We are looking at establishing a Mental Health Focus Group to support practitioners in mastering the maze of mental health. This is such a growing health issue, with a recent survey of Australian doctors identifying psychological issues as the number one presenting complaint in general practice and one in five (20%) Australians aged 16-85 experiencing a mental illness in any year. It is likely all health practitioners are witnessing a similar shift…but not everyone chooses to work in this complex area of health. Some practitioners might refer these clients, or only deal with this when it’s not the primary issue, and this is understandable, often appropriate and ok. For those integrative health professionals, however, working predominantly with mental health presentations, our need for specialist knowledge, skills, supervision and support jumps exponentially. How could we support one another’s practice and therefore the patients, in this capacity?
Over the last 16 years I’ve had a special interest in Mental Health and have seen a lot of patients who present with this as their primary issue. We have so much to offer mental health in our dispensary that we canuse, however, there are inherent complexities and challenges – none more so than really being able to identify the ‘red flags’ and knowing when you are not the ‘right tool for the job’
If it sounds like I am talking your talk and speaking directly to you, then I am. And this is your opportunity to let me know you’re interested so that we can continue to work towards establishing such a group. We are looking for practitioners who already have significant knowledge in this area and are looking to take their mental health skills and experience to a new level. This group will help you get building on what you already know and help you gain more confidence when working with clients who present with myriad mental health issues. Ideally we are hoping to attract practitioners from mixed disciplines: naturopathy, nutrition, IM GPs, psychologists, psychiatrists so that we can draw from our collective knowledge base and experience while familiarising ourselves with a ‘team approach’, so essential to mental health management. Can you see yourself in this collective?
“I really love the cases and listening and seeing how you interpret complicated presentations and methodically break them down in a way that digs down to the core/genesis of the issues.It helps me to provide more laser focus to my own complicated cases with your guidance.Love the mind maps!Thank you for all your energy, incredible knowledge and enthusiasm in skilfully educating mein a way that makes difficult cases easier to understand!” – Deborah Miller
There are so many great things about being part of a formal peer group focusing on Mental Health including:
Monthly hour- long meet-ups online via Zoom with a group of like-minded practitioners with a special interest in mental health
Opportunities to present your own case – and receive guidance on all aspects: from diagnosis to management
Structured follow up on client case presentations – in 2019 we’re introducing a new format to follow up on how the client is going after the session – what’s working, and what’s happening now? Sharing ideas and discussing the outcomes.
Sharing of multiple resources via our online locked learning platform
This will be a self-selecting group, so once you’ve applied to being part of this group for 2019, you will be committed for the full 12 months.
Serious Supplement Sleuthing – Introducing some very exciting tools to help you better discern between supplement choices for patients
Certificate of Mentoring Hours for your CPE points at the completion of the year
For more information on Group Mentoring and how to apply click here. Express your interest now by sending us an email on [email protected]!
But in setting up a dedicated new grad group mentoring platform for 2019, designed to help anyone who wants support transitioning from student to Naturopathic SuperPower (!)…here are some more details
Monthly live, interactive, online tutorials covering key core skills e.g. naturopathic differential development, pathology orientation and interpretation, referral letter writing, supplement sleuthing and lots more juicy stuff!
Supervised formal learning community of like-minded and similarly skilled grads
An online curated shared resource centre – yours and mine!
Introduction and sharing of key clinical tools to assist with screening, case work up and client management
Lots of opportunities for structured Q & A on specific topics, both during our live Zoom sessions and between sessions via our online learning platform
A year-long opportunity to immerse in a collegiate network – find your tribe
An annual subscription at an accessible price point for new graduates – paid in quarterly instalments
“This mentoring and access to Rachel is my lifeline!! There’s no one else who comes close to the level of education,
dedication and mentorship with such generosity and humility. Thank you!!”
KATE POWE | Naturopath
Interested?
Drop us an email at [email protected] to get yourself on the waitlist for this specific group offering in 2019. Applications open 15th October and close mid-November.
