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How To Make a Mustard Plaster for Chest Congestion

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of flour
• 1/4 cup mustard seed powder (you can also grind mustard seeds into powder yourself, which would make a stronger and even more effective poultice).
• Olive oil, to apply to SKIN so prevent the plaster from burning skin

Directions:

1. Stir in enough hot water to make a thick paste with flour and mustard seed powder.
2. Be sure to place a thin layer of olive oil on the chest before you put the paste on to help keep the plaster from “burning” the skin.  Place this paste on the chest and cover with a hot wet towel.
3. Place a dry towel on top of that. You don’t have to place a hot towel on the paste, but this will help the mustard seed to stay warm and effective.
4. It’s very important to check the plaster from time to time to make sure it isn’t burning the skin.
5. Leave this on the chest all day or overnight as long as the skin isn’t becoming irritated. If you have sensitive skin, only use the plaster for 20-30 minutes at a time.

By now I hope most of you have learned about the importance of maintaining an optimal state of bacteria in your gut. Through clinical practice, we are learning more and more about the link between these strains of bacteria and chronic illness. When it comes to diabetes, two of the biggest systems that are involved in the regulation of blood sugar is your immune system and gastrointestinal system. Probiotic bacteria have a direct effect on both of them. Let us look into that a littler more.

Wit regards to the gut, the need to maintain proper digestive function is a cornerstone for blood sugar regulation. When things are working properly in the gastrointestinal system, the production (if type II and not on insulin) and use of insulin is very efficient. As the digestive system becomes overwhelmed due to side effects of elevated blood sugar creating digestive neuropathic dysfunction (due to neuropathy, see my blog post here to read more), increased symptoms start to occur. The most common symptoms that people will feel can include gas, bloating, heartburn, diarrhea, constipation and general indigestion feelings. As the digestive system becomes more challenged, it becomes a viscous process that further contributes to a state of dysglycemia (both high and low blood sugar readings). The unfortunate part is that in the medical community, we do not take the time to discuss the reason these digestive disturbances are occurring. Thus people will reach for over-the-counter medications to improve symptoms and this only exacerbates the issue and creates more problems down the road.

With regards to the immune system, about 80% of your immune system tissue is found in the gastrointestinal system (the term for this is GALT- gut associated lymphatic tissue). The bacteria in your digestive system contributes significantly to the health of the immune system. When the bacteria starts to become compromised, immune system function lowers. This creates more inflammation in the body leading to more dysglycemic states.

Your proboitic bacteria are very important and if you are dealing with a chronic illness such as diabetes, there is almost a life long need to supplement with this beneficial natural therapeutic. Typically, you would get this bacteria from your food and it would make its way down into the digestive tract and begin to populate itself. In order for the bacteria to grow and flourish, the environment has to be optimal. You need optimal pH (diabetics tend to be more acidic), optimal pre-biotics (this is the food substrate that feed pro-biotic bacteria), optimal blood flow (which we know circulation is compromised in the diabetic individual) and optimal nervous system stimulation (remember that all diabetics have some state of neuropathy). All of these variables are significantly affected when diabetes is occurring in one’s body. When we supplement with the bacteria, it mostly becomes a numbers game with an effort to drop large quantities of bacteria into the digestive system with a hope that they will populate the GI tract. But please remember that you also need to continue to work on creating an optimal environment for those little buggies. This is where nutrition, detoxification and stress management come into play because these are topics that have to be addressed to allow those little buggies to do there thing.

When it comes to probiotics (and really supplements in general), please remember that not all are created equally. The best analogy I can give is when comparing power tools (hopefully you have had to use one recently and you can relate to this analogy). When you go and by a drill, there is a brand called Black & Decker and then there is a brand called DeWalt. Now while both of these drills look pretty much the same and have a lot of the same specifications on them, once you get into your project you will begin to notice a significant difference in quality and efficiency between the two drills. The DeWalt drill will out perform the Black & Decker every time, over time. That being said, it is better for you to use some tools rather than no tools at all. The brand of probiotcs that I recommend is the HMF series by Genestra.

Please remember to take care of yourself and do not settle for the fact that you just have to live with diabetes.

Dr.Buttler, educating people about diabetes in the Milwaukie and Portland areas.

When I initially see a diabetic patient, they often have complaints and concerns happening within their gastrointestinal systems. These symptoms can range from increased gas and bloating, to nausea and vomiting to diarrhea and constipation. You could almost diagnosis IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) in most diabetic patients. The unfortunate part of this scenario is that most patients with these symptoms are using a lot of different over-the-counter antacids, anti-diarrhea and constipation treatments to try and manage these symptoms. This direction of care only continues to enable the individual down a path of symptom suppression with the need to use stronger treatments to get an improvement in the symptom response. Based on the principle of “treating the cause and not the symptom”, I would like to discuss the reason behind why diabetics deal with increased digestive problems and what are some beneficial ways of addressing the underlying cause.

