The Art & Practice Blog
A Mindful Commute
One of the reasons I chose to do my undergrad at Queen's University (in Kingston, Ontario) was the beauty of its campus. The ivy-covered limestone buildings filled with me a romantic vision of what a student's life should be. I imaged myself strolling to class among...
The Tiny House Revolution
What does space mean to you? Is it a necessity? A status symbol? A burden? A friend and I recently went to see a documentary at the Toronto Hot Docs festival called Tiny: A Story About Living Small. The doc follows a young couple who embark on the project of building...
Affordable Naturopathic Medicine in Toronto
As you probably know, my classmates and I have completed our 3rd year of naturopathic medical school and are about to embark on our 12-month clinical internship and final year as naturopathic medical students. My brilliant classmates and I start to practice tomorrow,...
How I Managed to Pass NPLEX 1: One Woman’s Success Story and Practical Tips
Congratulations on another completed academic year! Not to rain on everyone's parade but, for many of you, there is a giant basic sciences board exam looming in the not-so distant future. So, there are websites out there on tips for studying for NPLEX 1, but they are...
Ninety
The CCNM class of 2014 started our naturopathic medical education in September of 2010 (or Jan 2011, for the Janbabies). Since then we have written and performed exactly 90 exams (including our board exam, NPLEX 1, in the summer after 2nd year). 90 seems like a nice,...
Spring Detox with Hydrotherapy
Ask any religion or ancient culture: there is nothing more detoxifying than pure, clean water to wash away our sins, whether material or metaphorical. Therefore, no spring cleaning regimen is complete without implementing the detoxifying power of water. Using...
Apple, Carrot and Fennel Spring Salad
Spring is (finally) in the air! For me that means long walks outside with the dog, time spent reading outside a cafe and, of course, fresh fruits and vegetables! While globalization does provide us with fruits and vegetables year-round (who doesn't love watermelon in...
Flourless Black Bean Brownies
So, you've probably heard of black bean brownies before. However, just like "therapist", black bean brownie is not a protected title. There are just as many varieties of recipes as there are hits for "black bean brownie" on google. Some have flour, some barely contain...
Real Food Inspiration
We often talk about eating "whole foods" or "real food". What does that mean? To me it means taking raw ingredients and mixing them together yourself. It means becoming more familiar with what food looks like at every step of its journey to your table: what a coffee...
Physicians Who Listen: the Naturopathic Elevator Speech
What is naturopathic medicine? My colleagues and I are often stumped to answer the question. Not because we aren't aware of what we do but because our philosophy has become so deeply ingrained in our own skin that it's hard to separate it from the rest of us. What's...
Chocolate Chip White Bean Blondies
Our last day of Primary Care, a third year course that is both the most educational course of the year and the bane of our existence, our group decided to have a pot luck. In the spirit of bringing something healthy, guilt-free and yummy to get us through our last...
The Art and Practice of Narrative Medicine
A classmate recently lent me a book that introduced me to the intriguing field of "narrative medicine." The book is called Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness, written by Rita Charon, MD, an internist practicing in New York City. Narrative medicine...
A Conversation with My Liver
This piece of writing was meant for The Body Parts Anthology, a compilation of naturopathic student writings, bringing the "art" into the art and practice of naturopathic medicine. It would be a way to creatively reflect on our experiences of learning about and living...
The Naturopathic Snack List
Health food needs to be grab-able. I believe that, if people are going to make lifelong changes to their diet and health, eating should be made as simple as possible. I think that many of us start the day off right and, because we forget to plan our snacks, we reach...
How to Make Your Favourite Baked Goods Allergen Free
Everyone loves baked things. They help fuel social gatherings, solo study sessions, go well with tea and coffee. What's not to love? The problem, however, is that most are laden with sugar, wheat flour, usually processed and virtually all contain milk and eggs, which...
How to Kill a Cold
After feeling the rush of adrenaline from the completion of our 3rd Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE), I woke the next day with that sharp tingling in my throat, indicating that I was about to get a cold. It seems my body loves to get sick at inconvenient...
7 Truths for Lasting Weight Loss
This article was first published in My Yoga Online. With the growing rates of obesity in our society, combined with the tendency for most people who successfully lose weight to gain it back only a short while later, it’s obvious that something is flawed in our...
Pitahaya: The Dragon Fruit
While traveling in South America, people sometimes ask me what I do for a living. Unlike some of the reactions I sometimes get in North America, when I tell people from South America that I'm a naturopathic medical student, I usually get warm, excited responses. The...
Coconut Cream Date Squares
Have you ever been invited to a dinner party and charged with the task of bringing dessert to one of those groups of people who always seem to be onto the next dietary fad? If not, you probably don't have any naturopathic friends. If you have been in this...
DIY Vanilla Spice Sugar Scrub
In search of something to tame unruly eye-brows I went back to Shopper's Drugmart one day. I perused the "natural" cosmetic counter, peering at the ingredients list of face washes, moisturizers and acne creams. What constitutes "natural" ingredients? I wondered....