Want to read more about what practitioners have to say generally about their experience of RAMP (Rachel Arthur Mentorship Program)… well check these out:)
Alright, so I can’t teach you how to leap tall buildings in a single bound but I can show you how you can make big leaps towards uncovering your Naturopathic Super-Powers! I often marvel on what I now know, that I wish I had been privy to as a new graduate and while it’s true some things can’t be rushed and only come with time and firsthand experience – my career path and those of so many others was made harder by the silo-esque way we were all encouraged to transition into the clinic: unsupervised, in solo practice, and without a formal support network. Each one of us trying to reinvent the wheel over and over again. Twenty years later, what I do know now, is that there’s a better way.
There is a bucket load of resources, skills, short-cuts and tips that can be shared with you by a good mentor and good practice supervision, can radically accelerate your progression to becoming the best clinician you can be.
I believe that one of the true strengths of our profession is our sense of community and connecting with that community. When I see this power leveraged to the benefit of the newest, and in some ways the most vulnerable members of our profession, it is a community of which I am genuinely proud of.
When you first start your clinical practice (suddenly now without a net!) you’re full of enthusiasm, overloaded with theories and have a heavy sprinkling of hopes but at the same time,often a tad overwhelmed by the very realness and responsibility of being, ‘the one they came to see and pay (!) to help them’. Making the transition isn’t always easy. Belief in your knowledge and trust in your own competency doesn’t come with your certificate of completion. Nor should it. You’ve still got training wheels on. But how reassuring to know that you can be amongst others in the same position & that together you can build skills and confidence with the help of one another and me. I’ve been there too and I know how important it is for me to share my 2 decades worth of experience (ouch!), not just for the benefit of you, the clinician but for every individual that sits in front of you. Because that’s why we took on this role in the first place, right?
“I am so happy my younger graduate Naturopath self had the insight to invest further in my knowledge and skill set and join RAN mentoring. As a baby naturopath of just over 5 year clinical experience, I have been able to grow my confidence in my clinical skills at an exponential rate thanks to mentoring. Rachel, thank you so much for being an amazing mentor and sharing your knowledge with us. I will continue to do group and individual mentoring for the rest of your career! (if you will have me of course!)”
Tess Doig, Group Mentoring 2018
Our profession thrives when we thrive as individuals and central to this is building networks of ‘similar others’ in order to find your tribe and benefit from the ‘collective’. Group Mentoring allows you to connect to a community of like-minded, similarly-skilled practitioners in a structured teaching environment. You’ll be learning core clinical skills that you can apply in realtime to your practice and be able to ask questions along the way. The most valued aspect of the mentoring is the ability to discuss practice experiences with the mentor and to hear and learn from all the group members, sharing experiences, knowledge and learning as we go during the sessions.
Joining Group Mentoring is a great way to develop your confidence, skills and knowledge. The bonus of these sessions is you’ll find your tribe, gain support and radically build your toolkit through…
additional resources – Mind Maps, Timelines and Mental Health & other screening tools.
quick accessible tools for discerning between supplements.
the basics in pathology interpretation including introducing you to our pathology template for recording and analysing your patient’s labs
the best places to access specific online resources for reference ranges, research etc. for free
If you’d like to hear a little about my own journey from the seeds of my childhood (yes seriously we went waaaaaaay back) that helped me make the decision to pursue this career path, through to teacher and now mentor…but the eternal student as well. Check out the FxMedicine podcast “The Value of Naturopathic Mentoring with Rachel Arthur”.
Have you put your name down on the waiting list for 2018 group mentoring? Read here for more information on the programme.
Applications open mid October, but you can put your name down first by emailing [email protected] today.
As an avid reader of medical news I face a barrage of headlines both domestic & international everyday. I feel this is important for many reasons – not just so that I know what’s being said about their medicine but what they’re saying about ours as well! Anyone see the jaw-dropping headline last week: Could Probiotics be bad for your gut? Yep.
Now how many of you didn’t make it past the headline? It’s hard isn’t it.
There’s almost a reflexive shutdown for many of us to dismiss such a proposition as simply ‘ridiculous’, surely on par with our response to an article from a climate skeptic…as we shake our heads with ‘you gotta be joking right?’… but unless we read on, we’ll never know. (more…)
OH YES!!…we are rolling out a‘new look’ for RAN Group Mentoring in 2019. We’re not losing any of the good stuff!, so don’t panic! We are keeping everything that so many practitioners love from the past 6 years of Rachel’s group mentoring (wow..have I been doing it for that long??!?) and simplyimproving the formula, with some great new features for 2019. We’ve received some great input from our mentees, who have been immersing themselves in the RAN experience over the past 12 months, and as a result of their generous feedback and insights we are fine-tuning our program to offer some great new features so it will be even bigger & better next year!
