The Good Mood Podcast

Dr. Anne Hussain is back on the Good Mood Podcast to talk peaceful periods, PCOS and why Ovulation is good for your mood--not just for fertility. 

In this pod episode we talk about the menstrual cycle, how our hormones impact our mood, problems with the oral contraceptive, and why ovulation is not just important for fertility--it builds the progesterone in your body that can vastly impact your mood and overall health. 

Dr. Anne struggled with PCOS, Hashimoto's thyroiditis and has a genetic anemia called thalassemia. Through her research she got to work on regulating her periods, and now helps other menstruators do the same. She follows a plant-based lifestyle and abides by the following principles (which I liked so much, I swiped from her website). 

Our healthcare system is failing too many people. Women are more prone than men to being dismissed and disregarded; this is more pronounced in the BIPOC and non-heteronormative population. Male models are applied to women all the time – women are not little men! Trans people have all their health concerns blamed on their hormone therapy. We ALL deserve access to healthcare that supports us.

Your healthcare should be a discussion and your care plan should be one that takes you, your history, and your lifestyle into account.

Synthetic hormones are not the only option when it comes to menstrual

and hormonal health concerns – medication is ONE of many options. There is a time and place for medication. Medication is often overused for multifactorial conditions like acne, painful periods, PMS, and mood swings.

Our culture of perpetual productivity is running us into the ground and we must learn to lean into our body’s natural cyclical rhythms of ebb and flow to fully show up. We also need to create and find more moments of peace, joy, and pleasure in life.

Everything in our bodies is connected – nothing works in isolation. As such, the food we eat, the thoughts we think, the people we spend time with, the information we consume, our financial situations, the way we move, and the products we use on our body ALL play a role in our health. Your healthcare plan should address all of these areas.

When we support our health and well-being, only then can we fully show up for ourselves, our dreams and goals, and the people who matter most. We need all kinds of people in all kinds of roles in the world.

Anne is a graduate of the Canadian College of Naturopathic medicine, an ND and a naturopathic doula. She also volunteers with Naturopaths without Borders.

If you struggle with hormonal issues like irregular periods, mood-related fluctuations throughout your cycle, heavy bleeding, or are just curious about how your hormones can send your mood on a roller coaster or smooth joy ride, take a listen! 

Find Anne at:

Her website: https://www.annehussain.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.annehussain/

Erica is back on the Good Mood Podcast to talk ADHD and how we can heal our inflamed brains with nutrition. We talk the symptoms of ADHD, what goes on in the brain, Erica's journey with getting diagnosed and trying Vyvanse for 9 months, to how she mastered her productivity and brain health using nutrition. According to Erica a lot of people with ADHD go undiagnosed, as their symptoms don't fit the typical picture of hyperactivity we often expect to see. 

We talk mindset, organization, diagnosis, Polyvagal Theory, histamine, glutamate, brain inflammation, nutrition for ADHD and how to master your mind when making nutritional changes for your health.

We use transformative coaching, lifestyle techniques, mindset work, nutrition, supplements, exercise, hydrotherapy and more to achieve these results. We work alongside existing medication prescriptions.

This a fun and dynamic conversation between friends in which we're joined by Erica's 8-month old Maeve. We're always chatting health and philosophy and this podcast recording feels like a typical conversation between the two of us (usually recorded back and forth over Whatsapp audio recordings). 

Erica offers online coaching programs dedicating to transforming the health of those who suffer from ADHD. She has a Doctor of Naturopathy degree from CCNM with a focus in fertility, pregnancy, family health, hormones and weight loss. She has a Kinesiology and health science specialized degree from York and is a registered holistic nutritionist. 

Find Erica at:

Her Website: erica-robinson.com 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericaellerobinson/

I think we're starving. Not for food per se, but something else. Something deeper. Something perhaps more nourishing (once you have enough food, of course). We're starving for pleasure. And this can show up with low appetite. Think about how if all you ate was the gruel porridge they were eating in the Matrix you probably wouldn't be that interested in food anymore. We're hungry for pleasure and adventure and because we're often missing these things, or don't know how to get them or if we deserve them, we go without. We start to lose our appetite, our libido, our energy, our vitality. 

We might fall into patterns of despair and hopelessness or irritability and resentment. 

