Scottsdale Holistic Medicine Wellness Blog

For 25 years, I lived in Portland, Oregon, where many patients experienced seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in the winter. SAD, also referred to as seasonal depression, is a type of depression triggered by changes in the seasons. Last year was my first summer in Maricopa County, Arizona. With over 30 days exceeding 110 degrees, I understood why I had read an article about how in places like Phoenix, SAD occurs in the summer.

What are the Symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder? (From www.nhs.uk)

Depression: Signs that you may be depressed include:

• A persistent low mood
• A loss of pleasure or interest in normal everyday activities
• Feeling irritable
• Feelings of despair, guilt, and worthlessness
• Low self-esteem
• Tearfulness
• Feeling stressed or anxious
• A reduced sex drive
• Becoming less sociable

Lethargy:

• Feeling sleepy during the day or sleeping too much
• Difficulty getting up in the morning

Everyday activities, such as working and staying connected with friends and family, can become increasingly difficult.

So What Can You Do About Summer Seasonal Affective Disorder?

Exercise: Exercise early in the morning and establish habitual patterns of movement. Consider swimming in a pool or working out in an air-conditioned gym.

Is there a dance or movement class you’ve been wanting to take? Now is the time! Yoga, Zumba, Pilates, ballroom dance—dance especially can help release endorphins, your feel-good chemicals. I’ve told patients for years that the key to staying in shape is to pick activities you love.

Stay Hydrated.

Use a Light Box: Use a light box first thing in the morning. The recommended usage for a light box with 10,000 lux is 20 to 30 minutes. Everyone’s light sensitivity varies, so find what works best for you.

Check Your Nutrients and Hormones: Ensure you are not experiencing depression due to deficiencies, especially Vitamin D.

Keep Your AC On at Home.

Psychologically Reframe: I recently met a woman from Minnesota who realized that summers in Scottsdale were less difficult than winters in Minnesota. “You don’t have to shovel your driveway, and you can still go places,” she said.

Find Calming Activities and Hobbies: Clay, pottery, painting, journaling, yoga—these can all help soothe you.

Get Out of Town!

Cuddle: Spend time with your favorite human or pet.

Find Indoor Activities: Indoor farmer’s markets, museums, movies.

Consider Acupuncture: Acupuncture can be an effective treatment for depression.

Test Neurotransmitters.

Eat Well.

Embrace the Season: Know that this is your season to go inward.

Stay Connected: Depression can make people isolate, so make sure you are keeping up social plans to stay connected.

Check Vitamin D Levels: It’s important to check your Vitamin D levels. No matter how sunny it is outside, if it’s over 110 degrees, you are probably not spending much time outdoors.

Get Sufficient Sleep, but Not Too Much.

It’s time to think outside the box when it comes to summer seasonal affective disorder. If I can support you in getting through this summer in Maricopa County, feel free to call Scottsdale Holistic Medicine at 928-862-2914.

When I was in naturopathic medicine school, I repeatedly heard, “in naturopathic medicine, you start by treating the gut.”

As a young twenty-three-year-old starting medical school, I had no idea of the magnitude of this statement.  

I have nothing against symptom relief. Most of us need it at one point or another. However, patching up symptoms can still have an underlying illness taking hold at a deeper level.  

Treating at the level of cause is paramount to getting rid of pollution at a river’s upstream instead of giving it chemicals downstream to attempt to make it clean.  

Over and over again I have seen our body get into patterns, whether positive or negative. Sometimes it does take a medication to break a pattern of sleeplessness or pain. Sometimes this can be done with acupuncture, rest and/or good food. Other times, it can be done by addressing the imbalances in the microbiome.  

Sadly, most doctors in busy allopathic medical models only have time to treat downstream.

Treating upstream takes time. It takes detective work, a thorough history and diagnostic workups.  People say they can’t take the time and money to diagnose correctly, but sometimes they are disabled without working. Learning from the microbiome can help us balance upstream for a healthy vitality.  

