Almost one out of every four Americans are either diabetic or pre-diabetic.

How do you get Type 2 Diabetes?

The short answer is, although genetics can predispose you to diabetes, it’s a lifestyle disease.

Think of sugar as quick energy.  It can get converted into the currency your body uses for energy very quickly.  But the flip side is, you can only have so much of it on hand — your blood can only accommodate a few tablespoons of sugar at a time.  Your body needs to get rid of any excess quickly, before it causes vascular damage or hyperglycemic symptoms.

So when your body has to get rid of it, where does it go?  Basically there are two compartments in your body: intracellular (inside the cells) and extracellular (outside the cells).  The bloodstream is outside of the cells, so sugar has to get inside the cells in order to get out of the blood.

Cells are pretty guarded about what they let in and out, though.  Very few things can “come in unannounced” – they have to have a friend vouch for them at the door.  The friend that vouches for sugar is called insulin (produced in the pancreas).  But cells can’t store sugar in its present form, so as soon as sugar comes into the cell, it gets converted from “quick” energy into “potential” energy — fat.

Problems come in when this cycle is repeated too often, too long: like a drug addict needing a bigger dose for the same high, your body will start to require more and more insulin to keep up with your sugar intake.  Eventually, your pancreas can’t keep up with the demand.  This leads to Insulin Resistance and Diabetes.

The Traditional Approach:

Medications for insulin resistance take one of two approaches: they either increase the sensitivity of the insulin receptors, so that they respond better to the insulin the body already produces, or they force the already tired pancreas to work harder and create more insulin, which accelerates the downward spiral.  It’s like whipping a dead horse.  Once the horse is soundly dead, insulin injections become necessary.

The Naturopathic Approach:

Diet and lifestyle adjustments are absolutely essential to treating diabetes effectively.

Our clinic offers a four-week program called U-Lite that has been used for over 12 years to reduce risk factors and reverse  pre-diabetes.  The program teaches you how to eat (in terms of both what to eat and how much to eat of it), and enables me to easily pinpoint other factors that may contribute to your pre-diabetic state, including nutritional deficiencies, food allergies, and other chronic conditions.  At the end of four weeks, you take the same questionnaire again and we develop a naturopathic action plan based on how far you’ve come and how far you have left to go.

Are you part of the 1/4 of Americans in the diabetic or pre-diabetic category?  Email me for a FREE copy of the  Pre Diabetes Challenge and find out if you’re at risk!

Dr Lauren Deville is board-certified to practice Naturopathic Medicine.  For more information, please see www.drlaurendeville.com. 

We’ve been led to believe that cholesterol is “the enemy” in cardiovascular disease.  This is not the case.

How Cholesterol and Sugars Interact In Your Bloodstream

Picture table sugar – it’s granular and it has relatively rough edges.  If you have too much sugar in your bloodstream over a period of time, those rough edges nick the walls of your blood vessels and cause damage.

Think of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) as a band-aid.  It’s your body’s attempt to patch up the damage that the sugar has inflicted.  The more extensive the damage, the more cholesterol you need to form an adequate band-aid.  The cholesterol itself isn’t the problem, then – it’s actually trying to fix the problem!  But with continued high intake of sugar, over time that band-aid plug gets bigger and bigger.  Eventually it may impede blood flow, or the plug can become unstable and break off, traveling to some other part of the body until it encounters a blood vessel too small to accommodate it.

To say the least, either one of these scenarios is bad.

Blood carries oxygen (among other things) to your tissues, and if not enough blood can get through to feed those tissues, it can cause serious problems.  Most of the time when we talk about cardiovascular disease, we’re specifically talking about your heart (hence the name, heart disease), because your heart requires so much oxygen in order to do its job.  Poor blood flow to the heart can have serious consequences.  Ischemia is what happens with the heart muscle doesn’t get enough oxygen.  Infarction (or heart attack) is what happens when blood flow is completely blocked.

The Traditional Approach to CVD, or Cardiovascular Disease

Most medications for cardiovascular disease try to lower cholesterol production.  But that’s like blaming the police for criminal activity because they happen to show up at the scene of a crime: it doesn’t get at the root cause!  Many cholesterol drugs also have side effects on all steroid hormones (because the drugs block the production of cholesterol as well as all the hormones formed from cholesterol).  And of course there are a number of other unpleasant side effects as well, including fatigue, muscle pain and even muscle breakdown, which can be very serious.

