Womens Health - Getting Back to the Basics

So welcome everyone to another episode of love the north Uh, we have a change in our panel today So we're gonna take a few minutes and introduce each other and then we'll get started. Well. Hi everyone. My name is Rachelle I am a pharmacist. I live in sudbury, ontario and I own a business called seasons pharmacy and culinaria. Why? Because we all know we need drugs to be healthy, but we also need good food to be healthy So, uh, my business partner and I we put a pharmacy and we sell real food in there and we talk about real food And tonight i'm very excited to be with you because as we hit brain and mood We're going to talk about how food is a really important part of having a healthy brain and having a healthy mood Absolutely. Excellent. And I'm the new addition to the panel this evening. My name is Kate Reid. I'm a Naturopathic doctor I've been servicing the community for about 25 years And i'm happy to be here to be part of the conversation tonight. Well, we're very thrilled to have you kate We're really excited that you're here tonight. Oh, thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you for coming really great So i'm so i'm Karen and I am a psychotherapist and a nurse practitioner and so together As a team tonight, we're going to actually look at the different aspects of mood and health from food How you can actually look at mindset from a different perspective how you can understand how the gut plays a big role in mental health And well-being and we're just going to take a deep dive and talk about some of these questions that people want to know and most Importantly how to help you actually take charge of your life and do some things that are helpful for you. So Let's start with kate for a first off. What do you think so kate so as a natural path? I mean you obviously look at focus of people from the naturopathic perspective, but you have a background in psychology as well So you really look at it from two different Prospects and how you and how do you assess these people when they come into your office when it comes to mood and health? Well, basically, uh, the approach in natural medicine is mind body(...) And spirit, you know the whole person(...) So when somebody comes in we we look at all aspects of health that are contributing factors So if if let's say relevant to the gut if somebody comes in with gastrointestinal concerns We would do an analysis and assessment in the office I have a specific instrument that I use to help me identify where the weaknesses and And strengths are in different areas of the body and that helps me objectively determine where to start treatment in terms of mood It very often to in today's society I'm encountering and you could probably concur with this both of you you see people who frequently have concerns around mood disorders low mood anxious mood And so on and so that gets inter interwoven with the treatment plan(...) Of course if there's a Further additional deeper work that needs to be done There's referrals made often to you yourself Karen to work through some of the trauma That's underlying the deeper patterns of mood disturbance. But furthermore, there's often physical reasons for(...) For underlying moods that have to do with imbalances in the in the body itself so part of my work and in helping others would be to determine where those imbalances are and Go to the root cause of those interesting so that is actually a good segue into how sort of you look at mood and health from a standpoint of both treatment and the traditional standpoint and then also from a standpoint of Food and how that affects it. Why don't you tell somebody that so it's really interesting in(...) You're in a pharmacy. So people are walking in all the time people are walking in just browsing the Isle looking for something to help them feel better looking for something to help them sleep better Looking for something to help them concentrate better Or feel less stressed out and especially You know, I think we can all attest to the fact that we're on the go especially women, right? Especially women around our age, you know We have kids and we have parents and we're trying to do everything in a job and keep the house clean and all those things So the level of stress and overwhelm is very high and I will often encounter these people just kind of browsing The vitamin aisle, you know in that area trying to look for a solution there the other kind of people I have are people come in With prescriptions now if they've been long standing on a prescription I tread into that area a little bit Differently than I do the person with the brand new prescription because what I find You know people are typically having 10 minute doctor appointments if they have a family doctor or maybe a walking clinic is you know Trying to write for antidepressants or sleeping agents at the at the counter Um, i'm trying to you know approach this person and say okay Like has anybody had a conversation with you about how much sleep are you getting? Are you getting some time outside in the sunshine? Do you eat alone mindlessly in front of the tv? Or are you I mean, maybe this is not the typical conversation of a pharmacist, but it's the conversation i'm having because I find that You know when we studied all of these antidepressants as a class, let's say, you know, the studies are mostly short-term and(...) They do take a little while to get started

(...)

