Even Mild Stress Can Lead to Disability, Study Says

March 24th 2011

It is a beautiful spring morning in Missoula with the daybreak bringing sunshine. You awaken from a perfect sleep, revitalized and day dreaming about all you want to accomplish this day. This day lays ahead, full of opportunity, and you feel right in tune to accomplishing your goals.

You fix your breakfast, steamed leafy green vegetables in miso soup with chunks of last night’s salmon, side of rice.

Eating calmly, gazing out at the crocuses coming through the winter’s earth, you enjoy this time.

Down the street, your friend wakes reluctantly to the alarm clock, feeling tired still. She has to wake up her children, make breakfasts and get them out the door within thirty minutes. Her husband left for work at five a.m. The hurried rush produces pop tarts slammed down the toaster and eaten on the way out the door. She gets the kids in the car and tries not to speed in the neighborhood as she careens towards the school. Then off to her own job, applying her make-up at the red lights and squeezing the cell phone on one shoulder as she drives and talks.

Welcome to America. The interdependent work machine needs you. Factories, offices, stores and Wall Street need you to work, to buy, or better yet, consume. It is 2011 and we have been loyally enjoying the fruits of modern living for several decades now. Look at the result. Are Americans healthier? The answer is no.

Stress is a subjective feeling. As Hans Selye M.D., the first to explain the physiologic effects of stress in the human, said, “stress is not the situation, it is your response to the situation.”  His work launched better understanding and intervention for stress-induced problems, at least in the holistic medical world.

There are several things to know about the effects of long term stress. First of all most Americans suffer from the effects of long-term stress. Stress on a daily basis for a prolonged period of time. Acute stress reactions, as in your fear of taking an exam, is usually short-lived and physiologic recovery occurs after the exam.

Long term stress effects your hormones. Because cortisol, the stress response hormone, is manufactured in the same cascade as your testosterone, progesterone, and estrogens, you may see a dip in those products as your body makes more cortisol. I like to point out that all of the preceding hormones in addition to DHEA and Pregnenelone, two OTC supplements/hormones, are all produced from the building block of cholesterol. Yes, the maligned cholesterol. Please rethink cholesterol!

Long term stress depletes your feel-good neurotransmitter, serotonin.

Long term stress increases the inflammatory pathway, general inflammation increases, any inflammatory process increases arthritis or Irritable bowel, eczema, heart disease, ulcers etc.

Long term stress will eventually deplete the stress-response hormone itself.

Fatigue will be constant along with your other depressing symptoms!

So logic would provide that the cure, is to remove stress. In some cases that isn’t entirely possible, either though yes it is of our thinking process. It is complex. Once triggered, the stress reaction is firing the familiar pathways. People with PTSD know this all too well. If you are not a Buddha yet, logic would provide that the next best thing you could do would be to mitigate the physiologic damage, and replenish the depleted hormones and neurotransmitters. The environmental stressors have to be acknowledged in this day and age as well. The constant bombardment of invisible chemicals through water, air, food from new carpet off-gassing to Lawn-Be-Green herbicide, we are saturated. It damages normal cell function, leading to fatigue and disease.

This can be done, and is better done, without anti-depressants. Unless you are at the end of your rope, certainly a medication could help. Also, take in the nutrients that are the precursors to your neurotransmitters, take out of your diet that which depletes. You know instinctively what works against healing but I know you want to hear this list again: sugar foods, refined carbohydrates, soda, excess caffeine, alcohol and lack of : Vegetables and whole foods, skipping meals.

As a naturopathic physician, I try and rebuild your depleted system while educating about lifestyle changes. Homeopathic medicine is one of the quickest cures I have seen, but the body will also need sustenance. Food for the adrenal glands, herbal formulas that help soothe the nervous system, nutrients that lower that nighttime excess cortisol which keeps you awake, and sometimes a supplement of cortisol itself is needed to pick some people up off the floor.

The environment is also stressed. We can work together to make it better. We are both interrelated, environment in our body, environment outside of our body. I want people to achieve health so they will have the energy to help our planet.

Radiation protection, update 3/18/11

Radiation: Protection March 18, 2011
Here is a short informational blog regarding the nuclear explosions in Japan.
People have latched onto iodine as the protecting remedy and consequently the local stores in Missoula and everywhere plus suppliers
, are sold out of iodine, in all its forms.

This is ok. You can still give your body protective nutrition should radiation reach Missoula, MT. Right now there is conflicting information as to what form of radiation is circulating in the trade winds and atmosphere. It is questionable if it has even reached Hawaii yet.

