As people navigate perimenopause, they start to become familiar with those common menopausal experiences. Hot flashes. Irregular periods. Heavy periods. Light periods. Night sweats. Vaginal dryness. Mood changes. So on and so forth.   What is often a surprise is being told that their cholesterol or blood pressure has changed as well. This unexpected news may come during a routine check-up and folks may be left feeling like they’ve done something wrong. This can be particularl

In recent years, I’ve added educator to my CV. After 20+ years of private practice, I decided to share my knowledge in a different way and have had the privilege of speaking to my colleagues about integrative heart health in a variety of venues. It’s been a pretty busy two years, but 2024 is the biggest year yet!   I started writing this blog on the plane back from San Diego where I spoke at the California Naturopathic Doctors Association’s Annual Conference about familial hy

Given that heart disease affects millions of Canadians, it’s somewhat mystifying to me that we (health professionals) only seem to highlight the broad strokes of risk. I think it’s fair to say that many people know that things like cholesterol, blood pressure, smoking, diet, and exercise all have something to do with heart health. You may not understand what the relationship is, but you probably know it exists. It’s true; these factors are definitely important and improving t

PMDD is similar to PMS, but much more severe and often debilitating. It involves mood, cognitive, and physical symptoms caused by the normal variations in estrogen and progesterone levels during the later half of the menstrual cycle leading up to the next period. It can be difficult to get a diagnosis by a health professional, which may be partly due to confusion about whether it is a psychiatric or a hormonal disorder, and likely also because doctors are taught that patients

Several years ago, as some of you may remember, I regularly wrote a newsletter for Kura. It was dense – lots of categories and links and interesting bits of health info. And although I really liked putting it together, it took so much time every month. Eventually, the time I thought I needed to spend on it became overwhelming and my newsletter-writing slowly trailed off. I was reminded of this when deciding what to write for the newsletter today. Although I’m super excited to