Do You Know How Well Your Organ Systems Are Working? “My bloodwork came back normal.” You feel relieved, but you're still tired, foggy, and not quite yourself. No lab result means much in isolation. Each marker needs to be read as part of a set, in the context of the person it belongs to: her history, her symptoms, her medications, and the stage of life she is in. Read that way, a standard panel shows far more than any single number does. What Your Labs Show Ferritin: Measures iron stores. It...
about 16 hours ago • 2 min read
In This Issue How’s the Water? An Editorial Piece In-Person In Orleans November 7-8: Three Spots Still Available How's The Water? “There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’” This was the parable American writer and professor David...
8 days ago • 2 min read
The Canadian Medical Association has formally named health misinformation a patient safety concern. At a recent (and fascinating!) lecture, my colleague Kim Bretz ND made the case that misinformation is no longer a fringe problem. It is a structural feature of the information environment we all live in. In my own practice, a growing share of appointment time goes to untangling misleading claims before the real conversation can begin. Here are my takeaways from her talk, and what I now...
22 days ago • 2 min read
Hello Reader , Have you ever had a day where one more small thing - a traffic jam, a missed email, a sink full of dishes - suddenly felt like too much? There's a simple picture that explains why: the stress bucket. The diagram above, created by the author of Upgrade Your Vagus Nerve, Dr. Navaz Habib, DC, shows the whole idea at a glance, and once you see it, you may never think about stress the same way again. Picture A Bucket That bucket is you - your ability to handle whatever life throws...
29 days ago • 2 min read
Are Your Aches And Pains Just A Part Of Getting Old? Very few things get under my skin like hearing someone say their body is simply "breaking down with age", as if crossing the "40" threshold means falling off some imaginary cliff. The honest answer to the question I hear most - "are the ailments I'm feeling over 40 the result of being over 40? - is no. Age is a risk factor, not a verdict. Much of what gets written off as "just getting older" is the visible end of something we can actually...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Monday Ingredient Spotlight: Ashwagandha KSM-66 vs Sensoril The question of "Which ashwagandha should I take, KSM-66 or Sensoril, Dr D.?" has come up a few times lately, so I wanted to squeak into your inbox with a quick rundown: what ashwagandha does, why the type matters more than the brand, and how to match it to what you're actually after. Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) is an adaptogen used for centuries to steady the stress response. Modern practice leans on standardized extracts - and...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
I want to share something I have been building with great care for some time When you picture a naturopathic doctor, you probably think of nutrition, supplements, and lifestyle as treatment interventions. Those tools matter, and they are not going anywhere. But over years of practice, I keep coming back to the same thing. Chronic illness rarely arrives suddenly. It accumulates quietly, over months and years, as stress and life's demands draw down the reserves you rely on to keep your body...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
In This Issue If You're Going To Use AI For Your Health Questions, Use This Hangriness Is REAL. Here Is The Fix Quote of the Issue If You're Going To Use AI For Your Health Questions, Use This You are going to ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude about your health. I know this, so let me redirect it. These tools are built to sound confident, not to be correct. They produce great-sounding answers and invent citations, which is exactly the wrong quality for a medical question. Use Consensus instead....
2 months ago • 2 min read
Sensitivity And Your Health 2 min read Last week I wrote about sensory processing sensitivity, the temperament trait carried by an estimated 20 to 30 percent of people. This week, I'm touching on how it can show up in seemingly unrelated symptoms. What The Research Links To This Trait The following lists show how people who tend to be more sensitive are more likely to experience these symptoms. In most cases these are the result of overstimulation, lack of support, and stressful demands...
3 months ago • 2 min read