Your Health Blog. But Clearer.
You deserve to feel better. You have important things to do with your life.
You shouldn’t have to limit yourself because of how you feel.
Your Health Blog. But Clearer.
You deserve to feel better.
You have important things to do with your life.
You shouldn’t have to limit yourself because of how you feel.
What’s the best way to catch breast cancer early?
By: Dr. Ashley Chauvin ND It is It is estimated that about 1 in 8 Canadian women will develop breast cancer during theirlifetime. However, the 5 year survival rate for breast cancer is now up to...
What you don’t know about Food Sensitivity Testing
By: Dr. Dominique Vanier ND Food Sensitivity Testing is a popular blood test that tests for sensitivities to food. It does this by looking at specific IgG antibodies in the blood to a wide range of...
The risks of a dairy free diet
When people think of a Naturopathic Doctor, they think about nutrition change as one of the foundational elements to good health. Historically, seeing an ND often meant “taking foods away” from your...
3 Reasons Why the Fertility Journey is Overwhelming
By Dr. Laura von Hagen ND Patients often feel lonely and isolated on their fertility journey. Unfortunately, this is something I know about all too well. I have also experienced infertility myself....
The Pap Test vs A Vaginal Exam
There might not be a public health screening program more successful than the pap test. After initiating routine screening for cervical cancer in women and people born with a cervix, cervical cancer...
Why a diagnosis of IBS matters.
If you have ever been assigned a diagnosis of IBS, you may not have felt particularly connected to the term. In the past, the term IBS felt like a ‘catch all’ diagnosis that patients were awarded...
What if your cramps are something more?
Menstrual cramps are almost a universal experience, with most menstruating people experiencing menstrual cramps at some point during their lifetime. Cramps have been shown in research studies to...
3 Simple Strategies to Understand your Hormones Over 40
If you’re over 40 and haven’t felt quite like yourself recently, you’re not alone. Upwards of 20% of women at the age of 40 are experiencing perimenopause, and that number increases every year after...
Key Nutrients for Optimizing Fertility
By Dr. Laura von Hagen ND We know that preconception care, what you do before becoming pregnant, sets the stage for a healthy mom and baby. Our goal as NDs is to anticipate complications that may...
Why I regularly test my insulin levels.
Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is the most common endocrine disorder. It is estimated that anywhere from 5-10% of women of reproductive age have PCOS. It is characterised by irregular periods,...
You can feel better during your breast cancer treatment.
By Dr. Ashley Chauvin ND A common side effect of chemotherapy and radiation is cancer related fatigue (CRF). 58% to 94% of patients with breast cancer experience CRF during treatment, and between...
Over 30? You Should Be Doing THIS For Your Metabolism!
Starting at the age of 30, your muscle mass declines at a rate of 3-8% each decade. As you get older, the rate of muscle mass loss gets even faster, clocking in at 5-10% lost each decade after 50...
Your past gestational diabetes predicts your future cardiovascular risk.
A 50-year-old woman walks into a doctor's office and is assessed for cardiovascular disease. Can you think about the kinds of questions that we should be asking her? We’re probably asking her...
Your hormones in peri-menopause. What is happening?
When women think about their transition into menopause, they often assume their hormones either have some slow decline into their fifth decade, or the hormonal carpet gets aggressively ripped out...
Screening for Celiac Disease in Type 1 Diabetics
Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a chronic, autoimmune disease characterized by the destructionof the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. T1D is often diagnosed in childhoodand results in a...
Early Menopause and Cardiovascular Risk
Women who have experienced early menopause (either surgically from hysterectomy or from early ovarian decline) often make appointments with their health care providers when hot flashes or insomnia...
Fluid retention and the menstrual cycle: What’s normal?
Premenstrual syndrome affects over 95% of women at some point in their reproductive lifespan with cyclical symptoms including somatic symptoms (physical symptoms) such as breast tenderness,...
Hashimoto’s Thyroid: More than just thyroid testing.
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis is the most common autoimmune condition and is responsible for over 80% of “low thyroid” even though most patients have never had their thyroid antibodies tested. “More than...
Your blood pressure and Insulin – why you should take notice of the connection.
High blood pressure is a significant contributor to cardiovascular disease and a health risk that increases with age in both men and women. The causes of cardiovascular disease are complex and every...
Menstrual Migraines: The Estrogen Connection
Menstrual migraines create a "diagnostic dilemma" for clinicians, which means we are often underestimating the importance of female hormones in migraine sufferers. Women with menstrual migraines may...
The Future of Your PCOS: Diabetes Risk
Women who have been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) in their teens or 20s often have their care focused on symptoms they can easily see – irregular cycles, acne and weight gain. As...
Are you ovulating? 3 signs to look for.
Women who have focused on their fertility are often very aware of the signs of ovulation, but women who haven’t tried to fall pregnant, or who fell pregnant easily in their past may not have been...
Three questions women need to ask about their heavy menstrual periods
As women age and progress towards menopause they often experience an increase in menstrual bleeding which creates significant quality of life challenge and sometimes even lost work time. Menstrual...
How Vitamin D impacts ovarian reserve in fertility.
With many women delaying childbearing until their mid to late thirties, the testing and treatment for ovarian reserve has taken centre stage in the field of fertility medicine. Testing for ovarian...
