We’re midway through a six-part guide to feeling good. Thus far, we’ve explored the importance of breathing, sleep, rest, pleasure, human connection and the nutritionist in me feels compelled to indulge in a couple of posts about food and mood.

Researchers now believe that many mood disorders, including depression, are not just brain disorders, but whole-body disorders, with chronic, low-grade systemic inflammation as a major risk factor.

Chronic inflammation arises as a result of many of the environmental stressors that we’ve talked about, such as poor diet and sleep, sedentary lifestyle, stress, negative thinking habits – all the usual culprits that you probably already know are important to address.

All of these factors influence our gut bacteria, which are critical to virtually every aspect of health including our brain function and mental health.

Beetroot to the rescue

The humble beetroot is a vegetable that in my experience is sorely overlooked by many...

This week in our ‘guide to feeling good’ series, we’re talking to my good friend, holistic Dentist Dr Vijaya Molloy. She is the owner and Principal Dentist of Vitality Dental here on the Central Coast.

Vijaya has trained across many areas of Dentistry including Orthodontics, Implants, Sleep Apnoea, Acupuncture, Cosmetic Dentistry and Nutrition and is passionate about taking a whole-body approach to dental care.

Breathing and Sleep by Dr Vijaya Molloy

The pursuit of wellness is a common theme in many people’s lives.  I think we’d all agree our mental wellbeing is elevated when we have the physical and mental capacity to pursue our lives to the fullest, whatever that personal definition may be.

Within my practice I encounter a number of people that have spent many years battling with chronic exhaustion. In these patients, often their breathing and sleep have not been checked.   In my opinion the two go hand in hand. 

Breathing

One of...

This is part two in our ‘guide to feeling good’.

Essentially, we’re stepping outside of the reductionist ‘diet plus exercise equals health’ paradigm and focusing on left-of-centre hacks to alter our biochemistry, physiology, mood and outlook.

Last week we touched on the idea that there’s a whole range of fun pastimes that we can indulge in to help us achieve our health goals from a different angle. Things like rest, pleasure and human connection.

This week we’re exploring the role of the vagus nerve, why it’s central to feeling good and how understanding its structure and function opens up even more exciting ways to improve our health.

What is the vagus nerve?

The vagus nerve is one of the longest nerves in the body and is so named because it wanders like a vagabond from the brain, all over the body, wrapping around every organ along the way. It controls our parasympathetic nervous system and can be thought of as a major highway...

Why your nervous system is key 

Greetings Coasties. I do hope you’ve enjoyed a relaxing break at some point over Summer. Granted our suntans may not be on par with previous years, but it does seem that many folks, restricted in their movements and unable to indulge in regular holiday festivities, enjoyed a simpler and perhaps more mindful break this year.

These unusual times have me contemplating how deeply intertwined our health, happiness and mindset, really are. It’s more apparent than ever that our external circumstances are often entirely outside of our control. However, our physical health, along with our mood, outlook and state of mind, are predominantly an inside job. And there are ways we can continue to feel good – great, even – despite what’s happening around us.

Although my teachings generally centre around food and nutrition, one thing I’m constantly harping on about is that when it comes to health, food is only one small piece...

This week we’re hearing from my friend, local Dentist Dr Steven Lin who practices out of Luminous Dentistry in Long Jetty. He’s the author of the international best-seller, ‘The Dental Diet’ which touches on many of the dietary concepts we’ve been discussing over the past few weeks – namely, the importance of returning to a diet based on traditional foods, based on the findings of pioneering Dentist, Dr Weston Price.

Steven and I are equally passionate about the oft-overlooked vitamin K2 and this article expands on my introduction of this important nutrient from last week.

How Vitamin K2 Fuels Jaw Growth, by Dr Steven Lin

One of the biggest problems of modern dentistry has been a failure to address the cause of crooked teeth. However, as we’ll find out, nutritional science has misunderstood the vitamin that caused the problem in the first place.

Today, at least 75% of kids have some level of dental malocclusion. Many patients ask me,...

We’re mid-way through a discussion of the work of Dr Weston A. Price, who studied the diets of traditional people and found them to be almost entirely responsible for their near-perfect health.

Activator X: a missing nutrient

In his research, Dr Price discovered a fat-soluble vitamin he called ‘Activator X’, which we now know to be vitamin K2. He referred to it as an activator because, as we discussed last week, like vitamins A and D, it’s an important catalyst which helps the body absorb and utilise minerals.

Price observed that “people of the past obtained a substance that modern generations do not have” and that its absence from the diet could explain many of our modern diseases. He was able to reverse dental decay and cure degenerative conditions in his patients by supplementing foods rich in this nutrient – the foods that all traditional cultures revered as sacred: animal fats, eggs, concentrated forms of dairy like butter and cheese,...

We’re mid-way through a discussion of the work of Dr Weston A. Price, who studied the diets of traditional people and found them to be almost entirely responsible for their near-perfect health.

I thought I’d expand on what was arguably his most important discovery, especially with respect to the diets of our modern children – that these indigenous diets contained ten times the amount of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D and what we now know to be K2) than their Western counterparts.

Ten!

Just to make sure we’re clear on the impact this deviation from tradition has had, especially with the anti-fat and anti-cholesterol campaigns over the past seven decades, there are now widespread epidemics of deficiencies of these vitamins.

Some 85 per cent of Australians are now deficient in vitamin D, despite our sunny climate.

And because so little is known about vitamin K2 and deficiency has also reached epidemic proportions particularly in children and adults over forty,...

Last week we introduced the findings of Dr Weston A Price, who studied the diets of indigenous peoples. His work demonstrated exceptionally clearly that any deviation away from their nutrient dense traditional diets would inevitably lead to a rapid decline in overall health, with rampant tooth decay, mental health issues and susceptibility to infectious and degenerative disease.

Principles of traditional diets

Given that Price travelled to all corners of the globe, the foods consumed by each indigenous group varied widely, however, regardless of where he went, they intuitively followed the same dietary principles and there were no exceptions.

These principles can serve as a flexible blueprint for us in this modern age.

I thought I’d expand on just a few of the ways we’ve deviated from the traditions and practices that Price noted were common to these cultures.

Thankfully we’re already witnessing a resurgence in popularity of some of these ideas.

1. Proper...

October 1, 2020

Bitter: the abandoned flavour

It’s a flavour that is universally associated with harshness, pain and the downright intolerable, yet bitter foods (and especially greens like radicchio, endive and dandelion) are an overlooked and very essential food group. It’s possible that many of the health complaints that plague us in the modern era, such as reflux, indigestion and type 2 diabetes, may in fact be traced to a deficiency of bitters in the diet.

For the health conscious folk among you, who probably prioritise getting enough fibre, vitamin C, iron and calcium – and for the finger-on-pulse types, probably also bone broth, liver, kale and chia seeds – when was the last time you pondered whether you’re including sufficient bitter foods in your diet? Did it ever make your checklist, I wonder?

Certainly not mine, until several years ago when my all-time favourite food author, Jennifer Mclagan penned the modern classic “Bitter: a taste of the...