There is no health without mental health.
Mental and emotional wellness are essential for living a happy, fulfilling and productive life.
Mental wellness includes positive self-regard, fulfilling social relationships, meaningful work, productivity, goal achievement, good physical health, and proactive stress management.
Mental health conditions, like depression and anxiety, are not brain-based phenomena. They are a result of multiple factors, including the health of our bodies and brains, our home and work environment, our mindset, personal beliefs and experiences, and our social relationships, among others.
Therefore truly addressing mental health concerns involves taking whole-body, person-centred view.
How I Approach Mental Health Conditions:
Case taking: I am interested in gaining an in-depth understanding of how you are as a person. We spend over 60 minutes together at each appointment to form a therapeutic relationship and make sure we both have a thorough understanding of all the pieces that influence your health.
Diagnoses are valuable they remind us that it’s not because there is something wrong with us. They make us feel less alone. In addition to knowing what is going on with you, I talk with you to understand how the diagnosis occurs in your life.
Uncovering Root Causes: I look at mental health conditions as symptoms, rather than disease. Together we try to understand what biological, psychological, social and environmental factors may be influencing your mood and mental functioning.
Digestion: The digestive system is often at the seat of mental health conditions. We look at the health of your microbiome, and rule out any gut infections, inflammatory gut conditions, like leaky gut, and food sensitivities.
Nutrition: Ensuring that the proper building blocks are in place for optimal mental and emotional health.
Counselling: I have additional training in Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Motivational Interviewing.
Stress and Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) Axis: We talk about stress, burnout and how cortisol, the stress hormone may be contributing to your symptoms.
Hormones: Our hormones have the ability to profoundly impact our mood. From our blood sugar, to our stress hormones, to the hormones that impact our fertility and mentstrual cycles, I look and test for signs of hormonal imbalance.
Amino acids and Nutritional Supplementation: To help balance neurotransmitters in the brain.
Mitochondrial Health: Our mitochondria are the energy-generators of our cells. Impaired mitochondrial function in the brain may contribute to mental health symptoms, and chronic inflammation.
Herbal Therapies: Herbs are particularly helpful for improving hormonal, mitochondrial, and neurotransmitter balance, for lowering inflammation, improving stress resilience, and healing the digestive system.
Research: Mental health research is an exciting field. I stay on top of current and emerging therapeutic tools, like heat therapy, mindfulness and self-compassion.
Conditions Treated:
ADD | ADHD | Addictions | Anxiety| Body Image | Bipolar Disorder | Depression | Eating Disorders | OCD| Panic Disorder | PMS | PMDD | PTSD | Self-Criticism | Self-Esteem| Stress Management | Children and Youth
Meet Dr. Talia, ND
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Mental Health Articles
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...
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...
The Naturopathic Guide to Snacking: 12 Blood-Sugar Balancing Snack Ideas
When helping someone improve their daily nutrition, it helps to start with one meal at a time. With my patients, I first tackle breakfast, the most important meal of the day for glucose control, which has major implications in mood and hormone regulation for the rest...
Can I Support My Mental and Hormonal Health as a Vegan?
"Dear Dr. Talia, I have been a vegan for 6 years. I also suffer from mental health conditions and possible hormonal imbalances. After doing some research on diets for anxiety and depression, I found that most of them include meat and animal products. I'm wondering:...