While suffering through the damp, dark remaining months of 2nd year of naturopathic medical school, camped out in middle-of-nowhere North York, I began to have intense emotional cravings for summer. (more…)
Canada is an interesting country. The people are careful in our friendliness and things are often left to understanding and not words. Kind gestures extend as part of conscious guilt and an aversion to making waves: please, thank you, sorry, sorry, sorry. A kind smile and awkward chit-chat about hockey.
We stand inside our pristine brick fortresses, in quiet neighbourhoods that are walking distance from good schools and we fill our flesh to prove to ourselves that our houses are not too big for us, that we really do need all the space. Things are bigger, but social circles are not. In our quiet surroundings, in our inhibited social reserve, we are sterile, septic and retracted, like the weather we endure for so many months of the year.
Driving through Cuba, the Canadians eyed 7 x 10 metered shacks, held up by a neighbour’s nails, holes welcome in the sea breeze as families lean against the front stoop. Freshly washed laundry waves in the breeze, flags symbolizing an uprising and then a plateau. Locals watch us as they expand into a chair, concentrating on the faint tickle of breeze on sticky hot skin, or lean against the door frame, casually eyeing this common trespass of foreigners. The Canadians watch the endless scene, house after house, an endless train of clothes lines, with a twist of fascinated guilt. Flesh memories of the softness of their beds, the gourmet food heavy in their stomachs fill their hearts with the dull burdensome ache of privilege, but their minds assure them of their powerlessness to change any of it.
“In Cuba, when someone has nice clothes, we know that they are brought here from AFUERA!” Jokes G, a Cuban and fast-friend I met on the beach. “The clothes and goods here in Cuba are, to put it politely, not very nice. But in your country, in Canada, everything is made to last, everything looks beautiful.” To the Cubans, afuera, or outside (of Cuba), is synonymous with quality.
Hearing this, I self-consciously bury my hands in the pockets of the the made-in-China shorts I got at H&M, which were a snap purchase, and will probably barely make it through the summer. Behind the friendly jokes and the toothy Cuban smile, I feel accused of splurging on silk robes while walking around in a land where everyone wears rags. Of course, with some of the best healthcare and education in the Caribbean, the downside of the revolution may be mostly a lack of material goods, Materialism, who despite her spiritual worthlessness is the god we pray to.
However, there is something stickier than materialism that seems to inject a certain joy and spirit of community into the hearts of Cuban socialists. Music, laughter, kind words and off-handed claps on the shoulder, as interpersonal connections blossom, characterize the Caribbean style of communication. Deep bonds are formed between strangers and hugs are tossed around with a reckless abandon that can at first can be threatening to the frigid, but kind, Canadian. And as I observe my fellow foreigners in the midst of this, and then our lives after we’ve returned home, I realized how impoverished our country has become. We lap up the warm smiles and friendly waves with the delirious fever of an abandoned castaway presented with cool spring water. At home, while we may be able to splurge our credit allocations on cheap plastic shit, we seem to be missing a key piece in the Great Happiness Puzzle—a sense of community and connection to each other.
Perhaps the large houses and the lifeless goods we’ve spent generations accumulating and built up around ourselves is only hindering our ability to survive. We pump music into our ears, shade our vision with Chanel lenses and calm our blood with the newest slow-release antidepressant. We keep ourselves contained in our invisible personal pods of comfort and thus we never fully live or learn the limits to our expansion.
We don’t have warm crystal-clear seawater, hot weather that melts our flesh into the atoms that surround it and merengue beats pumping the blood in our veins, but we do possess that same genetic code that deems possible the expansion of our selves.
From young adulthood we’ve been trying to find the answer to our desperate cry to fit in. Maybe, just maybe, buying the right clothes, listening to the right music or doing the right drugs will help me meld into those around me, will give me a sense of belonging and purpose. However, perhaps what the media tries to sell us is in fact a lie, no matter how maxed out our credit cards, the answer is simple: a smile, kind words, laughter and a friendly clap on the shoulder of a stranger as we begin to break through the icy pods that keep us separate from one another.