At any rate, iodine will be protective for radioactive iodine exposure. Right now what will be helpful are simply anti-oxidants such as vitamin C, N-A-C (n-acetyl cysteine) vitamin E, beta-carotene. Some other nutrients that are helpful will be alpha-lipoic acid and acetyl l-carnitine.

Much has been said about eating miso soup and seaweed. Seaweed contains alginates which mop up radiation. It is said that those exposed to Hiroshima fared better if they had a lot of miso soup. (As a friend said, weren’t all the Japanese eating miso soup?) Who knows. Miso soup is good nutrition. If you have a wheat/gluten allergy get soy miso, not barley miso. Add seaweed, like pieces of Kombu if you can find it.

The Shitake mushroom is also excellent protection and can be added to the miso soup or other foods. Supplementing with Reishi or cordyceps will give anti-oxidants and immune support as well.
Adrenal adaptogens such as astragalus and ashwaghanda will be helpful, especially if you are feeling stressed.

Remain calm. There is plenty we can do as we are fortunate in the U.S. to be far from the nuclear explosion. Send your positive thoughts to Japan instead of percolating in your panic.

Reform Health Care- YES!!

1/21/2011: Health care in America has become a pharmaceutical nightmare. Which drug will you need is the apparent question. This is not always bad except when it is the entire point of view. The majority of modern health care has become a maintenance of disease.

Why do we accept that disease is inevitable, permanent and sometimes fatal? Why do we submit to drug prescriptions as the answer to our pains and ailments.

Let me be clear that drugs have a very useful place, are very helpful and sometimes the best choice. The general overuse of prescription medicine has however led to several problems: Continued symptoms and more drugs, more drugs for side-effects of previous drug, stress of expense, lack of hope and energy to seek a better treatment, sometimes death.

A logical approach to a problem such as an ulcer is to take care of the symptom of course. But is taking care of the symptom with (Prilosec, for example) which will stop stomach acid secretion, which will change the pH in the gut, prevent proper digestion of protein and prevent absorption of minerals such as calcium thereby leading to osteoporosis, and paralyze the muscles of the stomach opening, preventing proper function – is this the drug you should take for years in order to not feel disomfort.

An alternative approach would be to analyze the patient’s diet, is there a food allergy problem, is there blatant coffee, stress and alcohol problem?  Is there another medication that injured the stomach? Screen for H. pylori, a bacteria that causes ulcers.Treat with deglycerrhizinated licorice extract, slippery elm powder and l-glutamine to soothe and heal the stomach. Address digestive function, eating habits including eating on the run. What is the history of toxins, some of which can damage cells in the stomach that produce stomach acid. Most importantly, know that gastritis, or the feeling of discomfort and burning in the stomach can be caused by LACK of stomach acid. Yes the very thing most medications inhibit. The antacids and proton pump inhibitors are often the very thing you don’t want.

Proper digestive function is outlined in Guyton’s book of Physiology. We want to restore normal function, not inhibit normal function. Naturopathic doctors work by analyzing symptoms to determine what has gone wrong, what is out of balance and why. It is the patient’s responsibility to work with dietary advice, changing unhealthy habits such as eating while running out of the house stressed to not be late.

There are plenty of herbal medicines and homeopathic medicines that help to restore balance and mitigate symptoms. If you have been on Prilosec or other rx’s for a long time, please do not attempt to stop them on your own. It is tricky, requires careful and proper treatment and it will take time. Remember normal function of all organs is what will have you feeling good and having energy.

 

 

A New Paradigm of Health Care

Five congressional committees are working on healthcare reform, President Obama is pushing hard for completion by August break. One bill cleared committee on Thursday along strict party lines. But support for change does not indicate support for a single vision of change. One reason for dissent on the hill come from the House Ways and Means Committee, which says there is no way healthcare reform as they envision it will save money.

The conundrum on The Hill is how to be sure every American citizen is covered by health insurance. This addresses the people who don’t have insurance due to cost, employers who can’t afford to offer it due to cost, people who must choose to pay rent rather than health care.

The price of health care stems from the cost and overuse of high tech procedures, drug costs, high hospital and specialist’s fees.

Here in Missoula, Montana, the cry is heard that there are not enough primary care physicians anymore because physicians prefer to specialize. Primary care doctors are not making enough money to entice new physicians to become one or to stay in practice.

I have a solution. It requires sensibility and common sense however. Those come at no financial cost however so I will proceed.  For the last 20 years I have been involved in medicine thinking it would be nice to be a bridge between naturopathic and allopathic medicine. Now I think more radically. Let naturopathic medicine be the primary medical model and we will refer to the specialists as necessary. Yes, you guessed it, the cost of medicine will go way down.