The Naturopathic Approach

Instead of trying to block the production of cholesterol artificially, we try to lower cholesterol naturally – by eliminating the need for the body to produce excess LDL cholesterol in the first place, using dietary and lifestyle adjustments.  Our clinic offers a diet protocol especially well suited to patients with elevated cholesterol and blood sugar called the Ultra Lite diet, only available through licensed health care practitioners.  The program includes lots of accountability and proven methods for sustainable weight loss, as well as improved blood sugar and cholesterol markers and reduced blood pressure.

The lifestyle adjustments we implement will also help increase production of HDL (the “good” cholesterol), helping to balance out your overall cholesterol ratio (thus lowering your risk).  And while we’re at it, we repair existing damage to the blood vessels, and prevent future damage using dietary supplements and botanical medicine.

It is possible to lower your blood pressure and cholesterol naturally.   Make an appointment today!

Once upon a time, food was fairly self-explanatory.  You pretty much knew that a chicken was a chicken, vegetables were vegetables, and there was only one kind of milk to choose from — the kind that came out of a cow — unless you happened to prefer the milk of some other mammal.

But these days, things are a little more complicated.  How do you really know what goes into a box of cereal?  What do all of those impressive-sounding labels really mean?

Below I’ve broken it down into two categories: claims that food companies make and ingredients you should avoid.

Claims that Food Companies Make:

• Natural or Organic: Natural just means the product does not include synthetic or artificial ingredients.  That’s good in the sense that you want to avoid consuming as many chemicals as possible, as many of them have been linked with a number of illnesses (see the list of ingredients to avoid, below).  Organic means the food is grown without fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, or growth hormones according to USDA standards.  Sometimes it’s worth it to pay more for organic and sometimes it isn’t, based on how full of pesticides the inorganic food tends to be.  In general, you want to buy the “dirty dozen” fruits and veggies organic, and you can save your money on the “clean fifteen” (http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary/).
• Lean and Extra Lean: These terms apply to meat, poultry, and fish.  Lean means there’s less than 10 grams of fat, 4.5 grams or less of saturated fat, and 95 mg cholesterol per 100 grams.  Extra lean means less than 5 gm fat, less than 2 grams saturated fat, and less than 95 mg cholesterol per 100 grams.  It’s a good idea to choose lean meats, as they decrease the risk of cancer otherwise associated with other meats.  But it’s most important to choose organic and free range meats if at all possible, because free range meats contain a better ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 (decreasing the risk of many inflammatory diseases), and organic meats do not contain growth hormones.
• Enriched and Fortified: Both of these terms mean that vitamins and minerals were added to the food, but fortified means more of the nutrients naturally found in the food were added, while enriched means that vitamins and minerals that  were lost during processing were added back.  But don’t think that the food itself is healthy just because the company added a few extra nutrients.  If a food needs to be enriched in the first place, it’s processed, and processing leads to a number of other problems (see the list of ingredients to avoid, below).  Also beware of the high sugar content commonly found in processed foods.
• Heart Healthy: this is a bit of a catch-all term, meaning the food is low in calories, whole grain, fat free, and/or made with oil instead of saturated fat.  The label is usually unregulated though, so you should take it with a grain of salt… no pun intended.
• Low Fat and Fat Free: low fat means three grams of fat or less per serving size.  Fat free means what it sounds like: only traces of fat exist in the food or none at all.  If you choose these foods because you’re trying to lose weight, though, beware that fat free does NOT mean low calorie.  In fact, for purposes of weight loss it’s more important to avoid sugar and processed carbohydrates than fat.  For more information, see here: http://www.drlaurendeville.com/articles/get-healthy-for-the-new-year/.
• Whole Grain: this means that all three major components of the grain kernel remain in the food: bran, germ, and endosperm.  The bran contains fiber and B vitamins, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and zinc.  The germ contains Vitamin E, selenium, thiamine, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, zinc, and protein.  The endosperm contains protein and carbohydrates.

When grains are milled, they lose the bran and the germ, retaining only the protein and carbs from the endosperm.  The lack of fiber in processed grains means that the remaining carbs hit your bloodstream almost immediately, and they act basically just like sugar.  Additionally, the loss of the bran and germ removes most of the nutritional value of the grain.  So are whole grains a better idea than processed?  Emphatically, yes!

