Hidden Nature of Chronic Infections:

• Chronic infections, unlike acute ones, are stealthy, presenting subtle or delayed symptoms.
• Common culprits include bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites, which can elude immune detection.

Impact on Health:

• Immune System Dysregulation: Chronic infections can lead to recurrent infections, autoimmune disorders, and increased inflammation.
• Chronic Inflammation: A key contributor to heart disease, cancer, and autoimmune conditions.
• Mental Health: Influences mood and cognitive function, potentially causing depression and anxiety.
• Fatigue: Profound, life-altering fatigue is a common consequence.
• Digestive Issues: Chronic infections can disrupt gut health, leading to IBS and food sensitivities.
• Musculoskeletal Pain: Infections like Lyme disease can mimic conditions like fibromyalgia.

Holistic Natural Medicine Approach:

• Personalized Assessment: Functional medicine doctors and naturopaths conduct in-depth evaluations and specialized testing.
• Diet Modification: Emphasis on anti-inflammatory, nutrient-rich diets to bolster the immune system.
• Herbal Remedies: Utilization of antimicrobial herbs like garlic and oregano.
• Probiotics: Critical for restoring gut health and supporting a robust immune system.
• Detoxification: Enhancing the body’s natural detox pathways to clear infection-related toxins.
• Stress Management: Techniques like meditation and yoga to alleviate stress exacerbated by chronic infections.
• Targeted Antimicrobial Support: Using natural agents like colloidal silver for specific pathogens.

Prevention and Early Intervention:

• Good hygiene practices and a strong immune system through healthy living are vital.
• Prompt attention to persistent symptoms to prevent the escalation of infections.

In conclusion, chronic infections require a comprehensive approach that functional medicine, holistic doctors, and naturopathic practitioners excel in. By addressing the root causes and supporting the body’s natural healing mechanisms, individuals can embark on a journey towards optimal health and vitality.

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Light and Personal Energy Production

As the light hits your skin at an appropriate enough intensity several metabolic events take place in the cell’s batteries, ancient bacteria known as mitochondria, that stimulate the production of energy currency, known as ATP (adenosine triphosphate). The food you eat combines with the oxygen you have taken in to produce ATP and the stimulation from light adds to this process. This energy unit, which is essentially light, is behind every function in your body from keeping you healthy and rejuvenating to having energy for social engagement and all of life’s events. When this is compromised our system still functions but poorly, much like an economy in recession – we see systems functioning but well below par, knowing we never feel so good but can’t understand why. Eventually ill health is an outcome. This is worsened due to reduced time in the sun, an overload of sunscreen on the skin when in the sun, and for many most of the day is spent indoors under artificial light – primarily only blue light, which deprives our cells even further.

Light Therapy

Light therapy is essential for our modern lifestyle, one that limits our time outdoors and even warns against direct sun exposure. Your cells want and need good light from the full spectrum. As a result you can produce more energy. The process is self-reinforcing. Light therapy has been studied through intensive scientific research over the past 40 years, specifically under an area known as low level laser therapy, or nowadays referred to as photobiomodulation. It is understood that the targeted wavelength of the red light spectrum, 630 to 660 nm, can penetrate the skin 8-10 millimeters, working from the inside-out to enhance mitochondrial function and thus benefit the skin. It has been noted in research that 660nm wavelength is closest to the resonant frequency of cell tissue and can subsequently be absorbed better in the hemoglobin, the carrier of oxygen in red blood cells. Near-infrared (NIR) wavelengths that function at the 850 or 880nm level have been shown to penetrate far deeper beneath the skin to tissue and bone. Based on research at NASA, NIR emitted through color specific LED bulbs operate by activating color sensitive chemicals in body tissues. This in turn stimulates the cell’s mitochondria.

Red and NIR, Skin and Organs

The combination of red light, which offers healing to the skin, and NIR, as healing to deeper organs, means a light therapy that improves our energy and healing, upgrades our health, enhances how the brain works because its energy workload is freed up and it can achieve higher grade energy production.

Health Benefits

Research study programs reveal health benefits that include enhanced blood circulation, anti-inflammatory effects, increased muscle recovery, improved skin tone and glow, reduced wrinkles and scars, improved wound healing, pain reduction, lymphatic flow boost, increased cellular growth, and even enhanced fertility and increased testosterone. A reduction of inflammation on both the skin and inner organs improves health and aids the reduction of inflammation in the brain to improve brain function.

How to Apply It

Take any opportunity you have to spend time outside in good, natural light. This is especially beneficial at the start of the day. One of the best ways to handle jet lag is to get up at dawn on your first wake up day in your new time zone and be outside, under the light looking towards the sun, whether cloudy or clear skies. Also take any opportunity to walk to work, school or the stores, and sit outside for lunch.

SOURCE: Samahita Retreat

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Several medical studies have evaluated the effects of red and near infrared light on conditions like multiple sclerosis and specific types of blindness – once thought to be irreversible – and found that application of measured doses of red and NIR acted to heal damaged tissues and restore cellular function. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Now, researchers have found that both red and infrared light can also help repair muscle tissue in athletes, helping them train and build muscle tissue more efficiently and compete more effectively. Light therapy has the additional benefit of being effective without the use of potentially harmful drugs. But how does it work?

Light Therapy Fuels Your Muscle Tissue

We all know we need sunlight to stay healthy. Plenty of studies have underscored the role of sunlight in the production of vitamin D, and even back in the first century A.D., Roman scholar and naturalist Pliny the Elder extolled sunlight as “the greatest remedy.” But despite the sun’s longtime reputation as a natural healer, it’s taken us thousands of years to figure out how the sun promotes healing responses in the body – particularly in the muscles. It all starts deep in the cells where tiny structures called mitochondria take in nutrients, process them, and convert them to an energy source that the cells can use to function and repair themselves. Different types of cells have different energy requirements, and that means they contain different numbers of mitochondria. In the case of muscle tissue, which has high energy demands, mitochondria abound. In fact, it’s those high levels of mitochondria inside the muscle tissue that makes red and NIR light therapy so effective in promoting muscle health.

Red and Near Infrared Light Prevent Muscle Fatigue

One of the primary ways light therapy helps promote better muscle health and function is by preventing or limiting muscle fatigue, which naturally occurs as a result of physical activity – especially strenuous exercise and training. In fact, research shows red and infrared light therapy is effective in preventing muscle fatigue and enhancing skeletal muscle performance.3

So how does light therapy reduce muscle fatigue and repair cells? At the most basic level, red and NIR light therapy improve the mitochondria respiration cycle and help mitochondria produce energy more efficiently – and that means muscles are less likely to suffer from fatigue. That’s it in a nutshell, but of course, the physiologic mechanisms behind all these benefits is a lot more complex. For instance, application of red and near infrared light helps promote production of antioxidants which play a central role in reducing oxidative stress associated with muscle fatigue. And they also increase the production of heat proteins – special proteins that help protect cells from stress and early cell death (apoptosis).4,5 Plus, light therapy helps reduce inflammation that can lead to cell damage.6,7,8 Some studies have shown an increase in microcirculation following light therapy, indicating tissues are more able to receive oxygen and other nutrients important for tissue healing – in addition to ridding themselves of toxic byproducts.9

Light Therapy Enhances Muscle Growth

Muscle function and repair are important for improving strength and endurance and reducing fatigue and soreness following workouts and physical activity. But the benefits of red and NIR light therapy don’t stop there. Research shows application of light therapy also promotes the growth of healthy muscle tissue, or muscle hypertrophy, naturally increasing muscle size and bulk – as well as strength.10,11 In fact, one study comparing muscle growth and strength between two groups of athletes – one using light therapy combined with exercise and one using exercise alone – found muscle thickness and strength were significantly improved in those who used light therapy, and results were clearly measurable using ultrasound imaging and isokinetic dynamometry (Figure A).12

The Long-Term Benefits of Light Therapy

In addition to increases in muscle repair, strength & size, and decreases in muscle fatigue – light therapy also offers long-term benefits for future muscle health and development by targeting muscle stem cells called myosatellite cells. Like other types of stem cells, muscle stem cells remain in an undifferentiated state until activated, at which point they develop into specific types of muscle cells. Just as mitochondria produce energy muscle cells need for optimal function and repair, they also help regulate muscle stem cell activation and differentiation – essentially guiding stem cells into their final form as healthy muscle tissue. Since light therapy enhances mitochondrial action, it may also play an important role in stimulating the growth of new muscle cells and tissue used to “speed up” the repair process following muscle injury or fatigue –  improving overall muscle health and function in the long run.

