Put Yourself in the Way of Beauty: on sunsets, sunrises, water, and nature
"There’s a sunrise and a sunset every day and you can choose to be there or not."You can put yourself in the way of beauty.”- Cheryl Strayed, WildYellow and orange hues stimulate melatonin production, aiding sleep.Melatonin is not just our sleep hormone, it’s an...
Heal Your Anxiety in a 90 Second Wave Ride
It was a crappy week and I was chatting with a friend online. He said something that triggered me... it just hit some sort of nerve. I backed away from my computer, feeling heavy. I went to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water and collapsed, elbows on the...
Crafting an Anti-Inflammatory Lifestyle
It's day one of my period and I've been healing a broken foot for 6 weeks. The weather is overcast, thick, humid and rainy. My body feels thick and heavy. Clothing leaves an imprint on my skin--socks leave deep indentations in my ankles. My face and foot is swollen....
The Wisdom of Cravings
Whenever I sit with a new patient for an initial intake, I ask about cravings. From my many conversations about food, appetite and cravings, the most common responses are cravings for salt, or sugar, with many people falling on one end of the preference than the...
Getting Meta on Metatarsals: Boredom, Loneliness, and Broken Feet
About a month ago I fractured my right 5th metatarsal (an avulsion fracture, aka "The Dancer's Fracture" or a "Pseudo-Jones Fracture"). As soon as I laid eyes on the x-ray and the ER doctor declared, "Ms. Marcheggiani," (actually, it's doctor, but ok) "you broke your...
Informed Consent: Your Right to Bodily Autonomy
"The right to determine what shall or shall not be done with one's own body, and to be free from non-consensual medical treatment is a right deeply rooted in Canadian common law. The right underlines the doctrine of informed consent. "With very limited exceptions...
How to Stop Craving Sugar
Quentin Crisp says, "Repeat yourself loudly and often" and so I'm repeating myself on blood sugar regulation. I guess if I had to leave a legacy in the world of natural health and lifestyle medicine, if I could sum everyone's problems down to one key major concept and...
Functional Movement and Surf Training
I was sitting with my friend and her ex-partner. Their kids are soccer stars--one is headed towards a professional career and the younger one is not far behind. My friends ex-partner, a fit soccer fan himself, lamented, "I'm getting old. I don't recover like I used...
Meeting Your Food
It's mulberry season, which means while walking through my neighbourhood I can snack, picking food right off the trees growing behind fences or on people's front lawns whenever I walk by a berry-stained sidewalk. There's something therapeutic about entering into the...
You Are Not Your Thoughts: On OCD
Can you do me a favour? I want you to think about your thoughts. Not just any thoughts: The Thought Spiral. We all have thought spirals. You know, where your thoughts feel like they're on an automatic playback loop? If you suffer from OCD, your thought spirals likely...
You Aren’t Sick, You’re Adapting
In my last post on "I Treat Stories", I talked about the spectrum between perfect "health" (perhaps better defined as "potential") and disease, and death. The Disease Spectrum, perhaps we can call it. And I also talked about the conflict many naturopathic patients...
I Treat Stories
"I don't believe in diseases anymore, I treat stories. "...No other medical system in the world ever believed in diseases. They all treat everybody as if, you know it's whether it's the ancestors or meridians--it's none of this rheumatoid arthritis, strep throat kind...
You Weigh Less on the Moon
I’ve struggled with body image as much as the next woman. In certain influencer, nutrition and health circles I find “skinny” is confused for “healthy”. When we talk about health and wellness, people assume we mean "thinness", or weight loss.And I want to confess...
Depression is a Ditch
"A human being can endure anything. "As long as they see the end in sight. "The problem with depression is, you can't see the end." Depression is like a ditch. Sometimes you head into and get stuck, but you manage to wiggle out. Other times you're in a major rut and...
Are You Beach Body Ready?
Yes.Have you heard of something called "self-objectification"?It is the effect of moving through the world imagining how your body looks to others: perhaps checking yourself out in the mirror, adjusting clothing, taking selfies--the awareness of your body moving...
Dear Anxious Patients: Choose to Trust Your Guide
Imagine that you're stuck in the middle of the Amazon forest. You have no idea where you are. You're terrified and hungry. All of a sudden a man (or a woman) emerges from the bushes. They tell you, "I can help you get out of here. I can help you find your way home"....
My Beliefs About Nutrition
Our beliefs come from external factors: our research, others' stories, things we read, things we see, and internal factors: personal observation of our own experiences. My beliefs about food have formed through reading scientific studies and nutritional studies, to an...
How to Heal Loneliness
Is anyone else feeling wet dog in a bathtub-level lonely?With this pandemic loneliness is on the rise. And we already lived in an epidemic of loneliness.Humans are social creatures with attachment needs--and many of us are alone or surrounded by people who make us...
Chronic Low-Grade Anxiety
Chronic low-grade anxiety. That feeling that you can't settle. You can't eat. You can't relax. Your muscles are tense. Not all is right with the world. Many people who live with chronic low-grade anxiety don't even realize it's there. I see this all the time in my...
I’m Walking, Yes Indeed
One of the reasons I love dogs so much is that we share a fundamental understanding: walking is healing.I love walking. My body craves walking. I walk to strengthen my lower body, to stretch my psoas (hip flexors), to stabilize my core.I walk to self-soothe, to...