Cold or flu? Helpful health resources

As the fall approaches, do you find yourself with symptoms that you can’t recognize as signs of a cold or the flu?   Check out Dr. John Selle’s “Patient Education” page on his website, which includes helpful links such as:  “Cold or Flu? Symptom Self-Assessment” and a reference page for understanding lab test results.

Dr. Selle’s website is listed on Koshland Pharm’s practitioner referral page.  This referral list includes the names and contact information for California practitioners in the fields of general medicine, gynecology, integrative medicine, lyme disease treatment, naturopathic medicine, oncology, urology, and veterinary medicine.  These practitioners are ones that we have worked closely with at the pharmacy over the last several years and that we have found to be committed to excellent patient care.  If you are looking for websites with helpful health and wellness information, or if you are looking for a health practitioner in California, you can check out Koshland Pharm’s referral page here.  We welcome feedback about the links you find the most helpful.

~Peter

www.koshlandpharm.com

Online Women’s Health Support Group, September 10-October 20

One of our favorite practitioners, Naturopathic Doctor Amy Day, is about to start a 6 week online wellness support group for busy moms.  This is a great resource for any mom out there who wants or needs to reduce stress, increase energy, or lose weight naturally.

In her introduction, Dr. Day addresses prospective group members:

“Dear Fellow Mom,

I know how stress and fatigue can get in the way of being the healthy mom that you want to be.

You feel so exhausted that it’s hard to even do the basics, let alone take care of your own health! You get behind at work because it’s so hard to focus. You are frustrated about the belly fat that just won’t go away. It seems like you spend half of your time with your kids yelling at them because you are so impatient and irritable. Your relationships suffer from lack of attention, and your friends wonder if you’ve fallen off the face of the earth.

If you want to restore your balance and rejuvenate your body, then keep reading…”

I highly recommend taking time to take care of yourself by using resources such as Dr. Day’s online wellness support group.  Be well!

~Peter

www.koshlandpharm.com

Helpful Health Blog Written by Bay Area MD

Here is the link to an interesting blog by a Bay Area medical doctor, Shiroko Sokitch, who integrates Chinese and Western medicine in her practice.  Dr. Sokitch has a unique approach to healing that she calls the 20/30/50 healing path, suggesting that 20% of a health issue can be attributed to a physical problem, 30% can be related to lifestyle issues, and 50% can be connected to spiritual and emotional concerns.   Dr. Sokitch’s latest two blogposts address the issues of depression and allergies from a holistic point of view.  Her blog is a great resource!

Healthy Digestion

Healthy digestion is a key component to our overall well-being.  Several common illnesses and conditions, such as food allergies, eczema and psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Chron’s disease, can actually be attributed to gastrointestinal dysfunction.   Taking specific supplements can be an effective way to address the root cause of some of these health challenges.  Click here to read more about seven supplements that can heal the GI tract by targeting multiple areas where the system might have broken down.

Of course, it is always important to talk with a knowledgeable practitioner when deciding if a particular healing protocol is right for you.  To see a list of Bay Area doctors who specialize in a holistic, integrative approach to health, see Koshland Pharm’s referral page.  Here’s to healthy eating, healthy digesting, and healthy living!  ~Peter

Treating adrenal fatigue

This is the fourth installment in a series of posts that I’ve written on adrenal fatigue and chronic stress (click here for the previous posts Chronic Stress – The 300 Pound Gorilla in the Room, More on Chronic Stress, and Do you have adrenal fatigue?).  This post will focus on treatment of adrenal fatigue. 

First, here are a few important points:

• It takes months to years of chronic exposure to stress for the adrenal glands to become fatigued, so it can take months for them to return to health.  In other words, be patient.  Reversing symptoms of adrenal fatigue is not instantaneous.
• Once the adrenal glands are compromised in their ability to produce hormones (especially cortisol), they will not naturally return to healthy functioning without treatment.
• Each person presents with a different profile of adrenal fatigue, so each person will have a unique treatment regimen.
• Saliva or blood spot testing of cortisol levels (4 tests over 24 hours) is very important to identify the adrenal output of cortisol and to help formulate an individualized treatment regimen.

With all that said, all treatment regimens share some similar attributes. 

First is to implement a stress reduction regimen into one’s daily activities.  This can include meditation, yoga, a relaxing walk, or a quiet breathing exercise.  I recommend at least 10-20 minutes of such an activity on a daily basis. 

Second, eat a healthy diet.  This includes eating enough protein (15-25 grams three times daily) and limiting intake of refined sugars (less than 40 grams a day). 

Third, limit caffeine (no more than 2 servings daily, none if possible). 

Fourth, take vitamins and supplements to support adrenal health (including adequate amounts of vitamin C).

For anyone interested in getting treatment, I recommend seeing an experienced practitioner to help customize a treatment plan and to help give encouragement throughout the process of healing the adrenal glands.  Also, a great resource is James Wilson’s book Adrenal Fatigue (which can be purchased at Koshland Pharm’s Website among various other places).

Please post your experiences and thoughts.

Live well!

www.koshlandpharm.com

Do you have adrenal fatigue?