But I don't think people are going back to the basics, right? Like by the time you're sick enough to actually go to the doctor and ask for help You've been struggling with this for a long time So I think one of the things That I would encourage people to do is you know Get in there a little bit earlier when you're starting to feel like you're having some problems But do take a look at your grandmother's advice. It's all very good. You know, are you Are you eating with somebody or by yourself? And if you're eating by yourself, are you eating mindlessly while you're doom scrolling on facebook? Or are you gonna maybe put some nice music on and light a candle to be your accompaniment? And think about what you're eating and if you're alone, are you cooking for yourself by yourself?(...) You know, there are things that we need to do strategies wise to build Some good mental health habits and they do really start with all of those other things And I would like to talk about more about medication later, but I just kind of want to Leave it there as the new patient coming in or the new person in the aisle I am taking that step backwards(...) And going from the beginning(...) So i'm not sure what you think of that. Well, I think Absolutely is important and even clients that come in to see me in my practice You know Medicine is set up as far as a health care model that we have so many people that are backed up and they can't get help And so with limited time But some of us in our practice have extended a period of time to work with clients and I choose to do that because I Can't get to the real story They're not how can I help them understand there might be something that they're missing?(...) Right because it's that root cause that we're looking for and kate you talked about traumas People are unaware of things that have passed that have been passed down to them from generational traumas Or things that they've experienced in their own early childhood their traumas play out big time in their present day And so we often think you know somebody comes in to see me And they have a relationship challenge and they're not sure if they want to stay in a marriage and that becomes now marriage counseling But then it's not really the marriage. It is. Okay. What is going on in that person's mind? That's created that part in their life that's causing more chaos and so we can fix the marriage But can we or do we have to go back and look at why is that person being triggered? Why is that person reacting that way? Why is that person showing up and at the same time as for the other person as well? So I like to get to the why and that's where we have to ask all those really heavy and maybe difficult questions Because if the person comes in looking for help then that's the person I have to help shift their mindset So that they can change their outcome in their life But starting birth to seven before hugely a part of how we show up and most people don't even go there Very true Root cause is something that I definitely focus on as a naturopathic doctor Uh, so many of the people that come to see me Um have have not ever been asked or or had exploration around What has caused? The symptoms that they're experiencing or the condition that they've developed So a lot of the time as you pointed out extra time spent exploring those Those nuances and elements of their history and perhaps even Transgenerationally into the family that might maybe leading to Some of their traumatic based or even physical and traumatic based causes of their condition(...) And I want to speak to your point of going back to the simple(...) elements that keep us sane and keep us grounded as human beings and and unfortunately our society today doesn't allow Space and time for that, you know getting your feet on the ground in the sand on the dirt Uh being around forests that I mean scientifically these things are proven to be healing and have specific positive beneficial health effects So I think in terms of simplifying getting back to those roots and helping people find them again, right? How do we how do we create those meaningful? elements that that are the foundation pieces for health for example the uh in the Study that national geo geographic did and many of you might have seen the live to 100 series on netflix They talk about the nine fact they went all around the world and studied All the people that lived over 100, right? And what were the nine factors that contributed to? Longevity for those people and they were really simple. They weren't complicated diets or supplement interventions(...) uh, it was basically(...) At six out of those nine were having to do with mental health and connection and your purpose in life Um, if you had if you had a connection to like-minded people if you had a spiritual community uh, and so, you know, these things are overlooked in our society because we're all just Putting our head down and going forward and getting the job done every day and turning off at night You know wash dry repeat doing the same thing the next day So I think getting back to the basics and i'm really glad that you brought that up Well, the other thing too about the basics is that if we think about nutrition and if we think about What kind of food we're eating while we're in a hurry rushing to get all of these things done And a lot of things that come in boxes That are convenient or drive-through. Listen, I had four kids in hockey So like we did plenty of drive-throughs, but now i've kind of have a little bit more time Maybe to think more carefully about that um

(...)

But if you're getting a lot of your calories from just sugar and things packed in boxes There's not enough building blocks and what we know we need is building blocks for health, right? Your body needs to make it feel good chemicals It needs to make the things that it needs to digest food properly. It all comes from the food you eat so if you're not getting solid

(...)

