Naturopathic Medical Clinic

Cholesterol is the building blocks for many of our hormones, it is important for brain health. Often times patients get put on statin drugs to lower their cholesterol without paying attention to the symptoms of low cholesterol or side effects of the statin drugs themselves. Statins can cause depletion of CoQ10, a nutrient necessary for cellular energy production. This can lead to fatigue, muscle weakness and brain fog. Statins can also actively damage muscle and brain tissue in some people. This can be monitored by a lab test called creatine kinase which indicates tissue damage is occurring. Many times, patients write off the cognitive decline as age related when it is their medication playing a role. Too high of cholesterol, especially if you do not have a high enough good HDL cholesterol, can damage arteries, but too low may be just as damaging to your health and quality of life. Schedule today to learn more about your cardiovascular risk. 🧠🫀☀

My goal as a provider is to optimize your health. I look for the cause of symptoms and work to educate you on how to change them with diet, exercise and stress management. I can prescribe medications if needed, but prefer to work with your body by removing obstacles to health and providing specific nutrition to help your body heal. Many of the standard of care treatments involve using medications that do not fix the problem, they only manage the symptoms. This requires you to stay on the medication for life, which is great for the pharmaceutical company’s bottom line but not great for yours. Seeing an alternative provider is a financial investment, but learning how to optimize your health and staving off chronic disease will save you time and money in the long run. I strive to increase your energy and vitality that allow you to live your best life. Schedule today to learn how to optimize your health!

Here’s how licensed naturopathic doctors (NDs) are contributing to the revolution in wellness:

✔️ Whole Person Health: NDs emphasize a holistic approach to wellness, treating the whole person rather than just the symptoms of a disease.

✔️ Integrative Approach: NDs skillfully combine natural therapeutic traditions with modern science to restore and optimize health, offering patients a wide range of treatment options that prioritize the least invasive, most effective methods.

✔️ Preventive Medicine: NDs focus on preventing illness and promoting health. By addressing underlying imbalances and optimizing health, they work to prevent diseases before they even occur.

✔️ Patient Empowerment: NDs empower patients to take control of their health by providing
education and collaboration that puts the patient in the driver’s seat of their own health.

✔️ Personalized Treatment Plans: NDs develop personalized treatment plans tailored to each
individual's unique needs, preferences, and goals.

Focus on Root Causes: Instead of simply managing symptoms, NDs aim to identify and address the underlying root causes of illness.

Learn more at naturopathic.org and naturemed.org

Licensed naturopathic doctors (NDs) distinguish symptoms from underlying root causes; they understand that symptoms express a body’s attempts to heal, similar to the way a car’s check engine light demonstrates an engine’s unresolved issues.

NDs are trained to find and treat what’s “under the hood.” 🔍 While they can and do provide relief from symptoms (using natural approaches first whenever possible), their goal is to uncover and help heal the root causes of illness. In doing so, they facilitate the natural healing ability in patients so that symptoms can be alleviated naturally.

By addressing the underlying causes of illness, NDs aim to promote long-term health and wellness rather than simply managing symptoms. This approach can lead to lasting improvements in overall health and vitality and can also reduce the need for long-term medication use or invasive interventions.

👉 Learn more at naturemed.org and naturopathic.org.

Quality sleep is so important to your health. So many times, patients take pills to help with sleep instead of evaluating the cause of their insomnia. Common causes include stress, neuroinflammation, sleep apnea, poor sleep hygiene, pain, and drug reactions. It is important to know why you are having insomnia so it can be corrected instead of just taking a pill for it. Melatonin is common natural treatment, but the brain becomes reliant on you using it; this worsens insomnia when you do not take it. Benadryl, ZzzQuil, and other antihistamine medications can help but are linked to an increased risk of dementia with chronic use. Many health conditions worsen with insomnia such as increased pain, anxiety, weight gain, and cognitive impairment. Caffeine is another blow it for insomnia. It takes 7 hours for your body to metabolize half the dose of caffeine you have ingested. So, if you are having trouble sleeping, do a trial off of caffeine for a couple weeks, then challenge back in to see if you notice a change in your sleep. Avoid stimulating activities such as screen time (TV, computer, phone) for at least 1 hour prior to bedtime. Working on balancing the nervous system to allow the body to be in the parasympathetic “rest, digest and heal mode,” can improve the quality and duration of sleep. My favorites are deep breathing, meditation, actively working on being ag Peace, visualization, yoga, tai chi and qi gong. By practicing stress management activities daily, you can train the brain to stay in the parasympathetic nervous system state and help get out of the sympathetic “fight or flight” mode. If your sleep is not improved with these recommendations, schedule to learn more on how to resolve your sleep issue.🌙

