Ayurveda is the traditional medical system of India and sets out recommendations for health from preconception to the final breath, covering preventative wellness, the daily life and deep disease treatment (including resolution of the Cell Danger Response). Learning Ayurveda can last the lifetime, but so much applicable wisdom is easily and simply available from the start. This episode features Sarah Kruse, Ayurvedic consultant and Panchakarma director (Ayurvedic detox). She discussed Ayurveda from the start- what it is and how it covers not just health and illness, but really how to establish swastha, meaning health as a way of being well-situated in self. She then covers the 3 main constitutional types in Ayurveda known in Sanskrit as vata, pitta and kapha and moves onto thinking about digestion and the gut which modern medicine is now confirming to be elemental to sustainable health. Ayurveda is the original personalized genomic medicine. Listen in to this episode with Sarah Kruse from Embrace-Ayurveda.com to get the basics- more to come on Ayurveda & Yoga (sister science) in upcoming episodes!

About half-way through this podcast with the incredible Dr Keesha Ewers, Ayurvedic & Functional Medicine Nurse Practitioner with her PhD in Sexology, she defines a Tantra as ‘a teaching’, but this whole show is actually a Tantra. It’s no holds barred as she challenges us to remove the veils of duality, even with things we have traditionally considered dirty or unpleasant or anathema. This makes everything in our environment a potential Tantra, from strangers we meet along a trail to our closest physical lover, with whom we still often maintain a separation. Dr Keesha then applies this perspective of Tantra to our culture, society, social upheaval, racism, politics and the COVID global pandemic. The walls we think we put up for our safety are no match for the reality in which we find ourselves. Rooting down into our universality is the answer. Being able to see ourselves as one with the virus and the police who murdered George Floyd affords us a unique and compassionate vantage point in which to interrupt the behaviors with greater effectiveness, efficiency and totality. This is the way to make social and global change and it starts within our own mind and consciousness.

Mitochondria are the cellular organelles that make our energy and they play a HUGE role in our ability to sense accurate threat as well as heal! Dr Ilene Ruhoy is a mitochondrial specialist and has spent years evaluating and optimizing their function. Listen in to learn what mitochondria are, why they are so special, how we can preventatively care for them to resolve our cell danger response and interventions to recover their best possible function including hyperbaric oxygen, nutrients in food and IV therapies and of course, stem cells (learn about nanotubules!).. Mitochondria are truly one of the most incredible aspects of our physiological machinery and deserve this devoted podcast. 

From Dr Carley Squires' early days as an athlete focused on keeping her own joints healthy, to the thousands of hours in training across the country in naturopathic school and in post-doctoral training focused on osteopathic and musculoskeletal assessment and treatment, we get the benefit of her passion for healthy joints both preventatively through the foundations of health as well as regeneratively through a wide variety of innovative treatments. She starts this podcast with the truest understanding of inflammation which is necessary at adequate levels to heal and remodel an injured joint. Dr Squires then systematically lays out joint treatment options: prolotherapy for hypermobile joints with laxity (inherent or acquired, including years after a whiplash injury, for example), PRP (platelet rich protein) for tears, and mesenchymal stem cell therapy (systemically via IV or locally via joint injection). She also discusses other non-traditional pain treatment options: ozone therapy, HBOT (hyperbaric oxygen therapy), nitric oxide, cytokine therapies and peptides. We round off this session with the current typical treatments for MSK (musculoskeletal) pain and their unfortunate limitations: NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) like ibuprofen which can actually be damaging if used beyond an acute period of injury, steroids, bracing, weight loss and surgery. Nobody escapes life without a few hard knocks; listen in to find out what to do when your joints get injured traumatically or through degeneration and how to get the best treatment up front to prevent any later progression to arthritis and chronic pain. 

