|
Have you:
Visited many doctors for your condition?
Felt rushed through your healthcare?
Been told, "Nothing is wrong with you"?
Felt nothing works?
Wondered if you can really feel great?
Do you have:
Fatigue and Exhaustion
Trouble concentrating/memory problems
Mood swings/irritability/depression
Difficulty with sleep
Stomach or digestive issues
Decreased immunity to infections
ADHD/Autism
Allergies/Asthma
Autoimmune conditions
Menstrual problems/gynecological conditions
Prostate issues
Diabetes/Cardiovascular disease
Trouble losing or maintaining weight
Endocrine/Neurological disorders
Headaches/toxicity/environmental sensitivities
Pain/Inflammation
Philosophy
Naturopathic medicine focuses on the whole person rather than just the disease. Our goal is to find and address the cause. We focus on therapies that are individualized for you, allowing your body to heal itself. Dr. Emily Chan's patients leave her office with a glow on their face. Besides getting on track to feeling better, your office visit is uplifting and inspiring..
In patient care, these fundamental principles are followed:
- Primum non nocere (First do no harm)
- Vis mediatrix Naturae (Healing power of nature)
- Tolle Causum (Treat the Cause)
- Tolle Totum (Heal the whole person)
- Docere (Doctor as teacher)
- Prevention
Toxicity
Did you know that a sick body could not properly heal if it is burdened with a load of toxins? Over 200 chemicals are already found in an American infant according to a Tufts University study. No wonder chronic disease is the principle cause of disability, and consumes 78% of health expenditures. Are you suffering from chronic disease and wondering what factors are obstacles to your healing? Are you suffering as a consequence to toxic overload? What detoxification pathways in your body are under-functioning? What nutritional co-factors responsible for these pathways are deficient?
Dr. Emily Chan uses modifications to your environment, diet, exercise, nutritional intake and specialized herbs and nutraceuticals to affect your epigenetic expression. Epigenetics is the study of modification of gene regulation or gene expression without altering the gene itself.
Think of the volume control knob on your stereo. The volume can be adjusted without changing the hardwiring (the genes that you inherited from your parents). For example, methylation of your DNA histone protein found in chromatin affects that gene's expression. Methylation is one early process in many detoxification pathways and can be affected by vitamin B12, and folate.
In other words, what you put in your body can affect how genes in these detoxification pathways are expressed. In essence, "we are quite literally, what we eat, as well as what our parents and even grandparents ate".
12 foods with most pesticides that you should buy organic:
- Peaches
- Apples
- Bell peppers
- Celery
- Nectarines
- Strawberries
- Cherries
- Pears
- Imported grapes
- Spinach
- Lettuce
-
Potatoes
Gastrointestinal Health
Gastrointestinal complaints represent the second most common physician visits for chronic disease. The environment around which we bathe our gastrointestinal tract is one factor why the prevalence of gastrointestinal problems in our country is so high.
Are we soaking our digestive tract with hormones, pesticides, chemicals, nutrition-less foods or stress? Could your nervous system or hormonal signals be affecting your digestive tract? These environmental factors could interact with your body contributing to, GERD, ulcers, diarrhea, constipation, gas, bloating, abdominal pain, parasitic infections, IBD, Crohn's disease, Celiac disease, Ulcerative colitis or even low immunity or autoimmune conditions.
Your GI tract makes up more of your immune system than your bloodstream and lymphatic system. Your GI tract is where absorption of nutrients and elimination of toxins take place. Your GI tract is the interface between the "outside world" (Open on both ends to the environment outside) and the "inside world" (the rest of your body). It can be though of as the door to the rest of your body. Does your door let in too little nutrients? Does your door let in too many toxins? Is your door inflamed, causing irritation and pain?
Dr. Chan will help you discover ways to improve your digestive system. We will find out what is causing your symptoms, understand how your body is interrelated, and use individualized modalities that suite you in the healing process. Are you ready to?
- Remove offending pathogens or antigens
- Repair the GI mucosa enabling it to be a properly functioning "door"?
- Replacing deficient acid or enzymes necessary for proper digestion
- Re-inoculating the GI tract with the type of flora necessary for proper immune function, and a non-hospitable environment for pathogens.
Stress/Anxiety Fatigue
As we become more technologically advanced, is technology really saving us time or are we just as busy with other things? Our fast paced world has become a place that may not be an ideal environment for our bodies to ebb and flow with its natural cycles, conducive to optimal health.
Back in the days when we were hunter-gatherers, stress was encountered in the form of physical danger. When stress is perceived by the body, it secretes cortisol, norepinephrine, and epinephrine which allows the body to run faster or fight stronger, in what is called a "flight and fight response". However in our modern day, we experience more mental and emotional stress on a regular basis, that not only evoke very frequent increased release of stress hormones, but our sedentary lifestyle does not allow the body to excrete these hormones as quickly.
Constantly elevated stress hormones are harmful to your body and can contribute to anxiety, fatigue, impaired blood sugar regulation, impaired body weight regulation, digestive dysfunction, muscle wasting, insomnia, and more.
Dr. Emily Chan can help you work on healthier lifestyle habits and choices that allow you to walk in concert with your environment, rather than have it fight against you. Often with chronic stress or trauma, the body is on automatic pilot in "high defense mode" even when the stressor is removed. Dr. Chan works on reprogramming your nervous system so it does not continue to send signals of danger to your body.