• Gluten Free: gluten is a protein found in the germ (see above) of wheat, rye, barley, and several other grains.  Gluten intolerance and Celiac Disease are both relatively common, and especially for Celiac patients, total gluten avoidance is critical.  That said, if you are not gluten sensitive, you don’t really need to avoid it.

Ingredients You Should Avoid:

• Trans Fats, aka Partially Hydrogenated Oils:  Trans fat means that hydrogen has been added to a liquid fatty acid to render it solid at room temperature, increasing its shelf life and improving texture or “mouth feel”.  It’s found in margarine, shortening, fried foods, and all kinds of processed foods.  Trans fats are incorporated into your cell walls, causing poor cell membrane and receptor function, and they also increase “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower “good” cholesterol (HDL).  This contributes to a number of chronic diseases, including heart disease and cancer.   Trans fats also lower immune system function and increase insulin resistance.  Avoid them completely if at all possible.
• Artificial Sweeteners: as a general rule, even though excessive sugar is a bad idea (for more information see here: http://www.drlaurendeville.com/articles/get-healthy-for-the-new-year/), if you must sweeten your food it’s actually a better idea to use real sugar than the stuff created in a lab.  That’s because these are your main alternatives:

1. Saccharin: an artificial sweetener found in Sweet and Low, 300-500 times sweeter than sugar.  It’s associated with bladder cancer when fed to rats in large quantities.
2. Aspartame: found in Nutrasweet and Equal.  It gets metabolized to excitatory amino acids which can lead to neuron cell death, and has been linked with various neurological diseases such as MS, ALS, and Alzheimer’s Disease.  It has also been linked to a number of adverse food reactions including headaches, migraines, depression, seizures, weight gain, irritability, insomnia, joint pain, and memory loss.
3. Sucralose: found in Splenda, which is 600 times sweeter than sugar.  Its byproducts are in the same chemical category as certain pesticides (PCBs and DDT), and inconclusive studies suggest that it may cause genetic mutations.  High doses have been linked with lower immune function.

• Preservatives: common in processed foods to increase shelf life, these have been associated with allergic reactions and are stored in body fat (which means it’s hard to get rid of them).  They include:

1. BHA (Butylated hydroxyanisole) and BHT (Butylated hydroxytoluene).  These are found in prepared and packaged foods.
2. Benzoates: found in shrimp and fish.
3. Sulfites: these are sprayed on fruit, veggies, and shrimp, and are associated with asthma.
4. Sodium nitrites and sodium nitrates: these are found on processed meats, and they are a known cause of stomach cancer.  They are, however, counteracted by Vitamin C… so if you have to have that cured bacon for breakfast, take your vitamins too!

• Monosodium glutamate: especially common in Chinese food prepared in restaurants, this is added to increase the salty flavor of protein.  It is a common cause of allergic reactions including chest tightness, diarrhea, headaches, and flushing.  For those who are not allergic it’s not really a problem, other than the fact that foods with additives are probably not the healthiest options.
• Salicylates: these are chemically similar to aspirin, and so people with allergies to aspirin may not tolerate them well.  They are found in cake mixes, sodas, dried fruits and berries, gum, pudding, and ice cream, and they are also used to enhance the flavor of certain spices. 
• Artificial Dyes: Blue #2 is found in soda and has been associated with brain cancer.  Green #3, found in lime drinks and popsicles, has been associated with thyroid cancer.  Yellow #6, in soda and candy, has been associated with kidney cancer.  Yellow #5 (also called tartrazine) is associated with allergies and ADD, and sensitivity is very common.  It is found in orange drinks, cake mixes and icings, seasoning salt, macaroni and cheese, gelatin desserts, and Italian dressings. 

The bottom line?  Read labels.  Avoid sugar, trans fats or partially hydrogenated oils, and any ingredients you don’t recognize.  Choose foods that will spoil and eat them before they do.  If you follow just these simple rules, you can forget the rest.

Eating healthy really isn’t that hard – most of our ancestors had it figured out!  All it takes is a little common sense.

Dr Lauren Deville is board-certified to practice Naturopathic Medicine.  For more information, please see www.drlaurendeville.com. 

Hormonal imbalances can seriously affect your quality of life.

