Hormone Balance
Do you suspect you’ve entered perimenopause? Has your daughter started puberty? Are these events happening at the same time?? (yes, it’s possible!)
Believe it or not we don’t have to suffer through painful periods, brain fog, hot flashes and weight gain. There are diet and lifestyle modifications we can make to alleviate our hormonal symptoms no matter where or when we sit on the “menstrual continuum.”
Check out my Shop page above for some accessible and do-it-yourself support to bring those hormones back into greater balance.
Can depression be an allergic reaction? How DOES food influence mood?
New science is showing that depression is in fact an immune response to inflammation in our body. Inflammation is normally a beneficial immune response but it can sometimes go unchecked, leading to chronic inflammation - attacking the body’s own tissues and resulting in autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, ulcerative colitis and mood disorders. Evidence includes data that shows depressed individuals with elevated blood levels of the proteins that indicate chronic inflammation.
How exactly does the inflammation create depression? Those inflammatory chemicals, cytokines, can pass through the blood brain barrier and into the brain. Once they get there, the cytokines disrupt basic neurological function such as neurotransmitter release and reception. Once our neurotransmitter function is out of balance, this can lead to depression, anxiety and other mood related issues.
And what role does food play in this chain of events? Many foods we eat contain proteins that activate our body’s immune systems and create chronic low levels of inflammation. My job is to work with you to identify those foods that may be setting off this inflammatory cascade in your body, and develop dietary, supplement or herbal recommendations to mitigate that inflammation and improve your mood.
Autoimmunity
We've all heard how hard autoimmune conditions can be to treat. There are over 100 autoimmune conditions, and having one autoimmune condition means you're likely to develop another one (polyautoimmunity). How can something so complex be impacted by something as simple as the food we eat?
There are three biological factors for autoimmunity:
Genetic predisposition
Gut microbiome
Presence of a leaky gut
The food we eat plays a huge role in the health of our gut flora. Healthy and abundant gut flora strengthens the lining of our digestive tract. Without this flora, our gut becomes "leaky" - one that is permeable, allowing viruses, larger food molecules, etc. to pass into our bloodstream, provoking an immune response - inflammation. When that inflammation is not mediated, or held in check by our body's feedback systems, autoimmunity can be triggered
By taking a detailed health history and using other investigatory tools I can better understand whether your B- or T-cell immune response is dominant, and make dietary, supplement or herbal recommendations to support physician diagnoses and treatment plans.