Find out your unique plan tailored to your job, family, personal needs, constitution, and blood type. From testing your hormone profile, looking at your iris, feeling your pulse and assessing your symptoms, Dr. Chan will tailor naturopathic therapies that can help you balance your stress hormones, and replenish a depleted or calm a "wired" system.
Autoimmune Disease
The purpose of the immune system is to differentiate between the "good guys" and "bad guys" or what is "self or non-self. The immune system is vital for keeping harmful pathogens from invading your body. Normally T cells made in the bone marrow are sent off to the thymus gland for a scan at 8-9 weeks of gestation. The thymus gland removes and kills any T cells that bind to self.
With autoimmune disease, the immune system malfunctions and mistakes what is self for non-self and attacks it. With autoimmune, allergic, or hypersensitivity disorders, the immune system inappropriately responds to substances that healthy people find harmless.
Increased intestinal permeability is one of the ways the immune system gets primed inappropriately. Increased intestinal permeability decreases the selectivity of the intestinal barrier, so consequently large undigested protein molecules enter the blood stream instead of the usual smaller amino acids.
When the bloodstream is flooded with these foreign substances and over-reacts, the excessive inflammatory response that occurs can cause symptoms such as increased mucous, sore/itchy throat, hives, psoriasis, joint/muscle pain, or any destruction of self-tissues. Food allergies, imbalance of intestinal microbes, parasitic infections, and an increased toxic load can all lead to increased intestinal permeability.
Antihistamines merely block cell receptors from allowing histamine to bind to the cells. While it decreases allergic symptoms mediated by histamine, anti-histamines do not decrease the amount of histamine or excessive IgE antibodies produced against harmless antigens. Thus a person taking anti-histamines is still in an allergic state and when they discontinue the drug, they are right back to full blown symptoms.
Immunosuppressive drugs used for autoimmune diseases such as Prednisone, DMARDs, or monoclonal antibodies are aimed at suppressing the immune system and have many side effects including increased susceptibility to infection. These drugs do not correct an immune system that has gone haywire inappropriately attacking "self", but rather suppresses the whole system.
Dr. Chan takes approaches that investigate why your immune system has gone aberrant and works to help your body reprogram your immune system. A multi-systems approach is taken in dealing with allergies and autoimmune conditions.
Nutrition
"Let food be your medicine". Have you heard of the expression, "you are what you eat"? Often we think of getting medicines, vitamins, and supplements to take, to feel better. However, how well we sleep, what we drink, what we eat is the foundation to health. We do not try to build a house without first having the foundation set.
There are so many diets out there, so how do you know which one is right for you? Perhaps you've tried a few and feel confused at this point. The good news is that you can no more choose a diet than you can choose the color of your eyes, hair or skin. Your diet was chosen for you by your genetic code.
One of the key players in choosing the right foods for you is your blood type. Dr. Peter D'Adamo, a forerunner in this field, has performed numerous laboratory and clinical research that has resulted in incredibly clinical success. Dr. Emily Chan uses blood type and other factors to help you determine foods that are beneficial for you (act as medicine), are neutral (act as nutritious foods), or are harmful (poison).
What we call "blood type" is actually a glycoprotein (sugar-protein molecule) that acts like an antenna projecting from your red blood cell. Type O's antenna is named fucose; Type A, fucose plus N-acetyl-galactosamine; Type B, fucose plus D-galactosamine; and type AB, fucose, N-acetyl-galactosamine and D-galactosamine.
In most of the population, these antennae coat your mucosa and body fluid secretions. It is as if your name was "Maddox", that all your cells have a nametag that says, "Maddox". Basically, the antenna that you display (or Maddox) influences how your immune system responds to foods, viruses, bacteria, parasites, allergens etc. How these substances stick to your cells or interact with them is influenced by what blood type marker you display. Whatever your body encounters as "not Maddox like" will be viewed as "not me".
When you eat foods that contain lectins incompatible with your genetic makeup, these proteins stick to your cells, a process called agglutination, which prepares your body to attack that lectin as if it were foreign like a virus or bacteria. However, in the process, collateral damage occurs to your cells. Obviously this has implications for allergies, autoimmunity, low immunity and gastrointestinal disorders, but it turns out that nervous tissue is very sensitive to the agglutinating effects of food lectins, as are arteries, liver and other molecules involved in hormonal or metabolic signaling.
Many patients show marked improvements in their symptoms with just eating foods that are compatible with their body. They also report beneficial side effects of increased energy, better mood and "never feeling this good in my entire life". Are you ready to experience the profound effects of eating foods that are right for you?
Nutritional Supplements
Your naturopath carries products that guarantee the contents listed on the labels are actually present in the stated amounts. Nutritional supplements that you get are made mostly for medical professionals, adhering to a high standard of quality control, absence from contaminants and have been studied in trials. Did you know that only 10 out of 21 brands of multivitamins pulled off the shelf for testing actually met the stated claims on their labels, in a study? Did you know that some products are contaminated with heavy metals such as lead? The cheapest product that does not work, or is contaminated, is very expensive
Disclaimer: This information is for educational purposes only and is not for diagnosis or treatment of disease.
Copyright 2010, The Lydian Center for Innovative Medicine
design by Dale Muzzey |