Most of us associate PMS with mood swings and cramping, but many other symptoms may be related.  These include:

• Insomnia
• Poor concentration
• Joint or muscle pain
• Fatigue
• Headaches and migraines
• Bloating
• Acne (especially around the chin and neck for many women)
• Changing bowel habits, including constipation and diarrhea
• Water retention and weight gain

Traditional Treatments:

Many doctors will prescribe hormone-based birth control pills in an effort to regulate your cycle.  These are often effective, and while many women do fine on them, there are some long-term consequences which you should keep in mind, such as increased risk of certain cancers and of stroke (especially for women over 35 who smoke).  I am not completely against these though, and I do prescribe them from time to time.

If your symptoms are mild, you may be able to control the cramping and muscle pain quite well with over the counter anti-inflammatory medications such as Advil or ibuprofen.  Although these too have their side effects with continued long-term use, once in awhile I see no problem with them for most patients, aside from the fact that they don’t address the reason the pain is there in the first place.

For water retention, your doctor may give you diuretics (to make you urinate more).  They work, but again, they don’t deal with the reason you’re retaining water.

For severe PMS, you may be given antidepressants, which help not just with stabilizing mood, but also have been effective for reducing some of the other symptoms as well.  Common side effects for these include GI disturbance, sexual side effects such as lowered libido, insomnia, and occasionally they can actually intensify feelings of depression.

Naturopathic Treatments:

PMS is usually associated with a high ratio of estrogen to progesterone.  Although both hormones decline dramatically leading up to your period, if you have relatively more circulating estrogen than progesterone, you’re probably going to have an unpleasant week or so.  We’ll address this from several angles.

1)      For most conditions, I start with what you eat.  I recommend a high fiber (fruits and veggies), low sugar, and low refined carbohydrate diet.  I also have an anti-estrogenic diet plan if you have a very high estrogen to progesterone ratio.

2)      Exercise is also very important: studies show that women who exercise experience significantly fewer PMS symptoms.

3)      Next, we’ll want to make sure your thyroid is balanced.  Your hormones are all interconnected.

4)      We’ll support your liver and your gut, probably at the same time.  You may have high levels of estrogen because “bad” bacteria in your gut keeps it from getting eliminated, because you have a backed up liver that can’t do its job properly, or a combination of both.  At this stage there are also some nutritional supplements we can add in to assist with estrogen elimination, while we’re getting your gut and your liver back in shape.

5)      In the meantime, to treat the symptoms:

• We’ll add in good oils (which function very much like Advil and ibuprofen, but without suppression) in order to decrease inflammation.  Many women may also find that acupuncture, chiropractic adjustments, or massage are very helpful for this too.
• Certain vitamins and nutritional supplements can help loosen muscles, regulate hormones and bowels, and decrease fluid retention.
• A number of botanical medications work wonders for hormone balancing.
• A well-chosen homeopathic remedy can sometimes improve all of the symptoms at once!
• Neurotransmitter balancing may be necessary for women who experience severe mood symptoms or insomnia.

6)      On rare occasions, I may prescribe bioidentical hormones for PMS and cramping.  Most of the time this isn’t necessary but it will get the job done, and with far fewer side effects than those sometimes encountered with certain birth control pills.

I love seeing patients for PMS and cramping because it’s usually a fairly quick and easy fix.  Are you ready to reclaim a week or two out of every month of your life?  Make an appointment today!

Dr Lauren Deville is board-certified to practice Naturopathic Medicine.  For more information, please see www.drlaurendeville.com. 

Your thyroid gland sits in front of your neck, right below your voice box.  It releases hormones that control your metabolism.  Hypothyroidism means that your thyroid isn’t producing as much hormone as it should.

Hypothyroidism is on the rise in the population in general, but it is still more common in older women.  See if you recognize yourself in any of the following symptoms:

• Sensitivity to cold
• Difficulty concentrating
• Constipation
• Depression, fatigue, and/or weakness
• Heavy menstrual bleeding
• Joint/muscle pain
• Thinning eyebrows, brittle hair or fingernails
• Unintentional weight gain

Factors that influence hypothyroidism include:

• High stress (because when the adrenals collapse, the thyroid tries to compensate for the lack of energy)
• Deficiency in the nutritional precursors necessary to produce thyroid hormone
• Certain drugs (including amiodarone and lithium)
• Toxicity, especially heavy metal toxicity.
• Inflammation of the thyroid gland (may be viral or autoimmune)

Lab Testing

There is some disagreement between the naturopathic and the traditional medical community over which lab tests ought to be run for hypothyroidism and how they ought to be interpreted.  Most doctors will run TSH only, or occasionally T4.  TSH is the hormone produced in your brain that tells your thyroid to produce actual thyroid hormone, which is T4.

