by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Mar 5, 2014 | Chronic pain, Meditation, Mind Body Medicine, Mindfulness
I can feel the general feeling of malaise and a focal ache in the side of my head. My mind slows and I feel that stupid sense of dullness overcome me. I am engulfed in a wave of sickness and pain; I am getting a migraine.
Many of my patients suffer from chronic pain. Their lives become about experiencing life behind a veil of physical discomfort, which intrudes into everything they do. Pain can be a metaphor offered up by the body for other forms of discomfort that are either too hard to solidify or too easy to ignore. When my little dog vies for my attention he cries. Our bodies do that too. Pain can be sticky, it can be complicated and its cause unclear. It can also destroy life; it becomes an unrelenting presence that threatens to ruin every plan or dream we have for a life of balance and well-being. Pain, and more importantly our reaction to it, can succeed at controlling us. So, how can we take back the control and heal through pain?
(more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Feb 19, 2014 | Community, Guatemala, Healing Stories, Health, Volunteering, Volunteering Abroad, Writing
We take a chicken bus to the hospital in Sololá, Guatemala. The emergency room is simple: 5 beds in a row sheltered by curtains. The sanitation conditions are questionable. There are no respirators (patients are bagged manually, all through the night) or fancy medical equipment. The emergency room is a bustling gathering place for the daily misfortunes of any of the 500,000 residents of Lago Atitlán.
My classmates and I, fresh from the airport, are dressed in navy blue scrubs, shiny and new from Walmart. I have a stethoscope around my neck: a Littman Cardio III. I’d guess that it’s the most expensive stethoscope in the hospital. It’s also auscultated the least amount of hearts; I’d be willing to bet that too.
(more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Feb 12, 2014 | Emotions, Empathy, Health, Philosophy, Psychology, Robert Schad Naturopathic Clinic
If you’ve ever participated in the medical system somewhere in the world, chances are there is a medical chart out there with your name on it. I have one in my hands now and I task myself with the job of getting to know it. It is based on a true story: a patient who has entrusted me with his case. I read through the 200-page document, transfixed as stories in the untidy scrawl of half a dozen interns – some of them now well-immersed in practices of their own – unfold on the white pages. These pieces of paper, bound together by a fragile cardboard shell, capture snapshots in time of the encounter between these young practitioners and the patient. I read between the lines. Coffee stains represent early mornings that followed late nights, plainly stated observations reflect the colour of different lenses with which these young naturopaths-in-training saw the world at that time. Their pens tell 6 versions of the same story. Their treatment plans tell the story of emerging practice styles and personal healing philosophies.
(more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Feb 10, 2014 | Health, Mental Health, Stress
My second year of training to be a naturopathic doctor was horrific in many ways. It began with performance-based physical exams, which brought with them the crippling feeling of being a deer, stunned by a set of bright headlights, unable to act in the face of the impending doom before me. Before practicals, my stomach would do whatever it wanted, my heart would boom in my chest, rocking my whole body with its force. I swore in these moments that I didn’t know my name, let alone the entire series of steps of a thorough lung and thorax exam. I became a bumbling mess. I hated the feeling. (more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 29, 2014 | Balance, Health, Ideal You, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Nature Cure
Most people who come to see a naturopathic doctor are in some sort of state of dis-ease. That is, they are often exhibiting symptoms that indicate that their bodies have begun to offer up warning signs that something is off balance. After all, if they didn’t have symptoms, how would they know something was wrong with them? The trouble with our society is we often don’t notice our bodies until we have a glaringly obvious symptom that we can’t ignore – like how I never pay attention to a car I’m driving until there is a red light and a beeping noise I can’t turn off. And, even at that, how often do we find ourselves out-of-touch with even the most annoying symptoms – like gas and bloating or pain and itching – simply because we’ve “learned to live with them”?