Resources: 

Find out more about Dr Carley Squires, ND: https://www.centerforhealingneurology.com/carley-squires-nd-lac-eamp/

Are you familiar with compounding pharmacies? This is not cauldron and puppy dog tail work. Dawn Ipsen, Doctor of Pharmacy, and owner of Clark’s Compounding Pharmacy and Kusler’s Compounding Pharmacy, breaks down all about compounding pharmacies, the mission of which is to personalize the pharmaceutical to the individual patient. Cutting edge medicine is all about personalizing the program- how about putting together the right ingredients, in the right formulation, removing the wrong fillers, and choosing the best form of administration for the patient? This is an amazing science. We start with describing the characteristics of a modern-day compounding pharmacy. Then we systematically walk through some of the most common things that get compounded: pharmaceuticals without fillers (aka ‘excipients’) so your medications won’t make you sicker, bioidentical hormones, sinus medications, topical preparations and others like low dose naltrexone, ketamine and oxytocin. Listen in to think about how a compounding pharmacy can improve your health and wellness with the incredibly knowledgeable and experienced Dawn Ipsen.

Resources:

Clark’s Compounding Pharmacy in Bellevue, Washington: https://www.clarkspharmacywa.com/

Kusler’s Compounding Pharmacy in Snohomish, Washington: https://www.kuslerspharmacy.net/

Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding: https://www.a4pc.org/ and to to find a compounding pharmacy near you https://a4pc.org/APC/FindaCompounder.aspx

Aging is certainly the measure of our years but, aging is also a metabolic process that science has combed for secrets across millennia. Of course, the most common goal is to reverse aging or to age more slowly with the goal of a higher quality and longer life. The first step is assessment. Modern technology has been looking at a number of these 'biological' clocks including telomere testing and the multi-omics testing which brings together algorithmic evaluations of proteinomics and metabolomics. The most promising test, however, is an epigenetic quantification of methylation. In fact, the TruAge test has over half a million places in the genome they are testing to give a final snapshot of your biological age. Hear Ryan Smith of Tailor Made Compounding discuss the science, what we know and what we don't know, and the value of calculating your biological age. TruAge is available without a doctor's order online at Trudiagnostic.com and also through our clinic, CenterforHealingNeurology.com, which gives you the added benefit of interpretation by our clinicians. 

Chef Arran Stark, Director of Food Service at Jefferson Healthcare talks method cooking, local eating and recipes like quinoa-crusted ling cod and citrus slaw to eat in season, like how many ways kale can be used over a winter growing season. Incredibly, this is how he feeds patients (both in-patient in the hospital as well as employees and out-patient visitors to the Hospital Café) at the critical access hospital in Port Townsend, Washington. Sitting around a campfire with his farming buddies, he hatched a plan to bring more local business to the labor-intensive process of organic small-scale farming and the need to offer fresh, healthy and tasty meals to nourish people as they heal. And he’s doing it! Part of the hospital budget goes to maintaining their on-site herb garden and they feed upwards of 300 people lunch daily. Part of the hospital budget goes to 4 local farms as vouchers in the slow winter times to plan for spring, summer and fall produce. This is really happening and if it can happen in Port Townsend, it can happen in your community too. Listen in to this brilliant Chef discuss bringing the sensual and artistic experience of cooking to the traditionally sad state of hospital food.

Dr Linda Bluestein, is a board-certified anesthesiologist and integrative medicine physician with a focus on hypermobility, Ehler-Danlos Syndromes and complex patients with chronic pain. In this brilliant exposition, she defines hypermobility, lays out the esoteric classifications of hypermobile Ehler Danlos Syndrome vs Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders and why naming matters for assessment and treatment of symptoms. Dr Bluestein then dives into practical recommendations for thinking about how connective tissue dysfunction (it's said "If you can’t connect the issues, think connective tissues”) can impact a variety of systems like the gut (constipation, prolapse, reflux, distention, gastroparesis), skin (delayed wound healing, poor scarification), dysautonomia, mast cell activation syndrome, in addition to the typical musculoskeletal conditions of dislocations, subluxations and other joint injuries. She notes, so wisely, that if we can shorten the typical diagnosis from ~25 years to, pretty much anything shorter than that, we can prevent a tremendous amount of chronic pain later in life. And then Dr Bluestein teases apart types of pain: nociceptive (meaning direct injury to tissues like from an injury), neuropathic pain (meaning dysfunction of the nerves themselves) or nociplastic pain (meaning dysfunction in how we process sensation) and the eventual progression to central sensitization syndromes, like fibromyalgia, if pain is allowed to linger. Finally, we cap off with a discussion about some selective pharmaceuticals, some common and some uncommon, and how to think about them: opioids, benzodiazepines, muscle relaxants, oxytocin, NMDA antagonists (magnesium, ketamine, memantine). 