Naturopathic doctors believe that these tests alone could be misleading.  Basically, there are several places where the production of thyroid hormone can go wrong: in the brain, in the thyroid, or in the rest of your body.  TSH and even T4 can look normal in patients exhibiting clear hypothyroid symptoms.  An accurate diagnosis may require several other tests.

It’s also important to interpret the TSH values in light of your symptoms.  Naturopathic doctors like to see TSH significantly lower than the accepted range in the traditional medical community.

Conventional treatment:

This typically focuses on replacement of thyroid hormone only.

Naturopathic Treatment:

While we may resort to thyroid hormone replacement therapy as well, we don’t usually start there.

1) First, it’s critical to make sure you’re getting the right nutrients, especially a particular few that are required to produce thyroid hormone and activate it.  There are also botanicals to jump-start a sluggish thyroid.  For many patients, this alone is enough to reverse mild hypothyroidism.

2) Next, we have to look at your adrenals.  This is one of those conditions where stress plays a major role.  The adrenals need to be stabilized before treating the thyroid.  Stress management techniques are also critical here!

3) If this doesn’t take care of the problem, we’ll need to assess whether you have antibodies against your thyroid.  If you do, several other tests may be necessary in order to determine root cause.

4) When necessary, there are natural thyroid medications derived from animal thyroid glands.  These are generally considered to be superior to the isolated T4 hormone found in pharmaceuticals, because natural thyroid also contains the full spectrum of thyroid hormones (T1, T2, T3, T4, and calcitonin) in order to stabilize the effects of T4.  Some patients find that natural thyroid hormone works much better than the isolated pharmaceutical version.

There may be angles to supporting your thyroid that you have not tried.  Together we can find the best approach for you.

Dr Lauren Deville is board-certified to practice Naturopathic Medicine.  For more information, please see www.drlaurendeville.com. 

Headaches can be caused by a lot of things.  Most often migraines must be differentiated from tension or cluster headaches, assuming that some of the more serious causes have already been ruled out.

Migraines usually begin around puberty and are more common in women than in men.  Pain is usually localized behind the eyes, and is accompanied by visual changes, light and noise sensitivity, nausea and vomiting.  Sometimes pain is preceded by flashing lights, called an “aura.”

Traditional Treatment:

1. Traditional medicine recognizes the importance of tracking triggers for your headaches by keeping a headache diary.  When you begin to see a correlation between certain triggers and the onset of a migraine, you can avoid those triggers as much as possible.  Unfortunately, triggers are different for different people.  For some, certain foods and food preservatives may trigger migraines.  There are a few that are more commonly associated with migraines than others, but even that list is rather long.  For others, triggers may be bright lights, certain odors or perfumes, alcohol, allergic reactions, sleep pattern changes, dehydration, physical or emotional stress, exercise, loud noises, missed meals, smoking or exposure to smoke.
2. Rest in a cool, dark room with a cool cloth on your head.
3. Use certain medications to control pain or stop attacks.  There’s a spectrum of medications to control pain, ranging from over-the-counter to narcotics and sedatives.  But beware that rebound headaches can occur if you take pain meds regularly to keep headaches at bay.  Many of the medications intended to stop attacks work on the vascular system, and these include medications ordinarily used for blood pressure, or those that cause blood vessels to narrow (including Imitrex, Cafergot and Midrin).  These medications increase the risk of heart attack or stroke if you have heart disease already, and you must avoid some of them if you are pregnant or are planning to become pregnant.  Other meds to stop attacks include certain antidepressants, and occasionally seizure medications.  These, of course, have their own set of drawbacks.

