Are you…

• Exhausted all of the time?
• Gaining weight despite eating less and exercising?
• Experience unexplained muscle aches?

Let me help you find the answers.

There are hardly ever cut & dry reasons for the chronic symptoms women experience on a daily basis. As a health care professional, helping women every day, this is incredibly challenging.

I wish it were simple, but there are often a variety of intertwining issues that contribute to chronic symptoms. This makes women’s health and wellness issues much like peeling an onion – you have to peel away one layer at a time to get to the source of the chronic symptoms that keep us from living full and vibrant lives.

Today’s woman is plagued by chronic stress, fatigue and is developing chronic illness at an alarming rate. The most common complaints I hear from women in my clinical practice are “fatigue & weight gain”. Other chronic symptoms include body aches, insomnia, anxiety, depression and “hormonal imbalance”. Most of the time, these symptoms can be attributed to a metabolic, hormonal or immune imbalance further compounded by the chronic nutrient & vitamin deficiencies I see on a daily basis. The sad truth is that even after the frustrating pursuit of seeking answers from multiple health care providers, many of these women are left feeling that “it’s all in their heads”. This in turn leads to poor quality of life and suboptimal wellness.  From a personal standpoint, I have been down this path and know what it is feels like to be in yours shoes.

It’s not all in your head.

Currently women account for 75% of all autoimmune disorders. Autoimmune disease occurs when our immune system becomes misdirected and attacks the very organs it was designed to protect. This leads to chronic inflammation and eventual cell destruction. Some of the common autoimmune disorders are lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, celiac disease, Crohn’s and many of thyroid conditions that affect women. While this is contraversial, there is even speculation that fibromyalgia my be related to an underlying autoimmune process.  Autoimmune disease is thought to be the underlying cause of more than 100 chronic health conditions and affects more than 30 million women. I believe this is grossly underestimated due to the number of undiagnosed cases. These are the women who are symptomatic but have “normal test results”  that have been labeled as “chronic complainers” by the health care system. Emerging studies have linked specific nutrient & vitamin deficiencies such as vitamin D deficiency to certain autoimmune conditions.

Even more startling are the consequences of metabolic syndrome. It is estimated that 1 out of every 2 adults will be affected by type 2 diabetes by the year 2050. This is being fueled by the overwhelming number of individuals with obesity & insulin resistance. One of my biggest frustrations is that insulin resistance is frequently not intervened upon until someone is formally diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, when in fact; insulin resistance and excessive insulin production have severe metabolic consequences in their own right. Not to mention, that at the time diabetes is diagnosed, the pancreas has already lost up to 50 – 80% of the cells that make insulin (beta cells) which increases the progression to insulin dependence.

Many women are not aware that it is primarily poor lifestyle choices that lead to an imbalance in insulin regulation. This in turn, can actually reprogram their metabolism to store belly fat. Belly fat leads to increased inflammation. Inflammation is the underlying cause of most of the chronic disease seen with aging such as heart and blood vessel disease, dementia, cataracts and so on. Various studies have shown increased inflammatory markers in women that are fed high sugar diets. Keep in mind that inflammation is the common thread for the majority of the chronic disease seen in our society. Interestingly, simple interventions such as decreasing dietary sugars, exercise and adding specific nutrients such as omega 3 fatty acids (fish oil) and highly potent antioxidants have been shown to reverse these inflammatory changes. Additionally, the metabolic consequences caused by insulin resistance are one of the major causes of fatigue that I see in women and makes maintaining a healthy weight very challenging at best

As if that’s not enough, more and more women are experiencing issues with hormonal imbalance. I believe that this is being fueled by suboptimal lifestyle, environmental issues and the imbalance created by insulin resistance. Polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) is a disorder that I am seeing more commonly in my practice. Women with PCOS have a genetic predisposition to severe insulin resistance which is further exacerbated by environmental and lifestyle issues, which results in a potentially devastating hormonal imbalance. If untreated, these women can experience significant menstrual disturbance, infertility, abnormal dark facial or body hair and male pattern hair loss. Again, leading to potential health consequences, poor quality of life and low self-esteem.

Secondly, the high number of women in the “baby boomer” generation moving into mid-life, coupled with the fear of hormonal replacement therapy, has left many women suffering the symptoms of peri/post menopause with limited options.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The good news is that we do have the power to change our lives by adopting a healthier lifestyle and making changes to get your body back in balance. Please join me on my Peeling the Onion blog as we search for solutions together.