Tritted nutritionally dense foods that have enough building blocks for you And some of those building blocks are coming from you in the food, but some is it some of that food is Digested by your microbiome and then your microbiome is producing some of the elements that you need and and I think that's a really great conversation Because kate i'm sure in your practice you're using probiotics or other avenues of Adjusting the digestive system Which will have tremendous improvements on the way you're feeling in your heart and in your head and the kind of loops that might be running Absolutely want to expand on that topic today. Yeah, so Yeah, well karen do you have anything to add to where we were? Yeah Well, i'm thinking when when you talk about the basics again, you're right the whole connection and we we all know through The pandemic that was about not having connection. I mean really if you look at the human connection point And we need to be around people to feel because real we are relational So when we're not with people then we lose that sense of ourselves and it's really people say, you know I feel like i've lost my right arm, but i'm not around my friends And so when did we stop this is a rhetorical question. When did we stop just going and visiting people? Like when I was a kid, it'd be national on sunday. I'll show it up Get in the car Yeah, so you go and visit and of course you're told don't breathe don't do anything be as quiet But we went to visit. Yeah, but we went, you know christmas time to go see everybody's gifts Why wouldn't look everybody's gifts? I don't know, but that's what we all did But we don't go and visit. I mean we visit those of us who are friends we visit of course and the most

(...)

Invigorating time in my life is when I can sit down and I can share a story and laugh and carry on and just be Me versus the professional that has to help people all day long I have a story here because we built the soap if everybody has visited seasons pharmacy and culinary There's an actual kitchen. So the pharmacy dispensary is over here Then there's a kitchen over here and I have a department That's the community harvest table and I didn't know I needed a department of the community harvest table until my landlord brought me This beautiful oak table and said here. Do you want this? And the number of conversations that have happened in the pharmacy(...) Of people who just kind of happen to come in at the same time that i'm like, okay You guys all need to meet each other Here's your common factors go and then I go back to work filly prescriptions and then they're having tea or they're having some kind of Snack in the in the pharmacy or we're sharing lunch or we're making a harvest dinner for the community garden people But this whole breaking of food right like breaking bread and eat sharing a meal with someone(...) Having a coffee or drink it just relaxes that whole system, you know conversing with someone and the driving concept right and

(...)

Laughter is medicine. Right readers digest has that whole section laughter medicine and it is actually it is Because your body can heal if it's relaxed enough to be laughing your body can now be doing some repair work instead of all stress Building, you know, which is counter repair work Well, and that's it and that whole stress response and then you take young people And all you see them is on their phone You know you go into a restaurant and it really simply still blows me away And i'm going to see a couple at a restaurant and they're both on their phone And i'm like, I want to go over and say can you please please put the phone down and make eye contact and communicate?

(...)

But we don't realize because we get so much into that and sadly all those devices, although they're great because we find information

(...)

Um the whole dopamine hit from as you say There's scrolling sometimes it's a doom scrolling and then on top of that is all the radiation and electrical conduction that comes off but that goes after our Our neurological system and therefore doesn't help a stress reduction. It actually increases stress Right. And so just because even just the sale of melatonin for an example, right? So we sell melatonin It's a hormone your body will make melatonin If you get up and spend your day in the daytime in the sun your body's going to figure out how to make melatonin So that at night sun's down you're going down to the bedtime, but all this weird light at all hours of the day It's tricking your body to a certain degree around, you know When am I supposed to produce this hormone? And so then we start taking it from the outside in bottles and it's like yeah, it'll help a little bit especially if you're in you know Temporarily, but then you know You don't really want to give your body hormones from the outside because then it doesn't remember how to make them properly anymore And then well, you know, it's it's not the best solution for solving a problem of 100% It speaks to the fact that we've gotten away from thousands and thousands of years of of us adapting on this planet to Uh living optimally a certain way and in our modern culture our modern society It has taken us so far away from that that we don't even know how to reconnect again to you know Being out in the sunshine Being out in the fresh air getting oxygen Connecting with people that eye to eye contact that social connection which produces hormones like oxytocin the bonding hormone(...) And how how modern technology has taken us exactly in the opposite direction away from all of that and away from health quite frankly Yeah, it seems like our modern culture is really good at at dopamine dopamine dopamine and then you want to create more dopamine and it's like we forgot about Like you say oxytocin this bonding hormone or the slower the slower

(...)

Not happiness as a hit like I have to be on the high on a mountain all the time. It's like that gentle calm reassured

(...)

Stability, you know And we think that we can connect with people on our devices and we can and i'm really grateful like we don't have to do letter writing campaigns anymore when when our when our lover's in a different town um

(...)

But it's not the same the flat image of the of the representation of your friend or your parent or your grandchild or whatever that is It's really not the same as being in person right because you have an energetic

(...)