Happy Mothers day! Especially to all the lovely moms in our community! 🤍💐🌸🌼🌷

Spring is here, as is allergy season for many of you. As the pollen counts go up we see more symptoms of sinus and asthma. These pollens trigger the release of histamine which causes itchy, watery eyes, nasal tissue swelling, and restricted airways. Unless you move to a different ecosystem, you cannot avoid it. But you can modify your immune system response. Food sensitivity testing helps you identify which foods are triggering more histamine release. Identifying those foods and eliminating them, greatly improves your seasonal allergy symptoms. You can also modify your diet to pull out foods that contain more histamine release such as night shades (tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers), citrus fruits, canned meats, fermented foods (yogurt, vinegar, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha), and bone broth. There are many more factors we can address to decrease your symptoms, so schedule today.🌷☀

If you are planning on conceiving, I strongly recommend working on detoxification for 3 months before you start trying. The toxins we absorb from our environment can greatly reduce s***m production and motility and can interfere with a woman’s ability to ovulate. Toxins not only affect our ability to conceive, they can affect the health of your baby. During pregnancy, the mother can transfer toxins to the baby through the umbilical cord. Also, while breast feeding, toxins can be transferred through breast milk. By actively working on detoxification prior to conception, you are greatly improving the health of your baby. Schedule today to learn the best way to improve detoxification pathways. 🌿🤍☀

https://www.naturopathicmedicalclinic.com/blog/2024/5/6/improve-your-energy-mental-clarity-and-metabolism

Improve your energy, mental clarity and metabolism — Naturopathic Medical Clinic Are you looking to improve your energy, mental clarity, and metabolism? You would first need to know more about the mitochondria.  Mitochondria are the engines of every cell in your body that are responsible for turning fuel into energy.  If the cell has adequate energy, it can tol

Have compassion for yourself! We all have a lot of obligations, don’t forget to appreciate all that you do accomplish. It is great to push to be better, but don’t forget to appreciate your successes. 🌿🤍☀

You can assist in balancing your hormones by implementing a few factors into your diet.

- Avoid alcohol and sugars.
- Ground flax seed 2 tbsp per day to stabilize estrogen receptor activity.
- Add more cruciferous veggies: broccoli, cabbage, bok choy, watercress, kohlrabi, and brussel sprouts to help with hormone metabolism.
- Focus diet on whole foods, avoid the processed junk foods.

Schedule an appointment today to evaluate your hormone status!🌿🤍🥑

Yes!!! Schedule today to help balance your hormones naturally!

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Navigating the menopausal journey? 🌸

Explore 7 natural avenues to find balance, reclaim vitality, and embrace the beauty of this transformative phase ☝️

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📣 Thank you for supporting small and local businesses.

Why 10,000 steps per day are not enough to keep you healthy:
• Walking may not get your heart rate into your target zone. You need to get into your target heart rate to help with things such improving blood pressure, decreasing risk of vascular dementia, creating new blood vessels to areas of the heart that are not getting adequate oxygen.
• You need to get higher intensity exercises to improve insulin resistance and help with mitochondrial function which turns fuel into energy.
• You need higher intensity exercise to help raise dopamine levels which is your “life is worth living” neurotransmitter. It helps with energy, motivation and mental clarity.

Sleep hygiene is important to getting a good night sleep. Practicing these activities can help with improving your sleep quality:
• Go to bed around the same time each night
• Avoid electronics within 1 hr of bedtime
• Keep room dark and quiet
• Work on calming activities before bed: warm Epsom salt bath, meditation, bedtime yoga, stretching, practicing thankfulness
• Avoid caffeinated beverages (it takes 7 hr for you to metabolize half of your caffeine intake)
If still not sleeping, schedule an appointment to evaluate and improve your sleep quality.