Conclusion: Light Therapy Works

Red and near infrared light therapy shows amazing promise as a drug-free treatment to enhance and improve muscle function, strength, and performance – as well as improving muscle size and bulk to help athletes of all levels train and compete better. And, the natural healing mechanisms stimulated by light therapy can help athletes heal more quickly following injury while also preventing muscle fatigue and soreness that can interfere with both training and competitive performance. Plus, light therapy can be performed in a professional setting or at home, making it extremely accessible. But as noted before, wavelength and intensity are incredibly imperative when it comes to light therapy.  Make sure you choose a device that delivers red or near infrared light with the correct wavelength along with an optimal amount of power.

For athletes of all backgrounds – from pros to students to “weekend warriors” – light therapy is a scientifically-backed approach that can have significant and long-lasting benefits.

SOURCE: WORKOUT BAR FITNESS

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Aletha Kenney, AAS, LMT, CNS, CPFS

Aletha is a Licensed Massage Therapist called to nurture and rejuvenate the body and soul while also healing hurting people. Using her intuitive nature, she applies a variety of modalities to restore joy and peace while bringing about an improved quality of life. A graduate of Parker University School of Massage Therapy with Honors, Aletha stayed at Parker earning an Associate Degree in Applied Science emphasis in Massage Therapy from their Health and Science School.

Areas of Expertise…

Deep Tissue, Fibrosis & Adhesion’s, Myofascial Release, Sports Massage, Neuromuscular Therapy, Swedish, Visceral Massage, Cupping, Hand & Foot Scrub, Prenatal Massage, Manual Therapy for Female Breast

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You’ve probably heard the phrase, “all disease begins the gut”. This statement is very accurate,and I’m certainly not going to argue with it. If your gut isn’t in optimal shape, then your immune system and your health will suffer.

However, sometimes we have to look beyond the gut to help fix the problem. The gut is connected to every other system and organ in the body in some way. What happens in the gut can affect your skin, hormones, brain, etc.

Often times, the reverse is true too; especially when we’re talking about the brain. The brain and the gut are incredibly linked. In fact, the gut has it’s own nervous system and is considered the second brain.

In order for your digestive system to function properly, it has to communicate with a properly functioning brain. The health of your brain affects your digestive system, and the health of your gut impacts your brain.

So, if you’ve been struggling with digestive problems like IBS and haven’t seen any improvement with diet or supplements, then you may want to consider the health of your brain; specifically, a very important nerve call the vagus nerve.

I recently read the book, Why Isn’t My Brain Working, by Dr. Datis Kharrazian, and he spends a lot of time talking about the function of the vagus nerve. I highly reading his book; it’s fantastic and full of wonderful information.

Vagus nerve coordinates communication between the brain and the gut.

Your brain stem contains a group of nerve bundles called the vagal nuclei, which branch out into the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve then branches out from your brainstem to your intestines.

As previously mentioned, your gut has it’s own nervous system called the enteric nervous system, and your brain communicates with the enteric nervous system through the vagus nerve.

It does this by activating the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve then activates the enteric nervous system. Your enteric nervous system then stimulates motility in the intestinal tract.

When your vagus nerve is working properly, you have good bowel movements, good enzyme production and overall good digestion.

When your brain function suffers due to degeneration and inflammation, output through the brainstem lowers. This decreases the firing rate of the vagus nerve, which can cause poor digestion, constipation, and food intolerances.

Does this sound like you?

Lack of sufficient output through the brainstem can impair the vagus nerve, which can result in poor digestive motility and constipation.

Many symptoms can occur when the vagus nerve is not functioning efficiently due to poor brain function.

As the gut-brain axis loses efficiency in communication, the vagus nerve loses the ability to activate the release of stomach acid, which helps digest protein.

Therefore, you may notice you can no longer digest protein like meat and eggs without feeling like you have a brick in your stomach. Or you may develop acid reflux. Both conditions are a sign of low stomach acid production.

If your gut-brain communication is poor, then you may experience poor enzyme and bile production. These functions are needed to digest fiber, starches, and fats. At this point, you may experience the inability to digest fiber-rich foods or fatty foods.

An impaired vagus nerve also leads to leaky gut, or intestinal permeability. Other consequences of impaired vagal function include bacterial and yeast overgrowth.

If any of this sounds like you, then you may have poor vagus nerve function. You can actually strengthen your vagus nerve by performing a few different exercises.

Neurons are like muscles. They need constant stimulation to be healthy. So, there are exercises you can do to make it stronger. Vagal exercises are easy to perform at home.

Try These 4 Techniques to Improve Vagus Nerve Function

Gargling

One exercise is to gargle with water several times a day. The vagus nerve activates the muscles in the back of your throat that allow you to gargle. Gargling contracts these muscles, activating the vagus nerve and stimulating the GI tract.

Be sure to gargle long and deep enough to make it challenging.

Sing Loudly

This can be a lot of fun. You can do this at home or in the car. If you’re like me, it’s probably best  to do it when you’re alone, so you don’t annoy those around you. (I was not blessed with a nice singing voice.)

Singing loudly works the muscles in the back of the throat to activate the vagus nerve.

Gag

This one may seem strange and even dangerous, but hear me out. You basically just want to stimulate the gag reflex, but don’t hurt yourself. You can purchase a box of tongue blades or use a spoon. Just lay it on the back of your tongue and push down to stimulate the gag reflex.

Gag reflexes are like doing push ups for the vagus nerve while gargling and singing are like doing sprints.

You will need to do these exercises consistently for several weeks to produce change.

Coffee Enema

If you are having significant difficulty with regular bowel movements, then you may try coffee enemas. Dr. Kahrrazian suggests doing them daily, but you could try weekly or whatever is comfortable for you.

Distending the intestines with an enema activates the vagus nerve. Additionally, the caffeine in the coffee stimulates intestinal motility. Many people notice their bowel movements improve over time, and they can start weaning off the enemas.

So, now that you have a few easy techniques to try, start incorporating them into your daily routine. Gargle as you sip your water throughout the day. Sing out loud in the car. Do a couple of gag reflexes before bed.

Over time, you may notice that your digestion is improving.

References:

Why Isn’t My Brain Working, Dr. Datis Kharrazian

SOURCE:  https://www.jenbroyles.com/4-ways-improve-digestion-doubt-youve-tried/

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NATURAL FERTILITY SOLUTION

This is my attempt to introduce you to the world of functional medicine and how it can help many suffering with infertility and looking for natural fertility treatments. Also commonly known as “integrative medicine”, and occasionally referred to as “holistic medicine”, if you’re struggling to fall pregnant naturally, you’ve been diagnosed with unexplained infertility, or you are looking for a natural fertility diet, then functional medicine has plenty of rational reasons for you to feel a renewed sense of hope.

“Functional medicine is the future of conventional medicine–available now. It seeks to identify and address the root causes of disease, and views the body as one integrated system, not a collection of independent organs divided up by medical specialties. It treats the whole system, not just the symptoms.” Mark Hyman, MD.

And thanks to treating the body as a whole and uncovering the root cause of your fertility problem, functional integrative medicine can uncover and fix many fertility problems that a normal doctor would not find or fix. Instead of offering a pill to fix the symptoms, it’s healing what is actually causing those symptoms. So simple isn’t it?! But it is pure genius.

So for all the hopeful moms out there searching for some extra natural fertility boosters, I’ve found one pretty in depth solution for you!

The most treacherous of journeys – a sperms tale

Despite external appearances, the process of getting pregnant is far more complex than a country song and a “night in a pick-up”.