Nothing I can prescribe can replace healthy habits such as diet, drinking sufficient water, movement, finding peace and having supportive community.   

More and more chronic diseases are getting connected to our gut microbiome.  Inflammation in the gut has been linked to Alzheimer’s and cognitive function.  

In Chinese medicine, digestion transforms our food into qi, which is energy.  

Stress can impact the gut microbiome brain connection. So it is possible that balancing the microbiome can be helpful to stress responses as well. The vagus nerve has been connected to our microbiome and the effect is reciprocal, meaning our nervous system impacts our gut and our gut impacts our nervous system.  

Probiotic interventions can be helpful to balance the microbiome.  

The neurotransmitter serotonin is mostly created in the gut, emphasizing the importance of the gut brain connection.

What is tested in a gut microbiome test?

Yeast, bacteria, parasites, enzyme markers, food reactions, occult blood and inflammation are amongst the markers included.

I have seen digestive issues balance, neurological symptoms improve and autoimmune flares lessen by balancing the microbiome.  

Leaky gut is extremely common in patients who have had too many antibiotics. Due to imbalances in the microbiome, the spaces between the intestinal cells can get bigger and food proteins get into the blood stream causing more food reactions. It is possible to heal the gut lining to decrease the occurrence of food sensitivities and reactions.

Who is a good candidate for microbiome testing?

Those with:

• Chronic yeast infections
• Chronic digestive symptoms
• Food reactions
• Chronic Fatigue
• Immune system issues/Autoimmunity
• Brain health issues/Cognitive impairment

Why also consider microbiome testing?  You want to optimize your health.  You’re not getting answers for chronic issues in the conventional medical model.  

The future of effective medicine lies in discerning causes rather than treating symptoms.  The gut microbiome can help us do just that…. 

If you would like to address causes by looking at the microbiome, feel free to call to make an appointment by calling 928-862-2914.

Our bodies are constantly giving us messages. Our healing work is to listen. In the book Heal your Headache, neurologist Dr. David Buccholz speaks about the threshold theory of headache. According to this theory, you add enough triggers, including food, sleep deprivation or stress, and your body hits the threshold of having a headache. I have seen the threshold theory apply to many different illnesses including IBS, autoimmune flares, allergies, asthma, and GERD amongst others. If we listen along the way when we are getting out of balance, there is much that can be prevented.

“My migraines are a sign that I’m doing too much,” a patient told me years ago. I have witnessed many times that if you don’t stop when your body asks, your body will stop for you with some kind of illness.  

How can we start listening?  First by paying attention.  In our overly scheduled culture, this can    be difficult to do. The late poet John O’ Donohue says that “stress is a perverted relationship to time.”  Slowing down, taking time off to be in nature and rest may heal that stress state.

From a Chinese medicine perspective, an energetic imbalance occurs before it manifests as a tissue pathology. For example, a person with a weak pulse, pale tongue and fatigue is showing signs of blood deficiency before an actual Western diagnosis of anemia occurs. By seeing a Chinese medicine practitioner, it may be possible to treat the blood deficiency through nutrition and herbs before it has progressed to actual anemia diagnosable in blood work.  

It is also important to listen to foods. Food reactions can manifest as different kinds of physiological responses. With a food allergy, your immune system is reacting to a food. An IgE reaction is immediate and may present as asthma, anaphylaxis, eczema or hives. An IgG reaction is delayed and may take 2 to 3 days to show up as a symptom. The IgG reactions can be difficult to pinpoint and identifying them with testing can be helpful. With a food intolerance, your body lacks the ability to digest a food. For example, people with lactose intolerance are missing lactase, the enzyme needed to digest it. Those with gluten intolerance have celiac disease and have to avoid gluten altogether, or there may be many nutritional deficiencies and other symptoms. With a food sensitivity such as a headache trigger your body is having a response, often to what are called vasoactive amines, substances that impact blood vessel activity. Other sensitivities occur when the body has a response in someway, but it is not necessarily immune-mediated or an intolerance.

