Be honest, how often do you notice and pay attention to your breathing? A couple times a day, once a week, once a month... maybe never? Many of us are doing our best to get healthy by eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, lean proteins sources, and healthy fats as well as exercising, and trying to reduce our stress, but often the same can't be said of breathing.

As Canadians, athletes are our celebrities. They win us championships and gain us worldwide recognition. They put our cities on the map and encourage future generations to continue their success. Because the retirement age for most sports is fairly young, we rarely hear about our celebrity athletes after they leave their sport. Hockey players, football players, and boxers all sustain tremendous amounts of head trauma over their career. Repetitive brain injury creates lasting effects on their physical and mental health, which we rarely hear about on the news.

Premenstrual symptoms affect up to 80% of women. For many, these symptoms are bothersome but do not necessarily impact their daily functioning. Premenstrual syndrome (PMS), however, affects up to 20% of women. This diagnosis is defined by a woman’s experience of at least one physical and one psychiatric symptom each month in the second half of her cycle (7–14 days before her period), that alleviate with or shortly after the onset of menses.

In an ever-evolving and modernizing world, we often overlook some of the simplest things. Many cultures are based around certain foods and religious values that teach a way of life. In these cultures, practising these religious values creates a sense of community that binds the group together and further emphasizes the culture. But as families move to new cities and countries, holding on to that cultural upbringing that includes religion becomes harder and harder.

What is ketosis and the keto diet? Is it good for you, or is it just another lifestyle trend that we’ll forget about in a few years? In this article, we’ll try to answer this question and review the available evidence to see what we can learn.

There are various supports for headache management such as supplements, acupuncture/body work, and herbal medicine.
Headaches can be divided into different categories, determining treatment type.

Fasting has been around for generations as part of cultural spiritual practices. Today, it is used for proper weight maintenance, healing from disease, and prevention. Humans are metabolically flexible: We are able to change the source of energy that we use to power our cells depending on the available resources. Ultimately, it is the production of ketones that generates the healing ability of a fast, disease prevention, and increased longevity.

Hitting the hay, sawing logs, catching ZZZs— these are terms we use to describe sleep, but what is happening is more like a well-timed orchestra performance. Areas of the brain work in concert; some turn on and some turn off, directed by cues from light and chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. However, recent research suggests that sleep is not a process confined to the brain but that can receive input from the entire body, most prominently through the immune system.

Energy medicine comes in many forms, defined as
anything that works on the energetic biofield of the
human body, also known as the aura. Focusing on
this aspect of health in turn has a ripple effect into
other aspects including emotional, mental, physical,
and even spiritual. I would like to focus this article
specifically on reiki of the Usui origin.

Sadness, hopelessness and loss of interest in previously interesting activities are the hallmark of a serious, well-known mood disorder commonly referred to as depression. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines the disorder based on specific emotions that one must feel for a set amount of time.

Collagen peptides have seemingly appeared out of nowhere. They are being advertised on social media, can be found on the covers of magazines… even my hairdresser has been talking about how she adds collagen peptides to her smoothie! But what are collagen peptides? Why is everyone adding this powder to their coffee, smoothies, or breakfast oatmeal bowl? And the real question is: Should you be adding collagen peptides to your diet as well?

In many parts of the world, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is not a common diagnosis. But in North America, a large portion of the pediatric population is being screened and diagnosed with ADHD every day. While there are differences in culture and diet, could there be more that we are missing in our understanding of this developmental condition?

Irritable bowel disease (IBD) includes ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD). It is one of the five most prevalent gastrointestinal diseases in the United States. People with IBD and other gastrointestinal diseases like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) suffer from the effects of damaged gut tissue due to inflammation. The symptoms are often life-altering, painful, and chronic.[1]

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a misleading term, since it doesn’t always involve cysts in your ovaries. You might now be wondering why the heck PCOS is called that, then, and what it is anyway.

As holistic practitioners, we pride ourselves on the assessment of the whole body and our ability to make connections between systems. We have the time to fully investigate our patients and understand that many health concerns are deeply rooted. We tend to see the cases that haven’t found success in conventional therapies and the cases where nobody has any idea why the symptoms are happening at all. For us, this means going beyond symptoms and sometimes even to the basics of cellular biology.