Find out more: 

Riana Giusti, Certified Nutritionist, lives, practices & teaches the power of food as medicine in her role at Starkel Nutrition (www.StarkelNutrition.com). In this show, she shares with us insights from years of experience which have included directing brain-health focused teaching-kitchen counseling for patients with cognitive and neurological disorders (Alzheimer’s dementia, cognitive impairment), health coaching for a Seattle-based wellness company translating comprehensive blood, genetic, hormone, and gut microbiome data into personalized nutrition plans, work as a personal and professional chef throughout Seattle kitchens and in her current role seeing patients for nutritional consults and managing the Metabolic Reset Program, known as ‘relief from chronic dieting’ (www.metreset.com).

This is such a practical and down-to-Earth show. She starts with a discussion of how she decides what to eat, which is a balance between her knowledge of the science and chemistry of food as balanced by love and intuition rooted in mindful eating practices & training. She shares her experiences with school gardens that lowered incidence of behavioral issues and violence in participating children. She deftly declines to recommend any one particular diet other than to target inflammation, noting so wisely that the best diet is the one is realistic, sustainable and beloved by the mind and the cells. She also doesn’t shy away from specifics! She dives into details about the ketogenic diet (currently getting certified), blood sugar stabilization, the brain need for healthy fats and intermittent fasting.  We end with the topic of her master’s thesis: chocolate! The mineral content can be remarkable and what is the difference between cocoa and cacao.

Riana Giusti’s way with food is really a treat to behold and she shares her sweet spirit  with us in this week’s show, motivating and empowering her clients to not only lead a self-fulfilling healthy lifestyle, but also to achieve a relationship with their bodies and food that is nourishing, flexible, peaceful, sustainable, and balanced.

Originally recorded in the first week of March 2020, before the last two weeks of protest and before Coronvirus up-ended our social & economic lives, with an update recorded June 2nd, this podcast with organizational development and workplace equity consultant Fleur Larsen shines a bright and clarifying light onto the role white women can and do play in the structures of racism in our social fabric and economy. These are ongoing issues (for centuries since prior to the inception of America as a country) and are so ingrained that they constitute ‘the water we swim in and the air we breathe’. Unlearning these patterns requires attention and awareness and often brings up feelings. “I’m a good person so how can I be racist?” The two are not mutually exclusive- we will make mistakes and the solution is to learn and make amends. “As a woman, I am targeted by sexism. How can I be the oppressor?” The two are not mutually exclusive- in fact, historically because of sexism, we have used our white privilege to stay closer to power. Join us for a conversation that was critically necessary before the last week of video and events and will remain some of the most important work we can do to heal our collective neurology- uncovering and uprooting each deeper layer of bias so we can show up authentically and accountably for racial justice for the long haul.

Resources:

· www.Fleurlarsenfacilitation.comincluding curated list of resources, books and organizations: https://www.fleurlarsenfacilitation.com/resources

· https://futureforus.co/To support the advancement of women of color in the workplace.

· Rachel Cargle:https://www.rachelcargle.com/

· Robin Diangelo & understanding white fragility: https://robindiangelo.com/

· The Conscious Kid with age-appropriate resources for parenting & teaching children about race & racism: https://www.theconsciouskid.org/

· Seeing White Podcast: https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

· To diversity the news sources: https://www.democracynow.org/

· Nikita Oliver: https://crosscut.com/author/nikkita-oliver

· Compiled list of articles & resources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BRlF2_zhNe86SGgHa6-VlBO-QgirITwCTugSfKie5Fs/mobilebasic

· https://www.upworthy.com/white-americans-asking-what-can-i-do

· https://blacklivesmatteratschool.com/teaching-materials/

· Article: What will be different this time? By CompassPoint: https://www.compasspoint.org/blog/what-will-be-different-time%C2%A0

· Digital Postcard from the Ground: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyyUWh09lC4&feature=youtu.be

· Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) helps white people move into accountable action & has chapters across the country: https://www.showingupforracialjustice.org/chapters-and-affiliates.html