This weekend I re-experienced an incredibly potent therapeutic intervention firsthand. We drove 40 minutes inland to vamp under the stars (that’s between camping and glamping and has nothing to do with vaping!) That was a good start. Breaking from the ‘norm’, looking at different scenery, digital detoxing, these are all important aspects of what helps us to distinguish time off from ‘time-on’… but the real therapy started when we lit a fire.
So we sat, just the 2 of us, in front of our little fire.
Talking for hours, being silent as well. Warm and cosy against the brisk night air, both totally mesmerized by the flames and glowing embers.
And surprisingly quickly – I could feel all its goodness – letting me down, filling me up, expanding me out. The antidote to our ridiculously busy lives.
And it made me think of all the times my patients need to sit in front of the fire. When the therapy, the remedy doesn’t come in a bottle or a powder but actually an act of reconnecting, of intentional slowing down, whatever you want to call that. I’ve prescribed some pretty funny and unusual things for my patients over 20 years and a lot of them, I guess, not dissimilar to this powerful charcoal remedy. Daily naps. A completely spontaneous trip away. Podcast Diets (aka health info abstinence periods). Long baths. Cups of tea with friends. Walks with a loved one after dinner. Candle-lit nights for one. (more…)
I was lucky enough to hear Jason Hawrelak’s excellent presentation at the Australian Naturopathic Summit last weekend, titled: A Case of Blastocystis Infection – Or Is It?Timely, highly valuable, immediately usable, provocative education (just how I like it 😉 ) on how perhaps often Blasto is playing the scapegoat for another condition/cause of patients’ GIT symptoms. During this case study, Jason detailed the shonky diagnostic work-up of his current patient by a naturopath 12 years prior…that naturopath was him.
There was so much to love about his telling of this case study and the discourse around it but here are my Top 3 Takes:
None of us know everything or practice perfectly but rather we do what we do, until we know to do differently…even Jason 😉
As there are 9 strains of B.hominis found in humans and many of these are in fact benign commensals, even perhaps important ‘apex predators’ for the microbiome, attributing someone’s health problems (digestive or otherwise) to the presence of this parasite should in fact be a diagnosis of exclusion…always asking yourself first, what else could it be?? e.g. coeliac, SIBO, food reactions etc etc
The cost of being a ‘premature evaluator’, to your patients and to yourself, can be very high…
If you’ve not seen Kitty Flanagan’s skit on current coffee culture...it’s essential viewing. In true Kitty-fashion, she wants to simplify coffee ordering down to 2 basic lines – White or Black – says all our pretentious coffee orders; macchiato, skinny, decaf, half strength, latte etc can essentially be reduced down to a much faster 2 queue system. But she’s forgotten the line for taking your coffee rectally. Sorry – did I make you just spill your coffee? Knowing How across health trends Kitty is, she’ll add this 3rd queue soon, if the number of patients asking me about this or telling me they’re already doing it. Now, while enemas had a place in naturopathic history, my training never covered them and, consequently, I’ve never included them in my practice. But the more hype I heard around coffee enemas specifically, the more I thought we better find out as much as we can, so at least we can better inform ourselves and our patients. And of course the monkey on your back, called FOMO, jumps up and down, incessantly asking, “Are you (and your patients) missing out on an amazing therapy?”
The first patient who told me they were using coffee enemas daily was a celeb. A very anxious one. Who also told me she couldn’t possibly drink chai let alone coffee because of the caffeine. This had me a bit stumped…I knew she wasn’t inserting decaff up there and I thought…well given the colon is SUCH an absorptive surface surely this is why she reported feeling, ‘so energised, more clear headed’ etc. with every enema?
I love it when new research supports my existing beliefs and bias, don’t we all?! 😉 ‘Sitting is the new smoking,’ emerged as a new war-cry a little while ago…then naturally, soon after came the nay-sayers, flooding the media with counter evidence. But you know I have to say, for most of us living and working in integrative health, some knowledge is truly intuitive…and it’s not often I say that word. Originally, I got into naturopathy I guess because I liked nature (I originally applied and got into Enviro Science…sheesh that was a bullet dodged!) and what resonated so strongly with me was the very simple idea that we should probably live more in harmony with nature and our health would likely benefit. Ok…I had lived in Byron Bay the year prior to entering my degree…you can see how I got here!
