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. My tongue feels heavy. My mind feels dull, achey, and foggy. It’s hard to put coherent words together.
I feel cloudy and sleepy. Small frustrations magnify. It’s hard to maintain perspective.
My muscles ache. My joints throb slightly. They feel stiffer and creakier.
This feeling is transient. The first few days of the menstrual cycle are characterized by an increase in prostaglandins that stimulate menstrual flow and so many women experience an aggravation of inflammatory symptoms like depression, arthritis, or autoimmune conditions around this time. You might get. a cold sore outbreak, or a migraine headache around this time of month. The phenomenon can be exaggerated with heavy, humid weather, and chronic inflammation–such as the prolonged healing process of mending a broken bone.
Inflammation.
It’s our body’s beautiful healing response, bringing water, nutrients, and immune cells to an area of injury or attack. The area involved swells, heats up, becomes red, and might radiate pain. And then, within a matter of days, weeks, or months, the pathogen is neutralized, the wound heals and the inflammatory process turns off, like a switch.
However, inflammation can be low-grade and chronic. Many chronic health conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, PMS or PMDD, depression, anxiety, migraines, even bowel and digestive issues, have an inflammatory component.
As I tell my patients. Inflammation is “everything that makes you feel bad”. Therefore anti-inflammatory practices make you feel good.
Many of us don’t realize how good we can feel because low-grade inflammation is our norm.
We just know that things could be better: we could feel more energy, more lightness of being and body, more uplifted, optimistic mood, clearer thinking and cognitive functioning, better focus, less stiffness and less swelling.
Obesity and weight gain are likely inflammatory processes. Insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome are inflammatory in nature. It’s hard to distinguish between chronic swelling and water retention due to underlying low-grade chronic inflammation and actual fat gain, and the two can be closely intertwined.
It’s unfortunate then, that weight loss is often prescribed as a treatment plan for things like hormonal imbalances, or other conditions caused by metabolic imbalance. Not only has the individual probably already made several attempts to lose weight, the unwanted weight gain is most likely a symptom, rather than a cause, of their chronic health complaint. (Learn how to get to the root of this with my course You Weigh Less on the Moon).
Both the main complaint (the migraines, the PMS, the endometriosis, the depression, the arthritis, etc.) and the weight gain, are likely due to an inflammatory process occurring in the body.
To simply try to cut calories, or eat less, or exercise more (which can be helpful for inflammation or aggravate it, depending on the level of stress someone is under), can only exacerbate the process by creating more stress and inflammation and do nothing to relieve the root cause of the issues at hand.
Even anti-inflammatory over the counter medications like Advil, prescription ones like naproxen, or natural supplements like turmeric (curcumin) have limiting effects. They work wonderfully if the inflammation is self-limiting: a day or two of terrible period cramps, or a migraine headache. However, they do little to resolve chronic low-grade inflammation. If anything they only succeed at temporarily suppressing it only to have it come back with a vengeance.
The issue then, is to uncover the root of the inflammation, and if the specific root can’t be found (like the piece of glass in your foot causing foot pain), then applying a general anti-inflammatory lifestyle is key.
The first place to start is with the gut and nutrition.
Nutrition is at once a complex, confusing, contradictory science and a very simple endeavour. Nutrition was the simplest thing for hundreds of thousands of years: we simply ate what tasted good. We ate meat, fish and all the parts of animals. We ate ripe fruit and vegetables and other plant matter that could be broken down with minimal processing.
That’s it.
We didn’t eat red dye #3, and artificial sweeteners, and heavily modified grains sprayed with glyphosate, and heavily processed flours, and seed oils that require several steps of solvent extraction. We didn’t eat modified corn products, or high fructose corn syrup, or carbonated drinks that are artificially coloured and taste like chemicals.
We knew our food—we knew it intimately because it was grown, raised, or hunted by us or someone we knew—and we knew where it came from.
Now we have no clue. And this onslaught of random food stuffs can wreck havoc on our systems over time. Our bodies are resilient and you probably know someone who apparently thrives on a diet full of random edible food-like products, who’s never touched a vegetable and eats waffles for lunch.
However, our capacity to heal and live without optimal nutrition, regular meals that nourish us and heal us rather than impose another adversity to overcome, can diminish when we start adding in environmental chemicals and toxins, mental and emotional stress, a lack of sleep, and invasion of blue light at all hours of the day, bodies that are prevented from experiencing their full range of motion, and so on.
And so to reduce inflammation, we have to start living more naturally. We need to reduce the inflammation in our environments. We need to put ourselves against a natural backdrop–go for a soothing walk in nature at least once a week.
We need to eat natural foods. Eat meats, natural sustainably raised and regeneratively farmed animal products, fruits and vegetables. Cook your own grains and legumes (i.e.: process your food yourself). Avoid random ingredients (take a look at your oat and almond milk–what’s in the ingredients list? Can you pronounce all the ingredients in those foods? Can you guess what plant or animal each of those ingredients came from? Have you ever seen a carageenan tree?).
Moving to a more natural diet can be hard. Sometimes results are felt immediately. Sometimes our partners notice a change in us before we notice in ourselves (“Hon, every time you have gluten and sugar, don’t you notice you’re snappier the next day, or are more likely to have a meltdown?”).
It often takes making a plan–grocery shopping, making a list of foods you’re going to eat and maybe foods you’re not going to eat, coming up with some recipes, developing a few systems for rushed nights and take-out and snacks–and patience.
Often we don’t feel better right away–it takes inflammation a while to resolve and it takes the gut time to heal. I notice that a lot of my patients are addicted to certain chemicals or ingredients in processed foods and, particularly if they’re suffering from the pain of gut inflammation, it can tempting to go back to the chemicals before that helped numb the pain and delivered the dopamine hit of pleasure that comes from dealing with an addiction. It might help to remember your why. Stick it on the fridge beside your smoothie recipe.
We need to sleep, and experience darkness. If you can’t get your bedroom 100%-can’t see you hand in front of your face-dark, then use an eye mask when sleeping. Give your body enough time for sleep. Less than 7 hours isn’t enough.
We need to move in all sorts of ways. Dance. Walk. Swim. Move in 3D. Do yoga to experience the full range of motion of your joints. Practice a sport that requires your body and mind, that challenges your skills and coordination. Learn balance both in your body and in your mind.
We need to manage our emotional life. Feeling our emotions, paying attention to the body sensations that arise in our bodies—what does hunger feel like? What does the need for a bowel movement feel like? How does thirst arise in your body? Can you recognize those feelings? What about your emotions? What sensations does anger produce? Can you feel anxiety building? What do you do with these emotions once they arise? Are you afraid of them? Do you try to push them back down? Do you let them arise and “meet them at the door laughing” as Rumi says in his poem The Guest House?