I don't want to say aura but basically it's your aura everybody would understand that it's like you have an energy system and i'm feeling Yes, how you're emotionally responding. I can read your body language because it's not just your smiling face saying words flat on The screen like I can sense a lot of things and I think one of the reasons We might feel a little bit, you know uncomfortable Sometimes it's because we've kind of lost that ability to do I trust my intuition that my feeling this is like, right Or I don't know. I just think that yeah, this connection is very very important We forgot about it, but getting there through good food is like my solution to the problem Well, it's like one of my solutions and and that's exactly it from a contact from a content of being connected(...) And when you're cooking together, you have the energy of that fun time Is it to the to write down to the point of when you eat good food and your body has the right nutrients in the building blocks and you talked about melatonin well melatonin is is is from Serotonin serotonin has to come from tryptophan and tryptophan is a protein and we all hear about turkey at christmastime We get sleepy with turkey. Well part of it is the carbohydrate load that's a crash after but but the turkey is tryptophan So all the building blocks that we need for hormones come from our food source The majority of them come from proteins clean proteins and we need healthy fats too, of course healthy fats and good carbohydrates And the challenge though, and I think I want to speak about this is that Even when some people work hard at doing that and they don't have the results Then the question comes down to what about the gut and the biome and that if there's not it's not set up properly Then maybe some of this doesn't even work because it can't be absorbed into the system. Exactly So I I just want to speak to everyone about a little bit about the gut and something called the microbiome so the microbiome is the individual genetics of all of the trillions of Bacteria and microbes that populate our digestive system think about that number trillions, right? What one can't even imagine What does a trillion look like and there's trillions and trillions of these organisms living inside our body that are actually(...) Have functions and important functions. They create hormones. They create neurotransmitters And they provide a great amount of stability to our immune system. So I think in our society, you know, I've witnessed a lot of germophobia(...) Antibacterial this antimicrobial that meanwhile there's trillions of microbes living right inside our body that should be there And when they're not there we get sick(...) Not only that when they're not there in the right balance and right population that affects our brain chemistry because Of the this there's a gut brain access So there's two basic basic brains in the body the gut the gut and the brain brain and they talk to each other all day long 24-7 these messages go up here influence our mood influence our cognition our thinking our ability to interact so many things and then vice versa What happens here also influences the gut everybody's heard about irritable bowel syndrome. That's this influencing that(...) So so the relationships go both ways and I want to tell you something really kind of cool and that's this They have done studies that have in mice and humans that have transplanted The microbes from depressed and anxious people into normal people and guess what happened to the normal people They became not normal people but you know, they're not an anxious non-anxious people(...) Became depressed and anxious and vice versa Right. They took the healthy flora from healthy people and put it into pressed and anxious people or mice or rats Whatever works all across species and and they got better That's huge. Yeah, it is speaks to if we get this balance through good food. Yeah, right So here's the wait so I have a farming story for anybody's a farmer in the in the north here Okay, so the first year I started chicken farming. I thought okay great. I'm gonna buy chickens I'm gonna have a cute little chicken coop went to the feed store. They gave me feed with antibiotics in it Now I was in pharmacy school and they said the veterinary Sector uses a lot of antibiotics and we were being taught about Antibicrobial resistance that if you overuse antibiotics all of these great life-saving drugs are going to become rendered useless because The bacteria are very smart and they're going to figure out how to like resist that so um

(...)

I will buy chicken feed. I'm like well, I don't have a horrible environment for my chickens I don't need any microbials in my chicken feed. So I brought it back So I thought oh the only reason they have antibiotics in these is so that Obviously poor living conditions and the animals are getting sick. So they need antibiotics. No, no, no, that's not why do you know Why there's antibiotics in chicken feed

(...)

