2019

Hill Park Medical Center > 2019
Healthy Goals

How IV Vitamin Therapy Can Help to Improve Your Health

How IV Vitamin Therapy Can Help to Improve Your Health

If you knew about a single vitamin that not only helps give you more energy, but helps you sleep more soundly; that increases cognition, but also calms your mind, would you take it? Especially knowing this vitamin is very safe and almost impossible to have too much of? This vitamin can do all of the above, along with helps heal nerves, elevates your mood, supports liver health, and more. Which vitamin is this?

Vitamin B12, or methylcobalamin, is found naturally in meat, eggs, and dairy, but also, in sea vegetables, chlorella, spirulina, and brewer’s yeast. It can only be absorbed orally if there is sufficient stomach acid, so if you are on any medications like Prilosec or Prevacid, you might not be absorbing it well. Other medications can also deplete B12 like metformin, statins, and diuretics. Even other conditions like celiac disease or GI inflammation can inhibit the absorption.

B12 can help with DNA production, red blood cell health and production, nerve pain, energy, and even herpes viruses like cold sores and shingles. It is used by almost every cell of the body and helps with energy production, pain, and healing. When people are deficient in B12, which can be a result of pernicious anemia or chronic stress, they often experience nerve and muscle pain, brain fog, difficulty sleeping, depression, immune dysfunction, and skin issues. Naturopathic doctors have been using this vitamin for a very long time to increase healing time, elevate mood, and increase energy.

Hill Park Integrative Medical Center recommends B12 in its methylcobalamin or hydroxocobalamin form and as an injection. This is to ensure the best absorption of B12, as injections allow you to absorb 100% of the dose since, it goes directly into the bloodstream.

We provide quick, painless injections on a walk-in basis. Most people come in once a week for four weeks in a row and report feeling a profound difference in their energy, mental clarity, and overall wellbeing. Hill Park is also offering walk-in B12 Happy Hours featuring a short consultation with one of our functional medicine doctors to help you choose which nutrient injection is best for you! They are Monday 3-6pm, Wednesday 4-6 pm, and the first Saturday of every month (Super Saturday!) from 10am-1pm.

B12 is also found in many of our IV and customized nutrient formulations, so give us a call or walk on in to give it a try!

IV Vitamin Therapy, Natural Allergy Treatment, Natural Immune Health

Allergy Relief – Staving Off the Sneezes

With the changing of the seasons and the rain finally coming to a close, the flowers come out with a vengeance. With the beauty that they lend the world, comes massive amounts of pollen. Allergy season often coincides with Spring and Fall, but, depending on your allergies, you can suffer year long. Brain fog, itchy eyes, sneezing, and feeling fatigued are not pleasant things you’d like to deal with on a daily basis. But, when you take the over the counter medications, the extra layer of brain fog and fatigue make it downright unbearable. So, you feel left between a rock and a hard place. There are many natural solutions such as IV vitamin therapy that can help to ease the pain of allergies, both lifestyle modifications and supplements that don’t give the brain fog or medication hangover, but still provide potent relief.

1. Air Purifier

Getting an air purifier in your home can help to decrease the allergens residing there. By making your house a clean zone, you can vastly decrease the amount of allergens you are subjected to. This gives your system a rest, especially at night, so your body can heal and rest itself from the onslaught of allergens outside. This also helps to filter out the harmful particles like mold, which can cause a low level of inflammation, especially in the respiratory tracts.

2. Use Natural Cleaners

We all clean when we start to feel the allergies coming on. Common household cleaners can often emit vapors that inflame and harm the skin and respiratory tract. Always wear gloves and use natural cleaners to decrease the chances of further inflaming your respiratory tract.

3. Vitamin C

Our cells react to allergens by releasing histamine. It’s the histamine that causes many of our allergy symptoms, like sneezing, itchy eyes, and skin rashes. Vitamin C helps to stabilize the cells to decrease their ability to release histamine. By taking appropriate amounts, this stabilizes the cell’s membranes and keeps histamine IN the cell, rather than outside it.

4. Vitamin B5/ Pantothenic Acid

Vitamin B5 is a super safe addition to your allergy regimen. B5 can help to control nasal congestion and dry up secretions. B5 can also reduce eosinophils, which are the main white blood cells (immune cells) responsible for allergies. This also helps to quickly decrease histamine levels in the body, which can help to alleviate symptoms.

5. Stinging Nettles

This herb is a great addition to your allergy arsenal. It helps to decrease the frequency and severity of allergy symptoms, such as runny nose and sneezing. If taken with enough time before allergy season, it can even help to prevent an allergic response. Its best to dose this herb frequently and early in the season to allow it to take full effect.

6. Gingko Biloba

This herb is normally associated with mood and cognitive function, but it also can play a small role in helping allergy symptoms. It can chemically mediate the inflammatory and allergy response due to some of its constituents. It’s got plenty of antioxidant properties that help to decrease inflammation and improve cognition. Lastly, it can help with asthma, as it decreases the bronchoconstriction!

7. NAC

This compound combats allergies in multiple ways. It is the precursor to glutathione, which is a major antioxidant, liver protector, and immune supportive nutrient. While strengthening the immune system, it also helps to thin mucus and phlegm, allowing you to breathe easier. Just drink plenty of water, as it can easily leave you feeling extra dry.