Journalling, meditation, mindfulness, hypnosis, breath-work, art, therapy, etc. can all be helpful tools for understanding the emotional life and understanding the role chronic stress (and how it arises, builds, and falls in the body) and toxic thoughts play in perpetuating inflammation.
Detox. No, I don’t mean go on some weird cleanse or drinks teas that keep you on the toilet all day. What I mean is: remove the gunk and clutter from your physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional plumbing. This might look like taking a tech break. Or going off into the woods for a weekend. Eating animals and plants for a couple of months, cutting out alcohol, or coffee or processed foods for a time.
It might involve cleaning your house with vinegar and detergents that are mostly natural ingredients, dumping the fragrances from your cosmetics and cleaning products, storing food in steel and glass, rather than plastic. It might mean a beach clean-up. Or a purging of your closet–sometimes cleaning up the chaos in our living environments is the needed thing for reducing inflammation. It’s likely why Marie Kondo-ing and the Minimalist Movement gained so much popularity–our stuff can add extra gunk to our mental, emotional, and spiritual lives.
Finally, connect with your community. Loneliness is inflammatory. And this past year and a half have been very difficult, particularly for those of you who live alone, who are in transition, who aren’t in the place you’d like to be, or with the person or people you’d like to be–your soul family.
It takes work to find a soul family. I think the first steps are to connect and attune to oneself, to truly understand who you are and move toward that and in that way people can slowly trickle in.
We often need to take care of ourselves first, thereby establishing the boundaries and self-awareness needed to call in the people who will respect and inspire us the most. It’s about self-worth. How do you treat yourself as someone worthy of love and belonging?
Perhaps it first comes with removing the sources of inflammation from our lives, so we can address the deeper layers of our feelings and body sensations and relieve the foggy heaviness and depression and toxic thoughts that might keep us feeling stuck.
Once we clear up our minds and bodies, and cool the fires of inflammation, we start to see better—the fog lifts. We start to think more clearly. We know who we are. Our cravings subside. We can begin to process our shame, anger and sadness.
We start to crave nourishing things: the walk in nature, the quiet afternoon writing poetry, the phone call with a friend, the stewed apples with cinnamon (real sweetness). We free up our dopamine receptors for wholesome endeavours. We start to move in the direction of our own authenticity. I think this process naturally attracts people to us. And naturally attracts us to the people who have the capacity to love and accept us the way we deserve.
Once we start to build community, especially an anti-inflammatory community—you know, a non-toxic, nourishing, wholesome group of people who make your soul sing, the path becomes easier.
You see, when you are surrounded by people who live life the way you do–with a respect for nature, of which our bodies are apart–who prioritize sleep, natural nutrition, mental health, movement, emotional expression, and self-exploration, it becomes more natural to do these things. It no longer becomes a program or a plan, or a process you’re in. It becomes a way of life–why would anyone do it any other way?
The best way to overcome the toxicity of a sick society is to create a parallel one.
When you’re surrounded by people who share your values. You no longer need to spend as much energy fighting cravings, going against the grain, or succumbing to self-sabotage, feeling isolated if your stray from the herb and eat vegetables and go to sleep early.
You are part of a culture now. A culture in which caring for yourself and living according to your nature is, well… normal and natural.
There’s nothing to push against or detox from. You can simply rest in healing, because healing is the most natural thing there is.
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 other: “I’m a salt craver” or “I’ve got a sweet tooth”.
However, cravings are so much more than that.
I believe that they are a beautifully intricate process, in which our body is trying to speak to us about what it needs.
Our cravings often feel like random urges, but they can reveal deeper insights into our body’s needs.
A sweet tooth, for instance, might be more than just a love for desserts—it could signal anything from a need for quick energy to an emotional response tied to comfort and nostalgia. While indulging in sugary treats can be a joyful experience, it’s also important to strike a balance.
Our bodies have developed taste receptors to detect quality nutrients from the environment. While these days sugar is abundant wherever you turn, during our hunter-gatherer times, it was a relatively scarce and highly sought after taste–the taste of ripe fruit, rich with nutrients, the taste of quality calories from carbohydrates, which may have been scarce in times of food shortage or famine.
Salt or “savoury” or umami cravings, often represent a need for more protein. Unfortunately, many of my patients who crave salt (and often calories) find themselves the bottom of a bag of chips, rather than grilling up a chicken breast.
Our modern environment doesn’t necessarily set us up to adequately translate and respond properly to certain cravings. Salted chips were probably not a thing in a natural environment and the only way to satisfy a salt and savoury craving would have been through hunting, consuming meat, or eggs and poultry.
When I was travelling in Colombia I was obsessed with broccoli–it was like I couldn’t get enough of it.
The same thing happened on a month-long trip to Brazil in 2019. Broccoli is rich in vitamin C, sulphur, and certain amino acids. It’s also a decent source of calcium. I’m not sure what nutrient I may have been lacking on my travels, but it’s possible that those cravings meant something for my body. And so I honoured them–I sought out broccoli like it was a magic elixir of health and ate as much of it as I could.
After developing significant iron deficiency after spending a few years as a vegetarian, I became suddenly attracted by the smell of roasting chicken from a local Korean restaurant I was passing by while walking the streets of Toronto.
The wafting smell of roasting poultry was majestic and impossible to ignore. It didn’t smell like sin, or temptation–my body betraying my moral sensibilities or whatever else we often accuse our cravings of—it smelt… like health.
There was no doubt in my mind as the delicious fumes touched my nostrils that I needed to honour my body and start eating meat again. I did and my health and nutrient status has never been better.
Patients will report craving carbs and chocolate the week before their period. The eb and flow of estrogen can affect serotonin levels. A large dose of carbs allows tryptophan, the amino acid that forms the backbone of serotonin, to freely enter the brain. This explains the effect “comfort foods” like starchy warm bread and pasta have on us, creating that warm, after-Thanksgiving dinner glow.
Chocolate is rich in magnesium, a nutrient in which many of us are deficient, that is in higher demand throughout the luteal phase of our cycle, or our premenstrual week.
Cravings are not just nagging, annoying vices, thrust in the path to greater health and iron discipline. They’re complex, intuitive and beautiful. They may be important landmarks on the path to true health and wellness.
Disciplines like Intuitive Eating and Mindful Eating have based themselves on the idea that our bodies hold intuitive wisdom and our tastes, cravings and appetites may be essential for guiding us on a road to health. Through removing restriction and paying more attention to the experience of food, we may be better guided to choose what foods are right for us.
