Categories
Functional Medicine Health Concerns

Supporting Healthy Blood Pressure Levels

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/6″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]Elevated blood pressure predisposes individuals to cardiovascular disease and
increased risk of cardiac events, including stroke and myocardial infarction (heart attack). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as of 2021, the prevalence of hypertension increases with age, with a rate of 22.4% among adults aged 18 to 39, a rate of 54.5% among those aged 40 to 59, and a rate of 74.5% among those aged 60 and older.

Primary or essential hypertension has no direct identifiable etiology, although genetics, suboptimal dietary intake, and other factors, such as sedentary lifestyle and obesity, are believed to be involved. In contrast, secondary hypertension is caused by other disease processes, including renal or endocrine pathophysiology.
Patients may unknowingly begin to trend toward hypertension without any overt
symptoms before diagnosis. This highlights the importance of regular blood pressure monitoring. When present, symptoms may signify more severe hypertension, and include headache, fatigue, vision problems, chest pain, and arrhythmia.

Nutrition and lifestyle intervention serve as important facets of care in preventing and ameliorating hypertension. You can lower blood pressure through the maintenance of healthy weight, increased physical activity, stress management techniques, and adoption of a heart-healthy diet, such as the Mediterranean diet.

Additionally, nutrients that support vasodilation, healthy endothelial function, and blood pressure regulation can be emphasized through diet or supplementation.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”2025″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” img_link_target=”_blank” link=”https://kingdomhealthcape.com/2021/05/a-functional-approach-to-high-blood-pressure/”][vc_column_text]

Action Steps to Support Healthy Blood Pressure Levels

Lifestyle Intervention

  • Regular physical activity to support healthy cardiovascular function and a healthy body mass index (BMI).
  •  Stress management practices, such as breath work, meditation, and yoga to
    modulate sympathetic response and tone.

Therapeutic Diet and Nutritional Considerations

  • Consumption of a heart healthy diet such as the Mediterranean diet or dietary
    approaches to stop hypertension, also known as the DASH diet.
  • Support blood pressure levels through intake of magnesium- and potassium-rich foods:
    o Spinach
    o Kale
    o Swiss chard
    o Pumpkin seeds
    o Almonds
    o Beet greens
    o Quinoa
    o Black beans and lima beans
    o Tuna and salmon
    o Dark chocolate
    o Avocado

Supplement support based on practitioner guidance:

  •  Hibiscus tea
  • Hawthorne extract
  •  CoQ10 with lipoic acid
  • Magnesium Taurate

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Final Thoughts

Functional medicine aims to focus on the cause of a medical condition rather than the symptoms. Conventional medical approaches can be quick to use drugs to control the associated symptoms rather than solving the underlying issue which can cause further issues in the long-run.

For example, high blood pressure is sometimes a result of poor eating habits or lifestyle habits such as smoking and drinking. A functional medicine approach looks for the underlying cause and will include a range of different tests to determine what is going on.

The practitioner will consider the full medical and lifestyle history of the individual and use a patient-centered approach. There can be a wide range of triggers for high blood pressure including environmental and genetic causes.

Low levels of certain vitamins such as vitamin D and C, for example, can impact blood pressure and cause raised blood pressure levels. Exposure to high levels of mercury can have a similar effect. Low levels of potassium in relation to sodium also leads to high blood pressure. If someone is pre-diabetic they may have high blood sugar levels and a predisposition to chronic high blood pressure.

The cause of high blood pressure is often different for each individual and, where conventional medicine provides a one size fits all solution, the functional medicine approach looks for the unique factors that are causing the condition.

If someone is suffering from inflammation, for example, their high blood pressure may be a result of that particular health problem. Treating the inflammation and reducing it can in turn result in an improvement in terms of the patient’s blood pressure.

Lifestyle interventions make a huge difference to many chronic conditions we suffer from in the modern world, including high blood pressure. For one individual that could mean adding more foods high in potassium. For another, it might be reducing weight and living a less sedentary lifestyle.

While we recommend the action steps stated above to support a healthy blood pressure, we can not emphasize enough how important it is to talk with a functional medicine provider to create a personalized pathway to restore healthy blood pressure!

