Naturopathic Source

The older you get the longer it takes to get better. The longer you wait to address your health issues the worse they will most likely get. Conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis and many times even cancer don't have a lot of warning signs. Suddenly they are there. In reality they are not "suddenly" there....these conditions have been building over time and when they finally show up as pathology, that is when a diagnosis happens.

I have many patients who come in for visits on a wellness basis. They have no big health issues, but they come in for a visit 3-4 times per year and I take a look at all aspects of their health and make sure everything is running smoothly and make  minor adjustments where things are not.

For example. Belinda is a 50-year-old woman who initially came to see me 3 years ago for pre-menopausal concerns and general well-being. She had some menstrual imbalance, pMS (premenstrual syndrome), sinus congestion and feeling unrefreshed with difficulty getting out of bed in the morning after a full night's sleep. Because these concerns were minor and she was overall in good health, all of these issues cleared up reasonably quickly with dietary changes, a detoxification protocol and a couple of supplements. The irritability and frustration she felt with PMS took a bit longer; these emotions are often connected to the stress a woman feels during the rest of the month and this was the case with Belinda. We addressed those emotional issues with a technique called Emotional Freedom Technique, and shortly thereafter she found that her PMS symptoms were no longer an issue. (She continued to use the technique on her own whenever she felt emotionally out of balance.) On follow-up visits now, Belinda usually reports feeling full of energy and happy. Whenever a problem does arise, we deal with it immediately. Belinda's viewpoint (in her own words, a couple of years ago) is: " 'Follow this food guide and call me when something falls apart' just doesn't cut it anymore". I couldn't agree with her more.

On the other hand I also have several patients like Catherine. She is a 65-year old woman who is taking approximately 8 different prescription medications each day. She has had a poor appetite for about 5 years and very low energy for the past 3-4 years. Several times per week she gets digestive discomfort after eating and often has trouble eating much at all. Her blood pressure is high, as is her cholesterol and she is on blood thinners, thyroid medication, 2 medications to bring down her blood pressure, a diuretic and a pill for her diabetes. There are more details, but in short, Catherine's health is not good and hasn't been for a while. The older we get the harder it can be for some people to make dietary changes and the longer it takes to get better. Not only does Catherine need to change her diet and lifestyle, her system needs to be strengthened and built-up and this can take a while. Whenever your system is weakened it takes a while to strengthen it again -- less time if you are younger and more time if you are older. I like to compare a weakened system to an overdrawn bank account. If you want to build that bank account back up, you need to save more money than you spend and put some away on a regular basis for a while. A day or two here and there won't do it. Our body's strength and energy is similar to that bank account; once depleted, you need to save more energy than you exert throughout the day on a regular basis for a while. And I think most people would agree (especially most weakened/depleted people) that at the end of the day they don't have much energy left -- in fact they often run out mid-day and just need to keep going because they have to meet all their responsibilities. So at the end of the day there is no energy to build up your system; no money for that empty bank account, as it were. NOTE: If you are in this situation, I don't want to discourage you. It IS possible to bring yourself back to health, but just realize that it is a process and you need to be patient.

So it takes a lot of dedication and effort, as you can clearly see. And this goes back to my original point: Take care of you health now!

TC