Integrative Health Blog

A primary care provider is a family physician, internist, or nurse practitioner who coordinates all of the health care a patient receives. The holistic primary care model offers not only traditional primary care but also incorporates the best of complementary and alternative healing therapies from around the world to help you achieve optimum wellness, not just freedom from disease.

Our holistic primary care providers will be your partner and guide in helping you achieve your health goals.

Top 5 Reasons for Integrative Medicine

1. We treat the whole person

The mind, body and spirit all contribute to your health status and wellness. An integrative MD or Nurse Practitioner will develop a treatment plan that addresses your medical needs as well as your emotional and nutritional well-being. Stress management, diet, and lifestyle factors all play a role in your overall health.

2. Integrative medicine and Functional Medicine treat the cause of imbalance, not just the symptoms

Do you think the genes you’re born with determine what happens to you? 

Whether you’ll be overweight because it runs in your family or whether you’ll get diabetes since your Dad had it?

Whether you’ll develop breast cancer because your Mom died from it?

You might be surprised to know that your genes don’t have as much control as was previously thought. 

Scientific American just published an article reviewing the latest information in the field of epigenetics.  Here’s a quote: “Many of the contingencies of life – what we eat, what pollutants are in or environment, how often we are stressed – affect how our genes operate.”  This is great news, because we have a lot of control over what we eat and how we deal with stress, and even some control over the pollutants in our environment (like our homes and cars).

Have you heard of epigenetics? 

Epigenetics is the phenomenon of how our environment, which includes the foods that we eat, the toxins we're exposed to, and even our stress levels, can turn genes on and off.  A new article published in Scientific American states "epigenetic effects play a crucial role in development, aging and even cancer¹."  Even cancer?!  This is great news, that we can make choices that influence whether those cancer genes get turned on or off! We should be aware of the fact that we have significant power over our health destiny.   

So, here are 3 things that you can do to drastically reduce your risk of cancer:

Every Cell in Our Body Needs Magnesium

In the human body,  magnesium is the eleventh element by mass and about 60-65% of the magnesium is found in the skeleton and teeth.

The remaining magnesium can be found in muscle tissue and cells and only 1% is contained in our blood. The body has high needs for magnesium. Magnesium is required for metabolic functions involving creation of energy ATP and its transport creation of proteins, nucleic acid RNA and DNA in all known living organisms.

Why We Need Magnesium

• Every single cell in the human body demands enough magnesium to function.
• Strong bones and teeth, balanced hormones, and healthy nervous and cardiovascular system as well as functional detoxification pathways depend on cellular magnesium.
  
• Magnesium works in concert with calcium to regulate electrical impulses in the cell. Magnesium concentration inside a healthy cell is 10 times higher than calcium.
• Magnesium is responsible for relaxation and is crucial to the healthy functioning of our parasympathetic nervous system.
• Magnesium deficiency is involved in many diseases from ADD, Alzheimer's, autism, autoimmune disorders, dental decay, and depression to osteoporosis, stroke, obesity and the list keeps growing.

The Problem with Magnesium

Unfortunately it is difficult to reliably supply our bodies with sufficient magnesium even from a good balanced whole food diet. In modern agriculture the presence of widely used NPK fertilizer has an antagonist affect with magnesium in the soil. Magnesium and other nutrients are diminished or lost in produce after harvest, refrigeration, transport and storage, even if all steps were done properly. Food processing can cause excessive  loss of magnesium in foods. Examples of such processing are milling the whole grains, roasting the nuts and seeds, and cooking the leafy greens. Fluoride in drinking water binds to the magnesium and creates an insoluble mineral compound that will be deposited in the bones.

Breast Cancer Prevention Starts in Childhood

According to a recent interview with Dr. Graham Colditz published by Medscape in December 2014, at least 1/2 of breast cancer cases can be prevented, largely by promoting a healthy lifestyle in girls at a young age.  In fact, Dr. Colditz has challenged us to start prevention by age 2 years old!  I recently wrote about this topic in an October 2014 article,  Breast Cancer Prevention Begins in Childhood?, but it’s worth revisiting based on the sheer magnitude of impact that a few simple preventive strategies can yield.

“Cancer risk is accumulating from before the time a girl hits menarche,” says Dr. Colditz.  Menarche is the onset of menstrual periods, which occurs at an average age of 12 years old in the US.  Therefore, clearly the emphasis on early detection and screening for breast cancer is incomplete.  Instead, our focus should be on educating parents and young women about the steps that they can take to eliminate their controllable risk factors. 

Lifestyle Factors Play a Role in Cancer