Tag Archives: health advocate

Female Hormones and Depression

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Recent research review by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) looked at hormonal dysfunction in women as potential causes for depression. This should be of interest as it lends to the mindset of clients with depression.

The focus of the review by the investigators and their subsequent report was on how the female reproductive system interacts with the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis, which regulates the body’s stress response. This mechanism can set up a biochemical environment for psychological disorders in females. It was noted that females are twice as likely as men to experience depression.

Through the HP-axis, stress in women impacts the reproductive hormones which can upset patterns of ovulation. This upset can contribute to the lost of menses and to infertility. If the inter-relationship of stress and female reproductive hormones becomes chronic, then behavior and mood disorders and depression can increase significantly.  We know that when oxytocin is suppressed due to excessive stress hormones, fertilized eggs cannot implant into the uterus. This is believed to be a primary cause of infertility in American women, owing to our highly stressful lifestyle.

Depression, eating disorders, alcoholism or other addictions may occur with the estrogen-induced disruption of normal HPA function. The key to preventing or correcting the problem as we find in many physiological conditions is to create a more balanced, less stressful lifestyle. If the body’s stress adaptation system becomes overwhelmed, and cannot appropriately adapt to the environment and demands of everyday life, many disorders and conditions can develop, depression being just one of them.

Regarding postpartum depression, the investigators identified that chronic hypersecretion of the stress hormone cortisol during pregnancy creates a temporary suppression of adrenal function following delivery. This coupled with the sudden drop of hormonal levels of estrogen after birth may be a significant factor in postpartum depression or subsequent immune dysfunctions such as postpartum thyroid conditions.

It is very important for women, because of our very integrated hormonal and nervous systems, to work towards a balanced, low-stress lifestyle. Unlike our male counterpart, our hormonal system immediately lets us know when we are “off-center” by delivering loud messages through hormonal dysfunction.

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Doctors Taking Control of Healthcare

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Doctors Taking Back Control Of Healthcare

For those us of old enough to remember Marcus Welby, MD and Dr. Kildare, the beloved TV docs we grew up with, we also remember a time when physicians ran healthcare. They set policy, budgets, insurance coverage guidelines and pretty much, back then, “everything healthcare” was directed by the doctors.

The insurance carriers, growing tired of paying for unnecessary surgery, warned the physician groups who ran the show that if they did not clean up the medical abuses taking place, the insurance industry would take away their decision making by enforced second opinions and limit paying for procedures that were being unnecessarily performed. Back in the 1970’s, there were millions of hysterectomies. Of these, 66% were deemed “unnecessary” by what has become the Medical Review Board watchdog.

Now in the U.K., to quote an article from English.news.cn, “The new British coalition government revealed on Friday that it planned to put doctors in charge of funding for frontline services in England’s National Health Service (NHS), in a change hailed as the biggest in 60 years.”

This is big! If this were to be enacted in the U.S., we could see a return of physician driven healthcare that is provided, determined and distributed by the same medical type of physician groups that were unable to police themselves a mere 30 years after the establishment of the American Medical Association and the mainstreaming of the pharmaceutical industry.

Granted, we have in place excellent watchdogs peer review boards and medical review requirements, but this works because of the lack of conflict of interest with the way these structures have been put in place.

The healthcare reform bill has yet to flex its muscles and most of us feel pretty much in the dark about what we can expect. No surprise since an overwhelming majority of politicos who voted on the bill had little to no idea what the bill contained!

The issues we see with today’s healthcare delivery simply reinforce the Whole Health vision of taking control of your body, preventing disease with common sense health hygiene and limiting the use of acute care medicine we as Americans are blessed to have available to us. Every day the news contains articles identifying the long-term use of even over the counter medications and caution us to realize we cannot repeatedly put these chemicals into our bodies and not experience consequences.

Chronic disease, which is the bulk of what is treated in healthcare today, is preventable and cost effective. Let’s create our own healthcare reform with self-directed whole person care – that means taking care of ourselves with consideration to all 5 aspects of health. In advocating this type of care through patient education, we all move toward living well and living long.

For more whole health discussions, listen to Dr. Georgianna Donadio’s radio show Living Above The Drama.

The Mediterranean Diet Is About More Than Just Food

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mediteranean diet, niwh, whole health

In Annia Ciezaldo’s April 1st article in the “New York Times Magazine,” she asks, “Does the Mediterranean Diet even exist?“ She suggests that since half of Spain, Portugal and Italy’s populations are overweight — with Lebanon rapidly following suit — then, contrary to popular belief, the Mediterranean people now have the worst diets in Europe.

