May 2012 Newsletter - Advanced Naturopathic

May 2012 Newsletteradvanced2018-01-14T20:53:58+00:00

I came across this quote and really liked it, so I decided to share it with all of you. I feel that this concept really applies to our approach to medicine and healing the body. It is gentle enough with the body, works within our innate, natural healing abilities, while being strong enough to reshape the world; one person at a time.

water

“Like water, be gentle and strong. Be gentle to follow natural paths of the earth, and strong enough to rise up and reshape the world.” – Brenda Peterson

Dr. Melina Roberts

Advanced Naturopathic Medical Centre

Featured Article

Understanding Arthritis: A New, Natural Perceptive

One in six Canadians are currently suffering from arthritis with a high proportion of them experiencing moderate to severe pain. Many people are told that this is a degenerative condition where our only option is to manage the symptoms. Conventional treatments for arthritis such as acetaminophen, NSAIDs and corticosteriods are effective treatments for decreasing the pain but they do not address the cause of the problem nor help the joints to repair themselves. The truth is that you have more than one option. We need to gain a better understanding arthritis, which will allow us to better treat it and reap the benefits of better health.

Arthritis literally means inflammation of the joints. We have been conditioned to think that inflammation and pain are bad things that we need to get rid of immediately regardless of the cause. What we need to understand is that pain and inflammation are natural, normal innate protective mechanisms that need to be understood and responded to appropriately, not suppressed or ignored. Pain is our body’s early detection system that lets us know that something is wrong. Inflammation is a localized protective response. It is our body’s attempt to heal itself. Pain is our primary warning signal that something is wrong and if ignored or suppressed will lead to tissue breakdown and degeneration. When pain is understood and responded to appropriately then tissue healing and regeneration are the result.

There are two main contributing factors to joint inflammation. READ MORE…

Featured Therapy

Prolotherapy – Regenerative Solution to Chronic Joint Pain

When you have chronic joint pain you NOW have 3 choices: suffer with chronic pain; go with the traditional approach of surgery or anti-inflammatory medications; or get injections to help regenerate your joint……which would you choose??

When joints are weakened by traumatic or over-use injuries, the blood supply to ligaments is limited, and therefore healing is slow and not always complete after injury. The limited blood supply means that the nutrients needed for proper healing are not able to reach those tissues. In addition, ligaments have many nerve endings and therefore the person will feel pain at the areas where the ligaments are damaged or loose.

Prolotherapy is a way to treat healable connective tissue in a non-surgical way. It is a treatment that stimulates permanent changes.

“Prolo” is short for proliferation which means regenerate or rebuild, because the treatment causes the proliferation of new ligament or tendon tissue in areas where it becomes weak.

How it works is a substance is injected into the affected ligaments or tendons, which leads to local inflammation. The localized inflammation triggers a wound healing cascade resulting in the deposition of new collagen. The collagen tightens the ligament or tendon and makes it stronger.

The challenge with this procedure is that it can initially be painful as the local inflammation takes place and healing is initiated, but the long-term benefit is lasting. In comparison to a cortisone shot where the initial benefit is pain relief but there are no long-term benefits.

Ideally you should receive the injection every 3-4 weeks for 3-6 treatments for optimal results.

Click here to read more about Prolotherapy.

Your Health Questions Answered

What is the problem with PORK?

Pork is biologically similar to human meat. That is one of the reasons they are able to do pig heart valve transplants in humans because the tissues are compatible with little risk of rejection by our immune systems. The problem with human’s consuming pork is that it elicits an immune response. We are able to see this with the darkfield microscopy, if a patient has recently eaten pork we will see the white blood cells in full force and very active. What the immune system does it helps us to decipher protein’s from self (do not digest) from protein’s from non-self (digest). Therefore if you eat pork on a regular basis you will challenging your immune system and over time it may have a difficult time being able to adequately decipher self from non-self, which can set you up for an autoimmune picture. Autoimmune disease is when the body is having a challenging time being able to decipher self from non-self.