I’ve been talking a lot about chronic stress and adrenal fatigue (see my earlier posts Chronic Stress – The 300 Pound Gorilla in the Room and More on Chronic Stress).  I have good reason to be bringing it up – it seems like everywhere I go I find people who suffer from it.  In fact, adrenal fatigue is rampant, maybe even epidemic.  The surprising thing is that, for the most part, the medical community doesn’t see it (good thing we have compounding pharmacists around to help rectify that).

So this begs the question: How do I know if I have adrenal fatigue?  Here are some tell-tale signs:

• difficulty getting up in the morning, feel terrible in the morning
• needing coffee to get going or keep going during the day
• mid-morning energy low
• afternoon energy low between 2-5pm
• second burst of energy at around 11pm lasting until 1-2am
• best sleep comes between 7-9pm
• craving salt and foods high in salt (potato chips, pretzels, etc.)
• low blood sugar under stress
• low blood pressure
• craving sweets
• intolerance to foods high in potassium (i.e. bananas)
• generally don’t feel well throughout the day

If this sounds like you, you most definitely have adrenal fatigue and need treatment.  In a future post, I’ll talk about the basic principles in treating adrenal fatigue.

By the way, this information was taken from a lecture by James Wilson, ND who wrote the excellent book, “Adrenal Fatigue: the 21st Century Stress Syndrome”.  I highly recommend this book if you are interested in this subject.

In the mean time, live well!

Peter Koshland, Pharm.D

www.koshlandpharm.com

More on Chronic Stress

In today’s modern times, being “stessed-out” is almost a cliche.  But what is rarely talked about are the real, quantifiable health effects of continuous stress on the body.  Even doctors often miss the boat when it comes to identifying the consequences of chronic stress and doing something to help alleviate it.

The bottom line is that humans are not physiologically equipped to experience continuous stress for months or years.  In his excellent book, “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,” Dr. Robert Sapolsky explains that our body is designed to deal with stress in ways similar to a Zebra.  In other words, we are built to have short bursts of intense stress (i.e. when we are being chased by a lion that wants to eat us) followed by long periods of relaxation (i.e. laying in the grass taking a nap).

Our reality is obviously much different.  With the varying demands placed on us by our jobs, families, and environment, we often experience prolonged moderate levels of stress with very little rest.  Over months and years, this can result in very real symptoms that can dramatically affect our quality of life.  Some of these symptoms include:

• depression
• insomnia
• ulcers
• low morning energy
• mid-day energy “crash”
• chronic fatigue
• fibromyalgia
• allergies
• constant infections and colds
• coronary heart disease
• and many more

Our society has already adapted itself to this reality.  Why do you think there is a Starbucks on every corner?  Caffeine helps us cope with low level of morning cortisol that result from the fatigue our adrenal glands experience after having to produce ongoing levels of stress hormones.

Stress and its consequence on our adrenal glands absolutely affects our hormonal balance.  If our adrenal output of cortisol is abnormal, the activity of all the other hormones in the body are effected.

The bottom line is that hormonal balancing begins with addressing the effects of chronic stress.  I’ll talk about how to do that in a future post.

In the mean time, live well! (and relax!)

Chronic Stress – The 300 Pound Gorilla in the Room

I went to an excellent seminar a few years ago where the lecturer, Dr. Eldred Taylor, listed the top 10 best selling pharmaceuticals of that year.  They included Lipitor, for cholesterol; some asthma medications; Ambien, for sleep; drugs for heart disease; and some antidepressants.  Then Dr. Taylor went on to say that every disease that these drugs are used to treat can be caused by chronic stress.

Well, that really got my attention since I had not heard a word about this in my 4 years of pharmacy school (although I did learn a lot about those top 10 drugs).  As I began talking to some of my patients about this topic, I realized that chronic stress is the 300 pound gorilla in the room.  The more I talked to people, the more it seemed like everyone had it.  Chronic stress and the subsequent adrenal fatigue that it causes, may be the single most important medical condition of our times, and no one has heard of it – not even most doctors!

What happens when we experience chronic stress over months and years is that it slowly alters the way our adrenal gland functions, ultimately depleting it of its ability to produce hormones necessary for our body to function properly. 

The adrenal gland is an important organ that sits on top of our kidneys.  Among other things, it is responsible for secreting the hormone cortisol, with is the hormone that allows us to cope with stress.  All cells in the body need cortisol.  It regulates glucose metabolism, it mediates inflammation, it regulates blood pressure, it affects the contractions of the heart, it affects the functioning of our immune system, it regulates the functioning of other hormones (like thyroid and the sex hormones), and much more. 

Interestingly, although our adrenal glands are the organs in our body that are designed to respond to stress, they are also the glands that are most easily damaged by stress.  Some people who have suffered from post-tramatic stress disorder (PTSD), have such a massive shock to their system, that their adrenal functioning is instantly altered.  For most of us, the damage is slow and incremental.

The good news is that there are things we can do to restore the functioning of our adrenal glands and reverse the negative effects of all this stress.  I’ll talk about that more in a future post.

In the mean time, live well!