Whole Medicine Blog
Safeguarding our health
All of us on the journey of health and wholeness must reckon with the grave influence of environmental toxins on our efforts. Ubiquitous in our foods, our water, our air, our household products--the number of chemicals in use is growing daily. Exposure to many of...
8-10 servings of vegetables a day? How in the world…?!
Yep, our super smart and well-informed nutritionist Nate tells us that's how many servings of vegetables to eat in a day to get the vitamins, minerals, fiber etc necessary for good health. How do we eat that much vegetable matter in 3 squares a day, especially given...
Exercise: It helps us feel better
Exercise For Depression And Anxiety Lots of research supports the benefits of exercise to make us less vulnerable to anxiety and depression. In fact, we know that exercise is as effective in the treatment of depression as the SSRI drugs. Why does this matter to...
Triggering and UNtriggering fears
It’s not the load that breaks you down. It’s the way you carry it. ~Lena Horne We have no shortage of triggers for our fears these days. It's too easy for our amygdalas - those almond-shaped structures in the primitive part of our brains that prime us to react way...
Heart Burn
Since I’ve been studying the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder treatment technique called Somatic Experiencing I’ve learned to listen really intently to people’s symptoms. It is not uncommon for people to come complaining of, for example, heart burn. That term carries a...
Adrenal Fatigue
The studies on Adverse Childhood Events (ACES studies) have uncovered the deeply damaging effects of early life trauma on our health decades later. The strength of the epidemiological evidence is staggering. We know things now that should drive public policy, public...
Running Away
Is there an epidemic of anxiety? In our practice we see people with many body symptoms. They come to us primarily for help with their fatigue, mind fog, bloating, muscle or joint pains or perhaps their thyroid – often when the blood tests indicate that their...
The Last Place
I find myself exploring people’s minds for what’s going on in their body. And this is what I’ve found: The mind, particularly the part of the mind that holds our secrets, can torture us, body and soul. I see a lot of people who have chronic back pain, fatigue,...
Paul’s Lessons
40 years ago last month, I started my internship in Pediatrics. Since then I’ve had a convoluted professional (and personal) path, but I observe a theme in that path – my attraction to families dealing with chronic illness and disabilities. My father was a physician...
The Importance of Kindness
I have been studying trauma and its effects on our health. There is troubling and compelling evidence that adverse experiences—especially in childhood—hurt us in the long run in every way imaginable. I see more women in my practice than men by about a ratio of about 2...
Picking up the Phone – Some of my tools for fighting anxiety
I’ve been writing in this column about trapped fight-or- flight responses as the origin of post-traumatic stress disorder. The theory is that the primitive part of the brain that controls our nervous system’s response to threat needs to come to completion any time it...
The Inner Cage – How your body can hurt you by trying to protect you.
It’s a scary idea. That we might have a disease process going on with no symptoms or signs to help us know that there’s a threat. This is the concept that drives the importance of routine physical exams and doctors visits. And certainly some of the diseases that...