The book The Dorito Effect outlines how our taste cues have been hijacked by Big Food. Like having a sham translator, processed foods stand between essential nutrients and the signals our bodies use to guide us to them. A craving for sweet that might have led you to ripe fruit, now leads you to a bag of nutrient-devoid candy that actually robs you of magnesium, and other nutrients in order to process the chemicals. A craving for salt and umami, or hunger for calories leads you to polish off a bag of chips, which are protein-devoid and laden with inflammatory fats, and only trigger more cravings, and shame.
It’s no wonder that we don’t trust our cravings– we live in a world that exploits them at every turn.
Clara Davis in 1939 was curious about the instintual nature of human cravings and devised a study that was published in the Canadian Medical Assoication Journal (CMAJ). The study was called Self-Selection of Diets by Young Children.
Clara gathered together 15 orphaned infants between 6 to 11 months of age who were weaning from breast-feeding and ready to receive solid food for the first time. These infants, before the study had never tried solid food or supplements. They were studied ongoing for a period of 6 years, with the main study process was conducted over a period of months.
The babies were sat at a table with a selection of simple, whole foods–33 to be exact. The foods contained no added sugars or salt. They were minimally cooked. Not all 33 were presented to each baby at each meal, however the babies were offered an opportunity to try everything.
The foods they were offered were water, sweet milk, sour (lactic) milk, sea salt, apples, bananas, orange juice, pineapple, peaches, tomatoes, beets, carrots, peas, turnips, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach, potato, lettuce, oatmeal, wheat, corn meal, barley, Ry-krisp (a kind of cereal), beef, lamb, bone marrow, bone jelly, chicken, sweetbreads, brains, liver, kidneys, eggs, and fish (haddock).
The nurses who were involved in running the study were instructed to sit in front of the infants with a spoon and wait for them to point at foods that they wanted. The nurses were not to comment on the choices or foods in any way, but wordlessly comply with the infants’ wishes and offer them a spoonful of the chosen foodstuff.
Throughout the study Davis noted that all the infants had hearty appetites and enjoyed eating.
At first, the babies showed no instinct for food choices, selecting things at random, and exploring the various foods presented to them. All of them tried everything at least once (two babies never tried lettuce and one never explored spinach). The most variety of food choices occurred during the first two weeks of the study when they were presumably in their experimentation phase.
Their tastes also changed from time to time, perhaps reflecting some hidden, internal mechanism, growth spurt or nutritional need. Sometimes a child would have orange juice and liver for breakfast (liver is a source of iron, and vitamin C from the orange juice aids in its absorption), and dinner could be something like eggs, bananas, and milk.
Many infants began the study in a state of malnourishment. Four were underweight and five suffered from Rickets a condition caused by extremely low vitamin D. One of the babies with severe Rickets was offered cod liver oil in addition to the other food options. Cod liver oil is a rich source of vitamin D.
The infant selected cod liver oil often for a while, after which his vitamin D, phosphorus and calcium blood levels all returned to normal range, and x-rays showed that his Ricket’s healed.
It is often thought by parents that children, if left to their own devices will eat themselves nutrient-deficient. While that may be true in todays’ landscape of processed frankenfoods, the infants in Davis’ study consumed a diet that was balanced and high in variety. They got 17% of their calories from protein, 35% from fat and 48% from carbohydrates and intake depended on their activity levels.
During the 6 years in which the infants’ eating habits were under observation, they rarely suffered from health issues. They had no digestive issues, like constipation. If they came down with a cold it would last no more than 3 days before they were fully recovered.
In the 6 years, they became ill with a fever only once, an outbreak that affected all of the infants in the orphanage. The researchers noticed their appetites change in response to the illness.
During the initial stages of the fever, they had lower appetites. And, once the fevers began to resolve, their appetites came back with a vengeance. They ate voraciously, and it was interesting that most of them showed an increased preference for raw carrots, beef and beets–which may indicate a need for vitamin A, iron and protein, which are needed for immune system function and recovery.
The habits of the infants to crave and select medicinal foods during times of fever and nutrient deficiency is such compelling evidence of Clara Davis’ craving wisdom hypothesis—were their bodies telling them what they needed to heal?
The self-selected, whole foods diets seems to have a positive impact on the mood and behaviours of the babies, all of whom were living full-time at the orphanage.
A psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Brennemann wrote an article on them entitled “Psychologic Aspects of Nutrition” in the Journal of Pediatrics on their mood, behaviour and affect, “I saw them on a number of occasions and they were the finest group of specimens from the physical and behaviour standpoint that I have even seen in children of that age.”
In our world we often try to mentalize our food choices: going vegan or low-fat, counting calories, or reducing carbs. We time our eating windows, fast, or try to exert discipline and will over our bodies’ inherent desires.
So often my patients need to be coached through food eliminations, or given meal plans and templates. The art of listening to the body: properly identifying hunger, thirst, fatigue, inflammation, and even emotions like boredom, anxiety, sadness, anger, and hurt, can be a long process.
And yet, I wonder if we clear our palates and offer them a variety of whole, unprocessed, fresh foods, if our bodies will settle into their own grooves–perhaps our health will optimize, our bodies will be able to more readily communicate what they need, our taste receptors and cravings will adjust, and our cravings and appetite will serve the purpose they were meant to–to tell us what we need more of and what need less of or not at all.
I wonder if we listen, what our bodies will tell us.
I wonder if we let them, if our bodies will exhibit the pure instinctual wisdom of nature and the quest for harmony and homeostasis that lies at the heart of our natural world.
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 one key take-home action plan it would be: blood sugar regulation and: eat protein.
Last week was pretty busy in my little homegrown virtual naturopathic practice and I found myself repeating myself loudly (well, in a normal volume voice) and definitely often, the importance of eating protein at every meal and the connection between their symptoms and blood sugar with virtually every patient I saw.
All of my patients last week seemed to be suffering from some combination of the following symptoms:
Fatigue, anxiety, overwhelm, disrupted, restless, and non-restorative sleep, sugar cravings, emotional eating, binge-eating/stress-eating, nausea and bloating, PMS, migraines, low focus and concentration, low libido, low motivation, poor exercise recovery, and weight gain/puffiness/body image issues.
Of course, many of these symptoms were presented as being unrelated to the other. Perhaps stress and stress-eating were related, but sugar cravings and low motivation weren’t necessarily related in my patients’ minds. Neither were their sugar cravings, overwhelm and low libido.