Firstly, consider the physical process of getting a tiny fragile tadpole, with nothing working in its favor except grim determination and the most desperate of swimming styles, to reach its prize. He weaves through a dark maze of narrow orifice, viscous fluids, long pipes, and dead-ends, to the site of your golden egg (who has had an equally treacherous journey) before having to work its way through a wall of gunk using its head as a spade, is as close to a miracle as the faithless can believe.

There are a lot of reasons why even a massive naval division of these Michael Phelps wannabes don’t make it to the prom with lady-luck. How receptive your body is to a timely visit from your male partner’s zygotes can make a big difference to what happens on that pee-test stick in 2 weeks’ time.

To get pregnant, you want your eggs waiting and excited to receive the visit. If you’re not very healthy, instead the path to the party can be fraught with toxic substances and landmines, or even worse, there might not even be anyone there to party with at the end.

Infertility’s link to ill-health

And that’s just the physical part of the process! From a biological perspective, getting pregnant and staying pregnant has got to be one of the most complex series of biochemical reactions that the human body is capable of. When you think about what is required to develop healthy eggs, that are then released on time, are fertilised, implant in the uterus, develop into a fetus and then successfully grow into a real-life human being in an environment fraught with potential reasons to abort, it’s amazing that we even have children at all!

There are just so many things that can go wrong. And if you are not at your optimum health one of these many things that need to go right in order to get pregnant may go wrong instead.

If you’re in the business of producing healthy happy little people, taking good care of your entire health and wellbeing, holistically, is a no-brainer if you ask me. As my husband would say, “you would never brew a decent beer in a dirty fermentation vessel” so why wouldn’t we want to place the same level of care in our baby making factory?

Getting your equipment in order is one of the most obvious and effective things you can do to get yourself pregnant, so be pro-active about your health before you do anything else. Consider this your self administered natural fertility solution. By fixing your health many times you can also fix whatever is preventing you from getting pregnant (age dependent of course). Here, functional medicine is one of the most powerful methods that’s available to you do to this.

What is functional (integrative) medicine and how can it help me as a natural fertility treatment?

To explain what functional medicine is, I have unashamedly lifted some great quotes and comments from some fantastic functional medicine writers. Catherine Guthrie is a fantastic writer  and I recommend her work to anyone interested in reading great articles about health and functional medicine. rk Hyman as become the face of functional medicine and has been doing a great job spreading the word. I have also quoted ffrey Bland, who is widely considered one of functional medicine’s leading pioneers.

So what is functional medicine? Mark Hyman, the chairman of the Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) described functional medicine best when he said “Conventional medicine is the medicine of “what” — what disease do you have, what drug should I give you. Functional medicine considers the diagnosis, of course, but it also seeks to answer the question “why”.”

It is all about preventing and treating long term chronic illness and diseases which are often at the root of our ill-health. And when I say disease I mean all those niggly health concerns that affect you daily. The chronic reflux or those swollen joints, not just the big stuff like diabetes or cancer. This requires an intensive process of doctor – patient interaction far different in style and approach to that of conventional medicine.

Functional medicine is a systems-oriented, science-based approach that involves looking at EVERYTHING, including a patient’s biochemistry, physiology, genetics, and environmental exposures and then looking for the underlying cause. Not just giving you a pill to fix the symptom so you can go on your merry way.

“Functional medicine isn’t ‘airy fairy,’” says Jeffrey Bland, PhD, “The method is grounded in science, and we use the best drugs available, if needed.” But, when appropriate, practitioners also advise patients about nutrition, exercise, and reduction of toxic exposure. “This is simply about using the right tool for the right job.”

Chronic, rather than acute illness solutions

Functional medicine is the solution to many of the short-comings of conventional western medicine.

As David Jones, MD, President of the Institute for Functional Medicine explained of his early experience as a physician in an interview with Catherine Guthrie (2013):

“I was seeing the effects of treating chronic problems with medications meant for acute illness, and the side effects left many of my patients feeling worse than they did before they saw me. My main treatments at that time were pharmacological and didn’t address the underlying causes of my patients’ real day-to-day issues.”

As reported recently by Guthrie (2013): Most experts acknowledge the current system is failing people with chronic illness. Even James Madara, MD, executive vice president and chief executive officer of the American Medical Association (AMA), agrees that traditional medicine education needs an overhaul.

“The structure of medical-school curriculum hasn’t changed in more than half a century, yet, in the last 25 years, patients’ needs have changed completely,” he says. “Today, for every one person admitted to the hospital, 300 more are seen as outpatients, most with chronic conditions. Caring for this new population requires an entirely different mindset.”

Functional medicine is the natural fertility treatment we’ve been missing

Imagine the triumphs of western medicine being a masterpiece of great art created by centuries of ideas and experiments conducted by the worlds’ most brave and intelligent members applying layer upon layer of paint over our collective history to create a marvel to behold.

In my mind, functional medicine is the finely applied top layer. Scattered throughout the art-work, amongst, and on top of all the layers that have come before, to take something that was already great, and then making it even better.

Western medicine is AMAZING at eliminating infectious disease (think Polio, and Malaria), and achieves miracles as a matter of course when it comes to acute trauma (think Grey’s Anatomy or ER) but the capability to solve the less acute health issues that befall almost all of us at some point was one of the few things missing from western medicines body of knowledge… until now that is.

My first contact with functional medicine

As I describe in isode 2 of my podcast where I tell my own infertility story, hen I was a teen, I went to see a doctor because I did not have regular periods. The solution? He put me on the pill.

Problem solved right? Right…. until I wanted to start making babies of course. Having periods is a pretty obvious pre-requisite to getting pregnant, so addressing my chronic lack of them was at the top of my medical agenda when I went to see a functional practitioner for the first time in 2010. This is where the journey of functional medicine as natural fertility treatment began for me.

I met my first functional practitioner, Dr Lee, when a friend recommended that she might be able to help with my acid reflux. Little did I know that I was also going to get PCOS fixed as well! As a professional musician that was required to sing for up to 3 hours at a time, 3 times a week to make a living, having a raw, burning sensation in my throat was a pretty serious threat to my livelihood.

My first visit to see Dr Lee was almost comical:

Me: “Hi Dr Lee, nice to meet you. Can you please fix my acid reflux?”

Dr Lee: “Sure. I should be able to do that no problem. How much do you weigh?”

Me: “Umm… excuse me?”

Dr Lee: “What is your temperament like? Are you moody?”’

Me: “I beg your pardon?”

Dr Lee: “Do you have regular bowel movements? Can you describe the consistency?”

Me: [choking noises] “are you serious? Is this some kind of a joke?”

The functional practitioners’ interview

As I soon found out, a good functional practitioner will ask you a ‘gzillion questions during your first interview, some of which will seem pretty normal like “how much alcohol do you drink?”, and others like “do you get impatient easily?” seem pretty out-there, especially if you just want your throat to stop hurting so you can sing without sounding like Johnny Cash in “The Man Comes Around”.

Once I got over my shock at the line of questioning, the nearly three hour interview with Dr Lee was cathartic. I had never had a doctor take every little aspect of my ill health so seriously. In fact the opposite was normally true.

If you have health complaints that you have almost given-up discussing with any medical professionals because they usually blow you off, then you’ll love seeing a functional practitioner because they’ll do the opposite.

Functional practitioners take everything seriously

From what I now understand, it is normal for functional practitioners to find “clues” in many of our behaviours regarding food preferences, relationships, hobbies and interests as well as what can be measured with any of the tools and implements of the conventional physician.

And this is not an “airy fairy” approach, there is actual pure scientific discoveries to be made behind these questions.

It was through my first interview that my PCOS, and multiple other health issues in addition to the acid reflux, came to Dr Lee’s attention after which she soon informed me that she intended to fix them all!

What a legend!

Diagnostic testing

After the interview, I walked away with a MASSIVE list of tests I needed to undertake which required sampling just about every fluid in my body. Depending on your tolerance for handling spit, blood, pee and poop, this experience can be a little traumatic so a good sense of humour as well as some trusting optimism is a great preparation for the “testing phase”.

Illness understood at the biochemical level

When the results came back I spent another two hours with Dr Lee where she told me everything she had learned from the testing.