Through years of counseling many patients, I have seen that people can also react to toxic people, situations and environments. Our environment has become increasingly toxic. Environmental medicine discusses how some people are the present day canaries in the coal mine.  Coal miners would historically send in a canary to assess the toxicity of the mine. If the bird died or collapsed, it was a sign that the mine was not safe to enter. Environmentally sensitive people are our culture’s canaries in the coal mine telling us when our environment is too toxic for health.

As far as toxic people and situations, we are sadly in an increasingly hostile society.  Listening to how our bodies feel around someone or a situation may give us signs about how safe you are before your conscious mind knows. Do you contract around someone or feel at ease? Do you feel at peace? Are you drained or uplifted? In the book When the Body Says No, Dr. Gabor Maté explores the field of psychoneuroimmunology, how our psyche is inextricably connected to our nervous system and immune system.

I encourage you to listen to your bodies.  Ultimately, your body houses your soul, which the accomplished writer and senior Jungian psychoanalyst says, “the soul is the most endangered species on the planet.” Listening to your body can help you take care of your soul, body, mind and emotions.

“Your bone marrow suppression is benign,” my primary care physician said after a hematologist gave me the diagnosis. “How can bone marrow suppression be benign?” I thought.  

In another instance, my PCP said, “I don’t know what kind of tropical illness you got,” when I returned from a Caribbean vacation. Different markers were off in blood work. I could hardly get out of bed for a month. She looked baffled and although well-intentioned, was not helpful at all. I learned later that lupus and other autoimmune disorders can flare with intense sun.  

When the rheumatologist who diagnosed me with lupus and I looked back on my health journey, we realized I probably had it since I was a teenager. It wasn’t diagnosed until 45. What I learned is that autoimmune disorders often run together and part of the picture was figuring out my thyroid and autoimmune Hashimoto’s as well.

Having been premed for conventional medicine in undergrad, I knew at a young age that I was not finding answers in the conventional medical system. In fact, I felt worse from many medications. 

Many times when I have had conversations with fellow naturopathic doctors, chiropractors and acupuncturists, our stories are similar. It was our own health journeys which led us to follow a different path.

Hence, I took a leap of faith to study naturopathic medicine and Chinese medicine. When the rheumatologist finally diagnosed me, he said, “Laura, I think studying natural medicine saved your life.”

What I learned is that despite helping many people figure out complex chronic illnesses, when I am sick, it is difficult to think for myself. Lupus is called the great imitator because it can mimic so many different illnesses. In general, autoimmune disorders tend to have episodes of flares and remissions.

It took a second hematologist after seeing various specialties of doctors for decades to get the right testing.

Are you tired of incapacitating systemic lupus flares? Do you want to learn how to have more control over your health? Are you tired of feeling overwhelming fatigue?

Are you tired of being minimized by your doctors? Have you been told that you just have to buck it up and live with it when doctors are not finding anything wrong? Are pharmaceutical medicines having challenging side effects for you?

As a provider, I have learned that although my treatment approach is holistic, there is strength in a proper Western medicine diagnosis and medications at the right time.

I would like to share a case with you that exemplifies why a holistic approach is important. In a specialized system of medicine, we still need general doctors who look at the whole picture and listen. My Cuban mother who lived in pre-Castro Cuba said many doctors relied on examination skills, history taking and intuition before advances in medicine were made.  

Years ago, I saw a ten-year-old who had chest pain and headaches. He had the full neurology workup with MRI and CT scan. In cardiology, he had a full cardiac workup with EKG.  

Upon taking a history, I learned that his headaches and chest pain were worse on days of PE classes. When I examined him, I saw that his breathing looked restricted. I asked the mother to go back to the pediatrician and have his lung capacity checked. His lung capacity was at 50% function! What he had was asthma, that was worse with exercise. His headaches were brought on from stress and lack of oxygen. This is a case that I have used to teach medical students about the importance of looking at the whole picture.