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Categories
Functional Medicine Health Concerns

How to Heal Your Thyroid

 

What Does the Thyroid Do?

The thyroid produces two thyroid hormones (T4 and T3) and calcitonin (which helps to lower calcium and phosphate levels in the blood by helping the bones absorb more calcium).  The thyroid hormones are essential for metabolism, as well as normal growth and development. They influence every cell in your body. They maintain the rate at which your body uses fats and carbohydrates, help control your body temperature, influence your heart rate, and help regulate the production of protein.

Unfortunately, most doctors focus on the individual hormones instead of the nutrients and processes that make those hormones. Thyroid dysfunction is a symptom of a much larger, whole body issue. It is just one piece of the puzzle.  Medicating the thyroid is a bandaid, and is not actually addressing any of the underlying issues going on.

The regulation of the thyroid hormones depends on the relationship between the anterior pituitary and the thyroid gland.  The pituitary secretes the thyroid stimulating hormones. This is why the HPA axis is so important in our health and why we can’t just focus on one part of the body. The HPA axis is the hypothalamus/pituitary/adrenal axis. If the HPA Axis is under stress, then the HPT axis is under stress as well- they are connected, and the HPA axis tends to take precedence. You cannot heal the thyroid if your adrenals aren’t healthy.

Gut Healing and Thyroid Health

The gut is one of the first steps to address in healing from any illness. The gut encompasses so much – digestion and nutrient assimilation, gut microbiome, gut/brain axis, and lots of inflammation can stem from the gut!

Stomach acid is so important for utilization of the nutrients needed to support a healthy thyroid, especially copper, iron, potassium and more. When our gut is out of balance, it can increase inflammation in the body which will stress out our HPA axis (and HPT axis). The conversion of thyroid hormones also depends on a healthy microbiome.[/vc_column_text]

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Liver Healing and Thyroid Health

The liver has hundreds of functions in the body. If it is not happy, then lots of things can being going wrong in the body and many processes start failing. Regarding the two thyroid hormones – T4 and T3, T3 is the ONLY form of thyroid hormone that the cells can use. T4 must be converted to T3 before it can be used by the cells. Guess where that conversion takes place?  Yep, in the liver! Thanks to the state of our food and environment, so many people have sluggish lovers because it gets sluggish when we have nutrient deficiencies, chronic underlying infections, and if we have lots of toxins.

Some of our favorite liver healers are castor oils packs, herbal infusions, bitter herbs like dandelion root, bioray liver life and liver detoxes.

There’s also high amounts of autoimmune thyroid issues these days (caused mostly by underlying infections like Lyme and EBV), but also from inflammation from many causes, including gluten and caffeine.

Avoiding gluten, processed foods, and goitrogenic foods like soy, can also help the thyroid. Focusing on a whole foods, organic diet with healthy fats and proteins is essential.

There’s a lot of focus on iodine for thyroid health but in isolated form, it can cause problems for some people. So, unless recommended by your practitioner, it’s best to get it from a good, clean source of sea veggies. Maine Coast Sea Veggies is a great brand!

Selenium is also a very important factor in thyroid health. A Brazil nut a few times a week will cover your selenium needs!

Recap:

There is a lot to thyroid health!

Balancing minerals, replenishing other nutrients, healing the gut, and healing your liver are imperative for healing the thyroid.

Addressing any underlying infections or toxicities will help as well.

Since there are many variations in thyroid dysfunction, fixing the thyroid will be different for most people.

Here are some things you can do now to help your thyroid:

  • Cervical spine chiropractic care
  • Addressing trauma’s and feeling “heard”
  • Addressing oral health such as amalgams & root canals as these are a direct download to the thyroid.
  • Nourish your body with minerals through whole food, natural sources.
  • Avoid taxing toxins & toxicants such as BPA, bromine, mercury, and lead. As these all compete with the receptors for iodine thus inhibiting thyroid hormone production!
    • Cans
    • Strawberries (conventional)
    • Tuna
    • Lead
    • Pesticides
    • Herbicides

Need More Help?