Dr Lee explained some of the most out-of-it concepts I had ever heard of. For example, she explained how zinc and vitamin B behave within the biosynthetic pathways of our metabolism. Dr Lee hypothesized that my deficiency of these key compounds, was contributing (if not completely causing) many of the problems I was having with fatigue, insomnia, moodiness, headaches, and bowel dysfunction. These same test results also explained why I had a poor memory and couldn’t handle stress very well!

Until that point, I had thought that my memory and anxiety problems were a hangover and just-deserts for a mis-spent decade as a foolish teenager and twenty-something who thought she was bullet-proof.

It also turned out that other mineral deficiencies impacted my hormone levels in a way that would explain why I was such a reckless tomb-boy as a kid, and why I was becoming such a whimp now as an adult. (I once broke my right ankle by jumping off a ledge in celebration of getting my left ankle out of a cast after I had broken it only a few weeks prior – yeah my mom and doctor were not impressed but who would have thought eh?)

PCOS understood as more than what wasn’t happening

As a functional practitioner, Dr Lee was able to view my PCOS as more than just a lack of menstruation, and hormone imbalances. She saw it as a fundamental problem with my metabolic machinery and the raw materials going into this complicated facility. Instead of putting me on the pill to control my hormones, and metformin to manage the insulin resistance that goes hand-in-hand with PCOS, Dr Lee took a completely novel approach: treating me through a specialised natural fertility diet.

Treating chronic illness without medication

After my crash course in molecular biology and learning how this affects us at an every day level I was prescribed with enough dietary supplements to support my own personal compounding pharmacy. I was also given a very strict “fertility diet” that for all its restrictions looks a lot like a paleo diet.

Dr Lee wanted me to focus on eating nutrient dense foods, especially animal proteins and vegetables, but almost NO sugar, and a reduced carbohydrate intake that only consisted of low GI carbs like sweet potato, quinoa, black rice and pumpkin. I also was asked to cut out gluten and dairy and all the other foods that showed up on my food allergy test.

I was devastated and excited at the same time (it was a really weird feeling) so I went to my favourite chocolate café for the last time to let my feelings fight it out over a sweet rich chocolate dessert. I grieved a little, and then I welcomed the start of the new me .

Chronic disease needs chronic treatment

I have made regular trips back to see Dr Lee over the past four years where we cycle through the process of interview, testing, and adjusting of supplements and diet. It is through this process that I have:

1. Achieved regular periods and solved my other PCOS symptoms
2. Completely solved my acid reflux
3. Completely resolved 15 years of insomnia
4. Resolved the random chronic nausea I formerly experienced
5. Become resilient against infection where before I was very susceptible to them

In short, I have become about 100 times healthier and that means my baby-making reactor is in far better shape than ever before. To sustain my husband’s oddly creative analogy, I’m now completely ready for the malt barley and hops to be added

Functional medicine as a natural fertility treatment

Need more natural fertility info? While functional medicine has given me a whole new lease on life, I think none of the health benefits have been as precious as the improvement made to my reproductive health. And this is why I thought you might care too.

I know I lack credibility because I haven’t actually overcome my infertility yet, so for now you’ll just have to trust me that I know I am going to be a better baby incubator thanks to all the collective improvements made to my well-being. And if I hadn’t had a few other problems like my husband’s sperm and my eggs not liking each other (s I explain in more depth in this podcast episode where I tell my infertility story)  truly believe I could have achieved a successful pregnancy without IVF but rather through living and practicing a natural fertility solution such as functional medicine.

I have four years of improving test results that say so which include:

1. Healthier cortisol levels. Cortisol is the stress hormone, and we’ve all heard 100 times that stress is bad for making babies right?
2. Healthier cholesterol levels. The benefits to both you and baby of having good cardiovascular health is widely understood by everyone by now (I hope).
3. No vitamin deficiencies (and I have been tested for ALL of them).
4. And bonus – my B6 levels are good which, I’ve been told, will reduce the severity of morning sickness when I do get pregnant.

I’m a much healthier weight for getting pregnant now, I’m stronger, I almost never get sick (unlike before), and my hormone and thyroid functions are almost normal which is a massive feat for someone who has PCOS.

When I go through fertility plan checklist, hanks to functional medicine, I can put a tick in just about every box. You could think of functional medicine as a natural fertility diet.

Evaluating a decent functional practitioner

Functional practitioners can be expensive…like Lawyer expensive; and the cost of supplements may make your eyes water if you need a lot of them like I do. So you need a way of evaluating the capabilities of your practitioner before you commit to the investment. We want to make sure that this natural fertility treatment is worthwhile for you.

The institute for functional medicine provides some fantastic guidance on how to do this including some downloadable questions for you to ask functional practitioners.

While I’m sure that these professionals know a lot more than I do about functional medicine, here are my criteria for identifying a good functional practitioner:

Useful metrics for identifying a decent functional practitioner

• Qualifications. his is the easy and obvious one right? A decent functional practitioner will have a bachelor in general medicine i.e. they are an M.D, as well as have post-graduate training specifically in functional medicine. Nutritional medicine would also get a pass from me. doubt there will be many good functional practitioners out there that haven’t also had some formal professional development training in their discipline either.
• The interview. xpect your good functional practitioner to ask you a g’zillion questions as mine did. Functional practitioners are trained in how to uncover the underlying causes of your health problems by studying your medical history as well as doing physical examinations, andlab testing. This means a lot of talking, including what may seem like some pretty strange topics concerning your mental and social well-being. They should also test all your vitamin levels as well as do thorough testing for your gut health, like poo tests, food allergies, etc.

Things to ignore when looking for a decent functional practitioner

• Cost is NOT a good indicator of performance.  have seen another functional practitioner (when I moved to another state) who was significantly more expensive than Dr Lee and who was not as thorough so don’t let the price-tag influence you.

• The public profile of their patients is NOT a good indicator of performance. Being a “Consultant to the Stars” does not necessarily make a functional practitioner a great one. While many celebrities may be wealthy and have great public influence, they’re no less capable of selecting a top quality physician than you or I. Chances are you’re probably just as good of a critical thinker as many top athletes and movie stars, so don’t let their decisions influence you either.

• How awesome their website is, is NOT a good indicator of performance. While it’s nice if they have a good website, if they’re a smaller business I’d rather that my functional practitioner was busy keeping up with advances in the scientific literature rather than working on self-promotion. I guess the message here is don’t judge a book by its cover.
• Authoring books and magazine articles is NOT ood indicator of performance. Anyone can write a book about functional medicine. I’m not saying that people go out and write books just to make money without being an expert in the subject. But what you should keep in mind is that the criteria used to determine if a book or magazine article is good enough to publish is a financial one. Scientific accuracy, or as I always like to call, a solid BS filter, does not come into play. This “don’t be fooled by book publications” sentiment of mine however, does not apply to the publication of peer reviewed literature.

Doctors similar to functional practitioners

I would also like to put a word in here for other medical professionals with titles other than “Functional Practitioner” that offer similar solutions to those I have described in this article. Functional medicine really is an approach to chronic illness and hence isn’t limited to people with a specific job title.  Doctors of any other description should all be considered “good Functional Practitioners” provided they DO what Functional Practitioners do.

As described above, provided they are a qualified physician (MD), order loads of tests, conduct extensive interviews, spend a lot of effort understanding your gut bacteria and immune system and getting to the root of the problem, and have an impressively wide array of credible treatments, then you should be good to go.  A good practitioner is a good practitioner and if you’re lucky enough to find one that’s in your area, then book your appointments!

More of the Function Medicine Natural Fertility Info

My plan is to make plenty of blog posts about functional medicine, well as interviewing a few experts in the field on my podcast over the coming months because I really believe that this is one of the best natural fertility treatments you can consider if you’re trying to start a family.

If this sounds like it might be of interest to you, the first thing I would suggest is that you download my fertility plan checklist where I summarise all of the important aspects concerning reproductive health you might want to think about.

If you’re anything like me, when I hear about something new I just want to consume as much good content on the topic as I can. I’ve saved you the search by providing links below to some of the best sources of functional medicine for natural fertility info I could get my hands on.

Xo Kym

SOURCE:  http://www.smartfertilitychoices.com/functional-medicine-fertility/

The post Functional Integrative Medicine as a Natural Fertility Treatment appeared first on Natural Healing Center - Grapevine, TX - Dr. Rodney Russell.

