What is functional medicine?Functional medicine is a systems biology based approach that looks for the root causes of diseases and symptoms. Functional medicine aims to optimize functioning of the body’s cells, systems, and the environmental systems where the person lives.The goal of a functional medicine perspective is not simply to quiet the symptoms, but to relieve the symptoms at the root cause.Functional Medicine vs. Functional Nutrition Technically, functional medicine is only practiced by providers…
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For moms and parents in your practice who decide to breastfeed, there is so much that you can do to encourage them to build a healthy breast milk supply. [caption id="attachment_8139" align="alignleft" width="615"] "I make milk. What's your superpower?" - Unknown[/caption] Supporting your clients to build a healthy breast milk supply is beneficial to the newborn babies as well as the mom or breastfeeding parent. There are several factors to…
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It can be hard to determine the best probiotics for endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain. The "best probiotic" can be challenging to choose from among the many options. It's even more difficult to determine which probiotics are best for endometriosis and chronic pelvic pain. As health and wellness professionals who support clients with endometriosis and pelvic pain, we have to educate ourselves about the research on the best probiotics for…
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One of the most frustrating challenges that our clients with endometriosis face is how to relieve the chronic bloating known as “Endo Belly.” Over the years, my practice has seen thousands of women struggling with this, and we have developed an integrative protocol for relieving the bloat for good. What is “Endo Belly”? Before we get into the steps to relieving Endo Belly, let’s talk about what it really…
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It was my honor to interview Dr. Allyson Shrikhande, MD, founder of Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine about the role of rehabilitation medicine in chronic pelvic pain. Rehabilitation medicine includes the tools of pain and nervous system modulation medications, specific injections to improve local pain in the pelvis, including pelvic nerve pain, and management and referrals for integrative healing. At Pelvic Rehabilitation Medicine, the physicians are on the cutting edge of pain…
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Celery juice, the hottest new instagram trend for solving all of your health problems, is probably ridiculous, right? That's what I thought, until I looked at the published literature on the specific health benefits of celery. Let's consider why some people are actually experiencing symptom reduction when starting their day with celery juice... Benefits of Celery Juice and Eating Celery 1. Celery juice has significant antioxidant effect: Celery root water…
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The beautiful thing about dark chocolate is that it is delicious, and let me share some of the best dark chocolate benefits with you... Dark Chocolate Benefits Certainly some women are highly sensitive to caffeine. For those women, dark chocolate is not a good choice. Some women don’t like dark chocolate. But, often if they are simply used to eating milk chocolate, it's an acquired taste that can be developed…
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Functional Nutrition Treatment Options for Vulvodynia and IBS When the pain of vulvodynia hits - the painful sex, the pain with wearing tight pants, the pain with just sitting through a movie! - you just want it gone. Fortunately, by taking an integrative approach and getting to the root cause of your vulvodynia, it's possible to relieve your pain for the long term! You might have heard of seeking specialized…
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Chronic Pelvic Pain and Autoimmunity... Is there a connection? In my practice, many of my patients who struggle with chronic pelvic pain also have autoimmune conditions. Even those who don't have clear autoimmune diagnoses, often have autoimmune issues - such as intestinal barrier inflammation, food sensitivities, immune hyper-responsiveness, and chronic inflammation. In this interview with Dr. Terry Wahls, we discussed her approach to reversing autoimmune disease, and the connections between…
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One of the reasons that relieving pelvic pain is so challenging is that pain in different systems within the pelvis can overlap. For example, in rats where experimental colitis (colon irritation) was induced, many of the rats also experienced bladder and urethral pain (Yoshikawa et al., 2015). Thus, there is clear overlap between bladder pain and gastrointestinal symptoms. Root cause relief for SIBO and interstitial cystitis related bladder pain requires…
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