Real Integrative Medicine with Dr. Jordan Robertson ND

Welcome back! After a summer hiatus we’re ready to get back to the podcast and share evidence-based health information and mindset discussion to help you advocate better for yourself in your health journey.    Today’s episode is a welcome-back discussion about how we often let our past decisions and failures prevent us from trying something new. We’re going to break down why we feel badly about past choices and how to reframe the experiences you’ve had with your health (even if they didn’t work).    Everyone is in the “middle” of their health journey, which means that you’ve all done things before today and many of those things didn’t work. Or they worked a little. Or they worked and now no longer work. But not pursuing any future goals or any future solutions because you’re not in perfect health right now despite trying things in the past is not the right way to look at your future.    If you’ve ever hesitated to try something new because you’ve been hurt or disappointed by your past attempts - this is a great reframe to help us go into the fall with a fresh new perspective.    Welcome back! The fall is going to be great.   I call out in the episode our Clarity Health clinic that services people in the GTA who are looking to change their health. www.clarityhealthburlington.ca Fill out a web inquiry to request a call back from our Patient Care Coordinators. 

Dr. Heather Hirsch, author of Unlock Your Menopause Type, discusses menopause types, the frustration of the lack of information and support, exploring the pros and cons of treatment options, understanding estrogen dominance and perimenopause, and the controversy surrounding hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

In today's episode, we’re taking a very practical approach to talking about nutrition and how to slightly change some of your routine nutrition patterns to help you meet your nutrition goals, especially if you are working on your blood sugar or weight loss.    We use the “money” and “budgeting” metaphor to discuss why we’d even consider taking a lower calorie food option occasionally or how to think about your nutrition patterns to be sure that they are helping move you forward with your health goals.    It’s a practical and pragmatic conversation about food including   Why cutting out fruits and vegetables makes no sense Whether you should eat low fat or high fat dairy Why choosing lean protein can really add up.  How to pick a treat that meets your nutrition goals  Why it’s easy to get carried away with certain food groups    If you struggle listening to discussions about food and calories, this episode might not be for you. We take a very realistic approach to discussing food choices and how your subtle daily choices may be walking you down a path you’re not interested in being on. I give you a lot of real and practical food examples and share how I manage my treats! I hope you enjoy the episode. 

With a wider conversation happening online about menopause, we’re seeing people come forward more than ever discussing the mental health strain that this phase of life can cause. I’m joined in this episode by one of my friends and close colleagues (we work in the same office!) Dr. Laurie Alpert ND, who is a NAMS certified menopause practitioner and your new mental health advocate.    Laurie and I share our experience in working with people in menopause and help you feel seen and understood in this deep conversation about our moods. We cover a lot of ground (from anxiety to depression to “meno-rage”) and give you the fire under your butt that you need to pay attention to your own mental health.    It’s common for us to blame the circumstances (teen and adult children, ageing parents, big careers) as the cause of mood changes for women over 45 and yet, menopause is a significant contributor to new depression (meaning you’ve never had an episode before) or a return of old depression (even if you’re well managed). We want every person to be able to recognize the changes their mood is having so they can get the support they need.    Dr. Laurie Alpert is one of our NAMS (North American Menopause Society) certified Naturopathic Doctors at Clarity Health in Ontario. We serve people in person in the GTA and virtually across Ontario. You can submit a request to work with Laurie at www.clarityhealthburlington.ca Listeners, wondering if perimenopause is contributing to your mental health concerns? Click here and download Dr. Laurie's free resource to encourage your care provider to consider your mental health in the context of menopause. 

With an increase in hormonal symptoms appearing over 40, many people are offered treatment options such as the pill, the IUD and HRT. Each of these treatment options have wonderful effects and some side effects and may or may not fit the bill for supporting people as they transition towards menopause.    In this episode, I sit down with Miranda Tawfik, a pharmacist with a focus on women’s health and hormone therapy. We discuss the pros and cons of each medication option and help settle some of your worries that you’ve been prescribed the wrong thing, or that they are “missing the boat” on a treatment option that they haven’t been offered yet.    We give you timelines to consider these treatments for, what to expect and when to consider switching to something else. We cover the lab work you can (and cannot) do when you’re on these treatments and the long term health benefits and consequences of each choice.    Whether you’ve been on the pill for decades, or haven’t used a hormone treatment since university, this episode will give you confidence in choosing which treatment option might be best for you and how to advocate to your practitioner to get it.    Origin’s Pharmacy is owned by Miranda Tawfik and supports practitioners and patients from all over Ontario get care for all phases of life, including hormone replacement therapy for menopause. You can find out more about the pharmacy through their website https://originspharmacy.ca/ 

PMS is more than a minor inconvenience. It can leave you feeling like a different person half the month, put strain on your relationships and can really derail achieving your other health goals.  In today’s episode, I’m joined by Dr. Keara Taylor, a Naturopathic Doctor in Toronto and one of our expert clinicians at The Confident Clinician. Keara’s focus in her practice and her research is on the emotional regulation of people through their PMS experience, and how to equip menstruators with the tools they need to feel more calm and confident throughout the month.  In this episode we cover: How to short circuit your PMS in the moment.  How to create a PMS toolkit of resources to help you improve your symptoms on your own.  How to teach your partner about PMS and why this is an important step.  Why “giving in” to your PMS is sometimes the right thing to do.  You can find Keara at www.drkearataylor.com or on Instagram @drkearataylor.nd  She works with people with PMS all over Ontario to feel better about their monthly hormone fluctuations, both physically and emotionally.   