Is sitting for work from 9-5 and then getting home to sit some more, just in a comfier place in front of a box that speaks to us & encourages us not to move a muscle because we might miss something and come out of our trance (!), the way nature intended us humans to interact with our world?
I’m making a wild assumption here I know…but I don’t think so.(more…)
A recent Medscape review on the medical benefits of fasting, published in July, got me pressing pause on the food button. Now don’t worry, we’re not taking the “breatharian” path…but for those of us perpetually well-fed people, going hungry has never seemed perhaps so appealing. This fasting focus has brought forth a handful of small but promising investigations and the positive attributes stretch over a huge span of body systems and pathological conditions.
Fasting is one of the cornerstones of naturopathy and in contrast with much of our therapeutic offerings these days does not discriminate in terms of costs. It’s financially available to absolutely everyone. But it might not necessarily, of course, be right for all. It has a long history of healing and is an effective non-pharmacologic strategy to counteract modern health epidemics such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and improving cognition.(more…)
When I look back over how I’ve raised my kids there are a few serious ‘what tha…’ moments – like the time I thought shopping with a child in rollerskates was doable…I mean she loved those rollerskates and she was amazingly agile and good…just not quite good enough to hold onto that 1L Biodynamic Yoghurt sufficiently…who knew?! Dietary wise, I can look back and be critical in hindsight about different details, the contents of our fridge and pantry have morphed over the years with my changing knowledge (money & time!) but there are a few things I can confidently say – ‘Nailed it’, accompanied by a fist pump! We’re all meat eaters, not carnivores by any stretch of the imagination but we do partake, however the kids and I were just reflecting the other day on the absolute constancy of legumes in our life. (I know you want CCTV footage of our dinner time chats now don’t you 😉 ) There would rarely be a day in our house without them…several times!
Now I sound like I’m showing off but trust me it’s not that impressive or exotic – it goes a little something like this: soup,(split red lentils or cannellini), bolognaise & lasagne (1:4 brown lentils with the meat), nachos for school lunches (kidney beans 4:1 with mince), falafel & hummus (chick peas) & tofu (my kids love this stuff for snacks often & for mains at least once a week).
Ok now everyone relax, I don’t make our own almond milk, grow our own vegetables or ferment stuff…see…it’s swings & roundabouts 😉(more…)
So I had to look all the way back in the UU30 back catalogue to 2013 to find my original Gilbert’s Girls recording talking about this common polymorphism and how it might present in your practice but I haven’t exactly been quiet on this one since then. In the last 5 years, I’ve continued the theme, predominantly focusing on the mental health links but now it’s time to tackle the myriad, murky and mercurial aspects of their digestive problems. You see, a survey of patients with this so-called ‘benign hyperbilirubinemia’ found that < 10% were genuinely asymptomatic – and the main two areas of their health complaints could be categorised as psychiatric and digestive. The problem for doctors, gastroenterologists and us alike is that that’s where the ability to categorise, classify or ideally diagnose comes to an abrupt end. Here’s a few lines from a few of mine to illustrate what I mean:
“I don’t know how to describe it – I just feel ‘off’, yeah I guess, maybe queasy, it changes in intensity but it’s been there as long as I remember”
“Something’s wrong but no one can tell me what. My stools are always different, sometimes pale, sometimes dark, floating, explosive and there’s no pattern with what I eat. I can eat the same thing every day but never get 2 stools the same. I’ve had loads of tests – they can’t find anything”
“It’s weird, I can’t say I get hungry. I just feel full like really quickly and it stays for most of the day. Sometimes I can even burp in the morning and it tastes like last night’s dinner!”
