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Author: Dr. Sonya Nobbe, ND
Dr. Sonya Nobbe is a Naturopathic Doctor and Director of Kingston Integrated Healthcare Inc. She has been practicing in the Kingston area since 2007.
Dr. Sonya maintains a family practice, with a clinical focus on complex chronic disease, including Lyme disease and Fibromyalgia.
Continuous Glucose Monitors for Weight Loss
I’ll come right out and say it: I’m a healthy middle-aged woman who thought that her experiment with a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) would validate her choice to regularly enjoy things like nutty muesli, whole-grain toast, and the odd beer, without consequence. This experiment was a useful wakeup call.
Before Your Kids Start Speech Therapy
Communication is an essential part of healthy relationships. A child who struggles to express themselves with clear speech or words might feel significant anxiety or frustration when interacting with important people in their lives. Younger children might express these feelings as aggressive or challenging behaviour. A Speech-Language Pathologist can help pinpoint how and why communication is difficult, and develop targeted therapy sessions to address these challenges. However, if clear speech and articulation are the primary concern, it’s important to address this critical health piece first:
Chronic Symptoms? Let’s Fix Your Breathing
In many ways, your breathing pattern reflects your health status and health resiliency. It’s a gateway to your nervous system, cardiovascular system, and your body’s biological homeostatic mechanisms (how the body maintains balance). A Breathing Pattern Disorder can be subtle but extremely impactful: They show up in a variety of seemingly disparate symptoms and undermine many people’s attempts to heal chronic illness. Addressing Breathing Pattern Disorders is one very important way we can strengthen your entire body and help you heal.
Symptoms of a Breathing Pattern Disorder
People with a Breathing Pattern Disorder often experience a few of these symptoms:
Banana Oat Muffins (gluten-free, nut-free, with dairy-free and egg-free options)
These gluten-free muffins have become a family favourite. They freeze fairly well so can be popped into a school lunch quite easily. The oats give them more protein than your traditional flour-based muffin, and they’re fairly forgiving if you need to replace some of the ingredients with others you have on hand (see below).
Prep time: About 15 minutes. Cook time: About 20 minutes. Yield: 12 muffins.
Cookie Dough Balls (“No-cook gluten-free protein balls”)
This protein ball recipe is adapted from the well-known plant-based food series “Oh She Glows” – in particular, Angela Liddon’s “Oh She Glows Every Day” cookbook… which will soon be available in our lending library! (Explore her Oh She Glows website for some excellent and inspiring plant-based recipes!)
Prep time: 10 minutes Cook time: None! Equipment required: Blender or Food Processor (even the small Ninja-style blenders work well) Yield: About 12 little balls
Health Canada Fees for Natural Health Products: Patient action requested
Though Health Canada’s deadline for public comment on its Proposed Fees for Natural Health Products (NHPs) has passed (August 10, 2023), I encourage you to continue to reach out to our Members of Parliament as this issue will be a topic of discussion when the House of Commons returns this fall. The fees are being proposed as part of regulatory activities to recover costs of the NNHPD‘s regulatory activities.
Though we all benefit from regulatory oversight that ensures high quality natural health products, increasing fees on Natural Health Products is expected to significantly increase the cost of NHPs for the consumer. It’s very possible that these increased costs will put our smaller suppliers out of business entirely (while the larger manufacturers and distributors like Nestle, remain).
Environmental Health Questionnaire
The purpose of this environmental health questionnaire is three-fold:
- Current health and wellbeing: Your personal sensitivity to environmental contaminants is unique and reflects many known and unknown factors, including past exposures, genetics, epigenetics, and nutrient deficiencies. Use this questionnaire to explore how your personal sensitivity to environmental contaminants impacts your current health concerns.
- Reduce your toxin burden: Use this questionnaire as a tool to identify unnecessary toxin exposures and eliminate them from your life.
- Prevention: Environmental toxins work synergistically against our body’s natural repair mechanisms. Do not underestimate the cumulative impact of current and past exposures on your future health and quality of life.
For a broader discussion about Environmentally-Acquired Illness and the impact of environmental toxins on our health, please follow the embedded links and explore some of the additional resources listed below.
Lyme Disease Guidelines for 2023
Up to 50% of the black-legged ticks in the KFL&A region carry Borrelia, the bacteria associated with Lyme disease.1 Ticks also carry an incredible number of other infections – many of which we’re just starting to understand. Treat every tick bite with immune-supportive measures and know when to request antibiotics from your doctor. Review these updated 2023 guidelines and reach out if you’re uncertain or need additional support.
Suicide Prevention
Eastern and old-world medical approaches that existed for thousands of years before our Western conventional model, teach us that every part of our mind, body, and spirit, is connected to all other parts. Our body works like an ecosystem: Pull on one string and the others react.
Integrative and holistic practitioners sometimes struggle to convey this simple principle. It can be difficult for some people to accept: Why are we treating kidney function to address bone health? Or digestive health to address skin concerns? When it comes to mental health concerns, the interconnectedness can seem even more foreign, but overlooking it can have devastating consequences.
Research has identified some simple, common blood test results that correspond to a person’s risk of dying by suicide. This news might be shocking at first, but understandable when we really come to embrace holistic health.
