Rebecca MilhamWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Chronic illness took a while to appear - if often started long before you noticed symptoms, so why is that we expect to get better in the space of days or weeks?  High cholesterol? Give me a statin....STAT.
Hypothyroidism? Quick give me thyroxine. Anxiety? Xanax will fix that... The problem with this approach is that while it may improve symptoms, or blood markers, in a short space of time (and don't get me wrong, sometimes that is exactly what we need to do in the short term), it doesn't fix any underlying issues, and it's these underlying issues that take a lot longer to resolve. People have become very used to this symptom control style of healthcare, so now even in the natural medicine world, results are expected to be quick - but unfortunately that's not always possible. Reversing damage in the body can take time. Sure - sometimes there's a quick fix - particularly if your problem is a recent one, but for long standing health issues sometimes change can take anywhere from weeks to months to years - but generally with improvements occurring all the time along the way. A Naturopath I used to see with my eldest daughter likened chronic health problems to peeling back the layers of an onion. Once you peel back the layer of those first symptoms and start to resolve them often you uncover other problems in the layers underneath. These aren't set backs, they are issues that have been there for a very long time - but they have been masked by the other layers of symptoms. Naturopaths look holistically at health and work to uncover what's driving the symptoms you're experiencing. For example is your thyroid issue caused by nutrient imbalances? Is it due to excessive intake of goitregens? Is it because you have Hashimoto's (an auto-immune disorder)? And if it is Hashimoto's, were their factors that may have initiated the condition? In an initial appointment, we spend around an hour with you taking a full health history. While some of the questions we ask may seem irrelevant, the answers you provide give us clues as to what is happening inside your body which enables us to find the best way to help you. Sometimes that requires further testing, which may seem like another delay, and an unnecessary expense - but may be an essential part of helping you get well again. So remember, the results you are looking for may not always be as quick as you would have liked, but making lasting health changes is worth the wait. Rebecca Milham Naturopath & Nutritionist The Natural Health & Wellness Clinic www.rebeccamilham.com.au www.thenaturalhealthclinic.com.au
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Rebecca MilhamNaturopath and Nutritionist It saddens me to see kids (especially very young kids), guzzling down sports drinks because they, and their parents, are led to believe they're good for them. Our kids are bombarded with a massive amount of exposure to these drinks. Their favourite athletes drink them, they sponsor MANY teams, they have signage all over sports stadiums, and they are repeatedly used to shower other players/coaches with after games. This huge amount of exposure begins to brainwash children from a very young age. I remember when my son was about 6 he asked me for a bottle of Powerade 'Because it gives you the power to reach your goals'. That was the tag line from the Powerade ad at the time which was on constantly during the AFL games he would sit and watch. That was the first time I realised just how powerful advertising can be to young minds. So let's have a closer look at these sports drinks and see if they are really something we want our kids to be drinking...........  I quit sugar almost a year ago today. And when I say sugar, I mean ALL SUGAR except for fresh fruit. I never really ate refined sugars anyway so for me quitting sugar involved cutting out dried fruit/date balls, maple syrup, rice malt syrup, rapadura sugar etc   If you've been walking around the supermarket lately wondering how some products received the Health Star Ratings they did, you wouldn't be alone!
While shopping on the weekend, and having the usual argument with my kids about why they're not allowed various breakfast cereals, I noticed something that I thought was a bit odd. The Sultana Bran Bud Cereal has a Health Star Rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Marketing people globally are always looking for those specific keywords that convince us to buy their products. Vitamin or Vita is one such word. It is designed to make us feel as if we are really doing something good for our health by purchasing the product, but most of the time we're not!
 Once upon a time when life wasn’t so hectic, I imagine that we were all much more in tune with our bodies. We listened to it’s signals. We knew instinctively what our body was trying to tell us. When we got sick, we stopped and let our bodies recuperate. For most people, that’s not the case anymore!
Let me give you a prime example.  Depending on how much you know about probiotics I may, or may not, be about to rock your world….!
 So I’ve been wanting to write this blog for a while, then I woke up this morning and saw that a guru of the natural medicine field in the U.S has written something very similar on his Facebook page yesterday! But I will chalk that down to great minds thinking alike and persist ;)
There are two separate issues I have, and both relate to fundraising for chronic conditions so bear with me!  What if everything we thought about Folic Acid was wrong?
Lately in the Naturopathic community you can barely go past a seminar, webinar or network group without hearing ‘MTHFR’ being bandied about – and no….. that is not some new acronym we use to swear at each other, MTHFR stands for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase and it is a very important gene when it comes to our health and wellbeing. Ok - so even as I write my title I know that it sounds a little odd - but give me a chance to explain!
Many people come to see a Naturopath as they have been unwell for some time. During an initial consultation, I will ask if they have had blood tests done recently, and quite often the answer is ‘Yes - but they all came back fine’. I always ask to get a copy anyway, which I’m sure seems odd to many people but there’s good reason. |
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