” All they’ve found is ‘biliary sludge’ but they say it can’t explain all my symptoms- makes no sense, right? I’m only 20, I’m male, I’m vego…and no one in my family has ever had gall bladder issues!”(more…)
I’ve had my nose in all the research on Gilbert’s Syndrome again..watch this space…in the interim just thought I’d share this image and a couple of important details I may not have been able to convey when you last heard me talk (very fast!) about this important and common polymorphism:
While the incidence is approximately 10% of Caucasian population, rates are heavily influenced by ethnic background and the highest rates (up to 1/4) are seen in Middle Eastern populations
Gone are the days of thinking this condition only effects bilirubin levels and the enzyme responsible for its clearance – more recent research has shown over 3/4 of patients with Gilbert’s Syndrome have multiple SNPs that compromise clusters of enzymes within the glucuronidation pathway – with varying patterns – this goes a good chunk of the way to explaining the variability we see in bilirubin levels and symptom pictures across patients all deemed to have Gilbert’s Syndrome. This also explains why figures of reduced glucuronidation activity vary anywhere between 10% less to 90% less! It depends on your cluster..but the average reduction is around 50%
UGT enzymes, the ones affected in Gilbert’s, are also expressed all the way down the GIT and constitute important food and drug handling. These UGTs are most active in the small intestines,as you can see above, but may explain why Gilbert’s patients are ‘more sensitive’ to medications than just paracetamol!
And are you still thinking you need to run an $$$ gene test to confirm your Gilbert’s hunch in a client whose bilirubin sits consistently high normal or high? Think again… here’s a great little diagnostic short-cut that even theRoyal College of Pathologists Australasiacites as sufficient evidence to confirm the polymorphism:
In the face of elevated total bilirubin levels and in the absence of liver pathology or increased haemolysis to explain this..”If the diagnosis is uncertain the serum bilirubin fasting level can be measured and should exceed the non-fasting level by >50%.”
Nice. So that means you only need to demonstrate that the patient’s fasting total bilirubin levels go up by at least 50% compared with their fed levels and BINGO you have your diagnosis. Much easier. Oh and this image comes from an interesting paper from Tukey & Strassburg 2001 – but is probably not for the faint-hearted 😉
Stay tuned for more 🙂
Just new to this condition and need a soft place to land with understanding Gilbert’s Syndrome? This previous UU30 is just the thing! Affectionately called Gilbert’s Girls because in particular it details a set of twins with this condition, this short audio explains the basics about this common polymorphism and why we tend to see a lot of patients who have this…even if no one has pointed it out to them yet! You could be the first to provide them with this important understanding about how genetics is impacting their detox pathways, changing their sex hormone handling and perhaps setting them up for both mental health issues and some serious upset guts! Better still, what to do once we have that diagnosis.
With many of the mentoring sessions I run, I suspect there’s often a misperception that the learning is one way. Part of what thrills me about being a mentor is all the learning opportunities I am personally presented with.
Recently, I had an exceptional example. You see, I am privileged to have a colleague, Sonya Cacciotti, in one of my groups. She has worked for over a decade in tandem with an extraordinary doctor up here in Ballina, and they have had a particular long-standing interest in sleep quality, assessment and management. Consequently, her knowledge in this area is exceptional, particularly with regard to not just obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) but the much more and often missed, upper airways resistance syndrome, that is especially common in women. She’s been in my ear on numerous occasions and during group sessions saying, ‘Watch out for this Rachel, it’s more common than we all realise and could be behind many people’s problems‘.
As luck would have it, I have seen a series of cases now within quick succession that all look suspiciously like undiagnosed apnoea or airways resistance. I was listening all along but now Sonya’s wise words and these conditions have my full attention.(more…)
It is with great excitement & enthusiasm that I’ll be speaking at the second independent Australian Naturopathic Summit being held in Lennox Head, NSW on the 24-26th August 2018. You’ll have to wait until Sunday though…and I’ll be sharing the stage with Dr Nirala Jacobi & Dr Jason Hawrelak. Our group plenary session is titled ‘Your CPE – What Ethics Got to Do with It. During this session we will be exploring how the practitioner may be influenced by subtle and not-so-subtle marketing, disguised as education and ask the question: “Can companies with a commercial interest, provide ethical and fair education that’s worthy of our CPE” ?
For Australian naturopaths, continuing professional education is most often provided by companies who either supply supplements or services to us. Not dissimilar to our medical colleagues, this presents an inherent conundrum with the risk of bias – from its most simple form: cherry picking research to favourably showcase a product or ingredient without providing a balanced account of the evidence, to its most sinister: manipulation or concealment of less favourable data. How can the astute practitioner glean valuable information and education from a biased presentation?
