Why Environmentally-Responsible Choices are Also Healthy Choices
“Climate change is the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.” World Health Organization
Many of us know that healthy lifestyle choices are also environmentally responsible choices. We know, for example, that biking to work rather than driving, is healthy. We know that reducing our exposure to synthetic chemicals by using natural household cleaners and eating organic food is also correlated to better health. But have you stopped to consider why this relationship exists?
I’m concerned by the sudden rise of debilitating anxiety in the patients who walk through my door. These people are feeling deeply unstable, ungrounded, and unsafe. Anxiety is harming their relationships with people, with food, and their environment. They’re confused by the cause of their anxiety and are hoping that I have a pill to take it away. Though I often suggest a pill to help, the real value in our work comes from identifying and treating the underlying source of anxiety. For those of you struggling with anxiety currently, I’m sharing some of the common contributing physical causes that are often overlooked. (In other words, it’s not “all in your head” and we can do something about it.) 
Where did this Lyme epidemic come from? “Tick-checks” weren’t a thing when we were kids. Now, ticks not only swarm our conservation areas, but also our gardens and children’s playgrounds. More than 1/3 of them in our area are infected with Borrelia, the bacteria believed to cause Lyme Disease, and an unknown number are infected with Lyme “co-infections” such as Bartonella and Anaplasma. Our instinctual response to this threat is to kill tick populations as quickly as possible… But history, ecological principles, integrative medicine and current research all teach us that this approach doesn’t work. A more sophisticated approach, one that acknowledges underlying causes of this epidemic, is urgently required.
You might be wondering whether your pharmaceuticals are interrupting your sleep, or whether a pharmacist can help you choose a safe over-the-counter drug to treat the occasional restless sleep. We asked 
Apparently, the world record for the longest time staying awake, achieved by a teenager in in the 1960s, is 11 consecutive days. Can you imagine how awful he must have felt? How irritable, illogical, and accident-prone, he must’ve been? Even chronic, small bits of sleep deprivation are associated with development and progression of chronic illness, and about twice the risk of a car accident. And yet, 
I recently attended a conference on Lyme Disease. We took a tangent during a wonderful lecture about immune system function, and explored flu strains and the vaccines designed to protect us from flu symptoms. I’d like to share with you what I learned.
Are you familiar with the term “echo chamber”? Amongst other things, it’s a media concept that describes how the internet works. Instead of expanding our awareness and experience of the world, it can limit it. The belief systems or “lens” we inadvertently apply in our social media engagements and google browsing, is amplified and reflected back to us. We only see what we already believe to be true. As the internet giants adapt to keep us engaged, our society becomes more polarized, with more extreme political views, and violence. Healthcare is not immune to this effect.
In medicine, when an infection becomes chronic, we generally consider that either the immune system is failing to control the infection, such as in HIV and AIDs, or that the infection is able to hide from the immune system, such as with the herpes virus that causes cold sores. Evidence suggests that chronic infection with any of the microbes associated with Lyme disease falls into both categories, which is one reason why persistent symptoms are so difficult to treat. 
Chronic Lyme Disease (and the many labels we’ve come to use to describe persistent symptoms after a tick bite) is complex, involving physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of health. Like the great Eastern gurus who guide their students to deeper levels of self-awareness, Lyme disease pushes people to more fully develop their faith and spirituality. A patient who has healed from chronic symptoms has done a lot of soul searching and practiced forgiveness and gratitude. This guru teaches us many lessons, including the paradigm-shifting awareness of what an “infection” is. Chronic Lyme Disease doesn’t classify.