The Healing Center Blog

Have you ever eaten sushi? 

Have you ever used Windex or other common cleaning products?

Have you ever traveled, or kissed someone?

If the answer is yes, you’ve been exposed to pathogens and other toxic chemicals.  Unfortunately, they are a widespread part of our modern lives.

Join us at The Healing Center for Dr. Marie Starling’s FREE Foundations of Health Series, “Toxins and Pathogens in your Environment,” to understand daily exposures that destroy your health, learn what they are, and how to avoid them.

As some of you may know, Dr. Marie Starling is putting on a FREE lecture series starting in April!  “Foundations of Health,” is a series designed to share Dr. Starling’s wealth of knowledge with anyone interested in long term health.  You don’t need to be a patient!  In fact, we are encouraging patient’s to bring any family or friends that don’t quite understand what it is you do when you’re at The Healing Center OR have interest in becoming a patient themselves.

Have you been from doctor to doctor in our day of modern medicine but still have no relief for what is causing you distress?  Functional medicine may be what you have been searching for.

Functional medicine is the practice of getting to the root of the issue by looking at the mechanisms of what’s not working in your body and then restoring that function.

Functional Medicine is grounded in the following principles:

Biochemical individuality describes the importance of individual variations in metabolic function that derive from genetic and environmental differences among individuals.

Vitamin D is important in many aspects of our health from healthy bones to protection from cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases.  Although it is known as the “Sunshine Vitamin” you are not always getting Vitamin D when the sun is shining.  In fact it is estimated that 50% of the population in North America are Vitamin D deficient.  Our mechanism for making Vitamin D depends on the availability of UVB rays and as you will read in this article from the Vitamin D Council, anyone above latitudes of 37° north of the equator and below latitudes of 37° south of the equator experience what is known as a “Vitamin D Winter” in which no UVB rays can penetrate the ozone and thus shuts down our ability to make our own Vitamin D.

Adrenal related disorders have become an epidemic as we currently live in a high stress society. The adrenal glands adapt to stress (emotional, chemical, physical) by producing steroid hormones cortisol, aldosterone, progesterone, and DHEA; and catecholamines epinephrine and norepinephrine. Dysfunction of the adrenal glands is not due to a problem with the gland, but rather the pathways in the brain that signal the glands to perform their function.  Patients often have symptoms of Adrenal Stress and they take supplements for their adrenals, but they don’t improve. This is because their symptoms are NOT an adrenal gland issue.

You may have heard the term “leaky gut” used at The Healing Center as a diagnosis and still don’t understand what it truly means.  It sounds like a catch term about conditions that people can’t really give you a clear picture.  So let me break it down for you.  Leaky gut, by definition, is “increased intestinal permeability or intestinal hyper permeability that happens when tight junctions in the gut, which control what passes through…

When one hears the word “parasites”, the thought of horror films comes to mind.  Yes, by definition, parasites are “an organism that lives on or in host and gets its food from or at the expense of the host”[1]  Although some parasites have evolved alongside of us and don’t cause harm, some parasites our body wants to eliminate because they can cause harm by manipulating our immune system response in a negative way.

At The Healing Center we have a holistic, whole-person view as well as molecular view, with tools and testing to evaluate the biochemistry of cells, tissues, and organs. We seek to find the exact imbalance in your body, the underlying cause for that imbalance, and the individualized solution.

At the Healing Center, we commonly see pathogens such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and mold underlying and accompanying many health issues for patients. We have multiple tools for eliminating these pathogens including herbs, clearings, frequency treatments, and detoxification. Another method of eliminating and managing pathogens is through proper oral care.

I found an excellent article by Dr. Hyman, MD this week that highlights 5 simple steps to eliminate IBS without drugs. We commonly use these steps in our practice, which are aimed at identifying and addressing the underlying cause for IBS. Most patients are prescribed antidepressants, sedatives, anti-spasm drugs, Metamucil or other fiber sources, and not given real answers, or real results. IBS effects 20% of the population. So what exactly is it and how can we eliminate it once and for all?