Improve Focus With 5 Easy Lifestyle Changes:

• Get at least 7 hours of sleep per night.
• Cut out sugar and processed foods out of your diet.
• Drink half your body weight in ounces of water daily.
• Get your heart rate up with high intensity interval training (HIIT) exercises every morning.
• Work on stress management daily with deep breathing, meditation, yoga, tai chi
or qi gong. Try to let the stress go throughout the day.

I love a good cup of coffee in the morning, but there are some symptoms that warrant giving up caffeinated beverages. 🤍🌿☕

These symptoms may include:
• Gastritis, or inflammation of the stomach, is worsened by caffeine
• Heartburn and Reflux can be triggered by caffeine
• Tachycardia, Atrial fibrillation and PVCs (pre-ventricular contractions aka heart
palpitations): irregular heart rhythms can be worse with caffeine
• Insomnia: it can take 7 hr for you to metabolize half your caffeine intake.

Consider doing a 1-month elimination of caffeinated beverages, then challenge back in to see if any of your symptoms worsen. You can learn more by scheduling with us.

Doing these exercises when under a lot of stress or dealing with a sudden anxiety attack may be beneficial, but if you are looking for a more permanent solution to managing your stress or anxiety schedule with Dr. Plunkett today!🌿🤍

Thinking about what gifts to buy for family or friends this year? Look no further! Give the gift of HEALTH! We have certificates available for purchase that can be applied to visits with Dr. Plunkett, future labs, or supplements! Stop by our office to claim yours today!🤍

We appreciate all the positive feedback we receive from all of our lovely patients!🤍

Investing in eating healthy, nutritious foods, lowers health care costs. Thank you Mark Hyman,MD for sharing this study.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=977548530393066&id=100044137838952&mibextid=7i0OJ8

Not too long ago, a group of doctors and public health experts at Massachusetts General Hospital noticed something striking: Many of the patients who routinely showed up in the emergency room requiring the most medical services were also the patients who seemed to be the most nutritionally vulnerable.

They were patients with heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and other largely food-related chronic diseases. For hospitals and health insurers, these are among the highest cost, highest-need patients. Working with a local nonprofit group called Community Services, the doctors decided to launch a study to see whether providing these patients with nutritious meals would have an impact on their healthcare outcomes.

The researchers recruited Medicaid and Medicare patients and split them into different groups. One group received regular deliveries of healthy meals that were made from scratch and designed by a registered dietitian: Each meal contained ingredients like locally caught seafood and locally grown Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, zucchinis, fruits and other fresh produce that nearby farms donated. Another group received nutritious meals, but they weren’t specifically tailored to their individual medical needs. The third group did not receive any of the nutritious meal deliveries. What the study found in the ensuing weeks was astonishing. The two groups that had nutritious meals had fewer hospital visits, ultimately resulting in a 16 percent reduction in their health care costs. And that was after deducting meal expenses.

The average monthly medical costs for a patient in the nutrition group shrank to about $843—much lower than the roughly $1,413 in medical costs for each patient in the control group.

These types of groups recognize what our federal government sadly does not: To tackle the crisis, our national food policies must be aligned with our healthcare policies. Instead of just treating rampant chronic diseases, we have to start preventing them—and we can do that with our forks.

Happy Veteran's Day! Our office just wanted to send out a big thank you to all of those that have served our country and those that continue to do so today! Big shout out to Buddy, Dr. Plunkett's nephew, whom joined the army this past year! 🇺🇸🤍

Whether you are finding omega 3s in the foods you eat or you take them in supplement form, they can be very beneficial for your overall
health.

1. Omega 3s can help assist in lowering neuro-inflammation.

2. Omega 3s are anti-inflammatory for the body and very beneficial for the skin health.

3. Omega 3s are important for cardiovascular health, they raise good HDL cholesterol to keep your arteries clean.

Which foods do you know that are high in omega 3s?🌿🥑🌰

Did you know that Lion’s mane mushroom grow in the Pacific Northwest? Not only are they edible, they have some great research on improving brain function.