Welcome to the Denver Holistic Health Blog
Scroll down to find posts listed by date or search by keyword or category.
The Long Road to Endometriosis
Endometriosis is endometrial tissue found outside of the uterine lining, typically in and around the pelvic cavity. These tissues can adhere to the uterus, bladder, ovaries, fallopian tubes, rectum, and can even travel into the abdominal cavity, affecting the colon system and diaphragm. Endometrial cells found outside can cause pain, lesions, adhesions, and inflammation, contributing to debilitating pain during ovulation and menstruation. The exact cause of endometriosis remains unknown, making it challenging to identity. Various theories have been proposed, including congenital, environmental, autoimmune, and allergic factors.
Lifestyle Factors and Healing
When you sleep, your body repairs and restores itself. Studies have shown that poor or interrupted sleep slows down healing and has a negative effect on body systems. When your body is recovering from an injury, surgery, or illness, your nutritional needs increase—you require more energy and nutrients to heal your tissue. Certain compounds like vitamins A, C, and D; amino acids arginine, glutamine, and methionine; and micronutrients like zinc can support your body’s healing response. Stress has a negative effect on virtually all of your body’s systems. It can slow your healing by disrupting the hormones that coordinate the healing response and can wreak havoc on your digestion, interrupting your ability to absorb nutrients that your body needs to mend itself.
World Lichen Sclerosus Day
Lichen sclerosus is a skin condition that causes skin alterations at the vulva. During an active flare, the vulva’s skin may undergo texture changes, color changes and bruising. Women can experience pain with intercourse, scarring, itching, fissures and bruising. It has been identified as an autoimmune disease with a diagnosis delay of 4-6 years attributed to its overlapping symptoms with chronic pelvic pain. While post-menopausal women are commonly diagnosed, it can affect individuals of all ages.
How Do You Get Rid Of Sciatic Pain?
Did you see Adele recently discussed her battle with sciatica? The irritability. The pain. The symptoms are debilitating. Yet, you did nothing different from your normal day to day activities, so why is there suddenly pain? It was your normal drive to your in-laws, so why this time are you left feeling a nagging sciatic pain? Unfortunately, the answer is, it depends.
5 Tips to Help You Recover From Caesarian (C-Section) Delivery
For anyone who has experienced a caesarean (c-section) delivery, you have also experienced an incision into the abdominal wall. These scars are typically located horizontally above the pubic bone or vertically under your belly button. The incision moves through 6 different layers of the abdominal cavity with stitching performed at the uterus, sometimes rectus abdominis muscle (6-pack muscle) and skin. In the immediate weeks after delivery we can be unsure how to heal the scar and how to take care of your newborn with decreased abdominal strength.
Yoga as Medicine: Sympathetic Dampening
If the nervous system is repetitively triggered into "fight or flight" mode it can get confused, resulting in "sympathetic wind-up," a constant, heightened resting state. In this stressed state the nervous system has a hard time calming down, resulting in possible pain sensitivity, stress, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, and fatigue. Yoga has been shown to reduce pain, stress, anxiety, depression, and irritability. Yoga practice can also increase blood flow, improve concentration, and improve sleep quality. In short, yoga can produce the opposite effect of "sympathetic wind-up."
Networks
In this group we refer our patients to other providers we think they'd benefit from. We educate ourselves on different techniques and how an integrative approach best supports healing. We empower patients by sharing resources and information. And by doing all of this, we believe we can improve the standard of care and quality of health in Denver.