By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND As a past engineer, I tend to be very analytical in how I see health, wellness and trends. One thing that I often say to new patients, especially ones with complex health issues is that a big part of how I work is by pattern recognition. What this means is recognizing same constellation of symptoms or the way someone …
7 Reasons to Test Your Hormones, and how to do it accurately
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND As most of you know, I’m a big fan of lab testing - the ‘test don’t guess’ approach. Here are some scenarios when hormone testing can be extremely helpful: (1) Getting a hormone baseline This is helpful especially in your 30’s or even early 40’s to have a baseline before they shift with perimenopause. If you know …
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Are histamines affecting your health?
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND Histamine intolerance and many health conditions associated with histamine appear to be on the rise in the past couple of years. In this brief article, I wanted to link some symptoms, conditions and underlying causes which I hope may help you to get to the root of your health, and perhaps be a missing piece for …
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How your health issues interconnect
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND From a naturopathic and functional medicine viewpoint, we look at the body as systems that interconnect, rather than symptoms that need treating on their own. I wanted to share with you some very common patterns of interconnection that I see regularly related to women’s health and hormones especially. It may help to shed …
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What to do if you have an inflammation flare-up
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND I have been seeing a lot of inflammation flare-ups lately in the clinic, and wanted to explain how I look at them, and help your body to get back into balance again. After a couple of stressful years for various reasons, and often a drop-off of self-care, inflammation can look quite different for each of us. Signs you …
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Top Causes of Insulin Resistance
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND Insulin resistance is something that I talk about multiple times every day in my work, and it has become even more prevalent in the past two years with high stress and a more sedentary lifestyle. It is extremely important to identify and address insulin resistance since it is on the trajectory towards diabetes, and on …
Long COVID treatment strategies
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND I have lately received several referrals of patients who are experiencing long-COVID symptoms, and wanted to share with you my perspective, areas to investigate and a possible approach. There is not much known about why some people are affected long-term from this infection and others only experience mild cold symptoms. …
Signs of Histamine Intolerance
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND I’m writing this article, because I have noticed a pattern in quite a number of patients lately and hope that this short article may help you put the pieces together for your own health if you are experiencing symptoms of histamine intolerance. Common symptoms associated with histamine intolerance include: nausea …
Coping with Prolonged High Stress
By Dr. Shawna Darou, ND It certainly has been a challenging couple of years, with ongoing stresses living through the pandemic. I find it interesting that everyone I speak to has had different stresses, but it does seem that almost universally, the load of stress has been significantly higher than it was previously. We are very good at …