“Close to 1 in 10 adults over age 18 owns an activity tracker” (1) You can’t go anywhere these days without seeing someone wearing an iWatch or a Fitbit. People are now more than ever becoming accountable for their health and wellness and tracking via a fitness tracker has become a part of this movement. Fitness trackers have been around for quite sometime but they didn’t start making mainstream headway until about the early 2000s. But, with all of this information available

This week’s blog post will be little different than others. Personal and professional changes in my life have finally allowed me to shed the worry of what others think and share my own candid thoughts in regards to self-care in women and why we need to redefine what it really means. A couple of weeks ago Erin sent me an article titled “We don’t need self care; we need boundaries” (1), written by psychiatrist Dr Pooja Lakshmin (2). After reading it (3 or 4 times!) it became ev

As you can probably tell by now, Erin and I are a little obsessed with the gut. It all began at the beginning of last year when we enrolled ourselves into the Institute of Integrative Nutrition following our annual primary care conference. Post conference, we both were convinced that there HAD to be a better way for our patients to heal themselves. A way that did not involve prescribing potentially harmful pharmaceutical drugs or having the generic “you need to change your di

Stress. Let’s face it, we all have it. And the majority of us are not great at managing it. Which is exactly why an estimated 75% to 90% of doctor’s visits are for conditions related to stress. Stress has an enormous role in the development of the majority of chronic diseases (1). While short bouts of stress can actually make you more resilient and boost your immune system, constant, low-grade stress can have the complete opposite effect. Not only can it suppress your immune

This past week I traveled for the first time to the great city of Louisville, KY to attend and speak at The Myositis Association (TMA) Annual Patient Conference, in regards to diet and supplementation for inflammatory disorders. This is their 25th year of providing this amazing conference to patients and caregivers of patients who are battling Myositis diseases. Now, you might be asking: Exactly what is Myositis? Myositis, by definition, is “a rare disease, affecting approxim

If you are anything like me, yoga is the one activity that you probably need the most but constantly struggle and fail to fit into your schedule. I have this underlying desire to be a zen yogi who is goes about her days being in touch with her mind-body connection, but the reality is that I run around like a stressed-out chicken with her head cut off 90% of the time. And I’m sure I am not alone in this! I also am a self-proclaimed cardio junkie, so often prioritize heart-pump

This title expresses a grave concern to the healthcare community that Metabolic Syndrome truly is a “silent epidemic”. While America’s waistline keeps expanding, so does our national debt, making this epidemic not only detrimental to our patients but to our entire healthcare system. In this week’s post, I want to try to give you some insight on what Metabolic Syndrome is, what tests should be ordered to properly diagnose it, and alternative therapies that can help you from ha

Collagen peptides are all the rage in the health and nutrition world right now. In fact, questions regarding collagen peptides and their health benefits are some of the most common questions that we get asked by our followers. Which is why we wanted to dedicate a blog post to this supplement superstar. Before I go any further, I should clarify exactly what collagen is. Collagen is a structural protein found in the skin and connective tissues of the body. It is comprised of a

Kombucha (pronounced Kom-Bu-Cha) has gained much deserved popularity in the recent years due to its gut-health benefits. Did you know that this fermented tea contains various, much-needed probiotics and has been around for the past 2000 years?! We briefly touched on kombucha in our Gut-health blog post series, but we wanted to give kombucha the spotlight this week as we are questioned on a daily basis: “What is kombucha and why should I drink it?” The beginning stages of komb

In this day and age, not many people go without owning a smartphone, tablet, or computer. If there isn’t a WiFi connection, you can literally see people going into convulsions. Ok, that might be a little dramatic, but my point is that technology is something that most people have access to and use religiously. This leads up to our blog post for this week: Our Favorite Health and Wellness Apps. We are always asked by our patients “What apps do you use?” So this week we wanted

A 3 part series discussing what is gut health, what foods and supplements heal, support and prevent adverse effects of an unbalanced gut, and the benefits of maintaining that balance. The Gut. People are always talking about their gut; whether its to follow it (see what I did there!), if they have gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms (bloating, constipation, diarrhea etc), or simply what should they do to keep it from acting up. A balanced gut has been documented to eliminate brain