Category Archive

Brandi is a bubbly, successful 34-year-old gallery owner who recently married her college sweetheart, and is hoping to start a family soon.  She’s been reading all the books about preparing for a healthy pregnancy and feels like she’s done her best to improve her diet, add some exercise to her life, and start a prenatal vitamin.  She’d been on birth control pills since her teens, but stopped them a year ago because she was having migraines. Since then, she’s been practicing natural family planning to prevent pregnancy until she’s ready to conceive, but something is missing – her periods.  She’s …

One of the most common questions that I’m asked in the course of a busy day seeing patients is, “so what do you eat?” I understand people’s curiosity. Do I walk my talk? Or am just providing lip service and spending my off-hours on the couch with a sleeve of Oreos and a Diet Coke? (Actually, Kit-Kats and Dr Pepper would be my choices if that was how I rolled).   I spend loads of time dishing out health and wellness recommendations, especially in my initial visits with new patients.  I recommend therapeutic nutritional protocols, supplement options, and lifestyle changes …

Bloating, cravings, depression, breast tenderness … ugh.  If you or your partner experience these symptoms in the days or weeks leading up to menstruation, you’re not alone. Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) affects up to 80% of women, and up to 20% of women report severe symptoms that significantly disrupt life. A subset of these women have symptoms so debilitating that they’ve been given a new diagnosis – premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Drug companies have hopped on board (with decent intentions) to help women who suffer from PMS.  To treat PMS and PMDD, conventional practitioners often prescribe birth control pills, anti-inflammatories, diuretics …

It’s February!  A month devoted to love, passion, and all matters of the heart.  From a physiological perspective, our hearts play a crucial role in sustaining life, but the true “heart” of health resides someplace else, perhaps unexpected – the gut!  Hippocrates knew this long ago when he declared, “All disease starts in the gut.” Twenty-five hundred years later, science is confirming what Hippocrates knew (in his gut) and it’s a fascinating time for science and gut health. Gut basics What is actually meant by “the gut”? Our digestive tract starts in our mouths, travels down our esophagus, into the …

As a new year rolls in, so do all of the pushes and prods to renew your life – change this, detox that, purge something else. Out with your old, broken 2018 life, and in with the new, shiny expectations for 2019! I’m not a New Year’s Resolution hater per se, but I do think that we need to rethink and redesign our sense of resolve. According to some some sources, up to 80% of New Year’s Resolutions fail by February – barely enough time to break in those new running shoes. Yet we start the year with such motivation …