A discussion in the Australian Medical Observer this week has got me thinking about the huge push for evidence-based Medicine to form the foundation of our naturopathic practice. Now as you well know, I am a lover of science, and I enjoy immensely when scientific investigations are done well but is 100% of what I do scientifically supported? Heck, no.
I’m a naturopath and by virtue of this, at times I have to work on the edges, frequently push new frontiers and sail some completely unchartered waters – in my management of every unique ‘n=1’ client who comes through my door.
The over-emphasis or incorrect reflexive association between EBM and Random Controlled Trials and Meta-analyses, such as the Cochrane reviews can lead to a potentially dismissive attitude towards other forms of evidence – traditional, anecdotal and empirical and clinic-based results. Our best teachers taught and reminded us that EBM should include ALL forms of evidence, right?
Turns out this is not remotely unique to naturopathic or complementary medicine however. Increasingly, universally-accepted interventions from mainstream medicine is being found to be unfounded!
A recent Cochrane review has created a divide in the medical industry due to its evidence-based slant on a review of direct-acting antiviral drugs (DAAs) in the treatment of Chronic Hepatitis C. To give you some background on DAAs… these antiviral drugs have been seen as a kind of “wonder drug” by researchers and doctors trialling them, with clinical results showing a 90% cure rate in patients with Hep C!!! That’s not a bad success rate, right?! Well, the Cochrane review had a different opinion….It made these actual accepted clinical results appear questionable according to science, claiming that “the therapies were not proven to save lives or prevent harm [and that] the trials were generally weak.”
The clinical trials that the Cochrane review was based on, were focused on the effects of the DAAs on sustained virological response i.e. the long-term absence of the Hep C virus RNA in patients’ blood. However, the review declared that it was “questionable if sustained virological response has any clinical relevance to the person with chronic hepatitis C.”
Hmmmmm…?!? Surely the absence of the virus in the blood of a person diagnosed with hepatitis C has great relevance to that person??!!
This opens up a lot of questions regarding the relevance or the appropriateness of over-reliance on evidence from meta-analyses and computer-generated statistics, in the absence of tradition, real -world and clinical findings. With more and more pressure to base our practice on EBM, are we forgetting that the foundations of our art and our science, lie in the traditional knowledge passed down through generations of healers? The knowledge of using Nature as medicine? Are traditional, anecdotal and empirical forms of evidence being pushed aside too readily, in the name of science? Of course, I could be seen to be as guilty as anybody for perpetuating this…so I’m just setting the record straight…it’s the marriage of the best of all the evidence sources that is the true potency and success of naturopathic approaches, I believe.
Just back from Slovakia and I am a little EXCITED & a giant bit KEEN TO SHARE!!!! Thank goodness we have a tour planned for Aug/Sept so I don’t have to sit on this incredible info for too long!! I had already been delving into the impact of mild acidosis across the life-stages before I left but post-conference…all my thoughts on this have been fed with industrial Slovakian-strength (totally organic) fertiliser! With the bulk of the research on acid-base balance (ABB) in the elderly, we need to clarify what we know about this across other equally important life-stages. We then know what to look for, and can make any necessary adjustments to the expectations and optimal management of all clients.
Could acid-base balance be affecting children? If so, how do we identify it?
Pregnancy – does this profound change in physiology also bring challenges for ABB?
What are the potential problems of not addressing acidity in pregnancy and early life stages?
I will be presenting a seminar series for bWellness on The life Spectrum of Acid Base Balance in August and September. What ages and life stages are affected by acid-base balance issues? Is Chronic Mild Metabolic Acidosis (CMMA) a phenomenon across the life-stage spectrum that simply takes different shapes and forms and are you able to recognise each? Evidence suggests there are many chronic diseases associated with high acid diets, especially as we age. Health practitioners are aware that the ability to excrete acids diminishes in older populations and they are familiar with the associated signs and symptoms. However, it is now clear, from the research, that we must be mindful of acid-base balance throughout all stages of life and ignoring it can have some incredibly profound impacts in individuals of vastly different ages and stages.