And yet, the common thread that connects all of these symptoms is, you guessed it: blood sugar.
I explained to one patient: even if I gave you a magic wand, that you could wave to make all of your life’s problems disappear, you would probably still be feeling that deep, disconcerting, restless, anxious, “all-is-not-well” feeling in your gut. The reason for this? Blood sugar dys-regulation.
Our body has certain physiological mechanisms that it likes to keep tightly regulated. Among them are blood levels of our sugar (which controls the amount of fuel our brain has for its minute-to-minute functioning), carbon dioxide, salt, and water. When these levels drop in the body we start to feel off. Our stress response is triggered.
Imagine the feeling of holding your breath, as carbon dioxide starts to build up in your blood, you’d pay someone a million dollars to be able to take a breath. Similarly, if you’re seriously thirsty it’s likely all you can think about.
When our blood sugar drops, we feel terrible. The symptoms are anxiety, shakiness, fatigue, low mental energy, burnout, decision fatigue, waking up in the middle of the night, irritability, dizziness and weakness, and an unsettled, doom and gloom feeling. Most of all, however, we crave sugar.
Despite all of the symptoms my patients were expressing last week, one of the main issues they were contending with were sugar cravings. “I just don’t have the motivation to cook a meal”, one patient expressed, “and so I end up eating a bag of chips for dinner, even though I’m not really hungry.”
“You are hungry,” I explained, “the hunger is just not manifesting in the way that you’re used to.
Let me repeat this loudly, ala Quentin Crisp: if you ever find yourself at the end of a bag of chips, or a plate of cookies, or a pile of donuts–you were hungry.
Eating disorder expert Tabitha Ferrar highlights a phenomenon in people recovering from anorexia as “mental hunger”. Physical hunger, the grumbling, gurgling, empty feeling in your stomach is the result of ghrelin and gastric motility, which builds up when leptin levels fall and our stomach is physically empty and creates what many of us assume are the sensations of “true hunger”.
However, these symptoms require energy form our body to produce. This is the reason why people with hypothryoidism are constipated–gastric motility takes metabolic energy.
If your body is malnourished, such as the case of anorexia, or even chronic stress and under-eating throughout the day, we often don’t get these signals of “true” hunger.
Our bodies simply don’t have the battery power to create these symptoms. And yet, we need nourishment, particularly we need to elevate our blood sugar to supply our brains with energy.
And so our body sends our signals of “mental hunger”, that feeling of “I can’t stop thinking about the chips in the cupboard”, that often leads to mindless binging as our body tries to replenish its reserves.
If you’re craving sugar, emotionally eating, devouring chips in the afternoons or evenings, or feeling decision fatigue/ or “lack of willpower”, you might need to start focussing on your blood sugar.
Blood sugar dysregulation is also tightly connected to our moods. Think of our body’s homeostatic mechanism as a tightly regulated machine, a fuel gauge on our body’s resources, which are needed in times of stress. When our blood salt, sugar or water levels dip, and our blood CO2 levels rise, we start to feel uncomfortable. This can be remedied by drinking water, sighing, deep breathing, or eating something. When these levels fluctuate and we fail to notice, our body releases stress hormone.
Cortisol is our stress hormone, but it’s also the hormone that plays a role in blood sugar regulation. When blood sugar dips beyond homeostatic levels, cortisol steps in to save the day. Low blood sugar is a stressor on the body. This might look like morning anxiety, feeling tired and wired, waking in the middle of the night unable to fall back asleep.
Again, you might not feel hungry during these moments–just overwhelmed, anxious, irritable, unsettled, weak, dizzy, and fatigued.
You’re in a fight with your partner. You’ve been cleaning out the garage and it’s hot out. You’re annoyed at the way he breathes, at the slow methodical way he goes through your stuff. The mess feels overwhelming, the heat feels stifling. You leave in a huff, ready to set fire to the entire operation.
Grumbling and fuming, you go inside. You take a breather, you eat something, you exhale deeply, you drink some water.
Gradually, as your body starts to shift into physiological neutral, your perception starts to change. The garage feels slightly more tolerable. It’s really just above moving one box at a time, going through it and then starting on the next one. You can do it.
Before you know it, you’re done.
When blood sugar is low our prefrontal cortex, the “ego”, “decision-maker”, executive functioning, planning and cognitive part of the brain, becomes depleted. We might call this “decision fatigue”, “willpower fatigue” or “ego depletion”.
“Administering glucose completely reversed the brain changes wrought by depletion…
“When glucose is low, [your brain] stops doing some things and starts doing others. It responds more strongly to immediate rewards and pays less attention to long-term prospects.”
In essence, you stop being able to make calm and effective decisions.
Brain sugar levels (the brain uses up 60% of available blood sugar) directly contribute to the feeling of being “solid”–able to make rational decisions, to respond to fears and anxieties, to emotionally regulate, to make competent and calm decisions.
When our blood sugar levels dip we start to spiral: we might think erratically, gloomily, catastrophically, and irrationally.
I had a patient who crashed at 3pm everday after school, when his major depression would “come back”. I asked him what he had for lunch, to which he replied he often worked through lunch. Breakfast was a croissant or piece of toast.
His first real (and only) meal was at dinner. The rest of the day was a sea of grazing on ultra-processed foods, sugar and white flour. No real food in sight.
Scarfing down an emergency granola bar every time blood sugar drops is one solution, however whenever we eat carbohydrates on their own, particularly the quick-release carbs like white sugar, or refined grains, our blood sugar spikes. Soon after, insulin is released, causing it to drop again.
Many of us start the day without food, or with a measly breakfast of toast or cereal, or some other carb-only meal. As I tell patients, though, a serving of carbohydrates is not a real meal.
You know what I mean: a bagel for breakfast, a sandwich and pb for lunch, a plate of pasta for dinner. Carbs, while an important part of a complete meal, are completely inadequate at keeping you fuelled for the hours of mental, emotional and physical labour you engage in between meals.
Does this mean you should eat low-carb? No, not necessarily.
What it means is that a meal contains fats, carbs, and protein. Therefore all meals, especially breakfast, and even snacks, should combine those three macronutrients to assure proper fuelling and blood sugar regulation.
When you eat a proper meal in the morning, your blood sugar rises slowly. It requires less insulin to get the fuel into your cells. Your blood sugar is metered out slowly throughout the next few hours instead of being rapidly absorbed.
This means no more spikes and crashes–in blood sugar, energy, mood or cravings. A proper meal provides hours of calm focus, more willpower, and more ability to concentrate and emotionally regulate.
