The answer largely depends on the health of your “internal ecosystem”. We need this internal ecosystem to include a diverse microbiome, a nervous system that adapts quickly to threats, and detoxification mechanisms that effortlessly maintain balance. A healthy internal ecosystem requires reliable interaction with a healthy “external ecosystem”.
Living in an unhealthy environment or out of sync with our environment, is extremely physiologically stressful.
The World Health Organization identified climate change as the number one health threat of this century. The prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, has an entire open-access journal dedicated to understanding the impact of planetary health on human health. Our City of Kingston recognizes the very real and urgent obstacles our community faces and has officially declared climate change an emergency.
Our capacity for disease-resiliency declines as our environment declines.
As healthcare professionals and clinicians, we see the impact of climate change on our patients’ health every day. Much like high blood pressure and cholesterol, climate change is “a silent killer” and the current state of our environment is a public health crisis. Our responsibility to you requires that we act now.
As a local business, we’re committed to environmentally-sustainable business practices and reduction of green-house gas emissions. We’ve been a member of Sustainable Kingston since 2012 and we actively search for and support community partners with similar environmental principles.
For our patients, we’d like you to understand that your health is directly influenced by our environment. This goes beyond concerns for air pollution, extreme weather events, and growing tick populations. As natural systems ourselves, we respond to our environment through mechanisms like circadian rhythm, epigenetics, and the microbiome. Ancient Eastern concepts like yin and yang have been teaching this for thousands of years.
By adopting healthier behaviours we engage in a positive cycle of change that supports our own health, the health of our community, and environment. We’re here to support you in these changes.
We’ve written and collected a few resources for you (in the menu to the right) to enjoy, share, and be inspired by.