Specific Testing & Working with a Provider

More sources for thyroid healing:

Dr. Brad Shook has many great videos about thyroid health, like this one!

Liver thyroid connection

Gut thyroid connection

Gut thyroid connection: Dysbiosis and Thyroid Dysfunction

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Categories
Functional Medicine Maternal & Pediatrics Women's Health

Top 10 Things To Promote Breast Health

Empower yourself and the women in your life with these top 10 ways we can support breast health.

 
This October and going forward, take control of the things you CAN control… because we believe breast cancer doesn’t have to be 1 in 8.?
 

10 Tips for Breast Health from our provider Taylor:

?1. Regular self-breast exams

See our last post for a how-to picture or ask your doctor/mom/trusted friend to teach you! 
You know your body best – don’t forget to check in on it. If we do regular (weekly or bi-weekly) breast exams, we will be able to catch an unfamiliar lump WAY sooner than if we just wait to get an annual breast exam or mammogram by our physician.
 
 

?2. Diet

Whole, real foods. Avoid grains, sugars and vegetable oils. Get food sensitivity testing done if needed!

This focus becomes so important because breast cancer has increased dramatically over the past few decades.

Whereas one in 20 women had it in the 1960s, today that number has risen to one in eight women. According to The American Cancer Society, over 40,000 women will die from breast cancer in 2025.

These and other statistics suggest environmental factors are driving cancer. What we eat, toxins, chronic stress, sleep deprivation, and other problems in modern-day society become catalysts to increase breast cancer risk.

Through Functional Medicine, we consider the factors that increase breast cancer risk and then eliminates them. From that perspective, we can literally change the soil in which cancer grows.

According to Dr. Hyman, imbalances in seven key systems in your body contribute to breast cancer and every other disease. Among these seven key systems include hormonal imbalances such as high insulin levels that eventually create insulin resistance.

Sugar, along with refined grains, becomes the driver behind high insulin levels. Every time we eat sugar, we raise insulin levels, which make cancer cells grow and promote inflammation – which is made worse with processed vegetable oils. It’s literally like adding fuel to the fire.

High insulin levels also increase estrogen levels. High estrogen levels correlate with increased breast cancer risk.

Sugar, especially as high-fructose corn syrup and other processed carbohydrates, surges our insulin levels, increasing estrogen in the bargain.

Put bluntly: Every time we eat sugar, we increase our risk for breast cancer.

Increased insulin also means our body becomes really good at storing fat, and a vicious cycle ensues as our insulin and estrogen levels stay cranked up. Studies show excess body fat increases our risk for breast cancer.

When someone is deprived of sugar and then injected with radioactive sugar, that sugar goes right to cancer cells, which triggers insulin, inflammation, all while feeding the cancer cells. Cancer cells love sugar.

To become proactive and prevent or reverse breast cancer, you absolutely want to eliminate sugar. For breast cancer patients, we recommend going cold turkey on sugar and processed foods.

 

?3. Avoid estrogen mimicking chemicals

These are found in beauty products, processed canned foods, plastics, commercial soy products, birth control pills, and unfiltered water.

Diet plays a major role in breast cancer, but so do other factors like environmental toxins. The most damaging ones include estrogen and substances that mimic it, which we call xenoestrogens.

Xenoestrogens bind to estrogen receptors that activate estrogen, stimulating cancer pathways. In fact, these estrogen mimickers are 1,000 times more powerful than estrogen, and they react synergistically.

To lessen our exposure to these toxins, choose filtered water and organic food; Always opt for high-quality meat sources like wild salmon and grass-fed beef; Become more aware about how things like household cleaners and cosmetics can increase your toxic load at the EWG.

 

?4. Supplement with antioxidants

such as black seed oil and black cumin!

The amount of healing properties provided by life on this earth will never cease to amaze us! Plants such as herbs, roots, fruits and vegetables are packed with micronutrients, phytonutrients, and essential minerals to aid and repair our bodies.