Did you know that women who have a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) can suffer from lack of creativity and a decrease in overall motivation after the organ has been removed?
In Alice’s world there was a pill to make you smaller and another to make you taller. In the world we live, however, we have pills that cover us for virtually everything – even racism. My pharmacology group recently presented an article on how blood pressure medication reduced racial prejudice by 66%. (An aside: perhaps more people should be on this medication.)
Castor oil is one of the best kept secrets of naturopathic medicine. Taken from the bean of the castor plant, this oil is rich in ricinoleic acid, an important active constituent that makes castor oil so special.
I’ve been struggling lately. The weather has gone back to its windy, cold and moody self, after playing mind games with us for a week or so. I’m back to taking my vitamin D, since the sun isn’t offering it up for free anymore. Maybe that’s why I feel cheated. It could very well be that we’re presented with so many flow charts it’s like I’ve died and gone to Flow Chart Hell – a special kind of hell where things break down into a series of isolated steps that are easier to understand, for some.
I can’t really say that I’m a creature of habit. I easily tire of routine and consistency. Maybe it was for this reason that I felt the need to take off from Canada for a few years and travel, why I remain a perpetual student (no two days are the same and we get a 4-month summer of something radically different). The student life serves me well in breaking up the routine.
As mentioned before, naturopaths are not necessarily defined by our toolbox of modalities. What, then, does define us as a profession? As we witness a rise in the demand for complementary and alternative medicine, and with it, the rise in something called the “Holistic Medical Doctor”, what sets naturopathic doctors apart?
It seems that almost everyone is “gluten-free” these days. I often hear the following Frequently Asked Questions surrounding the gluten and dairy-free phenomenon: Is this a trend? If these people have gluten allergies, why don’t they need to carry an epi-pen? Is this just a weight loss fad? For answers, read on for a naturopathic medical student’s explanation about food sensitivities.
Our immune systems are powerful things, they prevent us from the deadly pathogens we encounter daily (even those that happily reside in our own bodies). When we get sick, it is often not the bug that causes our symptoms, but our own body that creates inflammation and feelings of lethargy and malaise as it fights the pathogen. As necessary as our immune systems are, they also have the potential to attack the cells of our own bodies, which we see in a class of diseases termed autoimmune diseases. Our gastrointestinal tract also has a powerful immune system of its own because it is important for our body to ensure the harmful pathogens that we accidentally ingest don’t enter the rest of our body. This immune system, however, has the potential to react to non-harmful substances, like food proteins, and cause detrimental effects to our body. This is known as a food allergy.
There are many types of immune reactions but one of the most common is the IgE (a type of antibody) hypersensitivity reaction. This is the reaction experienced by people with hayfever and anaphylaxis (from peanut allergies, for example). In these reactions, the body reacts to the otherwise non-harmful substance, such as a peanut, in a severe manner – potentially causing the throat to swell to the point where it closes, causing suffocation. This is why people with peanut allergies must take extreme caution to avoid the source of their food allergy.
When someone claims to be allergic or “sensitive” to gluten or dairy, however, they are likely referring to an IgG mediated immune reaction, which causes different effects, to varying degrees. Rather than the very acute, life-threatening effects of some IgE anaphylactic immune reactions, IgG-mediated reactions often manifest as inflammation and chronic disease. In these types of food allergies, there is often the presence of “leaky gut” or intestinal permeability. A normal intestine has rows of cells into which food molecules enter. These cells are normally tightly linked by molecules called “tight junctions”, which prevent food molecules (proteins, fats and sugars) from entering the spaces between the cells. This means that food molecules must go through the cells in order to get into the rest of the body. When food enters our gut it is broken down by enzymes into its most minute particles and absorbed into intestinal cells. In a normal, healthy body, we do not want complex particles of food to get into our blood stream. When large proteins are found in our blood, our body sees them as being foreign and potentially harmful, and our immune system attacks them.