(more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 24, 2014 | Acupuncture, Autoimmune, Detoxification, Exercise, Food Sensitivities, Health, Mental Health
Anywhere from 10% to 55% of the population suffers from chronic pain. It is one of the conundrums of conventional medicine because, once the initial trauma (i.e.: the broken bone, bruising or cut, etc.) is dealt with, there are not many options for managing it. Pain medications usually have a host of side effects and offer only modest results. Many people are forced to live with pain, watching as their lives and well-being eventually deterioriate and they lose the ability to perform the activities they once loved. Thankfully, naturopathic medicine offers a variety of solutions for treating pain that can give you the chance to get your life back.
(more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 17, 2014 | Balance, Detoxification, Diet, Digestion, Food, Health
Eat up those whole foods, just save the raw until spring.
A month’s worth of holiday excesses, combined with this wet, soggy weather can contribute to feelings of bloated, puffy lethargy. I feel that, at this time of year, everyone is shunning the scale and examining their side profiles in the mirror, lying down to button up jeans and secretly blaming life’s woes on apple pie. For many, weeks of over-doing it in December, mean a January of self-induced deprivation to get back on track and re-emerge as svelte and bounding again.
It seems intuitive to balance a period of indulgence with deprivation. If weeks of unrestricted treats pushed us off track, then surely a firm, hard shove in the other direction should get us back on the rails. However, as any winter driver or horseback rider knows, sometimes all we need is a gentle nudging to steer our stead back on to the right path.
This year I’ve held myself back from diving off the cleansing deep end. I’ve decided that this year I need gentle nourishment, not another nagging voice in my head, moulding my behaviour one way or the other. I need far more carrots (cooked delicately in stews, not raw) than sticks. I’ve decided to nurture my relationship with food using diplomacy, not by summoning the cavalry.
(more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 13, 2014 | Gratitude, Happiness, Health, Letting Go, Love, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Psychology
Losses and pivotal life changes can make us feel as if our world of comforts and familiarity is crumbling away beneath us, leaving us with a sense of emptiness and shaken emotional instability. However awful these times may seem, they can also offer us the gift of intimately knowing ourselves, and the opportunity to grow and learn. We are at our most vulnerable, our most creative and, in a sense, our most awake and alive during times of emotional duress. Our sensitivity is heightened, and although many of these feelings are extremely painful, our ability to experience this pain also leaves us open to the possibility of truly feeling everything the world has to offer: excruciating suffering but also the promise of immense joy.
When we think of healing we often think of taking medications, receiving treatments or long courses of therapy. We often overlook the importance of the little, comforting things we can do to help nurture ourselves through painful times. These rituals and small comforts are powerful healing facilitators; we only need the courage to turn to them and to trust that we are on the right path.
(more…)
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 10, 2014 | Uncategorized
“Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand. What we are saying, in essence – we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”
― Alain de Botton, On Love
by Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND | Jan 5, 2014 | Health, Motivation, Nutrition, Psychology
Creating a vision board is a great, right-brained way to identify your goals for the new year.
New Year’s Day has come and gone, meaning it’s time for me to dust myself off, put away the wool blanket I’ve been camping out under with a good book, wash my coffee cup, change out of my pyjama pants and move from a state of “being” to “doing” again (just a bit more doing). I’ve never been a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions; they’ve always seemed to me like a fatalistic fad that we have already given ourselves permission to break. Even before we set off on our trek, we know that most New Year’s resolutions are doomed to die out and so we often resign ourselves to failing before we begin.
That being said, the new year, while just a symbolic date on our calenders, does signal new beginnings. It’s the end of down time – most of us are heading back to school after a period of rest and rejuvenation. It marks the passing of the winter solstice; the days are beginning to get longer, the earth is gathering warmth and rekindling our inner fires, which bring with them the motivation we need to accomplish our deepest, most important goals. So, this first post of the new year is dedicated to goal setting. It’s one of the skills we naturopathic doctors (and naturopathic interns) implement often, because getting to the root cause of disease and walking the path of health is never as easy as saying “start running and eating kale”. It requires a certain amount of foresight and personal empowerment.
(more…)