And especially…post my Slovakian castle experience at the International Acid Base Symposium..I am FULL TO OVERFLOWING WITH NEW INFORMATION ON THE IMPACT ON CHILDREN (!!! that has literally blown my mind AND YES! that warrants caps lock screaming…trust me) as well as the latest research in other age groups.(more…)
Right? I’ve been banging on about our kidneys for years now – only to be met with a deafening chorus of practitioners of all sorts chanting, “Yes! What about renal health & the best way for us to support it?! We haven’t been trained in this!!”
I hear you and I’m onto it.
You’ve no doubt heard me talk before about the incredible rise in Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and how often patients aren’t being alerted in the early stages because even though their renal deterioration is there for all to see in their basic bloods, it may be dismissed as a ‘normal part of ageing’…but for a population living longer and longer…holding onto our kidneys for life has never been more important! And yes, I’ve talked about what an incredibly powerful agent nutrition is for renal health – whether we’re talking dietary change (note: diet changing = game-changing), addressing even mild acidosis (that’s my talk in Slovakia), improving the microbiome for better urea handling – we should all be literate in this area of health because our contribution is potentially significant in both prevention and, within our scope, treatment.
But have we gone way way way back and checked in at Renal Health HQ (that’s like the Pond’s Institute but better) and asked ourselves…how much water do our kidneys need? Does anyone actually know the answer? Is there a role for therapeutic fluids? Are there situations when the relationship flips and H2O shifts from helping to harassing, an already burdened system?
I’ve just completed the Mastering Mental Health tour in May with Nutrition Care. The last 16 years I’ve been focusing on Mental Health and have seen a lot of patients who present with this as their primary issue. We have so much to offer mental health in our dispensary that we can use. From my experience of working in the pharmaceutical industry, the use of anti-depressants is enormous but in Germany it was almost none. Why??… because in Germany nutrition and herbal medicine is elevated and a doctor will choose to use this option over pharmaceuticals.
As a practitioner you need to know what the red flags are and when you are not the right tool for the job. This presentation hands over a roadmap that helps you to recognise where you start from, and the road to take when accessing and treating your client.
In this presentation, I introduced new clinical tools that I’ve been developed to help you master the maze of mental health, and what a maze it is! With so many possible biological drivers: from methylation to inflammation and from gonads to gut, these tools can help you quickly identify those most relevant to each patient and also outline the strategies necessary for redressing these.
Here’s some of the feedback from people who saw this presentation live…
“This will help me so much with a number of clients that will really benefit from this education.”
“It was fabulous. I love the tool and the way Rachel broke the process down into achievable goals”.
“Theory to practical example. Such an EASY way to explain the difference between over and under methylation + high and low histamine.”
“I am a recent graduate and this makes me more confident in patients with mental health.”
“As a practicing credentialed mental health nurse of 24 years, I found the information quite accurate and informative.”
A recently published case study takes out the ‘WOW! Factor Medal’ for its extraordinary illustration of just how impacting simple silly old lil’ (I’m being tongue in cheek of course) threadworm (aka Enterobius vermicularis) can be on a child’s mental health.
“The patient was a 10-year old Syrian female, who presented with unusual and vague symptoms like insomnia and irritability, nightmares and weight loss. Given the violent background of the Syrian warzone that the patient had escaped, she was firstly diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) before eventually getting correctly diagnosed with enterobiasis.”
They understandably thought she had a mental disorder
The medical officers understandably had it flagged as PSTD.
She had worms – threadworms
Two rounds of systemic (not OTC) worming drugs – with each dose two weeks apart, in order to avoid reinfection, the symptoms all resolved and after a 3 month follow-up period, the patient remained asymptomatic without any signs of recurrence.
Just makes you think are there others out there with the wrong diagnosis when it could be these creepy critters – doesn’t it
Want to learn more in the whole area of the potent overlap between GIT and neurobehavioural presentations in kids? Paediatric Digestive Issues & Neurocognitive Abnormalities was one of Rachel’s most popular presentations captured last year which talks you through the links and the practical work-up in each of paediatric patient. Rachel’s presentation reviews the key neurobehavioural manifestations of a variety of common paediatric digestive issues and introduce you to a few of her favourite paediatric patients that taught her all this (!), along the way. Available as Audiovisual streaming and PDF notes.