The Naturopathic Approach:

1. First, we will start with the headache diary to search for triggers.  It will be important to avoid them until we deal with the underlying cause.
2. At this stage we can also try several naturopathic treatments which are essentially suppressive, in order to control symptoms.  I’m not opposed to using or continuing to use medications as long as they are necessary, either.  Quality of life is very important.
3. About 50% of migraine sufferers have rotated vertebra in their necks.  Try a chiropractic adjustment.  This won’t likely take care of the whole case, but it can certainly help if it contributes to your headaches.
4. A very high percentage of sufferers also have food allergies.  Delayed reactions to allergens can manifest in a wide variety of ways, and this one is relatively common.  Your triggers may or may not correspond to the foods to which you are allergic, though, because it can take up to 72 hours for symptoms to show up after exposure to a food allergen.
5. While we’re at it, we’ll also assess your diet for certain key nutrient deficiencies which occur frequently in those who suffer from migraines, remove additives known to cause migraines in some, and ensure that your blood sugar remains stable throughout the day.
6. Some migraines are associated with neurotransmitter imbalances, which is why antidepressants are used.  If this is the case, the treatment may involve neurotransmitter testing and rebalancing in a similar fashion to the treatment for depression.
7. Environmental sensitivities frequently play a role in migraines, which may explain triggers like perfumes, cigarette smoke, and the like.  If this plays a role in your headaches, detoxification and cleansing will be in order.
8. Many women find that their headaches worsen at menses and improve during pregnancy, which implies that hormone balancing and liver detoxification will be very important in recovery.

As you can see, causes of migraines are many and varied, and it may take some time to unravel your root cause.  But together, we can select a protocol to bring you relief. 

Dr Lauren Deville is board-certified to practice Naturopathic Medicine.  For more information, please see www.drlaurendeville.com. 

Your immune system is designed to protect your body against harmful substances, such as bacteria, viruses, and foreign substances (allergens). In that sense, allergic responses are not inherently bad. But in a person with allergies, the immune response is exaggerated, and you react to substances that are not generally harmful. The word “allergies” is kind of a catch-all term. Learn more about what causes allergies.

The Traditional Approach to Treating Allergies:

Most medications for allergies focus on symptomatic relief, including antihistamines, steroids, decongestants, and a few other medicines that work by different mechanisms (such as Singulair).  Although these medicines can be effective for many patients, they do not address the root cause of immune system hypersensitivity, and side effects can be prohibitive.

For severe allergies or allergens that cannot be avoided, shots are sometimes recommended.  These work much like vaccines, exposing your body to a small amount of each allergen at a time so that it “gets used to” it.  They work well for some patients, but they require frequent (usually weekly) trips to the doctor, and the co-pay adds up.

The Naturopathic Approach:

The primary approach in traditional medicine is the same as in naturopathic medicine (at least initially), and that is the avoidance of triggers.  This is important while we figure out what else is causing the hypersensitivity reactions and address the root cause.

After that, it’s always important to start by cleaning up your diet.  You need adequate nutritional support in order to heal, or at least to avoid undue stress on your system that will impede healing.  At this stage, there are also supplements and botanicals which function via a similar mechanism to some of the more common drugs for symptomatic relief.

Now down to business. 

Allergies of any kind almost always involve the gut.  This is because 80% of your immune system is in your gut – it produces an antibody called IgA.  Ideally, your gut should produce a lot of IgA , because it’s your first line of defense against any foreign substance.  The flora and the lining of your gut need to be healthy in order to produce adequate IgA so that the rest of your body never has to deal with those substances.

Next, we will assess whether your adrenals are acting properly.  High stress leads to a high level of a hormone called cortisol, and this can also decrease production of IgA.

Next, we will assess your liver.  People with allergies almost always have a high toxic body burden.  Toxins are foreign substances which really are harmful to your body (unlike allergens which are not), and they need to be altered in some way so that your body can eliminate them.  This alteration usually happens in the liver.  When there are too many toxins and your liver can’t keep up, these toxic substances build up in the system.  This may increase reactivity to substances that would ordinarily be considered harmless.

Finally, we offer an alternative to allergy shots: allergy drops.  The drops are formulated in a similar fashion and work via a similar mechanism to shots, and the allergens represented in the shots are chosen based on the results of an IgE blood test to environmental allergens.  These drops are not covered by insurance, but the cost is likely cheaper than the co-pay for frequent visits for allergy shots, and they can be administered in the convenience of your own home… without needles.

Allergies are on the rise.  They can dramatically decrease quality of life, and in traditional medicine, they are very difficult to treat.  Fortunately, in naturopathic medicine there is hope.  Set up an appointment today. 

Dr Lauren Deville is board-certified to practice Naturopathic Medicine.  For more information, please see www.drlaurendeville.com. 

Do you feel bloated and uncomfortable after eating, or throughout most of the day?

If you are a female between teen years and early to mid-adulthood, and these symptoms have persisted for some time, it’s likely that you have what’s known as Irritable Bowel Syndrome, or IBS.