Instead of just toast in the morning, add about 20g of protein to your meal: a scoop of protein powder, 3-4 eggs, a piece of chicken, 3 tbs of collagen powder– in essence, have a proper meal.
Then, for lunch do it again–have a chicken breast on your salad, or a piece of salmon or beef.
Make yourself a smoothie with protein powder. Have a cold soak oats with collagen powder. Make yourself an omelette. Have a bean soup with 1 cup of beans.
Substitute your wheat or rice pasta (which is just carbohydrate) for a legume pasta made of mung bean or lentils, or black beans, which contain fibre and protein and are easier to make into a fast, complete meal.
When patients start having complete meals, starting with breakfast, their change in mood is often dramatic. They feel more mentally and emotionally stable. They have more energy.
Often we feel we get our second wind in the evening: (“I’m more of a night owl”). But so many of us work through our morning meals and only sit down to a complete meal at dinnertime. Maybe your “second wind” is actually just your first wind, purchased from the proper meal you had when you finally sat down and nourished your body.
What about intermittent fasting? Whenever I speak about breakfast there’s at least one DM or question, or “but I thought that…” and the topic of intermittent fasting almost always comes up.
Giving the body a break from eating is a good idea. For about 12 hours, if possible, stop eating.
This usually means stopping eating 3 hours before bedtime and creating an eating window from something like 7am to 7pm.
12:12 (12 hours of fasting and 12 hours of eating) can be great for resting the digestive system and supporting sleep. However, many of my patients use more extreme version of “intermittent fasting”, such as the 16:8 (16 hours fasting and 8 hours feeding) as a go-ahead to skip breakfast.
They wake up and get through the morning on coffee (with cream and sugar, which isn’t actually a real “fast”), and then eventually binge on sugar and chips after dinner, when they finally give their bodies permission to eat. It’s rare that they see the connection.
Most of us attribute the feelings of lack of control around food an issue with emotional eating and willpower. I find that in 99% of cases, “emotional eating” us usually just a result of blood sugar dys-regulation, protein deficiency and under-nourishing earlier on in the day.
A morning without food is a stressor on the body. Female bodies in particular respond to stress by becoming more insulin resistant, which further affects blood sugar dys-regulation and affects metabolic health–this is not what you want.
If you’d like to restrict your eating window, research shows that removing any after-dinner snacking (when our bodies are naturally more insulin resistant) is the way to go.
It’s also important to take a Protein Inventory. Sometimes I just have patients track their protein intake on a website or app like cronometer.com
The exercise is often enlightening, as patients are able to see how the protein density of their diet connects to their mood and energy.
I often get them to track their food for a few days to a week and then ask them: How do you feel on a higher protein day, where you meet your nutritional needs vs. a low protein day? What is your energy like? Your sugar cravings? Your mood? Your mental focus and clarity?
Conditions like OCD, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PMS, PMDD, cognitive issues, dementia, diabetes, pre-diabetes, weight gain, and bipolar all have roots in blood sugar regulation.
Blood sugar dys-regulation, over time can start to result in insulin resistance (often detected far before any changes to lab blood glucose start to show up).
Insulin resistance is the process in which the cells stop responding to insulin, requiring more insulin to be released. This causes inflammation and weight gain and, over time, elevated blood sugar. Insulin resistance can contribute to mood and hormonal issues, cognitive issues, like dementia, and metabolic conditions over time. This is definitely something you don’t want.
If you think you might have insulin resistance (characterized by sugar cravings, fatigue, abdominal weight gain, difficulty losing weight, hormonal issues, mood issues, low energy, and cognitive issues) consider getting your fasting insulin and fasting glucose tested. These two numbers can give you a HOMA-IR score, used to gauge insulin resistance, so you can work to reverse it before it progresses to pre-diabetes and type II diabetes.
If your test results indicate insulin resistance or early signs of type 2 diabetes, taking action as soon as possible is key to managing and even reversing the condition. Lifestyle modifications, such as adopting a whole-food, low-glycemic diet, engaging in regular physical activity, and prioritizing sleep, can significantly improve insulin sensitivity. In some cases, medication may be necessary to help regulate blood sugar levels effectively.
Often insulin resistance, inflammation and stress are a never-ending cycle and all need to be addressed, with blood sugar regulation as a key strategy to getting your body’s insulin signal working again.
Signs that your metabolic health is healing are more energy, less cravings, better mood, better sleep, and some weight loss (which usually starts occurring about 6 weeks into a lifestyle change program).
Low calorie diets can also be a significant stressor on the body affecting blood sugar. Making sure that your fat and protein intake are sufficient (aiming for about 1 g of protein per lb of body weight for an active person) is essential to regulating blood sugar, cravings, mood and energy.
So, how do you take control of your sugar cravings today?
Here are some places to start:
Start your day with a complete breakfast that includes fat, carbs and 20 g of protein
Eat full meals regularly throughout the day
“front-load” your calories, eating 60% or more of your food before 1pm
Aim for 1 g of protein per lb of body weight, or 90g of protein as a minimum
Track your protein intake along with your mood, energy levels and cravings so that you can have more agency over your food choices, dietary patterns and symptoms.
Have ready-to-grab protein sources like pumpkin seeds, eggs, protein powder, legume pasta, precooked chicken breasts, canned salmon, and so on.
If you’re going to try Intermittent Fasting start slowly, begin by avoiding late-night snacking or snacking before dinner.
Finally, book an appointment if you feel ready to support your metabolic health and get your nutrition right to support your hormones and mood!
For more on how to regulate your blood sugar (as well as nutrient levels and inflammation levels) to eat for your mood, check out my course Feed Your Head:
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 flow state of berry-eating from a tree (or a bush? they’re massive bushes. The act of eating becomes a ritual. It demands presence and attention. It becomes like a game, the objective is looking for rich colour, ripeness, size, and strategizing how to access the delicious, prized morsel you’ve laid your eyes on, then savouring the experience of having attained it, before beginning the process again.
It’s impossible to binge-eat this way.
I remember at my friend’s cottage last September it was blueberry season and we spent the weekend casually hanging out in the middle of blueberry patches. I would find an abundant bush, settle down in the midst of it and graze. I must have eaten 5 cups of blueberries each day and yet it took me the entire day to do it.
What better way to spend a day?
The best part of it was: I met my food.
I was listening to Paul Saladino of the Fundamental Health Podcast interview Daniel Vitalis from the Rewilding Podcast. The subject came up about foraging, and hunting and meeting your food.
“Some people have never seen a bass,” Daniel Vitalis commented.
“Maybe not in the wild, maybe not in a zoo. They don’t know how big it is, what colour it is, what kind of lakes it lives in, what it looks like.
