Autonomic Nervous System

Read more about the Autonomic Nervous System and how it controls every function of your body and how it affects your health.

Has Modern Life Permanently Altered Our Intestinal Bacteria?

Intestinal bacteria can greatly influence your long term health, and we are seeing alarming changes in our bacterial blends. A recent study compared the composition of intestinal bacteria in modern U.S. adults with that obtained from rural African children, a Tyrolean Iceman found in a glacier, an Austrian soldier from 1918 also frozen in glacier, …

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Kids with Eczema, Heartburn or Headaches

Does your child suffer from eczema, heartburn or headaches? While these conditions have become common in children, they are not normal.  Parents do not realize these symptoms are warning signs that their child is unhealthy.  Advances in medicine have made it is possible to simply “mask” these symptoms with pills; this results in the real …

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Do You Feel Broken After Pregnancy?

Common Problems After Pregnancy In my practice, I commonly encounter women who developed a number of physical problems that seemed to start after pregnancy.  In spite of consultations with their primary care doctors and multiple specialists, women are told that “everything is normal” and sent on their way with a few prescriptions to dampen their …

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How Pregnancy Changes a Woman’s Brain

We know a lot about the links between a pregnant mother’s health, behavior, and moods and her baby’s cognitive and psychological development once it is born. But how does pregnancy change a mother’s brain? “Pregnancy is a critical period for central nervous system development in mothers,” says psychologist Laura M. Glynn of Chapman University. “Yet …

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Diarrhea, Urgent Stools and Bacterial Overgrowth Syndrome

Bacteria and Our Intestinal Tract Our intestinal tract is home to billions of bacteria which are made up of 35,000-50,000 different strains.  Each strains of bacteria has the potential of producing a unique chemical that may influence how our body functions.  This mass of life is only beginning to be recognized as a potential factor …

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Why Do I Crave Carbs When I Have a Headache?

The craving for carbohydrates when suffering a headache stems from the fact that many people commonly experience headaches from low blood flow to the brain and scalp muscles. The low blood flow is due to an imbalance of the autonomic nervous system that is commonly associated with insulin resistance, obesity, diabtes and high blood pressure.  The carbohydrate cravings …

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Do You Have Trouble Concentrating?

Psychologists are finding out that even when people try to focus on a task they tend to lose concentration within 40 minutes, and sometimes as little as 10 minutes. The studies are based on a new technique, called transcranial Doppler sonography, that uses ultrasound to monitor blood flow velocity in the brain. The technique could …

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Stomach Acid & Hunger

Introduction It is not uncommon for individuals to occasionally feel hungry, weak and shaky or develop a ‘sour stomach’ between meals. Sometimes these symptoms can be so intense that it wakes them from their sleep. The symptoms quickly resolve after eating a snack. Their rapid improvement with food is understandably interpreted as a sign they …

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“Pickles and Ice Cream” or Why You Crave Sweets

Salty or Sweet:  Your Brain’s Need for Increased Blood Flow Most people crave either salty or sweet food.  They sense these foods make them feel better and because of that they like to eat them.  But many people have never been taught what these food cravings actually mean to their brains.  The reason for your …

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A Reader Asks – “How Do You Know When You Are Done ‘Detoxing’ After Reducing Carbs?”

Wikipedia – “Detoxification (detox for short) is the physiological or medicinal removal of toxic substances from a living organism, including, but not limited to, the human body.” Phrases such as ‘withdrawal from sugars’, ‘detoxing from carbs’ or ‘having low blood sugar’ are often used when people describe the feelings they experience after significantly lowering their carbohydrate intake.  I can understand why …

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Excess Stomach Acid Mimics Hunger

Introduction It is not uncommon for individuals to occasionally feel hungry, weak, and shaky or develop a ‘sour stomach’ between meals.  Many will interpret this as a sign they need more nutrients because their symptoms seem to improve after they eat a little food.  These symptoms can be so intense that it wakes them from …

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It’s Time to Worry If Your Child Has Heartburn

Are You Poisoning Your Children? Believe it or not, if your child has heartburn it’s because they are slowly being poisoned by the excessive amounts of carbohydrates in their diet. Their excessive carbohydrate intake is toxic to their nervous system and is directly responsible for increasing incidence of heartburn, fatigue, headaches, abdominal pain and frequent urination. Heartburn, the Most Obvious …

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Headaches and Lightheadedness

Headaches, A Common Malady A common problem many people experience from time-to-time is a headache. We can still function through the day with a mild headache but they can sometime become so severe as to incapacitate a person.  There are many known causes of headaches but there are only a few that occur quite commonly …

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Carbohydrates Can Cause Bladder Infections

Introduction I see many men and women who complain of recurrent urinary tract infections.  They may also complain of frequent urination in the daytime or at night, have sudden urges to urinate or may even leak a little urine when they sneeze or cough (stress incontinence). Many have report they have had normal bladder evaluations …

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Excess Carbohydrates Equals Lightheadedness and Fatigue

Introduction Many people are familiar with the occasionally sensation of feeling light-headed when getting up out of bed or after bending over to pick up an item or tie their shoes. This lightheadedness can sometimes be accompanied by visual changes such as seeing black spots, burred vision or transient vertigo. On occasion, the lightheadedness can …

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Carbohydrates and Urination Problems

Introduction Many patients commonly experience symptoms of urinary frequency, urgency or incontinence.  They may wake 2-4 times at night to urinate, have a sensation of needing to urinate but produce only a small amount of urine, have frequent or even the surprisingly urgent need to urinate during the daytime. Does this sound familiar?  Many of …

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How to Start Your Low Carb Diet

The approach taken on this blog is not the Adkin’s diet.  Completely eliminating carbohydrates is not the intention, but more a reduction.  Reducing the amount of carbohydrates eaten in a day and increasing protein in the diet is one of the best steps toward weight loss. Besides the benefits of weight reduction, reducing carbohydrates in …

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You Really Don’t Need A Snack To Reduce Your Afternoon Hunger

About 80% of my weight loss patients have a similar complaint, they feel a sense of hunger in the afternoon described as a “grumbling” of their stomach, a sense of weakness or even a shaky sensation as if they have low blood sugar.  And I tell them all the same thing, “Your sense of hunger …

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Do You Have Autonomic Dysfunction?