Ray (named changed to protect her and her family's privacy) noticed this. She noticed she needed JUICE. And so, she spent a year "being bad". What does that mean? Well I asked her and she responded, "Sex, drugs and rock and roll of course!" And so right away you can probably tell that this is a juicy episode. 

It's also an incredibly inspiring episode. Pleasure is beauty personified. It starts with the body. Can you enjoy the feeling and the look of your own body? Can you recognize it as an element of nature, no more or less perfect than a flower, a tree, or a pond? Ray went on this journey, learning how to feel into her physical experience, to lean into life. Into pleasure. She did this through exploring plant medicines, her sexuality (which takes her to the world of erotic and kink). 

We talk beauty, sex, spirituality, motherhood, embodiment, libido, pleasure, and many other things. It truly is a juicy episode AND I believe that no matter where you are in your journey, we could all learn to embrace body acceptance, to experience our bodies as a vehicle for our personal connection, pleasure and adventure, and learn to inhabit our experience. 

So many of us are in the roles of working, or serving others, putting ourselves and our needs last. And we felt spent, exhausted and unfulfilled. What would it mean to put down that bowl of gruel and serve yourself some delicious, spicy gingery JUICE? Listen in and let's explore. 

Ray supports women and non-binary people to connect with their pleasure and power. These are your birthright. She is a facilitator, writer, and small “i” intuitive. She draws on training in emotional bodywork (body psychotherapy), and health science. She’s also inspired by her exploration of conscious kink, fantasies and dreams, and sacred sexuality. Ray is dedicated to the healing power of Eros.

You can learn more about her at her website: 

badgirlwisdom.ca 

So, my friend and colleague, naturopathic doctor, Laura Brown wrote a book--Beyond Digestion.

We've talked digestion on The Good Mood Podcast: the structure and function of the vagus nerve and how putting your hands on can help diagnose and treat disease with Dr. David Miller, the gut microbiome and your trillions of little friends with Dr. Kim Bretz. BUT we can never talk too much digestion. As Dr. Laura shows us, there are multiple multiple angles at which we can examine, play with and learn about the gut. 

This is what Laura talks about in her book: the spiritual, mental, emotional, physical and structural elements of gut health. Her book is an exploration: first on the science of the gut--it's structure, the microbiome, and how they relate to our health and then how our gut and mind interact, to how our gut might be out link to the spiritual world. 

This is the beauty of naturopathic medicine, which I believe we highlight in this conversation: there are no protocols, no routine rote methods to healing. We assess, we do detective work, we respond, we guide and we play. There's no linear path. It all DEPENDS (if you've ever asked me a question about your health, you know that that is always the answer---the dreaded Depends). But Depends isn't just a diaper of an answer, collecting the faecal matter of uncertainty, even when it comes to the gut. Depends is a beautiful answer. 

It means that we start with you and go from there. And where we go depends on all the factors we're holding and examining and curious about and Laura really does that. Both with her book and this conversation. There's so much to consider and we let the conversation meander and her wisdom emerge. 

Ok, a bit of bio:

Dr. Laura M. Brown, is a registered naturopathic doctor with a functional medicine approach. She focuses on stimulating the body’s natural mechanisms to repair damage and rebuild health. She is a HeartMath Certified Practitioner, a level two Certified Gluten Free Practitioner and holds the designation of ADAPT Trained Practitioner from Kresser Institute, the only functional medicine and ancestral health training company.

Titled Miss Teen Ontario at age sixteen, Dr. Brown battled many health challenges of her own, ultimately prevailing through naturopathic medicine. Personally, she writes, gardens, hikes, and entertains on 20 beautiful acres in the heart of Ontario, Canada. 

You can learn more about her here:

Website: Southendguelph.ca 

Instagram: @drlaurabrownnd 

I met Dr. Aaron at an addiction workshop he hosted with a colleague Dr. Tanya (who was then Dr. Tanya Mate, daughter in law to THE Gabor Mate), called Project Starlight. Aaron is a naturopathic doctor and addictions counsellor, with a passion for mental health and providing healing, support, empowerment, community and resources for those living with and dealing with addiction. 

We haven't had an addictions episode on the Good Mood Podcast. We've talked about body image, shame, eating disorders, psychedelics, trauma, technology, self-care, and many many other mental health topics, but not addiction. So I've been trying to get Aaron on. This is a short episode in which we pack in SO MANY goodies that we'll definitely need to do a Part 2 soon.