“And, more importantly, even if someone fishes for bass or knows what they look like, if they eat bass in a restaurant or from a frozen filet they’ve bought at the grocery store, they most likely haven’t met that bass.
“There’s a massive disconnect in our society between us and the food we eat.”
In almost every other culture we would have shared an intimate relationship with food.
When I was eating blueberries I took the time to settle down in a patch of bushes and linger. The act of eating was immersed in a ritualistic past-time. I was connecting with the specific plant whose food I was borrowing. I was visiting her home–her environment.
When you fish for bass, or hunt a deer, you enter that animal’s setting. You meet it alive. You witness it living. You witness it dying.
The animal’s fate intertwines with yours.
Your survival and his become like a seesaw. Yesterday it was your turn. Today it’s mine.
I suppose the fish filet’s fate is also intertwined with yours: he may have been destined to end up in the freezer section of the local Costco, but somehow… it seems radically different, largely impersonal. Colder.
This is why we obsess over food sometimes: where was the bass made? Was it caught or farmed? Is it organic? Where was it processed? Eating animals is wrong—I’m going to go vegan. And so on.
I believe that this neurosis becomes our remedy for disconnect, for the disembodiment we experience. Eating becomes an intellectual task. We need to read labels, visit websites, and do research, rather than just experiencing our food first in its living form, before engaging in the eating of it.
Hunter gatherers don’t read labels. They don’t diet.
The Hadza from Tanzania don’t have food rules, restrictions ,or even mental, nutritional concepts about food. That’s a Western thing.
The Hadza, like many other cultures more connected to their food sources, simply possess the raw biological desire to eat whatever and however much they like that they can get, whenever they can get it. They are guided by taste and hunger.
Their lives revolve around hunting and gathering food. They simply immerse themselves in their food environments and eat.
We are also immersed in a food environment: the packaged, fried, doctored foodstuffs packed into grocery stores, fast food restaurants, gas stations, and convenience stores. These foods connect with our hunger cues and communicate with our tastebuds but offer none of the impact of “real” food on our physiology. They don’t nourish us.
They don’t connect us to the natural world. They don’t encourage ritualistic eating. What happened to that wheat sheaf or corn blade for it to become refined flour or hydrogenated oil? Could I participate in the making of it? Or do I lack the chemicals and technology to process this food to make these potato chips, bread, or cookies?
Our food environment encourages our disconnect and this encourages our neurosis around food and nutrition. In order to thrive in this environment we need to think about food. We need to read labels and make choices and abstain from certain foods, and make an effort to change our environment so that it becomes one more conducive to human nourishment.
We need to refuse foods served to us at events, or buy separate groceries, and make separate meals for our partners or children.
We create a food “island” for ourselves, in the midst of our community.
And this becomes impossible.
You are only as healthy as the group and environment you find yourself in.
So what can we do? Perhaps we can start with community. Where do the healthy people shop? Where do you feel most connected to your food? Is it in your garden? Is it visiting a farm? Hunting or buying meat from a hunter, or a farm? Can you meet your meat before you buy it? Can you develop a relationship with those who grow or process your food?
A hunting trip offers a deep connection to food, land, and tradition. It’s an opportunity to step into nature, understanding the balance that sustains both wildlife and people. For many, harvesting meat firsthand is the most ethical way to eat—knowing exactly where it came from, how it was taken, and the effort required to bring it home. A well-planned trip isn’t just about the hunt; it’s about immersing in the landscape, respecting the process, and ensuring nothing goes to waste.
Perhaps it means more at-home food preparation. Visiting more farmer’s markets. Talking with the people selling you your eggs. Perhaps it means developing a connection with a local farm where you source your food. Perhaps it means you pick your apples in season, or you grow your own herbs. Maybe you bake bread with your children, or can your own tomatoes.
Maybe you develop your own food and eating rituals and you practice them as a family or as a community.
Maybe you ask some questions about your food–what does this bass look like? How did this cow live?
Food has always been so central to human culture.
When we connect with the rituals of picking, hunting, growing, processing, and consuming our food, we learn what it is to be truly human.
“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 can’t get out at all. In those cases you need to call someone. It happened to me once. I was driving in the winter to a hiking spot and I thought that a flat-looking patch of snow was the side of the road and before you know it I’d driven into a ditch. I couldn’t get out. I tried gunning it, putting rocks under my tires, getting a friend to push. Eventually I just had to call someone. Within a few minutes, a tow truck came. The man driving it unceremoniously and unemotionally told me to put the car in neutral. He hooked a giant chain to my bumper. He yanked me out of the ditch. And then he drove off. Roadside assistance. In my last post I said something akin to “health is not emotional”. It’s sometimes just an equation. With patients I educate them on their prefrontal cortex, on brain inflammation, on Polyvagal Theory and the nervous system and how depression is a normal response of the nervous system to abnormal circumstances, and how to they can work with their body and environment to get the help they need to yank them out of the ditch. But I also talk about the people around us. We need them. We need them to be our prefrontal cortexes (because when you’re depressed or anxious yours isn’t working at full capacity–you CAN’T just yank yourself out a ditch, you need a tow truck, a chain and an unceremonious dude who knows what to do). You need a strategy. You need a hand. You need help.
Just like getting out of a ditch requires outside help, navigating depression and mental health challenges often means reaching out to someone who knows how to guide you through. It’s not a weakness—it’s a recognition that sometimes you need a strategy, a hand, and a steady presence to help you find your footing.
Therapy isn’t about being told what to do—it’s about working with someone who understands the underlying patterns and can help you create a plan to move forward. Depression can make even the simplest tasks feel insurmountable, but having someone to listen, validate your experience, and help you develop tools to regulate your nervous system makes all the difference.
Depression often feels like an insurmountable barrier, making it hard to see beyond the immediate struggles. It’s essential to recognize that this condition is not a personal failing but a natural response of the nervous system to overwhelming circumstances.
By understanding the interplay between brain inflammation, the prefrontal cortex, and the nervous system through frameworks like Polyvagal Theory, patients can gain insights into their experiences and find ways to support their mental health effectively. This knowledge can empower individuals to take proactive steps, but it’s also crucial to remember that overcoming depression frequently requires external support.
With the right support and strategy, individuals can find their way through challenging times and work towards regaining their mental well-being. Who’s your support team? Who are the people around you?
I talk to my patients about bringing their loves ones on board to help them set up systems to regulate their nervous systems, nourish their brains and bodies (don’t even think for a second that I didn’t have a snack to munch on while waiting for the two truck–this fact is not even metaphorical. You NEED a literal snack to fuel your brain), and reduce inflammation.
