 30th day of skipping out on breakfast.  Your body is getting quite used to starving.  You might have already switched your "healthy" weight set-point up a couple of pounds by now and not even feel hungry at all in the morning anymore.  Your adrenal glands are having to produce more than normal the amount of cortisol to sustain your blood sugar each morning and unfortunately (or fortunately), blood sugar regulation is not the only role for cortisol.  It also modulates stress in the body, acting as an anti-inflammatory when functioning normally, but in the case of chronic "starving", it actually functions to create a low level inflammation that sets the stage for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.  To add insult to injury, your HPA axis, in charge of signaling cortisol release, may become sort of numb from all this extra work, leading to "adrenal fatigue" - you may feel at this point like you can't get through the morning without some coffee.  Caffeine milks those adrenals for more cortisol and may make you feel more normal, medicating you essentially.  There will be a point, however, when even caffeine won't help if the cycle isn't recognized and turned around.
 
I really like using a lab panel called the
Adrenal Stress Index to look at your cortisol levels 4 times during the day, your insulin levels before and after meals, your cortisol precursors, and your salivary anti-gliadin antibodies to help assess where you are in this process.  Getting everything back to a normal Circadian rhythm can be as easy as implementing regular protein-rich meals and healthy snacks, prescribed bedtime and rise time, sleeping in the dark (seems easy but so many of us don't!), spending time outside during each day, moving/exercising, breathing deeply, and cutting out simple carbohydrates especially at key times during the day.  Others will require a heavier approach with nutrients to support the HPA axis and hydrotherapy to bring down the inflammation already in full swing.  Emotional obstacles tend to respond nicely to constitutional homeopathy.   

Changing your body composition and losing weight are not unlike quitting smoking or shelving an addiction as far as level of difficulty, level of daily commitment required, emotional involvement, and physical dedication.  Turning around years of the body's hard-earned adaptation (healthy or not) takes time, sometimes lots.  A pill may make you feel better, and even make you look better for a minute, but your perspective has to change for any long term benefit.  What you do everyday lays the groundwork for how well your body will function.  We literally are what we eat, what we do, and how we think.  You have the power!  Come talk to me when you're ready!  

Source for above food shot: Lachlan Hardy
Source for above "Biological Clock" diagram: YassineMrabet

Last Thursday, I had the pleasure of tabling and talking about prevention at the Healthy Ho Down, put on by HR at Coaxis, Inc here in Portland.  First of all, I have to say, what a fabulous group of people!  Welcoming, passionate, and full of humor were all of our hosts and the space just drew me in immediately.  Jody and I both were struck by how open people were to trying our tasty (but maybe not visually appetizing) green drink, and by how much general interest there was in natural medicine.  Sometimes it seems like such a responsibility to "prove" the efficacy of naturopathic treatments, dig up some clinical trial or provide some anecdotal evidence, but for the most part, I didn't feel I needed to prove anything to this already knowledgeable group.  Thanks to everyone who received us last week!  And thank you to Jan Sadlowski for including me in the event!  I wish you all the best in health.

I've never met a woman who was excited about scheduling her mammogram.  In the naturopathic medical field, especially, there seems to be a bit of apprehension about recommending screening mammograms.  And for good reason.  A study published in 1996 in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported an increase in DCIS (a precancerous condition in the breast) due to increased mammography screening.  DCIS does not always progress to invasive breast cancer, but does usually lead to surgery, and the increased incidence of such has raised the question in the naturopathic community of whether or not we're doing harm by prescribing a high dose of radiation to the breasts each year. 

Fast forward to October 2009.  An article is published after 10 years of breast cancer diagnoses and 7 years of follow up, thereafter, that puts forth some staggering statistics.  They found that 75% of breast cancer deaths in women in Massachusetts between 1990 and 2007 happened in those who did not have regular screening mammograms.  And we're not talking about a small number of cases followed in this study.  This was 75% of about 7,000 cases.  In medicine, there's always a delicate balance between risk and benefit.  In other words, does the increased risk of DCIS outweigh the increased risk of death from breast cancer if I've got it and don't know.  In naturopathic medicine, we deal with substances and treatments that, in general, are inherently safe, and we chose this field for that fact.  However, the ND's role in primary care in Oregon begs our attention to this issue.  Naturally, the decision lies with you, the patient, on what to do with your body.  So what's my opinion?

I'll go on record as saying, based on the evidence I've seen and statistics I've pieced together, mammograms seem to improve breast cancer outcomes due to early detection.  Until other screening tests are perfected (I like the future of thermography if they can get it together, standardization-wise and politically!), the yearly mammogram for women over 40 really seems like the best way to go.  And of course, there are all sorts of naturopathic therapies we can design to minimize any radiation effect on the breast tissue, improve your estrogen metabolism, and keep your natural immune surveillance in tip top shape for cancer prevention.

There's lots of scary evidence on both sides of the fence and you have to do the right thing for you.  If you're in this boat, good luck with your decision, you're not alone!

Perusing one of my research digests, I thumbed through the "Top 10 Most Read Articles of September" by OncologySTAT and found the #1 article serendipitously sketching the preventive benefits of Vitamin D pertaining to breast, prostate and colon cancers. Researchers have concluded that raising the normal range of Vitamin D in the blood to a higher level would prevent 58,000 new cases of breast cancer and 49,000 new cases of colon cancer EACH YEAR.  As well, apparently, it would prevent 3/4 of deaths from these cancers in the U.S. and Canada (which seems like an optimistic number to me, but wow!). 

So, it seems our blood Vitamin D goals have been set too low for too long!  Of course, we've known this fact for quite some time now, but finally the research has caught up!  We're all looking for surefire ways to prevent cancer and Vitamin D is well-researched and considered very safe!  Get your levels checked this month!