They want the chickens to gain weight really fast because if I can in my industrial food system raise a chicken in six or eight Weeks instead of 10 or 12 weeks that I can make money faster Right. So that microbiome is being affected by the Antibiotic in the feed and they're wiping out the bacteria that makes the chicken stay small They're selecting for bacteria that makes the chicken grow bigger faster fatter weight gain So if our whole food supply is contaminated with antibiotics to make the animals get fat faster Could that be one of the reasons why our whole society is getting fat faster? And then we look in the mirror and then we get sad because we're like we don't like our body image Because now we got our devices and we're comparing our body image. So like it's a very complicated story It is it is complicated, you know, yeah, and if you look at trajectory of emotional distress Over the past decade versus the past three decades(...) It's gone up. Yeah So if it's gone up, that means somebody some of us We're all doing something wrong And if it means we're doing things wrong If we take one personal step and say i'm going to change this one thing in my life Is it possible that I can make that change? And if you took that step and if you took that step and everybody start taking steps to go back to the basics like Get the food source back to whole foods without antibiotics in the meat Yes, right So if you can do that, right whole foods and if even if not right away get rid of the junk food and start with the whole food Get away from the devices that decrease your stress level and then make sure you're getting the right thing as far as a plan of a strategy a program for health versus just worrying about let's put out the fire we have a managed Disease system which is great in a crisis, but we all have the personal Right as well as responsibility to take back our health(...) I think one of the things and we should probably wrap this up soon But I think one of the most important things people need to know Your body is an amazing invention and it is designed to heal itself And if you can give it the right circumstances It's going to heal like if you cut yourself You don't have to go to like it's going to start to heal if you cut yourself Same thing if your if your brain is missing some chemicals your body knows what it needs to build the right chemicals We just have to provide it the right environment That's a relaxed environment a happy environment Give it the raw ingredients, but you can heal 100 If you're not feeling right you can get better and you don't have to shift everything all at the same time Start with the one worst thing Whatever that one worst thing is change that and once you have that change you'll develop some confidence that you could change something else

(...)

Start hanging out with people who want to change something. Yes, you can hang out with us. I love the norm Exactly We're going to come here like once a month or something with some kind of words of what we think are wisdom after you know We all been in practice for a long time We've all seen where the system is working really great and we've all seen where the system needs some improvements And in the place I feel the strongest about so i'm gonna word strongest It's a good word

(...)

We are we can be empowered and we are in control and our body wants to heal and we just need some Inspiration motivation and maybe a bit of good advice Yeah, and and I think from a standpoint of a practice we in health care can't help everybody But we can manage them and help guide them But if you go and get the information yourself from other different practitioners and start to read start to go back to basics and realize Okay, I can make changes then you can take charge of your health because nobody can write a prescription that this will fix We have them that we need to in crises But let's try to prevent the crises if we get our life in check our head in check or body in check And with that connection as you said it is much easier and you mentioned kate that you do some testing that actually shows that So it's not just a guessing game when they come to see you exactly It's it's one way that I can determine where the root causes are You know, that's the level that we want to be working at the root cause And when I first started in practice just this very brief story(...) Because I know we're coming to an end here today, but when I first started in practice Uh, I was doing everything by the book as we're taught in medical school physical exam blood work. Look at imaging studies, etc(...) And two years into my practice. I I didn't really feel that I was getting to root cause Well, I was seeing was still what was at the surface So the metaphor I like to use for my patients is this(...) If you come in and we just focus on the surface and we just focus on the symptoms. It's like(...) Turning the smoke detectors off in your house, but the fire is still burning your house down So what we want to do we also want to turn the smoke detectors off But we want to find the fire and put the fire out And you know putting the fire out going full circle back to the point your point and your point of reconnecting going back to the basics

(...)

Understanding that health is not complicated It's really quite simple when we build when we build that basic solid foundation piece to build our Our health of house on top of right when we get that foundation, right? Which are all those factors connecting to like-minded people eating Whole food that isn't adulterated with chemicals having a spiritual belief system having a purpose in life Having a glass of wine every day. That was one of the things by the way Well, we're not promoting alcohol consumption, but just saying antioxidants, right? uh And I forget what the other ones are but that's a large portion of that was in your Basic basic foundation that they provided for for living over a hundred. I think one of them was gardening. I remember exercise

(...)

Not exercise meaningful movement. Yeah, so so not the gym necessarily the garden(...) Walking down the mountain to visit your friend or walking down the road to visit your friend(...) You know some sort of meaningful movement not just like slogging away on a treadmill for 45 minutes But moving meaningful meaningful during your day so that when you move it's something that gives you a reward, right? It's not something you have to do So when you get when you get all those pieces, right and you get out of the way health health happens The body heals itself. It wants to be it wants to be healthy. It's it's It does as intelligent. Yeah. Well ladies, I think that was a great overview I know we could talk for hours because we all are very passionate about what we do But I really want to encourage all of you to to take a step back and ask yourself What can I make a change in my life today? How can I change? One thing every day for the future and how do I take charge of my life because literally it's your life You're the only one that's responsible. So take charge make changes and take your health back So thanks for joining us on love the north and we really appreciate this opportunity because you know in our practice we can only see how many people in a day and

(...)

We really think that this kind of a platform is really important for us to share things that could really make a difference for somebody(...) For somebody if they you know, they want

(Music)

(...)