Teresa Gryder's Naturopathic Notes: How to get healthy and stay that way without taking handfulls of meds for the rest of your days.

Idaho Pilgrimage

7/30/2020

As you probably know my favorite form of recreation (and meditation) is whitewater kayaking, and my favorite place to do whitewater kayaking is in the deep wilderness. Oregon is rich in lovely day runs and I have called it heaven for the whitewater kayaker. One reason that Oregon is heaven is the proximity of Idaho. Every year I make a pilgrimage to celebrate the rivers there.

A man named Frank Church was a senator from Idaho from 1957 to 1981, and during his time in the senate he got a lot of bills passed that help protect wild places and things. Some of the rivers we ran flow through a wilderness that bears his name. Thanks, Frank.

We may not think often about how wilderness impacts our health but it does. Undeveloped areas provide pockets of clean air and clean water for us and all the other species. Clean air is important to maintaining cardiopulmonary health and our sanity. Clean water is key to most life processes in most living things. Even just having a treed area nearby enhances quality of life for people in a city.

Idahoans know this. They hunt and fish and camp and swim in the rivers more than most folks. Some of them have fallen prey to misinformation about COVID-19 from the whitehouse, and I worry that they will not fare well when the virus finds them. But they are proud people and the more they get out into the wilds, the fitter they will be and the higher their chances of surviving the dread virus when it arrives.

As I settle back into my city routine I will begin to post again about COVID-19. Having taken a nice time-out my perspective has shifted a bit.

I hope you are getting outdoors. I hope you pull your face out of the mobile phone screen long enough to take in the green. I hope you see the crows fly and feel the cold water of a stream. These things are strong medicine.

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Heading into the Wilds again

6/2/2020

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The return from my last excursion was rough. We were in a great wilderness for 4 days and 3 nights. The day after I returned a dear one in my family died. He died of being hospitalized. He was urgent to escape but was unable to. He was sedated to death.

Then a white eye cop with hands in his pockets murdered a beautiful black man. The living rage of so many black lives mattering roared in spite of generations of hateful treatment. Then the agendas of all the whites interfered with the clarity of their message, damaged their communities. And always this horrendous potus tweeting his ego, tweeting his malfeasance plain as day. These times are beyond "interesting". They are fucked.

I would like to help with all of it but at this moment I feel the need to save myself. I save myself by turning it off. Meditation, yoga and walking help, but getting out of the city and away from the roads is my medicine. Getting to where there is no phone to ring, no media to read or watch, no news, is the very best medicine.

For all of you who are sad, angry and overwhelmed, you are normal. To feel crazy in crazy times is normal. Perhaps the best thing you can do for yourself is to take a time out. Go sit in the sun. Take deep breaths. Walk in the rain. Feel the raindrops. Watch the birds and hear them sing, or float down a river if that suits you.

When you are quiet inside you can see more clearly. When you are centered and strong you are a better ally. Do not let the constant news cycle rule you. Get out, and I will see you on the other side.

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A Fever is a Good Thing (Here's Why)

10/26/2019

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This is the author using a down jacket and cat to get warm.

If you’ve ever had the flu, you know how miserable it can be. Chills and sweats, body aches, coughs and sniffles—there’s nothing about it that anyone would choose to embrace. Many people get the flu vaccine every year and while that’s not the subject of this article, I will say that most of us don’t need it. Even if you get the vaccine, you might get the flu. Even if you don’t get the flu, you could easily get a cold or some other bug. When the days get short and the air gets cold and dry, more people get sick. That’s just the way it is.

In my parents’ generation the main treatment for a cold or flu was lowering the fever. Aspirin was avoided for children because it could cause Reye’s syndrome, but Tylenol was given. These days ibuprofen or naproxen are popular options for lowering a fever. But what if lowering the fever makes you sicker in the long run? What if it impairs your body’s effort to kick the bug out?

That is exactly what is happening. If you start to feel sick and get chills, the last thing you really want to do is lower the fever. It does not help you get better any faster. Instead of popping pills intended to keep yourself from getting a fever, you want to facilitate the fever. This is because fever is part of your immune system’s way of dominating infections and kicking them out. Once you realize this, you will know what to do. You might even be able to prevent yourself from getting all the way sick.

Whenever you feel strangely cold, it could be because your body has decided to turn up its internal thermostat. Chills are a sign that your body wants to be hotter. The best thing you can do is help it get as hot as it wants. Drinking hot tea, wrapping up in a blanket, curling up next to a fire are a good start. A hot bath is great. It’s hard to keep a bathtub hot for very long so boil a kettle of water and keep it on the side to pour in (carefully!!) when your water starts to cool down. If you have access to a hot tub or sauna where you won’t infect others, those are even better. Put on a warm hat or hoodie. Make a hot water bottle and put it on your midsection or your feet. Curl up with the kittie. The only warming thing you don’t really want to do is to exercise because you probably feel really tired if you have a fever and it will only make you more tired. Get warm and rest.