By Dr. Mercola

If you’ve added the artificial sweetener sucralose (brand name Splenda) to your diet because you think it’s a healthy alternative to sugar, you’re being dangerously misled. Research from the Ramazzini Institute has linked the popular sugar alternative to cancer, specifically leukemia.

The findings were first presented at a London cancer conference in 2012 and prompted The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) to downgrade Splenda from its “safe” category to one of “caution.”

Now that the study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal, CSPI has again downgraded Splenda, this time from “caution” to “avoid.”

Splenda May Increase Risk of Cancer in Mice

The researchers fed mice Splenda beginning prenatally and continuing for their entire lifespan. The mice were fed varying concentrations of the artificial sweetener: 0 ppm (parts per million), 500 ppm, 2,000 ppm, 8,000 ppm or 16,000 ppm.

A significant increase in cancerous tumors was seen among male mice, and the risk increased along with the dose. The risk of leukemia in male mice also significantly increased, especially at Splenda doses of 2,000 to 16,000 ppm.1 According to the study:

“These findings do not support previous data that sucralose is biologically inert. More studies are necessary to show the safety of sucralose, including new and more adequate carcinogenic bioassay on rats.

Considering that millions of people are likely exposed, follow-up studies are urgent.”

CSPI explained that the only other long-term feeding studies conducted on Splenda were conducted by its manufacturer. The new study, they said:2

” … [I]s more powerful than the industry-funded studies, which tested fewer animals, started exposing the animals beginning at adolescence as opposed to in utero, and ended earlier in the animals’ lives.”

After more than a decade, CSPI has finally gotten it right about Splenda in recommending that consumers avoid it. For the record, however, CSPI is generally an organization whose guidelines need to be taken with a grain of salt.

For instance, while recommending that people avoid artificial sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame and saccharin, they still consider drinking diet soda to be safer than drinking regular soda.

Splenda Is Found in 4,500 Products

If you’d like to heed the warnings and cut Splenda from your diet, be aware that it’s found in more than 4,500 products. Splenda has been smartly marketed, and it’s most known for its tag line “made from sugar so it tastes like sugar.”

It’s earned a reputation for being somehow safer than other artificial sweeteners like aspartame, which is why PepsiCo ditched aspartame in its Diet Pepsi in 2015 and replaced it with none other than Splenda.

Splenda became one of the top-selling artificial sweeteners in the U.S. in a very short period of time. Between 2000 and 2004, the percentage of U.S. households using Splenda products jumped from 3 percent to 20 percent. By 2012, Splenda generated sales of nearly $288 million.3

But make no mistake; Splenda is far from natural, even though it technically does start off as a sugar molecule. In the five-step patented process of making sucralose, three chlorine molecules are added to a sucrose or sugar molecule.

A sucrose molecule is a disaccharide that contains two single sugars bound together: glucose and fructose. The chemical process to make sucralose alters the chemical composition of the sugar so much that it is somehow converted to a fructose-galactose molecule.

This type of sugar molecule does not occur in nature, and therefore your body does not possess the ability to properly metabolize it. As a result of this “unique” biochemical make-up, the manufacturers claim that Splenda is not digested or metabolized by your body, making it have zero calories.

Splenda is supposed to pass right through you. However, the research (which is primarily extrapolated from animal studies) indicates that about 15 percent of sucralose is, in fact, absorbed into your digestive system and ultimately stored in your body.

If the potential cancer finding isn’t enough to sway you away from this toxic artificial sweetener, be aware that Splenda may wreak havoc on your gut bacteria, which could have an untold number of consequences on your health.

An animal study published in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, for instance, found that Splenda reduces the amount of beneficial bacteria in rat intestines by 50 percent while also increasing the pH level.

It also affected a glycoprotein that may affect the way certain drugs are metabolized by the body.4 The researchers explained:

“At the end of the 12-wk treatment period, the numbers of total anaerobes, bifidobacteria, lactobacilli, Bacteroides, clostridia, and total aerobic bacteria were significantly decreased … Splenda also increased fecal pH

These changes occurred at Splenda dosages that contained sucralose at 1.1 to 11 mg/kg (the U.S. FDA Acceptable Daily Intake for sucralose is 5 mg/kg).

Evidence indicates that a 12-wk administration of Splenda exerted numerous adverse effects, including (1) reduction in beneficial fecal microflora, (2) increased fecal pH, and (3) enhanced expression levels of P-gp, CYP3A4, and CYP2D1, which are known to limit the bioavailability of orally administered drugs.”

Splenda May Have Neurotoxic Effects and Is Found in Water

Research published in 2014 detailed Splenda’s oxidative effects and suggested the sweetener may have neurotoxic properties.

The researchers, who assessed the effects of sucralose on water fleas, concluded that: “exposure to sucralose may induce neurological and oxidative mechanisms with potentially important consequences for animal behavior and physiology.”5

The enzyme acetylcholinesterase is found in all animals, and for researchers looking for possible effects that artificial sweeteners like Splenda might have on animals and humans, this new information was disturbing.

If for no other reason, that’s why it’s so important to find out the consequences of Splenda exposure sooner rather than later, as the chemicals have already been detected in municipal effluents and surface waters in both the U.S. and Europe.6

Splenda Raises Your Insulin Levels

Far from being an inert substance, research also shows that Splenda affects your body’s insulin response. When study participants drank a Splenda-sweetened beverage, their insulin levels rose about 20 percent higher than when they consumed only water prior to taking a glucose-challenge test.7

Blood sugar levels also peaked at a higher level, “So the artificial sweetener was related to an enhanced blood insulin and glucose response,” researchers noted, adding:8

“Although we found that sucralose affects the glucose and insulin response to glucose ingestion, we don’t know the mechanism responsible. We have shown that sucralose is having an effect. In obese people without diabetes, we have shown sucralose is more than just something sweet that you put into your mouth with no other consequences.

What these all mean for daily life scenarios is still unknown, but our findings are stressing the need for more studies. Whether these acute effects of sucralose will influence how our bodies handle sugar in the long term is something we need to know.”

Artificial Sweeteners Confuse Your Metabolism

When you eat something sweet, your brain releases dopamine, which activates your brain’s reward center. The appetite-regulating hormone leptin is also released, which eventually informs your brain that you are “full” once a certain amount of calories have been ingested.

However, when you consume something that tastes sweet but doesn’t contain any calories, like an artificial sweetener, your brain’s pleasure pathway still gets activated by the sweet taste. However, there’s nothing to deactivate it since the calories never arrive.

Artificial sweeteners basically trick your body into thinking that it’s going to receive sugar (calories), but when the sugar doesn’t come your body continues to signal that it needs more, which results in carb cravings.

Contrary to industry claims, research over the last 30 years — including several large-scale prospective cohort studies — has shown that artificial sweeteners stimulate appetite, increase cravings for carbs, and produce a variety of metabolic dysfunctions that promote fat storage and weight gain — often to the researchers’ great surprise.

For instance, a 2010 review published in the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine revealed the correlation between increased usage of artificial sweeteners in food and drinks and the corresponding rise in obesity. More than 11,650 children aged 9 to 14 were included in this study. Each daily serving of diet beverage was associated with a body mass index (BMI) increase of 0.16 kg/m2.

Are There Safer Artificial Sweeteners?

I recommend avoiding artificial sweeteners of any kind, as each is linked with its own risks. Aspartame is perhaps the most dangerous of the bunch. At least it’s one of the most widely used and has the most reports of adverse effects. There are also hundreds of scientific studies demonstrating its harmful effects.

Sugar alcohols are another option on the market. They can be identified by the commonality of “ol” at the end of their name, such as xylitol glucitol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol, glycerol, and lactitol. They’re not as sweet as sugar, and they do contain fewer calories, but they’re not calorie-free. So don’t get confused by the “sugar-free” label on foods containing these sweeteners.

One reason that sugar alcohols provide fewer calories than sugar is because they’re not completely absorbed into your body. Because of this, eating too many foods containing sugar alcohols can lead to abdominal gas and diarrhea. It’s also worth noting that maltitol, a commonly used sugar alcohol, spikes blood sugar almost as much as a starchy new potato.