She states that the Greeks “are the fattest: about 75 percent of the Greek population is overweight.” From Ciezaldo’s perspective, the Mediterranean Diet research, which spanned over 50 years, was in fact — flawed.

Research on the whole health benefits of the Mediterranean Diet has been well-documented and includes the Harvard School of Public Health and many esteemed medical researchers. Among them are Ancel Keys and Paul Dudley White, who later became Dwight D. Eisenhower’s cardiologist.

Shortly after World War II, Keys and his colleagues set out to examine whether or not the Mediterranean dietary and lifestyle patterns were directly connected to improved health outcomes identified in Crete, Greece and southern Italy during the 1960s. These outcomes recorded the lowest rates of chronic disease in the world, and the life expectancy of adults in these regions was among the highest. This was particularly remarkable given the limited amount of medical care and services that were available to this population and the poverty these regions experienced.

Keys then began the long running Seven Countries Study and monitored the lifestyle and dietary habits of 12,700 middle-aged men in the U.S., Finland, the Netherlands, and then Yugoslavia, Italy, Japan and Greece.When the data was examined, the people who were the healthiest ate a diet where fruits and vegetables, grains, beans and fish were the basis of daily meals and valued vigorous physical activity and high social interaction. At the top of the list were the residents of Crete.

Scientists have intensely studied the eating and lifestyle patterns characteristic of the Mediterranean Diet for more than half a century. And with dozens of research studies, the evidence is that this way of eating and living results in an across-the-board reduction of chronic disease and increased longevity.

This evidence confirmed that certain Mediterranean lifestyles and dietary patterns were connected with good health. As a result, in the 1990s, Old Ways, an internationally respected nonprofit organization, joined in partnership with the Harvard School of Public Health to provide global education and information on this important disease-preventing evidence.

What the article has apparently overlooked is that the Mediterranean Diet is not just about what people eat. It is about the values, habits, relationships, quality of how food is grown and the quantity of how food consumed by these particular groups — not just how or what they eat. A point that is often missed by the media is that health is not isolated to one’s diet. The whole health of an individual is about the physical, emotional, nutritional, environmental and even spiritual components that create our overall state of health. Our dietary choices and habits can be seen as a metaphor of what the overall or whole picture of that individual’s health is expressing. We eat how we think, feel, work and behave, all of which are influenced by our environment, values, age, financial and education levels and even by our gender.

Beyond just nutritional health, the Mediterranean Diet promotes a way of living that includes the following components, which could explain the positive health benefits.

Intense physical activity that includes work and all its forms of movement; farming, building, planting, gardening, dancing, sports, house work, child care or any activity that provides a non-sedentary daily routine.

Consuming many types and varieties of food in moderation as a form of nourishment — both physically and socially, as well as sharing with others.

  • Meals are a part of the social and family fabric and are not taken alone.
  • Time spent eating is relaxing, nourishing and pleasurable.
  • Foods choices often include fruits, vegetables, whole grain bread and other cereals, potatoes, beans, nuts and seeds.
  • Olive oil is an important monounsaturated fat source in the diet.
  • Dairy products, fish and poultry are consumed in low to modest amounts, and little red meat is eaten.
  • Eggs are consumed zero to four times a week.
  • Wine, a component of social family sharing and bonding, is a dietary staple this is consumed in low to moderate amounts.

Is it any surprise that Europeans, who now have McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, electronic messaging that is replacing relationships and high credit card debt (none of which were there when the Seven Countries Study began), are becoming as obese and unhealthy as Americans are?

What is missing from many “nutrition books of the week” is the organic, common sense understanding that the food we eat is just part of a multi-faceted set of choices we make in how we choose to live and behave. Many of these choices are based on our personal and collective social values.

I was recently asked, in a conversation with an advisor to the U.S. Surgeon General, what I thought was the solution to health care cost reduction. I stated and firmly believe that until we as a nation return to the values we embraced and lived by up until the mid-1980s, a time when the “The Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous“ became the national obsession, we will remain a nation of countless individuals who feel in many ways marginalized from contributing our skills and talents — who are hungry to be seen, heard and valued.

This lack of belonging leads to poor nutrition and behavior choices, which serve in our efforts to self-sooth and self-medicate, as the world we inhabit continues on its trajectory of financial and societal misdirection. Yes, the Mediterranean Diet does exist, but the values that make it a healthy way of life are rapidly fading.

For more whole health discussions like this, listen to my radio show Living Above The Drama.