The Art & Practice Blog
5 Key Nutrients for Depression
When it comes to improving mood, most of us will do anything, including taking boatloads of pills. One of the challenges I face as a naturopathic doctor is choosing which supplements to prescribe my patients; in the realm of natural medicine we have what seems like an...
Maintaining Perfect Equanimity: My 10-Day Vipassana Retreat
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus wrote that weariness awakens consciousness, that “Everything begins with consciousness. Nothing is worth anything except through it." In the last few months, I'd been weary—sleeping, eating, exercising, commuting, working, preparing for...
Here Comes the Sun: How Circadian Rhythms Can Heal Our Mental Health and Hormones
Gorf is a man of his age, which, in his case, happens to be the Stone Age. Yes, Gorf is a caveman. And, perplexingly, Gorf suffers from insomnia. Gorf wakes up sluggish, long after the sun has risen, wishing he had a snooze button to smash. He struggles through the...
Some Like it Hot: Using Heat to Heal Depression
I will die in here today, I thought to myself, as I sat hunched and cramped in an oven-hot temazcal, or sweat lodge, somewhere on the Mexican pacific. The straw flap covering the opening of our sweaty mud hut was thrown off momentarily by someone outside, flooding our...
21-Day Blood Sugar Reset
Introducing a 21-Day Blood Sugar Reset The Low Carb, High Fat or "Ketogenic" Diet has been touted as a health solution for weight loss, mental health, hormonal health, as well as a treatment for insulin resistance, diabetes, childhood seizures, migraines, and...
Self-Compassion Break
Self-compassion is the act of treating yourself as you would any other loved one: treating yourself with kindness vs. Self-Judgment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxIO7bjiSJs&t=10s Self compassion is a modality that is being researched for treatments for mental...
Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Your Hormones (But Were Afraid to Ask)
In order to make sense of the world, people create stories. It is our greatest gift and most fragile weakness. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they encounter difficulties that they eventually overcome. It brings them closer. They live happily ever after—the classic...
The 3-Minute Responsive Breathing Space
This is one of my favourite exercises from Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, or MBCT, and just one exercise in an 8-week course directed at those who suffer from depression and anxiety. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5q8hLe5gDM This exercise helps us practice...
My Year of Living Ketogenically
I review my adventurous year of living on the Low Carb High Fat Ketogenic Diet. I've always had a sweet tooth. I remember binging on Halloween candy as a kid, stuffing one tiny chocolate bar after another into my mouth, as fast as my little fingers could unwrap them,...
Reflections on Being a Patient
I will never get annoyed at a patient's "lack of compliance" again. Health care is scary, even when you know what you're doing. When it's your own health, putting yourself in the hands of a professional is not easy. Yesterday I had an initial consult for myself with a...
What to Do About Your Mirena IUD (And Other Hormonal Issues)
Since publising the original article about the Mirena IUD on this blog, thousands of women have come out of the woodwork writing to me asking for help. When I originally wrote the article, I was spurned on by my observations of the women in my practice who had...
A Letter to Myself at 32
I often encourage my patients to write a letter to themselves on their birthdays for the following year using a website called FutureMe.org, where you can post-date emails to yourself to any date in the future. This exercise is great to do on any day, really. Tomorrow...
Volunteering at the Evergreen Yonge Street Mission
An interview outlining my adventures providing free naturopathic medicine to street youth at the Evergreen Yonge Street Mission health centre, originally featured in Pulse, a publication for members of the Ontario Association of Naturopathic Doctors. What is the...
Preventive Medicine: 9 Root Causes of Disease
I often get emails like this, “Dear Doctor, please tell me your favourite natural cure for anxiety”, to which I often reply: Dear, Anxiety, Imagine you are a gardener, tending to your garden. You are a skilled gardener: you tend lovingly to your plants every day and...
When Your Doctor Says, “You’re Fine!”
I hear this a lot: "I followed X, Y, Z (controversial) diet, and my doctor said my blood is fine!" Firstly, what do we think doctors are testing our blood for? Most standard blood tests look at cholesterol, check for anemia, and to see if our kidneys are failing or...
I Am Not My Thoughts: A Lesson in Meta-Awareness
Mindfulness philosophy tells us that our thoughts and emotions are simply phenomena that arise in our bodies and minds: they are not us. Those of us who suffer from depression and anxiety tend to enter cycles of over-thinking. The mind wanders and engages in...
Feeling Tired? Try These 15 Ways to Beat Fatigue
Like many people I see, Sandra was experiencing debilitating exhaustion. Completing her PhD, she was working all day and collapsing on the couch at 8 pm. She stopped going out in the evening. She ceased spending time with friends, engaging in activities outside of her...
Is Your Multivitamin Making You Sick?
Is your multivitamin or B-complex making you sick? Take a look at the label on your multivitamin or B-complex and see if it contains "folic acid". Folic acid is often used interchangeably with "folate", which is a vitamin needed for DNA synthesis and repair. Every...
13 Ways to Self-Care
Humour me for a moment. Take a moment to imagine your “happy place”—the place you feel most at home. Where are you? What are you doing? Who is there with you? What are the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations that fill the air and tickle your skin? What are...
My Amygdala and Prefrontal Cortex Discuss a Centipede Trapped in the Bathtub
Prefrontal Cortex: ...Right, so the deadline for the article is Monday. I can work on it tomorrow morning, but then I also need to schedule time for grocery shopping—what am I going to make for the week to eat? There's a giant load of laundry in the bin too, which I...