In a person with leaky gut, however, the junctions between the intestinal cells are broken and spaces are created between the cells. When food is taken in, whole proteins from the food (gluten is the protein found in wheat and casein is the protein in dairy products) slip through the spaces between the intestinal cells and enter the blood stream in large pieces. The immune system then attacks these proteins, causing a series of unpleasant events, mostly involving inflammation and feelings of malaise. Many scientists claim that chronic inflammation is the cause of all major disease. Scientists are unsure what causes leaky gut, but some theories include general inflammation from stress, excessive alcohol consumption or a lack of friendly gut bacteria that keep the “bad” bacteria from taking over and wrecking havoc. However, there is an increasing body of evidence showing that leaky gut may be caused by a hyper-reaction of the gut’s immune system to certain foods. These proteins then enter through the spaces between the cells into the bloodstream and to the rest of the body, causing a widespread array of unpleasant symptoms.
Most naturopaths profess that autoimmune-type diseases, inflammatory diseases, gastrointestinal complaints and some cases of psychiatric disorders coexist with some form of food intolerance and that, when the food that the patient is sensitive to is removed, the disease symptoms go away. Examples of diseases that may be a result of food sensitivities include:
migraines
acne or other skin conditions
Lupus
Arthritis and gout
Irritable Bowel Syndrome or Inflammatory Bowel Disease
GI complaints such as bloating, gas or constipation
Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s
Celiac disease (specifically defined as an allergy to gluten, the protein in wheat, rye and barley)
Psychiatric disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia or anxiety
Asthma
Childhood ADHD
Autism
Any disease in which there is pain or inflammation
And the list goes on.
Naturopathic testing for food intolerances involve the Elimination Diet, which is a strict removal of all foods that are common causes of sensitivities. My clinical nutrition professor claims that in the majority of cases, gluten and casein (from dairy products) are the culprit. The foods are removed for 30 days and most patients experience a complete reversal of their pain and symptoms. Our professor told us an amazing story about a patient with autism who, at the age of 9 years old, began to talk for the first time after eliminating an allergy-causing food and then proceeded to live a normal life.
At the end of the removal phase, the patient is then asked to reintroduce the foods, in a controlled and systematic fashion, under the guidance of their naturopathic doctor. If symptoms return upon reintroducing a certain food, then that food is deemed the culprit and, if they want to remain free of disease, they are advised to avoid that food for life. Being gluten or dairy-free may be a difficult lifestyle change for some individuals, but, for most, it is a small inconvenience compared to the incredible results they experience. Also, due to the growing understanding about the prevalence of food sensitivities, many gluten-free options and dairy alternatives are available at most restaurants and grocery stores.
Medical doctor Alan R. Gaby, wrote an excellent paper examining studies of patients with migraine headaches, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), asthma, arthritis and ADHD. When put on the Elimination Diet, 92% of the migraine sufferers and 91% of the people with arthritis experienced complete reduction of symptoms. No drug in the world has shown to produce results like that!
For the full paper, and the rest of the results, click here: http://www.altmedrev.com/publications/3/2/90.pdf
The Elimination Diet is a powerful naturopathic tool and has shown to improve and cure many patients’ symptoms. It’s a great example of “identifying and removing the cause of disease”, which is one of the 6 principles of naturopathic medicine. If you are interested in seeing how this diet may help you identify a food allergy and experience freedom from your symptoms, please contact a naturopathic doctor in your area.
Also check out http://www.elanaspantry.com/ or more of this blog, Art and Practice, for some excellent gluten and dairy-free recipe ideas!
Another naturopathic exam session has come and gone. The end of our last midterm week tucked an uncomfortable 49 exams (in less than two years) under our already stuffed belts. Despite the over-stuffing of knowledge (taxing our Spleens, according to TCM, which is the equivalent of overeating at a buffet), I can’t help but feel empty at the end of these week-long ordeals.