Xylitol, in comparison, does not have a great effect on your blood sugar, so from that perspective it may be a better choice. In moderation, some sugar alcohols can be a better choice than artificial sweeteners like Splenda and aspartame. Of the various sugar alcohols, xylitol is one of the best. When it is pure, the potential side effects are minimal, and it actually comes with some benefits such as fighting tooth decay.

All in all, I would say that xylitol is reasonably safe, and potentially even a mildly beneficial sweetener. As a side note, xylitol is toxic to dogs and some other animals, so be sure to keep it out of reach of your family pets.)

That being said, two of the best natural sugar substitutes are from the plant kingdom: Stevia and Luo Han Guo (also spelled Luo Han Kuo). Stevia, a highly sweet herb derived from the leaf of the South American stevia plant, is sold as a supplement. It’s completely safe in its natural form and can be used to sweeten most dishes and drinks.

Luo Han Kuo is similar to Stevia, but it’s a bit more expensive and harder to find. In China, the Luo Han fruit has been used as a sweetener for centuries, and it’s about 200 times sweeter than sugar.

How to Break Free From Artificial Sweeteners

The best option of all is to break free from the grip of artificial sweeteners, which starts by eliminating your sugar cravings. If you aren’t craving something sweet, you probably won’t have a desire to reach for an artificial sweetener.

First, I highly recommend trying an energy psychology technique called Turbo Tapping, which has helped many “soda addicts” kick their habit, and it should work for any type of sweet craving (or diet soda craving) you may have. A few other tricks to try to kick your sugar cravings:

I believe the mechanism is related to the dramatic reduction in insulin levels that occurs after exercise. Additionally, if you do eat sugars or fruits around the time of the exercise, your sugar levels will not rise as it will metabolized for fuel

• Exercise: Anyone who exercises intensely on a regular basis will know that significant amounts of cardiovascular exercise is one of the best “cures” for food cravings. It always amazes me how my appetite, especially for sweets, dramatically decreases after a good workout.
• Organic, black coffee: Coffee is a potent opioid receptor antagonist, and contains compounds such as cafestrol — found plentifully in both caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee — which can bind to your opioid receptors, occupy them and essentially block your addiction to other opioid-releasing food.9,10 This may profoundly reduce the addictive power of other substances, such as sugar.
• Sour taste, such as that from cultured vegetables, helps to reduce sweet cravings, too. This is doubly beneficial, as fermented vegetables also promote gut health. You can also try adding lemon or lime juice to your water.

SOURCE: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/03/30/artificial-sweeteners-cause-cancer.aspx?utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art2&utm_campaign=20160330Z1&et_cid=DM101521&et_rid=1421870347

 

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If you saw Laura walking down the New York City street where she lives today, you’d see a well-dressed 46-year-old woman with auburn hair and green eyes, who exudes a sense of ‘I matter here.’ She looks entirely in charge of her life, but behind Laura’s confident demeanour lies a history of trauma: a bipolar mother who vacillated between braiding her daughter’s hair and peppering her with insults, and a father who moved out-of-state with his wife-to-be when Laura was 15 years old.

She recalls a family trip to the Grand Canyon when she was 10. In a photo taken that day, Laura and her parents sit on a bench, sporting tourist whites. ‘Anyone looking at us would have assumed that we were a normal, loving family.’ But as they put on fake smiles for the camera, Laura’s mother suddenly pinched her daughter’s midriff and told her to stop ‘staring off into space’. A second pinch: ‘No wonder you’re turning into a butterball, you ate so much cheesecake last night you’re hanging over your shorts!’ If you look hard at Laura’s face in the photograph, you can see that she’s not squinting at the Arizona sun, but holding back tears.

After her father left the family, he sent cards and money, but called less and less. Meanwhile, her mother’s untreated bipolar disorder worsened. Sometimes, Laura says: ‘My mom would go on a vitriolic diatribe about my dad until spittle foamed on her chin. I’d stand there, trying not to hear her as she went on and on, my whole body shaking inside.’ Laura never invited friends over, for fear they’d find out her secret: her mom ‘wasn’t like other moms’.

Some 30 years later, Laura says: ‘In many ways, no matter where I go or what I do, I’m still in my mother’s house.’ Today, ‘If a car swerves into my lane, a grocery store clerk is rude, my husband and I argue, or my boss calls me in to talk over a problem, I feel something flip over inside. It’s like there’s a match standing inside too near a flame, and with the smallest breeze, it ignites.’

To see Laura, you’d never know that she is ‘always shaking a little, only invisibly, deep down in my cells’.

Her sense that something is wrong inside is mirrored by her physical health. During a routine exam, Laura’s doctor discovered that Laura was suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy and would require a cardioverter defibrillator to keep her heart pumping. The two-inch scar from her surgery only hints at the more severe scars she hides from her childhood.

For as long as John can remember, he says, his parents’ marriage was deeply troubled, as was his relationship with his father. ‘I consider myself to have been raised by my mom and her mom. I longed to feel a deeper connection with my dad, but it just wasn’t there. He couldn’t extend himself in that way.’ John’s poor relationship with his father was due, in large part, to his father’s reactivity and need for control. For instance, if John’s father said that the capital of New York was New York City, there was just no use telling him that it was Albany.

As John got older, it seemed wrong to him that his father ‘was constantly pointing out all the mistakes that my brother and I made, without acknowledging any of his own’. His father relentlessly criticised his mother, who was ‘kinder and more confident’. Aged 12, John began to interject himself into the fights between his parents. He remembers one Christmas Eve, when he found his father with his hands around his mother’s neck and had to separate them. ‘I was always trying to be the adult between them,’ John says.

John is now a boyish 40, with warm hazel eyes and a wide, affable grin. But beneath his easy, open demeanour, he struggles with an array of chronic illnesses. By the time he was 33, his blood pressure was shockingly high; he began to experience bouts of stabbing stomach pain and diarrhoea and often had blood in his stool; he struggled from headaches almost daily. By 34, he’d developed chronic fatigue, and was so wiped out that he sometimes struggled to make it through an entire workday.

John’s relationships, like his body, were never completely healthy. He ended a year‑long romance with a woman he deeply loved because he felt riddled with anxiety around her normal, ‘happy family’. He just didn’t know how to fit in. ‘She wanted to help,’ he says, ‘but instead of telling her how insecure I was around her, I told her I wasn’t in love with her.’ Bleeding from his inflamed intestines, exhausted by chronic fatigue, debilitated and distracted by pounding headaches, often struggling with work, and unable to feel comfortable in a relationship, John was stuck in a universe of pain and solitude, and he couldn’t get out.

Laura’s and John’s life stories illustrate the physical price we can pay, as adults, for trauma that took place 10, 20, even 30 years ago. New findings in neuroscience, psychology and immunology tell us that the adversity we face during childhood has farther-reaching consequences than we might ever have imagined. Today, in labs across the country, neuroscientists are peering into the once-inscrutable brain-body connection, and breaking down, on a biochemical level, exactly how the stress we experience during childhood and adolescence catches up with us when we are adults, altering our bodies, our cells, and even our DNA.

Emotional stress in adult life affects us on a physical level in quantifiable, life-altering ways. We all know that when we are stressed, chemicals and hormones can flush our body and increase levels of inflammation. That’s why stressful events in adult life are correlated with the likelihood of getting a cold or having a heart attack.

But when children or teens face adversity and especially unpredictable stressors, they are left with deeper, longer‑lasting scars. When the young brain is thrust into stressful situations over and over again without warning, and stress hormones are repeatedly ramped up, small chemical markers, known as methyl groups, adhere to specific genes that regulate the activity of stress‑hormone receptors in the brain. These epigenetic changes hamper the body’s ability to turn off the stress response. In ideal circumstances, a child learns to respond to stress, and recover from it, learning resilience. But kids who’ve faced chronic, unpredictable stress undergo biological changes that cause their inflammatory stress response to stay activated.

