First, some clinic news…
TESTING: REGENERUS PRICE INCREASE. Sadly, with inflation rising, many suppliers are having to increase their prices. Regenerus has just announced they will be increasing prices from 1st Sep so if you are planning to have of their tests done (eg. DUTCH, Mycotoxins etc), get ’em ordered before then and save some money. To remind you, here are all the lab test buttons for you so you can order whatever you need direct. Click on these and I get a little commission which helps pay for all my freebies and waffling on here and in the groups, thank you :). You can see the Lab test service in full with all the different lab testing factsheet here:
IMPORTANT: Use the buttons above to order direct from the labs or via me on the shop. Using these buttons means I get a little commission, which helps me keep the test service going for you, thank you. I’ll send your results with the full report and an email with my thoughts and recommendations – there is no extra cost for this. You can book any Support you need here. Please read the Lab Test FAQ fully before emailing me and use the Ask Micki service if you need help.
LIFESTYLE: MENTAL HEALTH. Our environment is really important to how we feel on a day to day basis. I am really susceptible to it myself. Take a gander at this new book The Sensory Home, by Pippa Jameson. Use some of the ideas to improve your wellbeing and sense of calm. It’ll look super on the coffee table too 😉
BRAIN: DIET. More research suggests that eating a diet high in ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) is harmful for the aging brain. UPFs are highly manipulated, packed with added ingredients including sugar, fat, and salt, are low in protein and fibre. Examples of UPFs include soft drinks, chips/crisps, chocolate, candy/sweets, ice cream, sweetened breakfast cereals, packaged soups, chicken nuggets, hotdogs, fries/chips, and many more. Over the past 30 years, there has been a steady increase in consumption of UPFs worldwide. They are thought to induce systemic inflammation and oxidative stress and have been linked to a variety of ailments, such as overweight/obesity, cardiovascular disease, dementia, cognitive decline and cancer. MEDSCAPE
LIFESTYLE: MENTAL HEALTH. One of the best tips I was given when I was being treated for PTSD was that when you start to feel anxious, try and look at something in the room that makes you smile. I deliberately put something colourful in each room of the house so I could do that. It worked more often than not. Repeat; ‘I am calm’ or whatever feels right to you, and focus on the colourful or happy item. I was reminded of this today when I saw this pretty pink tap for the kitchen. I mean: come on! For more tips like this and brain retraining, see my Healing Plan.
BONE HEALTH/OSTEOPOROSIS. Great summary from Orthomolecular News of mainstream and alternative treatment approaches for osteoporosis. They maintain that the calcium approach so favoured is plain wrong and can be harmful. Check it out. You can also see more in my free Osteoporosis Factsheet. I always remember as a massage therapist feeling actual calcium dumping in muscles – it feels too ‘hard’. More often than not, they were consuming a lot of dairy and calcium in supplements, but were woefully low in magnesium, so weren’t using the calcium properly, leading excess to be ‘dumped’ in tissues.
AGEING. Want to live longer and stay healthy? Check out the strategy in Kara Fitzgerald’s new book Younger You. It focuses quite a bit on methylation and epigenetics (ie genes expressed by lifestyle, diet etc) A science-backed approach. As she says: “We don’t have to accept a descent into disease and unwellness as we age as inevitable: when you reduce bio age you reduce your odds of developing all the major diseases, including diabetes, cancer, and dementia. With assessment tools for determining your bio age, recipes, and plans for putting it all into practice, Younger You helps you repair years of damage, ward off chronic disease, and optimize your health-for years to come.” I’ll have me some of that!
AUTOIMMUNITY: SELF CARE. Have you thought what is going wrong and scuppering your healing even though you are doing ‘everything’ right? Could it be a relationship that is the key stressor blocking you? I have often come across this and sometimes given difficult advice to extricate patients from stressful, negative people. Dr K agrees with me:
“Chronically negative and unhealthy relationships — at home, at work, at school, or elsewhere in your life — promote inflammation and hinder immune regulation, making it more difficult to put your autoimmunity into remission. This means that even if you do everything right to manage your autoimmune disease, you may not experience optimal benefits because of the pro-inflammatory impacts of that relationship. I can tell you in my own practice I see a dramatic difference between the patients who have support from their spouses and family……and those who are criticized at home, told they are making up their illness, or mocked for having a different diet and other needs.
Or people work in a situation where a relationship with a boss or co-worker causes them to feel high levels of stress and then spend their time off feeling frustrated or anxious about the situation. Even a negative relationship with your health care provider can impact your recovery.”
Prof Datis Kharrazian
Spot on. Consider it and deal with it if you want to get well. It doesn’t always mean you have to separate or leave; it can mean a change of mindset or protecting yourself from people. Talk to someone about it to help you work out some strategies.
PRACTITIONERS: ANDROPAUSE. Yep, men have a menopause too. We don’t hear that much about it but I come across it a lot. If you have a man who feels flat, demotivated, irritable, even grumpy/aggressive, poor libido, muscle mass loss, you can bet your bottom dollar his testosterone and probably his DHEA is dropping. Unlike women whose hormones drop with a thud, men’s hormones decline from 40-ish onward so we don’t notice the changes as much. But they’re there. Check out Christine Bailey’s Andropause webinar on FDX here and look on the DUTCH testing website for more on this subject.
GLUTEN: COELIAC, CELIAC, CROSS-REACTIVE GRAINS, CORN. Are you doing your gluten free diet OK but still not healing? Maybe you are cross-reacting to other grains, We are finding corn is ubiquitous in non-healing coeliacs. It often happens a few months after going GF and we call it gluten whiplash. Here’s Dr Osborne explaining it:
Turning to other grains and experiencing an incomplete healing process can result in the phenomena known as gluten whiplash. This is a scenario observed frequently in clinical practice when a patient starts to develop disease symptoms again after being gluten free for several months. If it has been your experience that you still have symptoms even after following a traditionally gluten free diet, the culprit may be other sneaky gluten-containing grains – like corn.
Gluten in Corn Can Damage Celiacs
Absolutely right, and that is my clinical – and personal – experience too. Check out my TGF (Trulyglutenfree) section of the website for more on this – it’s a minefield, I know, but a specialism of mine. There are several pages there, read them in order. I have the gluten gene tests mentioned on the site here in the UK – I was the first to bring them here, I thank you 😉
OK, that’s all folks! Bit shorter this week as I’m in the middle of moving back to Cornwall this week – yay! Please share to anyone you think it could help – ask them to sign up on this blog or newsletter so they can get the good stuff direct to them, thank you. Next time I write to you (new broadband allowing!), I shall be much nearer to the sea again 🙂
Retiring, but loads of help still here!
I have now retired from Purehealth, but I have left my site, books, newsletters etc all up so that you can still access all this lovely info from the last 30 years! I won’t be updating it now, but there is a LOT of really good info here still. Check My Favourites page for where to find info, supplements, tests, practitioners, courses and more. Anything I think could help. And Start Here if you’re not sure where to start with your symptom or condition.
Please continue to support me by using the links, which might give me a bit of commission and you some discounts, and you can buy me a coffee here if you feel moved to.
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Bless your cotton socks from me. Thanks for all your love, support and fun over the past 30-odd years. I will miss you, Micki x