Naturopath Tabitha McIntosh joins me as we chat about common health challenges, the cues that our bodies give us and what they mean, being out of sync with the world around us and how we can all "eat the world you want" with simple and achievable tips to take control of you and your families health.

Download the PDF transcription

Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   Hello and welcome to Unstress, I'm Dr. Ron Ehrlich. Today my guest is one of Australia's leading naturopaths, Tabitha McIntosh. Tabitha has written a book, One Bite at a Time: Reduce Toxic Exposure and Eat the World You Want.

Now, one of the questions I'd love to ask my guest, and I'm going to ask people as we go along in this podcast series is, what is some of the challenges that people face on their health journey? This is from the perspective of a health practitioner. What do they think some of those health challenges are? And when you hear what Tabitha comes up with, it could well be some things that ring a bell with you, and you may be interested to see what those challenges are, and what effects they could be having on you.

We also discussed our preoccupation with a "quick fix" and how it's affecting your approach to your own health. I mean, the question is, are you looking for that quick fix? Because if you are, I tell you what, there's a whole industry waiting out there to embrace you with open arms, but if you're playing the long game, you really need to be exploring what is actually going on, and Tabitha has got some terrific insights.  I also ask her to give some a couple tips to make a difference in your life. I think they're fabulous and I'm sure you will too. So, I hope you enjoy this chat that I had with Tabitha McIntosh.

Welcome to the show Tabitha!

Tabitha McIntosh:             Thank you so much for having me, Ron.

Dr. Ron Ehrlich:                   Tabitha you spend so much time ... Well, you're with patients all the time. And what are some of the challenges that you see people face when they're coming into your practice? I mean with their ... Well, firstly dealing with disease or actually just wanting to be healthy. What are some of the challenges?

Tabitha McIntosh:             Well, you're right. I do see between 35 and 40 people a week and it is quite unusual for a naturopath or a clinician to be in practice 10 or 12 years and still be considered a generalist. So, I, rather than narrowing myself down to just working with digestion or just working with fertility, I like to keep things interesting and I still see everything.

The challenges that clients are suffering when they come in to see me, really if I had to sum it up, they've lost their sense of deep connection to nature and the natural cycles. I had a really strong and deep belief that the more synchronous with nature around us, the healthier and the more in balance we are. And obviously, you need to have that combined with health literacy and education and access to clean water and things like that.

But, the people that I am seeing are so disconnected from their own bodies and from nature around them. They seem to spend most of their day in their head and highly stressed and highly sympathetic dominant. And, that has an enormous impact on everything. That has a very dampening impact on their immune capacity. It has an awful adverse impact on the digestive comfort, and obviously dry mouth all the time, that's going to affect things like their teeth, their bowels, their digestion.

When we're highly stressed and strung out a lot of the time, things like reproduction, reproductive hormones, they're certainly not a priority if we're just trying to survive. I'm seeing all sorts of concerns in here, lots of trace mineral deficiencies, lots and lots of digestive disorders, a huge amount of infertility and subfertility, both genders, not just women, significant fertility concerns and semen analysis problems with men, as well. I'm seeing premature ovarian failure.