Joan Kaufman, director of the Child and Adolescent Research and Education (CARE) programme at the Yale School of Medicine, recently analysed DNA in the saliva of happy, healthy children, and of children who had been taken from abusive or neglectful parents. The children who’d experienced chronic childhood stress showed epigenetic changes in almost 3,000 sites on their DNA, and on all 23 chromosomes – altering how appropriately they would be able to respond to and rebound from future stressors.

kids who’ve had early adversity have a drip of fight-or-flight hormones turned on every day – it’s as if there is no off switch

Likewise, Seth Pollak, professor of psychology and director of the Child Emotion Research Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, uncovered startling genetic changes in children with a history of adversity and trauma. Pollak identified damage to a gene responsible for calming the stress response. This particular gene wasn’t working properly; the kids’ bodies weren’t able to reign in their heightened stress response. ‘A crucial set of brakes are off,’ says Pollak.

Imagine for a moment that your body receives its stress hormones and chemicals through an IV drip that’s turned on high when needed and, when the crisis passes, it’s switched off again. You might think of kids whose brains have undergone epigenetic changes because of early adversity as having an inflammation-promoting drip of fight-or-flight hormones turned on every day – it’s as if there is no off switch.

Experiencing stress in childhood changes your set point of wellbeing for decades to come. In people such as Laura and John, the endocrine and immune systems are churning out a damaging and inflammatory cocktail of stress neurochemicals in response to even small stressors – an unexpected bill, a disagreement with their spouse, a car that swerves in front of them on the highway, a creak on the staircase – for the rest of their lives. They might find themselves overreacting to, and less able to recover from, the inevitable stressors of life. They’re always responding. And all the while, they’re unwittingly marinating in inflammatory chemicals, which sets the stage for full-throttle disease down the road, in the form of autoimmune disease, heart disease, cancer, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, fibroid tumours, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcers, migraines and asthma.

Scientists first came to understand the relationship between early chronic stress and later adult disease through the work of a dedicated physician in San Diego and a determined epidemiologist from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Together, during the 1980s and ’90s – the years when Laura and John were growing up – these two researchers began a paradigm-shifting public-health investigation known as the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study.

In 1985, Vincent J Felitti, chief of a revolutionary preventive care initiative at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care programme in San Diego, noticed a startling pattern in adult patients at an obesity clinic. A significant number were, with the support of Felitti and his nurses, successfully losing hundreds of pounds a year, a remarkable feat, only to withdraw from the programme despite weight-loss success. Felitti, determined to get to the bottom of the attrition rate, conducted face-to-face interviews with 286 patients. It turned out there was a common denominator. Many confided that they had suffered some sort of trauma, often sexual abuse, in their childhoods. To these patients, eating was a solution, not a problem: it soothed the anxiety and depression they had harboured for decades; their weight served as a shield against undesired attention, and they didn’t want to let it go.

Felitti’s interviews gave him a new way of looking at human health and wellbeing that other physicians just weren’t seeing. He presented his findings at a national obesity conference, arguing that ‘our intractable public health problems’ had root causes hidden ‘by shame, by secrecy, and by social taboos against exploring certain areas of life experience’. Felitti’s peers were quick to blast him. One even stood up in the audience and accused Felitti of offering ‘excuses’ for patients’ ‘failed lives’. Felitti, however, remained unfazed; he felt sure that he had stumbled upon a piece of information that would hold enormous import for the field of medicine.

After a colleague who attended that same conference suggested that he design a study with thousands of patients who suffered from a wide variety of diseases, not just obesity, Felitti joined forces with Robert Anda, a medical epidemiologist at the CDC who had, at the time, been researching the relationship between coronary heart disease and depression. Felitti and Anda took advantage of Kaiser Permanente’s vast patient cohort to set up a national epidemiology laboratory. Of the 26,000 patients they invited to take part in their study, more than 17,000 agreed.

Anda and Felitti surveyed these 17,000 individuals on about 10 types of adversity, or adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), probing into patients’ childhood and adolescent histories. Questions included: ‘Was a biological parent ever lost to you through divorce, abandonment or other reason?’; ‘Did a parent or other adult in the household often swear at you, insult you, put you down or humiliate you?’; and ‘Was a household member depressed or mentally ill?’ Other questions looked at types of family dysfunction that included growing up with a parent who was an alcoholic or addicted to other substances; being physically or emotionally neglected; being sexually or physically abused; witnessing domestic violence; having a family member who was sent to prison; feeling that there was no one to provide protection; and feeling that one’s family didn’t look out for each other. For each category to which a patient responded ‘yes’, one point would be added to her ACE score, so an ACE score of 2 would indicate that she had suffered two adverse childhood experiences.

To be clear, the patients Felitti and Anda surveyed were not troubled or disadvantaged; the average patient was 57, and three-quarters had attended college. These were ‘successful’ men and women, mostly white, middle-class, with stable jobs and health benefits. Felitti and Anda expected their number of ‘yes’ answers to be fairly low.

The correlation between having a difficult childhood and facing illness as an adult offered a whole new lens through which we could view human health and disease

When the results came in, Felitti and Anda were shocked: 64 per cent of participants answered ‘yes’ to having encountered at least one category of early adversity, and 87 per cent of those patients also had additional adverse childhood experiences; 40 per cent had suffered two or more ACEs; 12.5 per cent had an ACE score greater than or equal to 4.

Felitti and Anda wanted to find out whether there was a correlation between the number of adverse childhood experiences an individual had faced, and the number and severity of illnesses and disorders she developed as an adult. The correlation proved so powerful that Anda was not only ‘stunned’, but deeply moved.

‘I wept,’ he says. ‘I saw how much people had suffered, and I wept.’

Felitti, too, was deeply affected. ‘Our findings exceeded anything we had conceived. The correlation between having a difficult childhood and facing illness as an adult offered a whole new lens through which we could view human health and disease.’

Here, says Felitti, ‘was the missing piece as to what was causing so much of our unspoken suffering as human beings’.

The number of adverse childhood experiences a patient had suffered could by and large predict the amount of medical care she would require in adulthood: the higher the ACE score, the higher the number of doctor’s appointments she’d had in the past year, and the more unexplained physical symptoms she’d reported.

People with an ACE score of 4 were twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer than people who hadn’t faced any form of childhood adversity. For each point an individual had, her chance of being hospitalised with an autoimmune disease in adulthood rose 20 per cent. Someone with an ACE score of 4 was 460 per cent more likely to face depression than someone with a score of 0.

An ACE score of 6 or higher shortened an individual’s lifespan by almost 20 years.

Researchers wondered if those who encountered childhood adversity were also more likely to smoke, drink and overeat as a sort of coping strategy, and while that was sometimes the case, unhealthy habits didn’t wholly account for the correlation Felitti and Anda saw between adverse childhood experiences and later illness. For instance, those with ACE scores greater than or equal to 7 who didn’t drink or smoke, weren’t overweight or diabetic, and didn’t have high cholesterol still had a 360 per cent higher risk of heart disease than those with ACE scores of 0.

‘Time,’ says Felitti, ‘does not heal all wounds. One does not “just get over” something – not even 50 years later.’ Instead, he says: ‘Time conceals. And human beings convert traumatic emotional experiences in childhood into organic disease later in life.’

Often, these illnesses can be chronic and lifelong. Autoimmune disease. Heart disease. Chronic bowel disorders. Migraines. Persistent depression. Even today, doctors puzzle over these very conditions: why are they so prevalent; why are some patients more prone to them than others; and why are they so difficult to treat?

The more research that’s done, the more granular details emerge about the profound link between adverse experiences and adult disease. Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina, the University of California, San Francisco, and Brown University in Rhode Island have shown that childhood adversity damages us on a cellular level in ways that prematurely age our cells and affect our longevity. Adults who faced early life stress show greater erosion in what are known as telomeres – protective caps that sit on the ends of DNA strands to keep the DNA healthy and intact. As telomeres erode, we’re more likely to develop disease, and we age faster; as our telomeres age and expire, our cells expire and so, eventually, do we.