Antioxidants are plant or phyto-chemicals that protect your cells and tissues from damage caused by electrically charged molecules, a.k.a. free radicals. Cell and DNA damage is at the root of most diseases – including: autoimmune disease, cancer, and chronic inflammation. Antioxidants act like natural sponges, mopping up these free radicals to protect your cells and DNA from damage. This is why it is so vitally important to get as many antioxidants into your body as you can.

Antioxidants can be found in fruits and vegetables as well as herbs. You can ensure you’re getting these cancer preventing photo-chemicals in supplements – our provider Taylor recommends Black Seed Oil or Black Cumin! Talk to us about which brands we love and trust to ensure you are getting a high-quality supplement to aid your body!

 

5. Ditch commercial deodorants

that contain aluminum, parabens, & estrogen mimicking chemicals which increase your risk of breast cancer.

We want to avoid any deodorants with toxins such as aluminum, p-dichlorobenzene, and/or phthalates. We can’t recommend any certain brands – you can also make your own as it is the most effective and affordable. This also ensureds knowing that there are no hidden ingredients and our skin is being protected from toxins.

 

?6. Undergarments

underwire and snuggly bras restrict circulation and lymph flow. Opt for a bralette or wire-free option.

Aside from helping us look good and giving us support, how many of us have thought about how bra wearing affects our breast health?   The fact is women of all breast sizes who wear bras, especially for extended periods of time and especially bras with underwires, are negatively impacting breast health.

Bra wearing confines and constricts the breasts, reducing lymphatic drainage.  It is very important to have optimal lymphatic drainage to remove the toxins from the breasts that contribute to breast congestion and inflammation.  Estrogen is produced in the breasts and fat cells and if the lymph system is clogged, the breast environment becomes stagnant and unhealthy, leading us down a path none of us want to go down.

According to the book Dressed to Kill: The Link Between Bras and Breast Cancer, women who wear bras more than 12 hours a day have a 1 out of 7 risk of developing breast cancer.  While women who wear bras less than 12 hours a day have a 1 out of 52 risk, and women who never wear bras have a 1 out of 162 risk.

Over 85 percent of the lymph fluid flowing from the breast drains to the armpit lymph nodes (also why it’s not helpful to block this detox pathway with antiperspirants). Most of the rest drains to the nodes along the breastbone. Bras and other external tight clothing can impede flow. The nature of the bra, the tightness, and the length of time worn, will all influence the degree of blockage of lymphatic drainage. Thus, wearing a bra can contribute to the development of breast cancer as a result of cutting off lymphatic drainage, so that toxic chemicals are trapped in the breast.

Does this mean we should stop wearing bras? Not necessarily. If you do choose to wear a bra, avoid bras with underwires and make sure you get a proper fit! This makes a HUGE difference in circulation and lymph function.

 

? 7. Avoid medications that impact hormone levels

such as HRT (synthetic hormone replacement therapy) or birth control pills. There are other alternatives out there such as cycle mapping! If you use birth control as a method of hormone balance consider a bioidentical option such as BioTE.

Conventional treatments for hormonal imbalances typically include synthetic hormone replacement therapies, birth control pills, insulin injections, thyroid medications and more. Unfortunately, for the majority of people suffering from hormonal disorders, relying on these types of synthetic treatments often does three things:

  1. It makes people dependent on taking prescription drugs for the rest of their lives in order to keep symptoms under control.
  2. It simply masks the patient’s symptoms, but doesn’t solve them, which means that the patient can continue to develop abnormalities in other areas of the body while the disorder progresses.
  3. It potentially causes a higher risk for serious side effects, such as stroke, osteoporosis, anxiety, reproductive problems, cancer and more.

Is it possible to balance hormones naturally? The good news is: yes, in many cases it is. At our office, we address root causes of hormonal problems, as well as provide treatment options to help you balance your hormones naturally.

 

?8. Exercise

daily movement increases circulation and lymph flow. Rebounding!

Regular, moderate exercise supports cellular health and the cellular process of autophagy, which is the recycle and cleanup of old or damaged cells. We CAN NOT recommend daily movement enough! Go for a walk, garden, turn up your favorite music and have a dance party while you clean… just move your body!

A new study adds to existing evidence linking physical activity with longer survival in women diagnosed with high-risk breast cancer.

