Combating Loneliness
Authored by Dr. Barrett I am fascinated by the connection between loneliness, social isolation, community and our health. I am not alone, there is an entire field called sociogenomics that is dedicated to examining how social factors affect the activity of our genome. Prior to the pandemic we knew that loneliness was on the rise […]
Autoimmune Disease + Chronic Infections
Authored by Dr. Barrett This is part five in a series covering autoimmune disease. Don’t miss upcoming articles covering environmental medicine and mind body medicine. Check out previous articles covering Loneliness, GI health, nutrition part 1 and nutrition part 2, and hormones. Autoimmune disease develops when the immune system starts attacking your own tissues. In […]
Winter Toolkit
Authored by Dr. Barrett and Jesse Haas, CNS, LN Maintaining wellness all winter long is more important now than ever. Most of us face at least two major health challenges this time of year…but we’re throwing in a suggestion for a third just in case! First we think about our immune systems. Flu and cold […]
Hashimoto’s Research Update Winter 2021
Authored by Dr. Barrett Myo-inostiol and Selenium for Hashimoto’s (2017) You might already know that selenium can be very helpful for Hashimoto’s. It’s an antioxidant that supports the production of glutathione. Selenium is helpful in reducing anti TPO antibodies. This study compared patients using selenium alone and selenium with myo-inositol. Inositol is involved in cell […]
Body Size Does Not Equal Health
Authored by Dr. Barrett You cannot tell how healthy someone is by looking at their body size. Read that again. This reminder is particularly important in January when we are inundated with marketing about shrinking our bodies. We have been fed a false narrative by society for far too long that implies people in smaller […]
Stress + Immune System
Authored by Dr. Barrett Is stress slowly killing you? It feels that way right now and surprisingly the answer might be yes! Lately I’ve been focusing my continuing education and reading on Psychoneuroimmunology defined by Merriam Webster as “a branch of medicine that deals with the influence of emotional states (such as stress) and nervous […]
Digesting the Digestive System
Authored by Dr. Barrett I often hear patients express a desire to ‘health their gut’ as a means for achieving their health goals. In naturopathic medical school I often heard the phrase ‘health starts in the gut’ or ‘treat the gut first’. Treating gut health has become popular, but what does it really mean? According […]
Loneliness and Autoimmune Disease
Authored by Dr. Barrett This is the first article in a series exploring autoimmune disease with a holistic lens. Don’t miss upcoming articles diving into chronic infections, nutrition part 1 + part 2, hormones, environmental medicine and mind body medicine. I am fascinated by the connection between loneliness, social isolation, community and our health. I am […]
Hashimoto’s Research Update Summer 2020
Authored by Dr. Barrett I am starting up a new blog series to highlight research updates for Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (HT). My intention is to review recent literature every 6 months. I am starting by pulling together a variety of research articles until I feel ‘caught up’ (will I ever feel caught up?!) and will then […]
Self Compassion and Autoimmunity
Authored by Dr. Barrett I have been writing about how self criticism and perfectionism have negative health consequences. If you missed those articles you can read them here (self criticism and autoimmunity; perfectionism and autoimmunity) The antithesis to self criticism is self compassion. Self compassion is extending the same compassion to yourself that you would […]