The allopathic model of medicine manages chronic disease, does heroic interventions and life-extending procedures such as liver transplants, and patches up traumatic injuries. The technological advances are great, the knowledge and skill in sewing limbs back on fabulous, the scanning machines to find hidden tumors are wonderfully helpful too.

The worst thing that has happened is the dependency on pharmaceutical drugs for every ailment.

The doctor has become a prescriptionist.  The drugs most often control one symptom and have a negative effect or two elsewhere, and, they seldom actually correct the underlying reason for the problem in the first place.  So, we have become a nation full of people taking medications and still not getting well. Hello! Is this what you call success? Why do we want to keep going like this?

For those of you who don’t, and these are the people who seek out chiropractors, acupuncturists, naturopathic physicians, massage therapists, and midwives, you intuit that you can cure your ailments and not be stuck on a medication. You are who we as naturopathic physicians see in our office. It is my joy and pleasure to reveal how disease came about, and how we can clean up, fortify, and support the normal physiological functions of your body. We can cure infections, chronic disease, high blood pressure, depression and other ailments by using specific herbs, specific nutrients, specific homeopathic medicines.  Patients don’t have to take synthetic medication and they feel better, not just maintained. All in all, you can feel better and spend less money than you would with allopathic care, and yet the system does not support this, it supports the medical/pharmaceutical/insurance triad. These are the powerful interests that are influencing the decision makers.
Common sense?  Demand an expansion of natural medicine as the mainstay of medicine. Combined with the great emergency medicine and the medical support for the deeply ailing folks, we could be a prouder, healthier nation.

Naturopathic doctors are licensed primary care providers in Montana, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Alaska. They are licensed in Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, California, Hawaii, Minnesota, Maine, New Hampshire, Utah and the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.

There will be more states licensed as the legislation is passed. The licensing process assures that you have trained physicians not someone who earned a certificate in a correspondence school.

Ask for what you want, not a re-arrangement of dollars spent on health care. You want health care that improves your health.

A dinner with Sen. George McGovern

I had the pleasure of joining 10 other people for dinner with former Senator George McGovern. I had just seen the movie Gonzo, so George’s face was fresh in my mind. George said that Hunter Thompson was brilliant, he just used a lot of substances, as we all know, that made his moods erratic.

The dinner was organized by a spitfire named Darla who is angry enough at the cost of health care to be very active in building a solution. She and the others were and are strong advocates of a single payer plan.  Senator McGovern is also in favor of  universal coverage, he likened it to Medicare, where the government pays for health care.

I invited my colleague Dr. Ian Nesbitt, and we were there to keep naturopathic or alternative medicine, in the conversation about coverage. Ian asked George if naturopathic medicine was covered by his current personal policy and he answered no. All retired senators and congressmen have a salary and health insurance for life. However, being that it is the government, they have not yet been enlightened as to the benefit of covering naturopathic medicine and other modalities in the “alternative” category.

In addition to hearing a couple of wonderful stories about the life of George McGovern, the conversation was about how to gain influence where it counts, in order to ensure universal coverage is where health reform emerges.

I am not necessarily in favor of this nor am I opposed. My perspective is that the health delivery needs to have a new format, in a new up-to-date paradigm. The current system is obviously an albatross that has and is causing a multitude of problems, both  financial and healthwise. Why keep funding this 37^th rate system?

My solution: See next blog entry.

Why Natural Medicine for Montana?

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Political focus and individual focus is on health care these days. It is a pivotal time where it has been recognized that America’s health care costs are not effective and are causing personal bankruptcies.

I say, why pour money into a system that has failed us in many ways. We need to change the whole health care paradigm. I will list some of the reasons and I will suggest a small plan to set an example of how the health care delivery can change.

The United States rates 17^th in quality of health care. Why is it that the most modern, most educated country, (that used to be plump with money) and full of highly educated people, and the newest in technology cannot have a healthy population?

My simple answer: Stress and pollution. Stress and pollution are the major contributors to all of the modern diseases.

High tech, pharmaceutical medicine may only add to this problem, when it is not the perfect help. The training of Americans that a drug prescription will take care of their ailments has been detrimental. This behavior eradicated the societal support for being responsible for your health in terms of what you eat and its effects.

The effects of stress are causing and/or perpetuating almost every disease and symptom you can name.

Pollution, chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs, poor quality foods, synthetic and artificial food components are depleting the human body of necessary nutrients. Modern medicine does not acknowledge, accept or help to correct this depletion.

Is there a philosophy for modern doctors? What is the goal of AMA medicine in 2009?

Why will this system of medicine continue as is, while heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and neurological diseases soar in numbers?

In addition we must, as a society, take responsibility for our health and not think it is up to the doctor to fix everything. As a society we must use less chemicals on our lawns, on our crops, in our foods –everywhere.