Researchers have also seen a correlation between specific types of adverse childhood experiences and a range of diseases. For instance, children whose parents die, or who face emotional or physical abuse, or experience childhood neglect, or witness marital discord between their parents are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, lung disease, diabetes, headaches, multiple sclerosis and lupus as adults. Facing difficult circumstances in childhood increases six-fold your chances of having myalgic encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome) as an adult. Kids who lose a parent have triple the risk of depression in their lifetimes. Children whose parents divorce are twice as likely to suffer a stroke later down the line.

Laura and John’s stories illustrate that the past can tick away inside us for decades like a silent time bomb, until it sets off a cellular message that lets us know the body does not forget its history.

Something that happened to you when you were five or 15 can land you in the hospital 30 years later

John’s ACE score would be a 3: a parent often put him down; he witnessed his mother being harmed; and, clearly, his father suffered from an undiagnosed behaviour health disorder, perhaps narcissism or depression, or both.

Laura had an ACE score of 4.

Laura and John are hardly alone. Two-thirds of American adults are carrying wounds from childhood quietly into adulthood, with little or no idea of the extent to which these wounds affect their daily health and wellbeing. Something that happened to you when you were five or 15 can land you in the hospital 30 years later, whether that something was headline news, or happened quietly, without anyone else knowing it, in the living room of your childhood home.

The adversity a child faces doesn’t have to be severe abuse in order to create deep biophysical changes that can lead to chronic health conditions in adulthood.

‘Our findings showed that the 10 different types of adversity we examined were almost equal in their damage,’ says Felitti. He and Anda found that no single ACE significantly trumped another. This was true even though some types, such as being sexually abused, are far worse in that society regards them as particularly shameful, and others, such as physical abuse, are more overt in their violence.

This makes sense if you think about how the stress response functions on an optimal level. You meet a bear in the woods, and your body floods with adrenaline and cortisol so that you can quickly decide whether to run in the opposite direction or stay and try to frighten the bear. After you deal with the crisis, you recover, your stress hormones abate, and you go home with a great story. For Laura and John, though, that feeling that the bear is still out there, somewhere, circling in the woods, stalking, and might strike again any day, anytime – that feeling never disappears.

There are a lot of bears out there. Chronic parental discord; enduring low-dose humiliation or blame and shame; chronic teasing; the quiet divorce between two secretly seething parents; a parent’s premature exit from a child’s life; the emotional scars of growing up with a hypercritical, unsteady, narcissistic, bipolar, alcoholic, addicted or depressed parent; physical or emotional abuse or neglect: these happen in all too many families. Although the details of individual adverse experiences differ from one home to another and from one neighbourhood to another, they are all precursors to the same organic chemical changes deep in the gray matter of the developing brain.

Every few decades, a groundbreaking psychosocial ‘theory of everything’ helps us to develop a new understanding of why we are the way we are – and how we got that way. In the early 20th century, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud transformed the landscape of psychology when he argued that the unconscious rules much of our waking life and dreams. Jungian theory taught, among other ideas, that we tend toward introversion or extroversion, which led the American educationalist Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers to develop a personality indicator. More recently, neuroscientists discovered that age ‘zero to three’ was a critical synaptic window for brain development, giving birth to Head Start and other preschool programmes. The correlation between childhood trauma, brain architecture and adult wellbeing is the newest, and perhaps our most important, psychobiological theory of everything.

Today’s research on adverse childhood experiences revolutionises how we see ourselves, our understanding of how we came to be the way we are, why we love the way we do, how we can better nurture our children, and how we can work to realise our potential.

To date, more than 1,500 studies founded on Felitti and Anda’s hallmark ACE research show that both physical and emotional suffering are rooted in the complex workings of the immune system, the body’s master operating control centre – and what happens to the brain during childhood sets the programming for how our immune systems will respond for the rest of our lives.

The unifying principle of this new theory of everything is this: your emotional biography becomes your physical biology, and together, they write much of the script for how you will live your life. Put another way: your early stories script your biology and your biology scripts the way your life will play out.

Unlike previous theories of everything, though, this one has been mind-bogglingly slow to change how we do medicine, according to Felitti. ‘Very few internists or medical schools are interested in embracing the added responsibility that this understanding imposes on them.’

With the ACE research now available, we might hope that physicians will begin to see patients as a holistic sum of their experiences and embrace the understanding that a stressor from long ago can be a health-risk time bomb that has exploded. Such a medical paradigm, which sees adverse childhood experiences as one of many key factors that can play a role in disease, could save many patients years in the healing process.

But seeing that connection takes a little time. It means asking patients to fill out the ACE questionnaire and delving into that patient’s history for insight into sources of both physical and emotional pain. As health-care budgets have become stretched, physicians spend less time interacting one-on-one with patients in their exam rooms; the average physician schedules patients back-to-back at 15-minute intervals.

Still, the cost of not intervening is far greater – not only in the loss of human health and wellbeing, but also in additional healthcare. According to the CDC, the total lifetime cost of child maltreatment in the US is $124 billion each year. The lifetime healthcare cost for each individual who experiences childhood maltreatment is estimated at $210,012 – comparable to other costly health conditions, such as having a stroke, which has a lifetime estimated cost of $159,846 per person, or type-2 diabetes, which is estimated to cost between $181,000 and $253,000.

Further hindering change is the fact that adult physical medicine and psychological medicine remain in separate silos. Utilising ACE research requires breaking down these long-standing divisions in healthcare between what is ‘physical’ and what is ‘mental’ or ‘emotional,’ and that’s hard to achieve. Physicians have been well-trained to deal only with what they can touch with their hands, see with their eyes, or view with microscopes or scans.

Just as physical wounds and bruises heal, just as we can regain our muscle tone, we can recover function in underconnected areas of the brain

However, now that we have scientific evidence that the brain is genetically modified by childhood experience, we can no longer draw that line in the sand. With hundreds of studies showing that childhood adversity hurts our mental and physical health, putting us at greater risk for learning disorders, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, depression, obesity, suicide, substance abuse, failed relationships, violence, poor parenting and early death, we just can’t afford to make such distinctions.

Science tells us that biology does not have to be destiny. ACEs can last a lifetime, but they don’t have to. Just as physical wounds and bruises heal, just as we can regain our muscle tone, we can recover function in underconnected areas of the brain. If anything, that’s the most important take-away from ACE research: the brain and body are never static; they are always in the process of becoming and changing.

Even if we have been set on high-reactive mode for decades or a lifetime, we can still dial it down. We can respond to life’s inevitable stressors more appropriately and shift away from an overactive inflammatory response. We can become neurobiologically resilient. We can turn bad epigenetics into good epigenetics and rescue ourselves. We have the capacity, within ourselves, to create better health. We might call this brave undertaking ‘the neurobiology of awakening’.

Today, scientists recognise a range of promising approaches to help create new neurons (known as neurogenesis), make new synaptic connections between those neurons (known as synaptogenesis), promote new patterns of thoughts and reactions, bring underconnected areas of the brain back online – and reset our stress response so that we decrease the inflammation that makes us ill.

You can find ways to start right where you are, no matter how deep your scars or how long ago they occurred. Many mind-body therapies not only help you to calm your thoughts and increase your emotional and physical wellbeing, but research suggests that they have the potential to reverse, on a biological level, the harmful impact of childhood adversity.

Recent studies indicate that individuals who practice mindfulness meditation and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) show an increase in gray matter in parts of the brain associated with managing stress, and experience shifts in genes that regulate their stress response and their levels of inflammatory hormones. Other research suggests that a process known as neurofeedback can help to regrow connections in the brain that were lost to adverse childhood experiences.

Meditation, mindfulness, neurofeedback, cognitive therapy, EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing) therapy: these promising new avenues to healing can be part of any patient’s recovery plan, if only healthcare practitioners would begin to treat the whole patient – past, present and future, without making distinctions between physical and mental health – and encourage patients to explore all the treatment options available to them. The more we learn about the toxic impact of early stress, the better equipped we are to counter its effects, and help to uncover new strategies and modalities to come back to who it is we really are, and who it was we might have been had we not encountered childhood adversity in the first place.

This is an adapted and reprinted extract from ‘Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal’ (Atria), by Donna Jackson Nakazawa. Copyright © Donna Jackson Nakazawa, 2015.

SOURCE:  https://aeon.co/essays/how-bad-experiences-in-childhood-lead-to-adult-illness

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