Women who engaged in regular physical activity before their cancer diagnosis and after treatment were less likely to have their cancer come back (recur) or to die compared with those who were inactive, the study found.

Studies show regular exercise can decrease your breast cancer risk. Exercise improves insulin sensitivity, helping you balance estrogen and maintain a healthy body weight.

Just like in nature, where there is stagnation – there is disease.

Be sure to move everyday!

 

? 9. Decrease & manage stress

we recommend certain adaptogens, prayer/meditation, and other creative, calming outlets.

Studies connect chronic stress levels with increased breast cancer risk. Whether you opt for meditation, stretching, deep breathing, walking barefoot in the grass, or another de-stressor, find something that works for you and do it.

 

? 10. Quality sleep and good sleep hygiene

effects the body’s ability to repair itself and fight off disease!

Studies show an inverse association between sleep duration and breast cancer risk. Listen to your body or aim for eight hours of quality, uninterrupted sleep every night.

Find our top sleep hygiene tips here!

When it comes to cancer – and really, optimal health – we’re all in this together. We can all learn from each other. If you’ve found ways to reduce your breast cancer risk, we want to hear from you. We would love to hear your thoughts below or on our Facebook page.

Categories
Functional Medicine

What Your Medical Practitioner Should Be Asking You – But Probably Isn’t

Uncovering the “why” behind your symptoms is key to unlocking true healing. The “why” is found within your life story. Our practice was created to give you and your practitioner the time necessary to uncover the intricacies of your health journey.
Your health journey starts the moment your life begins. Here are some questions & reasons your functional medicine provider may ask you when starting to uncover the “why’s” behind physical symptoms.

“In the United States, about half the C-sections we do appear to be avoidable. This study is the first to estimate the potential population-wide harms of this trend to mothers over the long term” – co-author Dr. Neel Shah, who leads the Delivery Decisions Initiative at Ariadne Labs

Did your mother give birth to you vaginally or by C-Section?

A caesarean section (CS) can be a life-saving intervention when medically indicated, but this procedure can also lead to short-term and long-term health effects for women and children. Given the increasing use of CS, particularly without medical indication, an increased understanding of its health effects on women and children has become crucial.

There is emerging evidence that babies born by CS have different hormonal, physical, bacterial, and medical exposures, and that these exposures can subtly alter neonatal physiology. Short-term risks of CS include altered immune development, an increased likelihood of allergy, atopy, and asthma, and reduced intestinal gut microbiome diversity.

The persistence of these risks into later life is less well investigated, although an association between CS use and greater incidence of late childhood obesity and asthma are frequently reported. There are few studies that focus on the effects of CS on cognitive and educational outcomes. The study, published in the Aug 9 issue of JAMA Surgery, was led by researchers at Aalborg University in Denmark and at Ariadne Labs in Boston. More than 23 million women across the globe have C-sections each year, making it the most common surgery in the world by far. More than one million women have hysterectomies later in life to remove their uterus, most often because of pain and/or bleeding.

Understanding potential mechanisms that link CS with childhood outcomes, such as the role of the developing neonatal microbiome, has potential to inform practitioners so they can better aid in restoring patients to optimal health.

What were some of your biggest losses, traumas & life events?

Providers need to understand how trauma can affect treatment presentation, engagement, and the outcome of physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral health services. Trauma, including one-time, multiple, or long-lasting repetitive events, affects everyone differently.

Immediate and Delayed Reactions to Trauma

Some individuals may clearly display criteria associated with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but many more individuals will exhibit resilient responses or brief subclinical symptoms or consequences that fall outside of diagnostic criteria. The impact of trauma can be subtle, insidious, or outright destructive. How an event affects an individual depends on many factors, including characteristics of the individual, the type and characteristics of the event(s), developmental processes, the meaning of the trauma, and sociocultural factors.

From sleep disorders to food addictions/coping mechanisms, working with a provider to recognize traumas & triggers, create safe environments, and aid in re-regulating nervous systems in healthy & helpful manners can help restore mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Were you exposed to antibiotics early in life?