Why aren’t the successes of naturopathic medicine (and other holistic, alternative practices) brought to the American public via the news? Aren’t you curious to find out why and how your friend or colleague recovered from chronic fatigue, from depression, why they did so much better in their chemo treatment than you?

The success is already here. I would like to enact a health care model in Missoula, that can be an example of excellent health care that gets people better for the long term; medication-free, symptom-free or better, and therefore saves money. I believe that starting small and being a pilot program is easier to achieve( than asking the politicians in Washington D.C. to undertake what they will need to study, etc. etc. and take years to accomplish, if then, given the opposition that will arise.)

With our very own Senator Baucus in charge of health care reform, perhaps we can offer an exemplary solution.

A naturopathic medical model that can provide acute and chronic care, at fair market value, educating and treating patients to restore health.

Are you interested? Please join in with your comments and ideas.

Need NCCAM? Not as badly as we need NDs

In the news: The federal government is thinking of stopping funding for NCCAM, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the NIH.  Its current budget is $122 million.

Washington Post.com Health Check-up asks if this is a good idea: “If that funding were left entirely to the private sector, would there be conflicts of interest? If a supplement maker, for instance, is charged with determining whether its supplements cure colds or reduce cancer risks, can we trust those findings?”

Conflict of interest? Trust?

Why is this question posed in terms of the role NCCAM might play in protecting the public from alternative therapies, rather than the loss of the advancement of understanding about the potential of alternative treatment?

Why has it been acceptable for the last four decades to trust drug research that was done by pharmaceutical companies? Where is the outrage about conflict of interest there?

The risk of dying from a vitamin is infinitesimal compared to the reality of pharmaceutical drug deaths per year in the USA.

According to Archives of Internal Medicine, 9-10-2007, reported deaths from properly prescribed medicine increased 2.7-fold, from 5,519 in 1998 to 15,107 in 2005. The overall relative increase was 4 times faster than the growth in total US outpatient prescriptions, which grew in the same period from 2.7 billion to 3.8 billion

While the office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine is researching whether or not echinacea works for colds, qualified, educated and licensed naturopathic physicians are using herbal and nutritional medicines to treat acute and chronic disease successfully.

Such research might satisfy those who don’t know, but research takes time and money. Meanwhile people are dying and sick. Those who know now can help now.

We’ve been operating for at least 40 years under a system that lets pharmaceutical companies oversee research at the expense of patient health.

NCAAM has spent a fair amount of its budget pursuing the idea that some alternative treatments are ineffective in test groups. It has done little to actually advance the understanding of alternative treatment modalities that professional naturopaths know.

I am for having my patients on the least amount of medication possible. Depending on their health situation no medication may be reasonable, attainable and healthier.

This is not a philosophical or “us v. them” mentality. My job, the job of a naturopathic physician, is to restore normal physiology to the human body, and the human body runs on the nutrients we call vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids. Plain and simple.

National health reform needs to emphasize the delivery of sensible, non-harmful medicine that enables people to get well and thrive or survive while feeling better. NCCAM dollars may be better spent providing alternative healthcare as part of the everyday medical regime Americans expect and deserve.

Welcome to Natural Medicine for Montana

My mission is a triplet:

• Address the national health reform issue locally.
• Increase awareness of the capabilities of naturopathic medicine.
• Increase awareness and action to decrease chemicals in our local environment.

Policy: As the political agenda focuses on health care reform out in Washington D.C. it appears to me that it would be easier to make changes locally while the giant political machine has its lengthy, laborious process.

What if Montana creates a health reform plan that has success in treating illness,  decreases chronic disease, uses less pharmaceutical medication and ultimately costs less for medical care?  Why not set an example for Senator Max Baucus.  Why wait?

Naturopathy: Naturopathic medicine is a broad term for an approach to health based on the philosophy of doing no harm to the body and finding the cause of the illness. Naturopathic medicine is a philosophy and an approach to health with applications from around the world and from ancient times up to modern applications.  Montana licensed naturopathic physicians as primary care physicians in 1990.

The environment: We have done more damage to the planet in the last 50 years than has been done in 50 million years. The consequences are too huge to ignore.  The human biological system cannot sustain, process or live with the accumulation of man-made chemicals that are now stored in our bodies. The cancers, auto-immune diseases, neurological diseases, fatigue, mental illness and plain depression are part and parcel of this emerged world of toxins. The natural world around us is also changing with increased canine cancer, dying species, malformed animals etc.

We have knowledge, we have tools, we have money (sort of). Let us use these tools for something tangibly constructive.

Please, write in your interest and we will make a difference.