There is a theory of depression that it is an ADAPTIVE state meant to get us through a difficult time.
Famine. Capture by a predator. Infection or illness. Isolation from the group.
These may have been the historical hunter-gatherer inputs that caused depression but now it seems that depression can be triggered anytime our bodies are in a perceived or real “stuck” state with no way out.
Many, if not most, or all, depressive episodes I’ve worked with follow a period of intense anxiety. Our body’s stress response burns out, we can no longer “get away from danger” and we shutdown and collapse.
We turn inwards. We immobilize. We ruminate (possibly as a way to THINK our way out of danger).
This is why the 2a serotonin receptors that encourage “active coping” or things like BDNF, which is involved in making new brain cells, have important roles in the treatment research for major depression.
I’ll bet you’ve been told you have a disease, though. Something incurable that you’ll deal with your whole life.
But what if, rather than a disease, depression is a STATE you visit, and sometimes get stuck in that follows anxiety, stress and certain triggers?
How might that change the way you see yourself and your mental health? How might that change the way you seek solutions to how you’re feeling?
“The Adaptive Rumination Hypothesis by Andrews and Thomson posits that depression is not a pathology but a set of useful complex thoughts and behaviours that enable troubled people to withdraw temporarily from the world, deliberate intensively about their social problems, and devise solutions.”
From the Psychiatric Times
The major problem with depression that keeps us stuck in the state is when we turn our rumination back on ourselves and engage in self criticism.
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 understanding of biochemistry and anthropological data, to my own embodied experiences and my clinical experience.
These beliefs inform the way I practice and form biases in the way I do further research or understand patient experience and my own experience with food. These beliefs informed the way I put together my foundational program and how I position food on Instagram and on Youtube–these are the beliefs that form the messaging and the medicine.
I thought it would be interesting to write them down to declare them explicitly and examine them.
What do you believe about food and nutrition?
I believe that food contributes to our health and to disease.
I don’t believe that food is the ONLY factor in contributing to these things, obviously. I think food plays more of a role in our health (much more) than conventional medicine would claim. But, I also believe it is less of a direct factor in our health than many Instagram influencers or nutritional salespeople (you know the ones I’m talking about, the ones who write books call “The Cure for X Disease” and things like that) would assert.
For example, I don’t think that you can cure cancer with carrot juice.
I also don’t think that, if you’re sick or know someone who is sick in some way that you or they got there because of your food choices. Chocolate cake didn’t give you diabetes. Gluten didn’t cause your depression.
But I do wholeheartedly believe that food plays a key role in shaping us: our physical and emotional and mental bodies. Food contains the nutrients we need to function. It feeds our cells, our microbiome, it shapes our bodies.
It’s crucial to recognize that while food is a significant aspect of our overall health, it’s not the sole determinant of our well-being.
Each person’s health journey is unique and multifaceted, encompassing not just dietary choices but also lifestyle factors, mental health, and environmental influences.
When we realize that our health is shaped by an interconnected web of factors, we’re less likely to fixate on any one “magic bullet” and more likely to invest in a sustainable, compassionate path toward healing.
While no one-size-fits-all answer exists, combining personalized support with evidence-based brain training can empower individuals to reclaim their sense of balance and clarity in both body and mind.
Food is one of the important ways that our bodies receive input from the outside environment. This information is communicated through specific plant nutrients, like resveratrol found in red grapes, or in the foreign compounds and toxins that pollute the regions where we live.
Through food we can heal. Through food choices, over time—nutrient deficiencies, or surviving off of too many things that aren’t really food—disease can start to form.
Food connects us to the earth.
2. I believe that our bodies are intelligent. Our bodies have evolved mechanisms that can communicate to us what they need–if we listen.
Our taste receptors tell us about the quality of the food we’re consuming. Freshly picked in-season fruits and vegetables taste very different than out-of-season, bland ones. The richness of flavour often corresponds to the richness of the nutrients present in the foods we eat.
We crave animal fat. We crave sugar. We crave salt.
We crave these things because they represent a density of nutrients that our bodies need.
We’re drawn to colours, because colourful foods represented foods that were fresh and ripe and packed with nutrition.
I look at a lot of things in medicine through the lens of evolutionary biology. A lot of people in my field and in science do. I trust that the way my body is formed as a response to an environment that is ever changing.
The humans who were most drawn to ripe, nutrient-dense fruit, or the saltiness of animal protein, or the delicious texture of fat, ate more of these foods. And eating more of these foods gave them an evolutionary advantage, allowing them to survive and pass on their genes to future generations who inherited preferences for these tastes.
Therefore I believe that consuming animal fat and sweet foods and salty foods is not bad.
Craving these foods is not bad. Cravings and taste preference represent a complex chemical system that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to bring us to the things that helped us thrive.
I actually believe that we should listen to our cravings–they can be quite sophisticated. However, I also believe that:
3. Big Food has highjacked our taste buds.
There is something called “The Dorito Effect” where food companies high-jack these natural drives, these cravings, these taste preferences to get us to eat more frankenfoods. A Cheeto has been engineered to get you to consume the whole bag.
Therefore I don’t think we can trust our cravings when we’re consuming a high amount of “fake” foods–foods grown in a lab, foods made in a plant, foods that have 5+ ingredients that didn’t exist in 1913 or whatever.
How much of these foods is appropriate to eat? I try to minimize my consumption as much as possible. I’m not sure what the right answer is for you. I do know, however that I can’t let my body take the reins on what foods I might be needing if I consume too many of these processed foods.
How do I know I need more carbohydrates when I crave sugar or if my body is just chemically addicted to Sweettarts? I try to satisfy cravings with the whole food version of the thing and I find that that often works create an ongoing, trusting relationship (which takes time) between my taste receptors, the environment, my stomach, my mind, and my cells.
I believe that these relationships can help my body relax and know that it will be fed, like a crying baby who knows its caregiver will respond to its cries.
4. I believe that humans should consume a combination of plants and animals.
This may be a fairly controversial belief.
Of course there are many animal rights activists, vegans and plant-based diet advocates who would tell me that you don’t need animals to be healthy. There are many people who swear the Carnivore Diet cured their autoimmune disease.
And, maybe they’re both right. However, I believe that humans evolved eating some sort of combination of animal and plant foods and that there are distinct nutrients that are rare in plants and others that are rare in animals.
I can’t personally get enough protein on a plant-based diet. And, after eating a diet that is too meat-focused I start to crave salads, whole grains and beans.