Peri-menopause and depression. Changes happen earlier than you think.
Perimenopause can begin as early as 5-8 years before a woman’s final menstrual period and brings major fluctuations of hormones that can cause significant symptoms and disrupt the quality of her...
How a woman ‘feels’ about menopause will change her experience.
We know that there are major geographical differences between how women experience menopause around the world, with North American women suffering the greatest from the hormone changes that occur at...
Should we lower our “tolerance” for menstrual cramps?
Menstrual cramps are one of the most common symptoms that women experience in their cycling years and can reduce quality of life, cause lost work days and is a major source of ‘over medication’ with...
The “best” diet for POCS
It’s not uncommon for women with PCOS to seek nutrition solutions online for their condition, and with a quick Google search, you can see that there are hundreds of “right ways to do it” published...
Why is hormone testing so hard?
It’s not uncommon for our patients to report that their hormonal tests that they have had done previously have been reported as “normal” but that they are experiencing symptoms that are related to...
Fasting Insulin: A window into your metabolism
We often hear from patients that they feel their metabolism is ‘slow’ or ‘broken’ and that the amount of food and exercise they eat and perform never gets reflected on the scale. Annually patients...
How to lose weight, without cutting carbs.
Do you need to cut carbs to lose weight? The short answer is NO. Although cutting carbohydrates (sugars and starches) out of your diet can be a useful tool for weight loss, it is by no means the...
What is a typical teen girl experience versus PCOS?
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome is a metabolic-system-meets-hormonal-system condition, which occurs as frequently as 1 in 10 women of reproductive age. Even though PCOS begins early in life, with roots...
Carrying to Term: Reducing your Miscarriage Risk
Dr. Jordan Robertson has published her first self-help book for women struggling with infertility and miscarriage. After spending the last decade collecting research on the topic, Dr. Jordan has...
Why is My Metabolism Slow?
You may feel tired, cold or that you've gained weight. Maybe your digestion seems a bit more “sluggish”. You may be convinced that your metabolism is slow. Why does this happen? Why do metabolic...
Three Ways to Avoid Overeating at Meals
Sometimes those holiday feasts are just amazing. And it's not just the abundance of delicious food but also the people, the decorations, and the ambiance. It is way too easy (and common) to indulge...
We can predict if you’ll get Gestational Diabetes.
When we aren’t using lab work to guide treatment, we are using it as a screening tool, to try and predict the future. We know that women with certain hormone imbalances are at risk for gestational...
Breast Cancer Treatment and Joint Pain: Safe and Natural Treatment Options
Tamoxifen, Letrozole and the other drugs in the Aromatase Inhibitor class are commonly prescribed long-term medications for women recovering from breast cancer. These drugs are often...
Common Medications Lower Male Fertility
Evaluating male fertility has never been a significant focus in conventional medicine, especially with the advent of more advanced reproductive technologies. Most ‘causes’ or concerns of male...
Uninvited Hair Growth
Given the huge number of cosmetic options available to women, it’s not uncommon that women self-medicate by tweezing, lasering or waxing their unwanted hair for years before they approach someone on...
Break-up with Breast Pain
Breast pain (medically called “mastalgia”) is one of the most common PMS symptoms reported by women, with as many as 90% experiencing some type of breast pain at one point or another during her...
Melatonin and Breast Cancer. Improving mood and quality of life during your treatment.
The success rates of breast cancer treatment have skyrocketed over the last few decades and we now graduate thousands of women into the “survivor” classification every year. The success...
PCOS and Miscarriage. The Placenta Matters.
Women with PCOS who have been working through fertility support are usually laser focused on the difficulties they have ovulating. PCOS by definition results in many anovulatory (no ovulation)...
What if it’s not PMS?
PMDD or “Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder” is a relatively recent re-classification of women who experience significant mood changes in the weeks leading up to their menstrual cycle. Certainly in...
Peeing your pants is not a normal part of aging.
Lower urinary tract symptoms, such as feeling a constant urge to go, leaking or frequent infections are one of the most common symptoms checked off on our hormone symptom checklist. These issues...
Is half of your cycle ‘defective’?
The menstrual cycle is a beautifully timed sequence of events with different hormones being released every few days. This flux of hormones is very important as it supports egg development, ovulation...
Testosterone over Estrogen. The Role in Male Fertility.
Male factor infertility is generally under-diagnosed and treated, partly because many men avoid testing, and partly because the treatment for male infertility usually lands couples in a fertility...
Ginger versus Advil for Menstrual Cramps.
When approaching any case, Naturopathic Doctors are always looking for clues in a patient’s history that can help us understand the “why” or the “root cause” of the symptoms a woman is experiencing....
Investing in IVF? Invest in this first.
The choice to pursue In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) requires a heavy investment from couples both emotionally and financially. Despite the high-stakes nature of this procedure, many couples are not...
Not well since concussion.
Concussion and other forms of traumatic brain injury (TBI) have become well known triggers for later life neurological complications such as early onset dementia and personality changes, but what is...
Assessing Your Fertility
Working with one of our Doctors on your fertility can open the door to more comprehensive assessments on egg quality, sperm quality and cycle strength. Couples often seek supportive care when they...