In this episode we talk: how addiction works in the brain, how to support people with addiction (why "cutting them off" sometimes touted by certain support circles might not be the way to go"), Gabor Mate and Compassionate Inquiry, Carl Rogers and the Rogerian method of counselling, Rat Park, dopamine, Vancouver's Insite safe injection site and other Harm Reduction models, Harm Reduction vs. Abstinence models of addiction support, and so on and so on. 

Addiction affects us all. Either you are struggling with one or know someone who is. Addiction is a community-based problem. Addictions are formed in a community or family or lack thereof and affect everyone in said community and/or family. There are also so many misconceptions and judgements that are common around addiction and those struggling with them that only serve to worsen the problem: the shame and isolation that lie at the core of helping someone live their life to the full extent of their dreams and desires. 

I really hope you enjoy this episode and learn lots! 

Find Aaron at: 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.aaronnd/

Dr. Talia Marcheggiani, ND hosts another solo episode sharing her story: her health and food journey, and her thoughts and beliefs around food and how to eat for health. 

Topics:

Cravings

Different Diets

Restrictions/Dieting Culture

Listening to the Body and Intuitive Eating 

And more. 

Please subscribe to the pod and like us on Apple! 

Dr. Dimpi rejoins the Good Mood Podcast to continue a conversation we started on Instagram. 

What makes us frustrated in the doctor-patient interaction? What unseen obstacles step in the way of our healing? So many times we've met and worked with patients who have seemingly done all the work and yet still struggle with feeling lost, that they're not making progress. This can be such a frustrating experience for both patients and practitioners: that feeling that you're both spinning your wheels. Both of you are trying so hard, to make progress, to feel better, and yet you feel just as deep in the woods as when you started. 

I have had many conversations about this with my colleagues and friends. Healing is such an art and we don't have all the answers. And there are subtleties to the journey that can be triggering and invalidating to talk about---because sometimes there are limitations to language. 

I wrote a blog post about an analogy of being lost in the woods--maybe the jungle let's say of disease and despair and the things that we might do, either consciously or unconsciously that keep us stuck there. And Dimpi reached out to me, telling me how much she resonated with this topic, how she's been having the same conversations, and how she'd love to talk more. 

We went out on a limb and recorded a convo together--this might be part 1 of a series, we'll see how it goes (although it did feel good to just get it off our chests and put it out there). Let me know what you think of this topic. It is providing more clarity for you? Is it helping provide something like validation for some of the confusion you've felt on your own journey? 

For example: as patients how do we strike a balance between finding our own empowerment and trusting in our guides? As practitioners how do we let our patients lead on their own healthcare journey while also inspiring patients' trust in us as authority figures? Is "authority figure" even an accurate way of describing what we do? Expertise? 

So many times my experience as a healer or patient have been humbled. 

So Dimpi and I got on with it and talked, and here's our convo. Dimpi is a great person to talk to about this stuff because she focuses her practice on healing the highly sensitive person: the artists, the healers, the outcasts, the person who feels, the empath, the Indigo child. She helps highly sensitive women unleash their full potential with subconscious rewiring, naturopathic medicine and functional labs so they can feel empowered in their health and be of greater service to others. 

Her first episode on the Good Mood Podcast is one of our most popular. 

Now, last thing before we get on with it. Please check out Good Mood Foundations, which starts March 1st. This may be your way out of the woods. The link to explore more about it is in the show notes. 

Happy listening! 

Learn more about Dimpi: 

Her website: https://www.suryawellness.co/dr-dimpi-patel

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doctordimpi/

Good Mood Foundations: 

taliand.com/good-mood-learn 

Another solo episode with Dr. Talia

What do the great minds of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, literature, science and religion have to say on the topic of loneliness?



Is there a pill for loneliness?

Can you be lonely in a crowded room?

Does solitude equal loneliness?

How can we cope with grief?

What do the Buddhists and Stoics say about loneliness?



And, most of all, how can we cope with an ever-increasingly isolated world?



Tune in to listen.

Remember conversations from "Saying Hello Again" by David Denborough:

- What did [your loved one] see when they looked at you through loving eyes?

‍

- How did they know these things about you?

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- If they could be with you today, what would they say to you about the efforts you are making in your life? What words of encouragement would they offer?

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- What difference would it make to your relationships with others if you carried this knowledge with you in your daily life?