During birth, a relatively sterile unborn child becomes a newborn coated with microbes on every surface. This collection of bacteria, archaea, viruses, and fungi found in and on the human body is called the microbiota. The collective genomes of the microbiota are considered to be the metagenome, and the totality of the microbiota, metagenome, and their interactions is the microbiome. The microbiota has many critical functions including protection from pathogens, development and maintenance of the immune system, and helping the host access nutrients in food. The gut microbiota has been of particular interest, as perturbations of this community have been linked to disease states including autoimmune disease and neurological disorders. Antibiotics have consistently been shown to change the gut microbiome in humans and animals.

The infant gut microbiota increases in diversity and richness while becoming more stable over time, especially once solid foods are introduced into the diet, until the community resembles an adult-like state at around three years old.

Since the gut microbiota is important in host immune development, nutrient absorption, and protection from pathogens, changes in the community composition could have deleterious effects on the host. The spectrum of diseases for which an altered gut microbiota has been implicated is quite broad. Several excellent reviews have focused on the relationship between the microbiota and host immunity. One critical aspect of this field is that T cell populations in the gut can be influenced by the microbiota and its metabolites. One of the most studied groups of bacterial metabolites, short-chain fatty acids, have been shown to exert epigenetic regulation of transcription factor genes to influence regulatory T cells in the gut. Changes in T cell populations are one mechanism by which alterations in the gut microbiota may be contributing to autoimmune diseases including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), asthma, allergies, arthritis, and multiple sclerosis (MS) Thirteen studies, including a total of 527 504 children, were included in a systematic review and concluded exposure to antibiotics in infancy was associated with an increased odds ratio (OR) of childhood overweight and obesity.

Understanding your unique gut microbiome is vital to creating an environment that allows the rest of your body to function properly & thrive!

Were you breastfed as a child?

Health outcomes in developed countries differ substantially for mothers and infants who formula feed compared with those who breastfeed. For infants, not being breastfed is associated with an increased incidence of infectious morbidity, as well as elevated risks of childhood obesity, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, leukemia, and sudden infant death syndrome. For mothers, failure to breastfeed is associated with an increased incidence of premenopausal breast cancer, ovarian cancer, retained gestational weight gain, type 2 diabetes, myocardial infarction, and the metabolic syndrome.

Compared with breastfed infants, formula-fed infants face higher risks of infectious morbidity in the first year of life. These differences in health outcomes can be explained, in part, by specific and innate immune factors present in human milk. Plasma cells in the mother’s bronchial tree and intestine migrate to the mammary epithelium and produce IgA antibodies specific to antigens in the mother-infant dyad’s immediate surroundings, providing specific protection against pathogens in the mother’s environment. In addition, innate immune factors in milk provide protection against infection.

Not breastfeeding or weaning prematurely is associated with health risks for mothers as well as for infants. Epidemiologic data suggest that women who do not breastfeed face higher risk of breast cancer and ovarian cancer, as well as obesity, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and cardiovascular disease. As in the pediatric literature, most evidence arises from observational studies, which are subject to confounding by other health behaviors. For maternal health outcomes, associations are generally reported according to lifetime duration across all pregnancies, rather than duration of feeding for each pregnancy.

Given the compelling evidence for differences in health outcomes, breastfeeding should be acknowledged as the biologic norm for infant feeding. Physician counseling, clinics, and hospital practices should be aligned to ensure that the breastfeeding mother-infant dyad has the best chance for a long, successful breastfeeding experience. And, if it is not an option for a mother, practitioners should be informed so that they can best support the mother and infant through supplementary practices.

Did you achieve puberty at an early age?

Adolescence is increasingly recognized as a critical period in the life course, a time when rapid development of the brain, body, and behaviors opens a window of opportunity for interventions that may affect health throughout life.

Puberty results in very rapid somatic growth, brain development, sexual maturation, and attainment of reproductive capacity. It is accompanied by final maturation of multiple organ systems and major changes in the central nervous system and in psychosocial behavior ().