When it comes to function in the body, the nervous system is at the top. All of the tissues that make up your organs, muscles, tendons and ligaments are innervated (meaning they have a nerve going into them, much the same way an electrical wire needs to go into a plug to give it power). This innervation is what stimulates the tissues to do its function. So for instance in the muscles, the nerve creates muscular contraction. In the organs, such as the stomach, this innervation causes enzymes to be produced. In the small bowel it causes digestion to occur. In the large bowel, it causes peristalsis to occur (which is the movement of the the tissue to aid in bowel function). As you can see, nerves play a vital role in initiating activity to occur in the body.

So why are diabetics challenged when it comes to their digestion? It has to do with the nerves. To understand this further, let us talk about diabetic neuropathy. This is a common condition that diabetics deal with mostly in their lower legs and feet. Neuropathy occurs because the elevation of blood glucose in diabetes affects the small blood vessels that feeds these nerves. As the glucose rises, it wears down the integrity of the blood vessel preventing adequate blood from getting to the nerve and allowing it to function correctly. The lack of blood flow to the nerve slows down function of the tissue it is innervating and creates pain as a signal of feedback.

This general understanding of neuropathy gives you the basis behind the cause of gastrointestinal symptoms in diabetics. A thing to remember is that if you are having diabetic neuropathy in one part of your body, you are having it everywhere. Thus, the cause of intestinal issues in diabetics can be from neuropathy. You want to avoid using medications such as Lyrica when you are having neuropathy because you are just covering up the symptoms without an ability to get feedback from your body. The wearing down of the nerve tissue and the subsequent reduction of function in the organs is what causes gastrointestinal symptoms to occur. Thus it is important to regulate the elevated blood glucose to allow better circulation and blood to return to the nerves. This will improve the digestive symptoms that occur as a result of diabetes.

Dr.Buttler, educating people about diabetes in the Milwaukie and Portland areas.

Nutrition is such a important topic when it comes to the disease of diabetes. The obvious impact of the food we eat when we are dealing with dysregulated blood sugar should be first and foremost in our minds. The unfortunate part is that the conventional approach to nutritional counseling for diabetics falls very short of what is truly needed to educate patients who are dealing with this health concern. The recommendations that are presently being made based on medical science that has been clinically proven to be unsuccessful, needs to be moved past. The purpose of this post is to give you a starting to point to begin educating yourself on choices that you have which can create immediate impact on your blood sugar.

Top 3 foods to eat

#1- Animal protein– I can imagine the shock this may have for a few people given the fact that we are in the midst of a climate revolution and the questioning of how our lifestyle choices are affecting the environment. Well, what I can tell you is that there is no better food to stabilize blood glucose levels than animal protein. This is based solely on my clinical experience and the results I get with my patients. I want you to know that not all protein are made the same. 10 grams of protein from peas is different than the 10 grams of protein from fish or chicken. I would argue that the response that animal protein has on blood sugar versus the plant based protein, is 30x more effective at keeping the blood glucose levels stabilized. The important thing to remember when eating animal protein is that you do not need to eat a lot in one sitting. It is actually more important to eat small amounts more frequently through the day than larger amounts at one time.

#2-Leafy greens– By now I am assume most people are clear about the fact that green things are good for us when it comes to food. The mineral and nutrient density found within green leafy vegetables provides the body with the resources to aid in metabolism. It really is all about minerals when it comes to the metabolism (vitamins are important as well but not as much as minerals are). Proper mineralization helps maintain proper pH balance in the body. Regulation of pH allows for enzymatic function to take place. If the pH is off even by a few points, metabolism begins to slow down. When metabolism slows down, this causes blood glucose levels to be maintained at a higher level and then eventually convert to adipose or fat tissue. Leafy greens such as lettuce (romaine, green and red leaf), spinach, arugula, chard, kale, collard greens and mustard greens are just a few examples of this wonderful food group (I think of them as a food group) that has a profound effect on your blood sugar.

#3- Sweet potatoes/yams (the orange ones)- Oh man, how many of you remember the sweet potato dish at Thanksgiving with the marshmallows in it? For a lot of my patients, sweet potatoes/yams often elicit a slight gag response when I first advise them to eat this great diabetic food. Well, I am here to tell you that sweet potatoes/yams can taste wonderful and have a extremely important role in the metabolism. It is the complex nature of the carbohydrate in the sweet potatoes that provides a metabolic cushion for my patients. As I hope you are aware, the type and kind of carbohydrate that a diabetic eats can be disastrous to their blood glucose levels. Sweet potatoes/yams do not create a dysregulation in the blood glucose when appropriately combined with animal protein and vegetable.