And remember, Good Mood Foundations launches March 1st. There's still time and space to get in. http://taliand.com/good-mood-learn

Why do I focus on mood and mental health? Well, at the core of it, when I was working with patients who were suffering from various physical ailments, I often found mood, mental and hormonal health at the bottom of it. 

After all, what do we want to be if not happy? I mean the reason your IBS or your PCOS or your CFS or your MS bothers you is that, ultimately, it makes you unhappy. And so, for me and for most of us, health is happiness. 

I also saw SO MANY solutions in my naturopathic toolkit to solve depression, anxiety and hormonal issues--new, science-based ways of looking at how our bodies and minds function--that weren't anywhere to be found in the conventional system. I was excited to share these tools and resources and strategies with my patients. 

But good health isn't the only route to happiness. Dr. Ellen Wong, my supervisor and teacher when I was at CCNM, and a fellow ND, knows this. Ellen decided to focus on happiness when she, like me, realized that it was the key component to helping her patients live an amazing life. 

Ellen had her own struggles with perfectionism and depression and so, to heal herself (I mean so many of us are in this game to first heal ourselves and then lead others on the paths we've blazed through, scratches on our faces from the underbrush, machetes still in hand... good visual, I digress) and heal her patients, she began to study happiness. 

Her studies took her to the happiest place on Earth... nope not Disneyland... is Disneyland that happy? There's no real food there and Mickey is quite elitist... but to Bhutan, a country that has a Happiness Index. 

We talk Bhutan, snow days, we talk about mindset, we talk happiness. It's a terrific episode. Dr. Ellen is a real gem and I miss her Saturday clinic shifts. This was a fun catch up. We also talk technology and how it doesn't necessarily have to alienate us. 

Also: the little relationships are just as important (or at least they're important) as the deep soul connections. We need both. And, of course during this time we're missing out on the those day-to-day casual interactions with the local barista. 

Dr. Ellen describes herself as a recovering high-functioning overthinker (if this is you, you HAVE to listen to this episode, we talk so much overthinking... it's great). After two hospitalizations she reached a tipping point--she burnt out. How many of us have been there? Or are there? Or are getting there? 

Although she appeared like she "had it all together" - she secretly lived with never ending mental chatter that left her feeling overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted and unhappy. Realizing this was not how she wanted to spend the rest of her life, she set out to learn how to stop overthinking and reframe her negative thought patterns. 

As the Founder of The Joy Avenue, a Confidence Coach and a Creatrix® Transformologist®, Ellen works with women who are tired of feeling overwhelmed, self-doubt and anxious and guides them towards feeling calm, confident and free. But what she's most passionate about is helping women prioritize their happiness as much as their success.

You can find Dr. Ellen Wong at:

Her website: 

https://thejoyavenue.com/about/

Instagram: @Thejoyavenue

And of course, don't forget to check out my online program for mental health and hormones: The Good Mood Membership Program. 

Presence... is that the key to healing? Being present in one's body, being present with one's thoughts. Existing in the present moment. The present moment is where everything is happening. It gets us out of the head and into the body. 

The body is our home. It's where our emotions live, as they manifest in real-time, where they can be processed. Being present and embodied are the key states for healing from trauma, from accessing our truest, wildest selves, and from experiencing optimal mental and emotional health. 

Bodily presence is also where the richness of experience lies. It's where we experience enjoyment, love, connection, intimacy and pleasure. 

Alison Crosthwait is a trader turned psychotherapist turned coach who supports people through deep inner transformational healing. She applies techniques like breathwork, psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, and other forms of energy and emotional healing to help her clients access their free and authentic selves. 

"To feel alive is a practice", Alison writes on her webpage. "Sometimes we can talk for years about getting out of ruts. Other times a crisis brings us into a realization. Either way there comes a time when talk about it isn’t enough.  When reading books doesn’t cut it."

Alison specializes in change. She speaks of her journey from a Wall Street trader to a person who experiences complete presence, freedom and ease in her life. 

We talk trauma, psychedelics and the integrative process, how pets can be our greatest teachers (with plenty of dog and cat interruptions throughout this episode to prove that point), inner work, desire, orgasm and all the other ways we can reconnect with our wild, animal, dynamic selves that hold the key to deep healing. 

Find Alison at: 

Her website: https://www.alisoncrosthwait.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alisoncrosthwait/