 A range of social determinants of health arise in adolescence, with peers, schools, and eventually the workplace becoming strong determinants of health and well-being as the influence of the family wanes (). These social changes are apparent even in traditional or more sociocentric cultures. More than half of the top 10 risk factors identified in the Global Burden of Disease study () are largely determined during adolescence.

Adolescence is also a time when young people may modify or alter the pathways to adult health or illness (). Early life experiences may reinforce both good and poor trajectories. Similarly, resilience during adolescence may improve outcomes for young people born into adversity. The transfer from primary to secondary school, sexual debut, and entry into the labor market may be critical points for preventing the accumulation of health risk ().

Adolescence is a time of great developmental plasticity and risk for the onset of a range of disorders that can carry a high burden of disease throughout the lifespan. It offers a critical developmental window of opportunity for intervention and prevention. Puberty and brain development during adolescence are responsible for dramatic shifts in burden of disease, away from childhood conditions toward injuries and emerging noncommunicable diseases. Knowledge of the unique developmental processes that characterize adolescence and the role they play in both risk and opportunity during this phase of life is expanding rapidly. What remains is the task of translating this knowledge into intervention and prevention methods that target modifiable, developmentally sensitive mechanisms to maximize the effectiveness of intervention approaches during this phase of life.

What is your work environment like?

Chronic, sustained exposure to stressful working conditions can result in a variety of long term health problems, including: Cardiovascular disease, Musculoskeletal disorders, & Psychological disorders.

Objectively assessed job demands were significantly associated with blood pressure and Cortisol levels. The model also predicted elevations in physiological responses after individuals left work, suggesting that potentially health-impairing reactions to jobs that have high demands and low controllability might carry over to home settings and thus pose a high risk of long-term health impairment. The results have implications for the role of personal control in occupational stress.

The goal is to create conditions that do not trigger the biologic and behavioral pathways to disease & disorders. Creating and implementing practices and environmental support requires leadership and strong cross-functional collaboration outside of the traditional structures for workplace health, safety and wellness.

Knowing the impact your environment has on your overall well-being is crucial to learning how to aid your body through nutrients, adaptogens, and healthy stress management practices.

At Kingdom Health & Wellness…

We want to help you make connections between events in your life and the current state of your health. That’s why we often refer to holistic medicine as the “investigative journalism” of medicine.
We believe a practitioner should take the time to go through your health history in depth, perform advanced testing, and help you create a game-plan to address the lifestyle factors necessary to truly make a difference and improve the quality of your life.

Schedule an appointment

 

Resources:
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (US). Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services. Rockville (MD): Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); 2014. (Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 57.) Chapter 3, Understanding the Impact of Trauma. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/

Champagne N, et al. Obesity/Overweight and the Role of Working Conditions: A Qualitative Participatory Investigation. Univ. Mass. Lowell, Oct 2012. www.uml.edu/research/centers/CPH-NEW.

Development of the human gastrointestinal microbiota and insights from high-throughput sequencing.

Dominguez-Bello MG, Blaser MJ, Ley RE, Knight R
Gastroenterology. 2011 May; 140(6):1713-9.
Rasmussen SH, Shrestha S, Bjerregaard LG, Ängquist LH, Baker JL, Jess T, Allin KH. Antibiotic exposure in early life and childhood overweight and obesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Diabetes Obes Metab. 2018 Jun;20(6):1508-1514. doi: 10.1111/dom.13230. Epub 2018 Feb 25. PMID: 29359849.
Sandall J, Tribe RM, Avery L, Mola G, Visser GH, Homer CS, Gibbons D, Kelly NM, Kennedy HP, Kidanto H, Taylor P, Temmerman M. Short-term and long-term effects of caesarean section on the health of women and children. Lancet. 2018 Oct 13;392(10155):1349-1357. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31930-5. PMID: 30322585.
Stuebe, Alison. “The risks of not breastfeeding for mothers and infants.” Reviews in obstetrics & gynecology vol. 2,4 (2009): 222-31.

Succession of microbial consortia in the developing infant gut microbiome.

Koenig JE, Spor A, Scalfone N, Fricker AD, Stombaugh J, Knight R, Angenent LT, Ley RE
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Mar 15; 108 Suppl 1():4578-85.