IBS is also known as irritable colon, mucous colitis, spastic colon, spastic colitis, and nervous stomach.  Symptoms include abdominal pain and cramping, changes in bowel movements (often alternating between constipation and diarrhea), flatulence, and occasionally mucus discharge.   When symptoms start, the frequency of bowel movements and the appearance of stools change, although symptoms tend to improve after bowel movements.  IBS patients with diarrhea will have frequent, loose, watery stools and may have difficulty controlling the urge to defecate.  Those with constipation may experience straining and cramping with bowel movements.  IBS patients may also lose their appetites due to the bloating sensation.  Overall, these symptoms tend to wax and wane over time for some patients, though for other patients they are constant.

If you didn’t already notice, the IBS symptom picture is highly variable.

IBS the most common cause of referrals to gastroenterologists in the US, and it is a diagnosis of exclusion.  That is because in patients with IBS, there aren’t any abnormalities in the structure of the colon itself, and all test results come back normal.  Within the traditional medical paradigm, therefore, not much can be done for it.  There is very limited data for the efficacy of any particular drug for this condition.

But fortunately, in naturopathic medicine, there is hope.  I take my time with my patients in order to discover the most likely root cause for his or her symptoms.  Some patients may have food intolerances contributing to their symptoms.  Others may have significant dysbiosis (overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria in the colon).  Some may simply not have enough fiber and water in their diets.  Some women may have a hormonal imbalance – these patients find that their IBS symptoms significantly worsen around the time of menses.  There is almost always some component of emotional stress in the case — more than 80% of the serotonin receptors in the body are found in the gut, which may partially explain the correlation between IBS and depressive symptoms.

Sometimes symptoms that suggest IBS require further testing to rule out other conditions, and sometimes a diagnosis can be made clinically and treatment can begin immediately.  I have seen IBS patients improve dramatically with homeopathy, enzymes, some simple diet and lifestyle adjustments, and stress management techniques.

The bottom line – the cause and the symptom picture varies depending on the patient, and so the treatment must also be individualized.  Call for an appointment to determine the best treatment for you.

Dr Lauren Deville is board-certified to practice Naturopathic Medicine.  For appointments, please call Nature Medica at 887-4287, or for more information, please see www.drlaurendeville.com. 

As a naturopathic doctor, I take my time with my patients and get to know each person’s story, as well as his or her health history.  Very frequently it turns out that at least a component of his or her chief concern involves stress.

Nor am I alone in this – an estimated 75-90% of all visits to Primary Care Physicians are for stress-related complaints or disorders.  Stress has been linked to all of the leading causes of death, including heart disease and cancer.  Clearly from a holistic physician’s perspective, proper stress management techniques are absolutely essential to your health.

The following is a list of recommendations that I make to my patients.  Some may be more applicable to you than others.