If your body is getting sick, it is mounting an immune response to something. You want it to do that. You want it to get the fever because that will help it get rid of the infection. Heating treatments are used for cancer too, because heat activates the immune system. There is nothing wrong with letting your body get a degree or three warmer than it usually is!

Unfortunately as we get older our bodies don’t get fevers like they used to. Kids make great fevers, so high that they can have harmless seizures from being so hot. Adults can get good fevers, high enough to kick infections, but rarely hot enough to cause seizures. Old people sometimes don’t get fevers at all, and this is a problem, because it’s hard to tell when they have an infection, and because the infections can hang around a long time. Regular heating treatments for elders are not a bad idea even when they are not sure if they’re sick. Some elders have low body temperatures to start with so if their temperature measures as “normal” (98.6F) they actually are having a fever.

Obviously you must be careful when using boiling water, heating pads or anything hot that you do not burn someone. A body temperature of 99F or more generally counts as a fever and if it gets over 101F or so your fever is getting real. This means the body is fighting something it considers dangerous. Generally we get higher fevers from bacterial infections than from viral ones, but getting our body totally warm helps us beat viruses just like it helps us beat bacteria.

The moral of the story is that fevers are good! If you get a fever, that means you are healthy enough to have a functional immune system, and it is doing its job. If you get the chills, your body is serious about beating an infection, and the best thing you can do is to get yourself toasty warm, drink liquids, and rest. Don’t eat food, that distracts the immune system, much of which lives in the intestine. Just get yourself hot and wait it out.

When your body suddenly starts sweating and you feel way too hot, the fever has broken. It’s OK to take off your hat and get out from the covers when this happens. The fever might come back again, or it might not. If it comes back again, drink hot liquids and cover up and get warm again. Usually after a few cycles of this the illness will be over. Unlike the lingering sickness that would have happened if you lowered the fever with pills and stopped your immune system from working. So be thankful for the innate intelligence of your body and enjoy the fever! It’s what nature intended.

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On Spiritual Practice and Loving Life

3/26/2017

What do you practice in your life? I believe it was the Mahatma Gandhi who said that bit about how your thoughts become your actions and on down the line…. It was about how you create yourself by what you choose to think and believe. A practice is anything that you do regularly, even ritually. A morning cup of coffee is a common practice.

If it is true that what you do becomes who you are, it is worth putting some thought and intention into your own personal practice.

There are a lot of yoga practitioners out there. I count myself as one. I practice at least a little yoga every day. For me it is the avenue by which I came to recognize and respect my own body, which was necessary before I could begin to care for it. I was in denial of my body for many years. In my 20’s, though I looked fit, I could not touch my toes without bending my legs. One cannot gain flexibility without a regular practice, because it is a gradual process. And one cannot be truly strong without flexibility; if you can’t use the full range of your body’s movements, your strength is hobbled. I believe this applies to flexibility of the mind, too. If once lacks mental flexibility, one cannot learn.

Many say we should all develop a spiritual practice. This is about choosing at least some thoughts and actions that are oriented toward our highest values and goals. A cup of coffee might not satisfy this. Having some small fraction of each day that is dedicated to the big picture, to the people and things that we most love, is a simple way to remind us that we are part of that Wholeness that is the World. Regardless of your belief system—and even if you are firmly atheist or mildly agnostic—you will benefit from such a practice. The research tells us that you will live longer, be less depressed, and be more likely to request life-extending medicine when your time is short. You will love life more.

I personally have been mulling on these ideas of a practice because I now have a medical practice as well. What is the core of my practice? It is evolving. Perhaps the most important thing I can do for my patients is to help them to notice the great blessings that abound as long as we live. The irritants of daily life are passing things, often irrelevant in the longterm. I practice meditation, gratitude, kindness, the four agreements, and also being in nature. My church the is river, sky, mountain, snows of winter and buds of spring. Science shows that being in natural environments lowers blood pressure and stress hormones, but I believe it does more than that.

I also practice Feng Shui. Not in any traditional way, but in the deeper concept. Feng Shui taught me that the physical things that surround me either facilitate or impede my practice. I strive to make every item in my space a reminder of all I have to be grateful of, and what I am striving for. If physical things get in my way, I move them. If they are not moveable, I move other things to improve the flow.

So now you know my practice. What is yours? I look forward to hearing about it.

Idaho Pilgrimage

Heading into the Wilds again

A Fever is a Good Thing (Here's Why)

On Spiritual Practice and Loving Life

Author: Teresa Gryder

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