There are many other ways to alleviate allergies – avoiding food sensitivities and trans fats, practicing good hygiene in the home and on yourself, and avoiding exposure to extra chemicals and scents during times of sensitivity. If you are looking for an IV vitamin therapy in Sonoma County then, make an appointment and we can discuss the best methods for you to combat allergies!

 

Phrase: IV vitamin therapy Sonoma County

BioIdentical Hormone Therapy, Hormone Balance, Low Testosterone, Menopause, Peri-menopause, Women’s Health

Bio-identical Hormone Replacement Therapy

Most women associate hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with menopause, but it actually has many more uses to correct hormone concerns that arise throughout a lifetime. Naturopathic and functional medicine doctors use a special class of hormone replacement therapy, called bioidentical hormone replacement therapy (BHRT), to treat not only menopausal women, but, also perimenopause, fertility, PMS, PCOS, anxiety, insomnia, and even men who are having issues with low testosterone.

Bioidentical hormones are derived and modified from natural sources, such as the Wild Mexican Yam, and are structurally identical to the hormones our bodies naturally produce. Therefore, we can expect similar results from them.

Bioidentical hormones differ from synthetic hormone replacement therapy in several ways. Synthetic hormones are chemically foreign from the hormones we produce, so, they often behave a little differently than our natural hormones. One significant difference is that synthetic hormones have been shown to bind more tightly to the receptors in our bodies, which makes the receptors work overtime and have a much more potent effect, sometimes more than what we want.

A good example of synthetic hormones hijacking the normal processes of the body is birth control. Hormonal birth control is made up of synthetic hormones that bind very tightly to the body’s estrogen and progesterone receptors and “trick” the body into thinking it’s pregnant. This can happen even in relatively low doses. In this way, we can use the synthetic hormones to our benefit for family planning, but, we don’t necessarily need this effect in our hormone balance regime.

Bioidentical hormone therapy offers several options for delivery and personalization. Bioidentical hormones are often compounded, which provides more flexibility in customized dosing and delivery form for your personal needs. The forms of bioidentical hormone therapy generally include transdermal cream or gel, lozenges, capsules, or suppositories.

Some benefits of bHRT include:

  • Lowers cholesterol and increases HDL (the good fat)
  • Maintains collagen in our skin and connective tissues
  • Improve cognition and protect brain tissue
  • Improve sleep
  • Improve mood and alleviate anxiety
  • Mitigate thermal regulation (warm rushes and hot flashes)
  • Improves cardiovascular health
  • Stabilizes bone health

At Hill Park Integrative Medical Center, we have several doctors who specialize in the prescription of bioidentical hormones for many different clinical applications. We treat both according to symptoms and labs and have had great success in hormone treatments across many patient populations, including reproductive age women, men, fertility, and post/perimenopausal women.

We don’t think that bioidentical hormone therapy is the only hormone balance regime – there are many solutions to hormone imbalance with the use of herbal medicine, targeted nutrient therapy, acupuncture, and many other resources. For moderate to severe concerns, bioidentical hormones can be very effective, especially in combination with other natural therapies, to correct hormone balance and are safe when applied correctly by an experienced doctor.

Uncategorized

The New Year’s Cleanse

With the beginning of a new year, our resolutions to live the most vital and healthiest life are often renewed. The most common resolutions are to lose weight, assume healthier eating patterns, and get back in the gym. These are all great resolutions, and everyone should strive to be a better version of themselves. However, there can be a sneaky roadblock you might not even notice that increases the difficulty in achieving these goals – environmental toxicants.

Over the holidays, we often stray from our typical diet: eat less vegetables, drink more alcohol, exercise less, and eat so much more sugar than we usually do. We are also cooped up inside, often with fireplaces. All of these factors, and more, can overburden your body’s ability to eliminate waste from the cells and also from our environment. These toxicants are often stored in fat and can hijack our best attempts to lose weight.

So how do we overcome this hurdle and feel better, gain more energy, and achieve the most weight loss? We can do a short detox once life is a little more settled. Our detox involves a few facets to make sure your body has the proper tools it needs to clean out the toxicants, eliminate them, and start with a clean slate moving forward.

Step one is to give your body high quality nutrients and ingredients. We want to give your body the best, most efficient fuel we can provide for the energy needed to keep our brains healthy and cells clean. We also will use food to decrease inflammation (step 2), which can gum up the works and make the body work sluggish. We’ve found that just by decreasing the amount of inflammation in the body, a person can lose up to 10 pounds.

Step 3 involves making sure we can properly and efficiently eliminate the toxicants. If we skip step three, it is like we are cleaning out a closet without trash bags. You can get it done, but the room will be a mess for much longer while you slowly work to eliminate the junk. Our plan involves giving your body the nutrients, natural medicines, and the tools necessary to package up the toxicants and efficiently eliminate them.

Most people on our detox program notice vast improvement in brain function, energy, skin vibrancy, and overall well-being – all while being several pounds lighter. So instead of just working yourself to death to lose some weight, let our alternative medicine clinic in Sonoma County partner with you to help clean out your body’s closet, find sustainable healthy living practices, and lose some weight in the process.

We wish you a peaceful, prosperous, and healthy 2019!