Top 3 foods not to eat

Before I tell you what my top 3 whole foods not to eat are, I want to emphasize the fact that food choices containing sugar (also sugar free food products) are absolutely contraindicated in a diabetic nutritional environment. Meaning, you can not eat sugar when you are working to heal diabetes.

#1- Grains- While this might seem obvious given our new understanding of glucose metabolism, I can not understate the impact that grain based nutrition has on the body’s sugar response. Grains pack in them not only tremendous glucose reserve but also an inflammatory substrate known as lectin. The biggest problem with grains is the fact that they are refined and packaged into different food products that people with diabetes tend to consume in high volume. My patients also ask me about eating whole grains and I let them know that in certain instances whole grains are worse for you then refined grains. The important takeaway with grains is that you remove them from your diet to allow rehabilitation of glucose metabolism.

#2- Nuts- What a bummer! For a lot of people, nuts are a wonderful snack that is shelf stable which allows (in theory) you to get through the day without having to eat larger meals (let me remind you that it is essential to eat regularly through the day if you are diabetic, every 2-3 hrs). The problem with nuts is that they have an antigenic (inflammatory) response to them that increases inflammation in the body. They also do not provide the adequate protein and fat that is needed for the metabolism to main a homeostasis for regulating blood sugar.

#3- Dairy- While butter is fine (given the fact that it is 99% fat, get grass fed) all other dairy products influence blood sugar metabolism due to the milk sugar and milk proteins present in them. In diabetes we tend to like protein, but not proteins like whey and casein (there are different types of casein to choose from but all types are problematic). These proteins instigate an immune response to an already overtaxed immune system when diabetes is present. It is also not a great idea to consume a lot of diary free products as a replacement.

Remember that food is your best medicine. Be thoughtful with your nutritional choices and take the steps towards healing.

Dr.Buttler

As a naturopathic physician trained under the primary principle of “treat the cause, not the symptom”, I can not help myself when it comes to educating the public about their health care choices regarding acute health concerns like cold and flu. All to often in our current medical culture we disregard the effect of our choices and the long term impact that this creates on the health of the individual. When it comes to cold and flu, there is a plethora of over-the-counter treatments that do the exact opposite of “treating the cause”. This includes medicines such as Tylenol PM, Robitussin cold/flu, Acetaminophen, Motrin, etc… All you have to do is go into the drug store or pharmacy and you will see the endless rows of suppresive symptom therapies.

I get it! When you are not feeling well, you want it to go away as fast as possible so you can get back to your life. Our culture has forgotten about the concept that when we are sick, we need to slow down and rest. We tend to look for the quickest way to avoid the perceived suffering and discomfort that occurs with acute illness. The problem with this approach is that the inappropriate management of acute illness (meaning the use of over-the-counter medication to suppress symptoms), sets up the environment in the body to have greater problems down the road. You should now be asking yourself what those problems might be. Well it is chronic illness! Conditions such as auto-immunity, cancer, heart disease and diabetes are rampant in our lives. An important thing to remember is that chronic illness is multi factorial, meaning it has many different causes and I am here to inform you that how you treat your acute health concerns is one of those causes.

Now that I have that out of the way, I am going to give you some great options on treating acute cold and flu symptoms with much safer treatments that do not contribute to your probability of getting chronic illness. Yay!!!

#1 Hydrotherapy- use alternating hot and cold applications on the body to improve circulation. There is a great treatment called warming socks, where you put a pair of cotton socks under cold water, wring them out and then put them on the feet. You then sleep with them on and this improves blood circulation and immune function. Another form of hydrotherapy is to apply a cold wash cloth application over the throat and then insult with a towel or scarf. Then allow the body to warm up the towel. This will improve symptoms through circulation. You can also use the shower to do contrast hydrotherapy by going back and forth between hot and cold water. I would also like to inform you here of the benefits of using castor oil topically to move lymphatic fluid. You can apply castor oil over the neck and chest when dealing with cold and flu symptoms.

#2 Food as medicine- when you are sick you should fast the body, this means that you rest the digestive system to allow more energy to become available for the immune system. The best things to be eating when you are acutely sick are soups and broths made exclusively with veggies. My favorite is Bieler’s Broth, here is a link
https://wellnessmama.com/285471/bielers-vegetable-broth/ . This broth will help alkalize the body and reduce acidity which aids in the anti-inflammatory response.

#3 Use Homeopathics and botanical medicines- to often when people are sick they are reaching for OTC medications to suppress symptoms. Medicines such as Tylenol Cold/flu, nasal decongestants and many other treatments only push the acute reaction back into the body. This type of short term thinking is what will compromise the integrity of the immune system and the ability of the body’s functional state to maintain long term proper immune status. There is plethora of different natural therapies that can be used depending on the specific profile of reaction that you are having. Either speak to a natural health care practitioner to have individual prescribing of correct treatments, or research on your own and find the remedies unique to your situation.