High-quality protein, iron, choline, Vitamin D, EPA and DHA (marine omegas), zinc, tryptophan, B12, and other nutrients are hard to get enough of in a plant-based diet while preserving ratios, keeping the body’s hormonal systems (like blood sugar) balanced, and honouring cravings.
5. I don’t necessarily think, however that the Paleo Diet is the best diet.
I don’t think any diet is.
I think in principle Paleo was a cool idea: we humans spent the majority of our time in a hunter and gatherer before food processing and agriculture made things like grains and legumes digestible.
Therefore, like we should feed dogs like wolves, and we should eat like our primal ancestors, as our bodies haven’t evolved fast enough to keep up with high fructose corn syrup, etc.
I agree with the premise. But I also think that there is evidence that grains and legumes were consumed before agriculture, perhaps just not as in high amounts. Our bodies are different from the way they were when we were hunters and gatherers: we have more stress for example and higher complex carbs may help us manage this stress.
Also, animals fats, while good for us evolutionarily now exist inside of the context of an environment that is filled with thousands of chemicals. Animal fat is where chemicals are sequestered and therefore consuming lard, butter, and tallow as the main fats in the diet may not be as good for us anymore.
I’m not sure, but I think we need to appreciate our modern context and consume foods that are relatively unprocessed and well-digested that weren’t necessarily available when we were hunting and gathering our own food.
In essence, I think the research points to the fact that whole gains like oats and buckwheat and legumes like lentils are good for us.
6. Food is social. We don’t make nutrition decisions in a vacuum.
We use food to communicate: I love you, thanks for lending me your Back to the Future DVD set. Sharing food is an important part of our biology, of the human existence.
Humans are social creatures. And our socialness orients around food for a variety of reasons: celebration, socialization of children, peace-making, reward, pleasure, art.
I eat differently depending on who I’m with. I eat differently depending on the foods available at my local grocery store.
When I’m with my ND buddies I eat differently than when I’m with “muggles” or, non-NDs.
Navigating food in the social realm can be difficult–a balancing act between our own internal values around food and our values around connection–not offending someone, for instance.
I have suffered when my food choices didn’t fall into the realm of the society I was living (for example, being a vegan while living in South America) and trying to live with my Nonna, my Italian grandmother, while also learning that gluten was making me sick.
We may have conflicting values about food. But I believe that that’s ok.
I believe certain foods can contribute to inflammation but I also believe that they can help soothe my troubled emotions and overwhelm at times, and that that is anti-inflammatory.
To be honest, I don’t really like wearing socks and shoes–they feel weird on my feet.
I would rather prance around barefoot as the bonafide urban-dwelling earth-child I know myself to be deep down. But, I’m aware that we live in a world where the ground is sharp, and cold.
Sometimes it’s not safe, or socially acceptable to walk around barefoot.
And so I don’t. Because even though I love being barefoot, I can’t always do it. It’s not always appropriate.
And so it is with eating ice cream. Sometimes you’re trying to avoid it, but other times it’s appropriate to have some.
Under certain circumstances, eating ice cream might be the healthier choice.
7. Food obsession and shame have no place in health.
Of course eating well can bring is closer to health. However, steer the ship slowly. Be patient with yourself. Be curious about the process and learn to pay attention.
8. Embodiment is the key to bringing us back to nature and understanding our relationship with food again.
Sometimes we need help with our relationship with food.
Sometimes we need to unwind the years of food shame and diet culture to figure out what we even like, let alone what’s good for us.
I sometimes tell patients to have protein every time they crave something.
Just try it. See what happens.
Sometimes a craving for salty snacks means you need protein. It doesn’t mean it’s bad to satisfy a salty craving with popcorn, but if you do how do you feel? Is the salty craving gone?
Sometimes cravings for carbs and salt is the body asking for more protein. And then, in that case, it might be better to try having some protein. Just like sometimes you’re tired and food can help but so can a nap and a nap might help more.
It’s a process that involves trying things, from a place of curiosity, not judgement. And paying attention to how you feel.
If someone asks you for directions to a coffee shop in a language you don’t understand, and so, trying to be helpful you send them to a greenhouse.
They’ll love the greenhouse, you think. It’s beautiful there. And it is a beautiful place. But, they actually wanted a coffee and a piece of pie. And your intentions were pure. You were trying to help, trying to listen.
You just didn’t speak the language.
So I tell patients, have protein when you experience cravings and that might help you get enough protein.
Cravings aren’t bad. They’re essential. They’re a language.
Feeling stuffed isn’t bad. It’s another language. So is hunger. Hunger, satiation, cravings, mind-hunger, feeling stuffed to the gills, are all important syntax in the language your body uses to talk to you, to tell you how to feed it.
It’s hard to listen in a room full of shame, so it can take time to learn.
I talk with Dr. Kara and Dr. Dave of That Naturopathic Podcast, rated in the top 6 Canadian Medicine podcasts, about taming the tiger of anxiety. Click to learn about your HPA Axis, the stress response and how we can “tame the tiger” by providing our body and mind with the assurance that we’re safe. Listen on Spotify.
I talk to Taylor Morozova of the Weird Waves Podcast about how I became a naturopathic doctor, surfing, immunity, vitamin D, and how to stay safe in the age of Corona. Listen on Spotify.
Hannah Hepworth, of the Anxiety Revolution Podcast, and I team up to discuss a natural and functional approach to managing anxiety.
In our talk, featured in her 2019 Anxiety Revolution Summit, a series of talks with integrative mental health practitioners and experts, we discuss circadian rhythms, the body’s stress response and the HPA (hypothalamic pituitary adrenal) axis, and blood sugar, and their role in anxiety.
Click the link to listen to this 30-minute interview. Let me know what you think!
I appeared on the Rebel Talk Podcast with Dr. Michelle Peris, ND. Dr. Michelle writes,
“Not a week goes by that I do not discuss mental health with patients in my office. Rates of depression and anxiety are on the rise. So I really wanted to unpack this important topic for you, giving you relevant information and diving deep into interventions that can help optimize mental health. ⠀
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In this episode, Dr. Talia details how our brains work while suffering from depression, anxiety and stress. Her deep knowledge of neuroscience is combined with mindfulness practices and also with microdosing, an approach that consists in taking low doses of psychedelic drugs, such as LSD or psilocybin-containing “magic” mushrooms, in order to prevent and treat symptoms of depression. ⠀
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Dr. Talia talks about mental and physical barriers, that can holds us back from making the changes needed for a healthier and more balanced life. Listen to this podcast and be inspired by this out-of-the-box conversation about neuroscience, mental health and mindfulness.”
