As a Naturopathic Doctor, I treat a wide variety of acute and chronic health conditions using the fundamentals of my profession, along with a few extra tools. The main methods of treating in my practice are described below.
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NUTRITION
Food should be enjoyed, but it also needs to give us nutrient to function optimally for our entire lives. The therapeutic use of food, along with ensuring that we digest and assimilate properly, is fundamental to Naturopathic Medicine. You may not think your diet has anything to do with many of your health concerns, but the impact can be far-reaching: not just weight problems, or digestive issues like IBS, ulcers, reflux, constipation & diarrhea..... but skin issues like eczema and rosacea, joint & muscle pain, headaches, sleep disturbances, cognitive & memory decline, water retention, hormonal swings, mood issues, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, lowered immunity and frequent infections, and many more issues can be affected to varying degrees by your diet. With so much information bombarding us daily on what diet to follow, I will help you sort out fact from fiction, and what will be most appropriate for your own individual needs. In dietary counselling, we will look at food allergies/sensitivities, your own particular dietary habits and health issues, and create a nutrition plan that will get you on the right track. This may or may not involve supplementation with high quality nutraceuticals, but food is always, ideally, the fundamental starting point. |
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BOTANICAL MEDICINE
Herbs are nature's medicines, and have been used for thousands of years around the world. Many of today's pharmaceuticals have their roots in traditional plant medicine. Used to treat almost any health issue you can think of, modern botanical medicine comes in many forms, from simple teas, poultices, and salves, to more sophisticated encapsulated formulas and potent tinctures. In my office, I have a particular passion for individualizing botanical tinctures, based on your health issues, but may also prescribe various other forms of herbal medicine to safely and effectively address your needs. Herbs can be used as nutrient and to support your own body's natural mechanisms, but also, according to the tenets of pharmacognosy, to treat and heal in a medicinal manner - often with a great deal more safety than drugs, and with incredibly few side effects. As a Naturopath with extensive training in Herbal Medicine as well as Prescriptive Authority with pharmaceuticals, I always make sure that herbs are used safely and without negative interactions with any drugs you may be taking. We are uniquely positioned in the health care system as the only practitioners with this particular knowledge and skill. |
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ACUPUNCTURE
Approved by the World Health Organization, licensed and covered by provincial health care across Canada, and used successfully for a plethora of health issues, acupuncture is an energetic medicine that works by restoring flow of energy through blocked channels, releasing body tension, affecting the neurological system, and modulating the balance between all of our body systems. In my practice, I have seen very positive results using acupuncture for mood disorders, digestive problems, acute & chronic pain, insomnia, hormonal imbalances, and perinatal issues like fertility challenges, pregnancy symptoms, and post-partum recovery. |
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PERINATAL CHECK-UPS
I offer pre-conception visits to prepare your body and your health for pregnancy, particularly valuable to women who have been on hormonal birth control for greater than 10 years, and women who are over 35. I also offer prenatal wellness visits - one basic check up for each trimester, assessing symptoms of pregnancy and making sure your blood pressure, basic chemistry (like blood sugar, iron levels and thyroid), and physical health signs (like weight gain, edema, heartburn, and constipation) are all under best parameters. I use treatments that are simple, safe, and yet effective: nutrition & exercise that's tailored to you, hydrotherapy, acupuncture, judicious use of supplementation, compounded iron or thyroid medication when necessary, and the small handful of herbal medicines that are known to be safe and useful for pregnancy-related health issues. |
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WELL-CHILD CHECK-UPS
I offer a series of well-child visits simply to check in on the basics of your child's development. From birth to puberty, we humans go through a vast, and rapid, set of changes. Along with these changes come particular health challenges, most often involving the digestive, neurological, and immunological systems. From cradle cap and ear infections, to teething, food allergies, sleep problems, learning & processing difficulties, behavioural problems, anxiety, food pickiness, allergies, asthma, and chronic infections - many of these things can be modulated or even prevented with regular check-ins to look at the various ways to keep your child healthy and balanced. Much as in my perinatal work, I use treatments for children that are simple, safe, and yet effective. Kids don't need much to shift a health problem - I start with optimal nutrition and make sure their microflora is supported, and from there add supplementation if necessary, botanical medicines that have a proven safety profile for kids, and often some recommendations for stress & anxiety management and activity levels. |
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BIO-IDENTICAL HORMONE THERAPY