I encourage you to keep in mind that you have tremendous power when it comes to your choices. Choose health today and see the benefits down the road.

Dr.Buttler

This is obviously a very serious topic that I do not take lightly. The first thing to touch on is the fact that when it comes to addiction, it is not about the substance that someone becomes addicted to but rather the potential in ones environment that creates susceptibility to addictive behavior. (To understand this more, please watch this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs ). Thus, even given the fact that opioids have highly addictive properties, my concern is more centered around how the current medical model and specifically physicians are not thoughtful with how we treat people when it comes to chronic health conditions. My fear is that this level of thinking and medical behavior is only going to continue to occur until the next epidemic surfaces. We continue to search for answers in medicine that lay outside of the individual patient. We search for answers in the lab to find high powered, potent medication that can have significant short term benefit without regard to long term consequence. The opioid epidemic, as horrific as it has gotten, is a representation of the level of thinking we are dealing with . Our thinking has to change. The solutions that we are looking for, needs to come from a holistic model, not a reductionistic model.

As I have the pleasure of working with patients and see the experiences that people have at the doctors office, it becomes painfully obvious that doctors are not putting both the time and effort (thinking) into patient care for people dealing with chronic illnesses. There is often an argument that it is not the doctors fault that this is occurring but rather a product of the current medical system. While that is true on one level, it is also the doctors responsibility to think critically and work with their patient’s to go over all potential options when addressing chronic symptoms rather than using re-occurring prescription drug based treatments without thought of long term impact. My fear is that the next opioid is sitting out there in the pharmacy and we are going to fall back into the same problem that we currently find ourselves in based on our current medical approach to addressing chronic health concerns.

As the Youtube video above indicates, it not the substance but the environment that is created and nurtured around the individual that is the larger problem. As healthcare practitioners, we need to be creating environments that help support our patient’s to engage in behavioral change. Helping them to understand the power that their day to day choices make on their health. We need to establish an environment that is conducive to healing and treating the cause of disease rather than trying to suppress and mask symptoms. As we focus on this, change will begin. Change not only in the health of individuals, but change in the level thinking that has gotten us into these unfortunate circumstances.

Change can start with you. You can begin asking you doctor to think outside the box with regards to your health. You can ask them to help you address the cause of your illness, rather than treating the symptoms. You can evaluate your current health routine and ask yourself if what you are doing is moving your towards improvement. If you are uncertain of that, then begin educating yourself. Talk to people, ask them what they are doing. Find doctors that will spend the time with you to begin addressing the cause. Demand this, as we need to begin a change of thinking when it comes to our health.

According to a recent article on WebMD ,
https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/news/20191015/steroid-shots-for-painful-joints-may-make-matters-worse#1 , it appears that the conventional community is finally becoming aware of the detrimental impact of cortisone shots. What naturopaths have known for years is that these steroid shots break down the tissue structures that they come into contact with when they are administered. What most people feel after having cortisone administered is the anti-inflammatory affect that occurs, which typically brings them relief. This relief unfortunately is short lived and what is left over is a weaker area of the body with a greater tendency towards an inflammatory reaction then there was prior to the administration of cortisone.

Understanding the concept of suppression helps you understand why this is happening. When an area of the body is in an inflamed state, there is a reason that it is occurring. This reason can be due to metabolic, structural or immunologic causes. Cortisone shots (and for that fact all steroids) are one of the most common suppressive treatments that we use. They work by shutting down the inflammatory cascade of response in the body. As I stated above, people tend to like them because they improve their symptoms rapidly. But we have to remember that these treatments are not addressing the cause of the inflammation that is occurring but rather suppressing the reaction. So if we shut down inflammation before the body is ready to do it on its own, there is a tremendous amount of instability that gets created within those tissue structures. As an analogy, think about if you were using supports to hold up a house that was under construction and lets say over time these supports became annoying to the workers who were having to work around them. So, they decided to remove the supports before the work was done on the foundation. In essence, this would start to create instability in the work environment as the annoyance of the supports had been removed. Much the same way, when we try to remove the annoyance of inflammation before the body is done using the inflammatory response for healing, instability is going to get created within those tissues. You do not want the “foundation” in your body to become compromised as it will lead to great problems.

As a medical culture, we need to stop focusing so much on treating the symptoms of the individual and work with them to address the underlying cause of the problem. If there is inflammation happening in the body, what is the driving reaction behind it? It is the individual’s diet? Is it there lack of circulation due to lack of activity? Is it due to their increased states of stress? Is there increased toxicity in the body?

Can we use anti-inflammatory support that is not suppressive? YES!!! There are a tremendous amount of naturopathic therapies that can improve inflammation without creating bigger problems. We can work to create better lifestyle choices that can reduce inflammation.

The next time you need to address pain and inflammation, think about addressing the cause of the problem, not the symptoms. You will be investing in the benefit of long term health.