• Get enough sleep.  Adequate sleep contributes to overall well being, including but not limited to improved energy and greater emotional stability.
• Eat a healthy diet.  High sugar, high saturated fat, and nutrient deficiencies can all cause inflammation and a physiologic stress response in your body.
• Exercise regularly.  Exercise elevates your mood by releasing endorphins (the natural “high”) and improves your metabolism.  It also promotes the elimination of toxins from your body by improving your circulation.  Toxic accumulation can also cause a physiologic stress response.
• Maintain a positive attitude.  Thoughts easily become habits — negative meditation (or worry) produces a negative attitude, and positive meditation does the opposite.  Just like any other habit, it’s difficult to break the tendency to think negatively at first, but it becomes easier with practice.  It is also important to be selective about the ideas that you allow to influence your mind.  As far as you are able, surround yourself with positive people and uplifting media (books, music, movies, and the like), and shut off those voices that are negative or harmful.  It still may not be easy at first to change habits of negative thinking, but this will certainly help to set you up for success.
• Practice effective communication.  Many stressful events in our lives come about as a result of poor communication, leading to tension in relationships.  It is important to diffuse these situations at the outset as much as possible in order to avoid larger problems later on.
• Manage your time.  This involves planning for those tasks that we consider to be most important, and also allowing time for relaxation.  Planning your schedule in advance will help you know when to ask for assistance, rearrange your priorities, or say no when you see that you won’t have enough time to complete a particular task.  Both over scheduling and poor time management can lead to unnecessary stress.
• Develop leisure activities.  Consider joining a social or volunteer group with similar interests to yours.  Schedule time to get away for the weekend, to go on vacation, or to spend time with people you love.
• Relaxation techniques.  Choose one or more of the following suggestions to practice regularly.  Notice that all of these techniques involve a shift in focus — that is the key.
1. Prayer: The idea that we are in control of our own lives is an illusion anyway.  Prayer reminds us to place our focus not on the problem, but on the One who can lead us to the solution.  Pray about your concerns, but then be still and listen.  You might be surprised what you’ll hear.
2. Meditation is the art of clearing your mind and focusing intently on a single image, phrase, or idea.  Worry involves the constant focus on a negative thought or idea, while meditation is the intentional focus on a positive idea.  For example, I meditate on Bible verses that speak specifically to my circumstance.  Instead of worry and fear, I begin to see the positive solution I hope for as I focus on these words.  My hope then turns into faith as I choose to believe the verses on which I am meditating.
3. Guided imagery.  When you worry, you are using your imagination to envision a negative outcome.  Why not use the powerful tool of your mind in order to achieve the opposite effect?  There are many terrific guided imagery CDs that can help you with this technique if you are not yet adept at creating powerful images on your own.
4. Yoga.  This form of slow, methodical stretching holds each pose long enough to release stored tension in the muscles that are forced to relax.  It also emphasizes proper breathing (see below).
5. Deep breathing.  This is a quick way to bring your body into a parasympathetic (or a “not stressed”) state.  When muscles are tense, they seize up, inhibiting blood flow and oxygenation.  Deep breathing provides more oxygen to your tissues, helping to release that tension.   Breathe in and out to a count of five seconds each, expanding your stomach rather than your chest.  This drops your diaphragm, fills your lungs to capacity, and slows your heart rate.
6. Massage.  This technique forces blood flow back into tense muscles, which both delivers oxygen and whisks away toxins that have stagnated in the tissues.

Stress is not what happens to us; it’s the way our bodies react to it.  But if we supply our bodies and our minds with positive, healthful influences, we will be much better equipped to deal with the challenges of life.

Dr Lauren Deville is a board-certified Naturopathic Physician.  For more information, please see www.drlaurendeville.com, or call 520-887-4287 to make an appointment.

If you’re chronically stressed out and always feel tired, read on. 

Your adrenals are two pyramid-shaped glands that sit on top of your kidneys.  They perform a variety of functions, but adrenal fatigue specifically refers to their ability to help the body cope with stress.  Prolonged stress can lead to adrenal burnout.

The core of the adrenal glands produces an acute stress neurotransmitter called epinephrine, also known as adrenaline (hence the name, adrenal glands).  Epinephrine performs a very important function: it gives us the strength we need to get over an acutely stressful situation.

Our ancestors needed epinephrine in order to stay alive in a hostile environment.  But today, we’re stressed out all the time.  Adrenaline gets released when we’re late and stuck in traffic, in angry confrontations, or even when we’ve adapted to chronic anxiety.

One of three outer layers of the adrenal glands produces another hormone meant to offset the effects of adrenaline and “buffer” the body against the effects of acute stress.  This hormone is called cortisol.  But the adrenals were never meant to produce as much cortisol as they have to in chronically stressful situations.  Eventually they just get tired.

The first stage of adrenal fatigue happens when you have been under a lot of stress for a long time, but not quite so long that your adrenals are unable to adapt.  During this stage, cortisol output is chronically higher than it should be, but still not high enough to compensate entirely for the adrenaline output.   In this stage you may experience:

• Weight gain
• High blood pressure
• Disturbed sleep
• PMS
• Irritability

During the second stage, when your adrenals can’t produce enough cortisol to compensate for prolonged stress, you may experience:

• Depression
• PMS
• Insomnia
• Sugar cravings and hypoglycemia
• Low blood pressure upon standing (orthostatic hypotension)
• Recurrent infections and difficulty shaking off infections

Your naturopathic doctor can work you up for adrenal fatigue; often the diagnosis can be made clinically but sometimes labs are helpful.  There are a variety of treatments, depending on the stage of adrenal fatigue, ranging from diet and lifestyle changes to supplements to prescription medications for more severe cases.  But most patients I’ve seen with adrenal fatigue feel much better just with a few simple treatments.  You can get your energy back too.

Dr Lauren Deville is board-certified to practice Naturopathic Medicine.  For more information, please see www.drlaurendeville.com.