I love watching someone so good at their craft. Whether it’s an artist, or a great lawyer, watching someone in their element always leaves me feeling in awe of their dedication, experience and tenacity to get great at something.    Nobody feels that way about their doctor.    In today’s episode, I want to address the trend of “doing your own research” for your medical care. The general distrust in medicine and the lack of appreciation about what goes into making a medical decision (combined with the internet) has left people feeling like they are actually more capable than their doctor at reading research. It’s left people feeling like there are un-read articles that only they can find (and their doctor won’t) and even that their doctor wants to choose something for them that is not the best answer (on purpose).    Reading research, synthesizing difficult concepts, communicating those concepts and helping people make value based and pragmatic decisions about their health care is my absolute super power. But put it in the ring with blogs, podcasts, DIY health programs and people’s overestimation in their own research capabilities and I’m left going toe to toe with an accountant over their hormone dose, or a teacher over their nutrition needs.    This episode isn’t about discouraging you from being interested in your health - quite the opposite. But being informed and interested is not the same as being a good researcher. I share my top strategies for “doing your own research” if you want to try, and when to trust the information that’s being offered to you by your health care team.  For the first time, I’ve created a DIY program for patients with endometriosis that helps you “do your own research” with guided videos, handouts and the real evidence on how to lower your pain. If you’re a person with endometriosis or menstrual cramps, you can download the Women’s Health Unplugged app and purchase this program at a low cost.

If you’ve spent 10 minutes on social media, you’ve probably heard the term insulin resistance. If you’ve spent 11 minutes on social media someone has probably scared you into feeling like your blood sugar is a problem, and you need a special solution to manage it.  In today’s episode, we talk about what the term insulin resistant means, and why everyone needs a basic understanding of blood sugar regulation to achieve better health. With diabetes being one of the most important (and most common) health consequences of aging, understanding your personal risks and how to manage them is a massive step in the right direction toward diabetes prevention.  And, in true Women’s Health Unplugged fashion, Jordan outlines the myths about blood sugar, why you don’t need a CGM (continuous glucose monitor) even if your favourite Instagram account wears one and what practical considerations look like to reduce your future risk of diabetes.  In this episode, we cover:  What the definition of insulin resistance is Which lab tests you could consider to better understand your blood sugar Practical steps that help lower the risk of insulin resistance and diabetes The myths and claims you can ignore  If you’re a practitioner and a member of The Confident Clinician, we’ll see you this weekend at our 12-hour insulin resistance advanced training. This course is free for all current members and will provide you with all of the resources you need to better support your patient population.  If you’re not a member, you can add your name to the waitlist for our July 2023 member drive. We only add clinician members twice per year. You can learn more at http://www.confidentclinicianclub.com

In today’s solo episode, we talk about how to tell if it’s time to throw your plan in the garbage and try something new.    It’s common when working with patients that people “quit” when things aren’t getting better as fast as they want to, or there’s a mismatch between what people value (natural treatments) and what people want (instantaneous results!).    We also talk through questions you need to ask such as:  Do you understand your baseline?  Are you even tracking the right things? Do you even know when you should expect results? Do you have enough information and resiliency to navigate speedbumps in your plan.    Healing isn’t a linear journey, and so if we expect hand-over-fist improvement every day, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.    But also, sometimes you need to quit what you’re doing and start something different. We’ll break it down and I’ll share what I’ve learned about how to tell if your plan isn’t working for you.    Remember that you can download our Women’s Health Unplugged App on the App Store or Google Play. Our first course on Endometriosis is available for purchase inside the app. It provides users with 5 video modules to learn on their own how to support their period pain. 

I’ve been following the research on burnout, PTSD and resiliency for a few years because I find adaptive changes in the brain and nervous system so fascinating. Getting real results with patients often involves us recognizing the impact of their mindset, nervous system regulation and level of burnout/resilience as we construct a plan.    We can easily see how a patient would find it hard to do a particular part of their plan if they couldn’t afford it, if the resources were too far from their house or if they were downright allergic to the suggestion. But when we think about resiliency, we often have preconceived ideas about what that means, and how “resilient” we are or aren’t.    Dr. Jenny Liu is a Postdoctoral Associate with the MacDonald Franklin OSI Research Centre and an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, Schulich School of Medicine, Western University. Dr. Liu’s background is in the science of stress and resilience. She works with stakeholders to identify the determinants of resilience in different communities and support efforts to promote or build resilience using a number of evidence-informed strategies and approaches.   In this amazing episode, we talk about the definition of resiliency, how you need to reframe the way you consider yourself and your support systems and how you can change how you feel about your stressors just by focusing on the pillars of resilience.    Her free self-assessment app is available online at https://twitter.com/resilient_u and is a great place for people to start to understand what is influencing their ability to show up as their best selves every day.    You can follow Jenny on Twitter at https://twitter.com/resilient_u