Does menopause have to be so hard? I don't believe so. Technically, what most women experience as 'menopause' is called 'Perimenopause' - the years that it takes for the female hormones of estrogen and progesterone to finally fall to low levels and stay there. This can be up to 10 years for some women, and can have a huge impact on sleep, mood, cognitive function, memory, weight control, libido, injury healing and overall muscle tone & fitness, and of course can have a significant impact on health issues such as osteoporosis, breast cancer, and cardiovascular disease. Before considering hormones, I work to help you simply get healthier - just as in many symptoms associated with difficult periods in your reproductive years, there are many improvements that can be made to regulate hormones simply by changing diet, decreasing stress & anxiety, getting more exercise, and achieving a healthy weight. However, when huge hormone swings are the cause of your anxiety, poor sleep, weight gain, and low energy, it's harder to fix those without balancing the hormones through the process. Through my prescribing license, I'm able to give you access to various forms and combinations of bio-identical hormones to help make the transition easier. Hormone therapy doesn't come without some risks, and I will go over those with each woman to determine the safest and most effective course of action. |
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LIFESTYLE COUNSELLING
Our choices, when we have choices, can impact our health in positive and negative ways - physically, mentally, emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually. Building habits - good or bad - is often at the root of the way most of us live, and yet most of us seem to build the bad ones more easily than the good ones. Your genetics, your environment, your relationships, your financial status, and your own thoughts can all impact the choices you make every day to exercise or not exercise, to eat well or to eat crap, to stress and worry or to calmly let go what you can, and all the other hundreds of choices we each make every day. Habits don't get a chance to become habits if they don't in some way serve you, and that's true for the bad habits as well as the good ones. The trouble with bad habits is that they can persist long after their original function in our lives is gone, and now they're just wrecking our health. If you stop to consider how that's affecting your life - your energy, your relationships, your opportunities - you might discover a chance to make changes. My role is to help you identity where the struggles are, to break it down so it's not so overwhelming, and to strategize steps to make the changes you really want. Even the smallest change can have a huge impact - let me help me you find that. |
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STRESS MANAGEMENT
When was the last time you just laid down in a field?! In modern day life, stress never seems to have an off-switch. Stress as a mechanism of mobilizing us in the face of threat is a normal and appropriate response and thank goodness we have it because we would never have survived this long, but it's not meant to be 'on' all the time. Good health requires that we spend more time in our parasympathetic state - also called the 'rest and digest' state of our nervous system. Instead, most of us are in a state of 'wired & tired' which feels like a constant vibration combined with exhaustion and eventually an inability to sleep. These are signs of burn out - the adrenal system takes a constant hit, and eventually the consequences can lead to many health issues:
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ALLERGY TESTING & SUBLINGUAL IMMUNOTHERAPY
Environmental allergies can be tested in office, using a standard Skin Prick Test. This involves a tiny amount of an allergen placed on the skin followed by a mild scratch - if you are allergic to a substance, your skin will respond with a welt or a hive, usually within 15-20 minutes. This is known as an IgE Histamine-mediated immediate response. Treatment involves serially diluted allergen substances, placed under the tongue, to desensitize your immune system over a period of time - very similar to the old allergy shots that many of us got as kids. I give you the appropriate remedy (or remedies if you have multiple allergies) and you can do this at home. Best time to start this is typically 1-2 months before allergy season - here on the west coast, that means January/February for most of our blossoms and flowers; and March/April for our grasses. This treatment is safe for children 3 years old and up. Sensitivities (or Intolerances) are slightly different. These are tested with a blood sample which is sent to a lab and analyzed for a different immunoglobulin, called IgG. I can have you tested for more than 200 foods and substances, and treatment will vary for individuals depending on the results found. |
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B12 INJECTIONS
There are many reasons that B12 can decline over time: Long-term vegan diet, traumatic bleeding, compromised small intestine, autoimmune disorders like Crohn's or Ulcerative Colitis, hypothyroidism, iron deficiency, chronic parasites, smoking, regular and long-term alcohol consumption, Depression & Anxiety, neurological conditions, chronic stress, and the simple fact of aging. Recent studies show that many adults are low in B12 by their mid-50's, regardless of dietary intake or health status. B12 injections are done intramuscularly, usually in the shoulder, and are offered on a weekly basis for those who have labs to show outright deficiency, and on an occasional basis for those with low normal levels - this would be assessed on a case-by-case basis. For non-patients who are only seeking B12 shots, a short initial intake will be necessary to start a file, and if blood work is deemed necessary, I will set you up with the lab requisition prior to starting shots. |
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PRESCRIBING - NATURAL OR PHARMACEUTICAL
As a Naturopath with a prescribing license, I can prescribe natural products (and will happily send you to our local compounding pharmacies as well as local supplement retailers as I have a very limited in-office dispensary) as well as pharmaceutical medications depending on need. I work closely with compounding pharmacists to find the correct form and dosage of standard meds, and to make sure we access Pharma Net to always stay aware of the other medications you've been prescribed. I would aim, first and foremost, to treat the cause of whatever ails you, with a focus on doing least harm for the most benefit, but also keeping in mind that medication is sometimes warranted. |