The Ontario Public Health Care System and You

Our public health care system recognizes the inherent challenges presented by the complexity of the human body, the many approaches to health, varied cultural backgrounds, and financial constraints. The Patient's First Action Plan for Health Care aims to provide a revamped public health care system which places Patient's First. The main goals of this Plan are to:

• Support Ontarians to make healthier choices and help prevent disease and illness. 

• Engage Ontarians on health care, so we fully understand their needs and concerns. 

• Focus on people, not just illness. 

• Provide care that is coordinated and integrated, so a patient can get the right care from the right providers. 

• Help patients understand how the system works, so they can find the care they need when and where they need it. 

• Make decisions that are informed by patients, so they play a major role in affecting system change. 

• Be more transparent in health care, so Ontarians can make informed choices. 

One step the Ministry of Health has made in support of these goals is the increased and continued regulation of health care professions. There are presently 26 regulated health care professions. Regulation ensures that those practicing these professions have attained measured levels of competence and abide by certain levels of ethics and professionalism. Regulation also paves the way for increased coordination, integration, and transparency. 

What you can do to help the public health care system help you:

• While feedback was collected for the end of February, 2016, you may still submit your input here. 
• Let your insurance providers know your interests and preferences. (Letters in support of Homeopathy-Service-Reimbursement are available by contacting the clinic.) 
• Encourage your health care practitioners to collaborate.
• Seek out integrative health care practitioners and clinics. The 360 Wellness clinic offers four regulated health care services (Physiotherapy, Acupuncture, Homeopathy, and Massage). Several practitioners offer complementary wellness modalities as well.

5 effective tips to keep your children flu-free this season

There are 5 very important and effective things that parents can do to help support their children’s health and decrease the likelihood that they will get sick:

1: Ensure that your children get enough sleep. This may sound obvious, but I can tell you from field research that I have conducted in addition to classroom visits that many children are not getting enough sleep. The best sleep is generally had between, if not from, sundown to sunup in a dark, quiet room with no electronics. One of the reasons quality sleep is so important is because the immune-boosting bacteria in the gut do their work at night and in the dark. There is a lot more to this, but for the present purposes: Less sleep = less immunity. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.

2: Ensure that your children get real, unprocessed, quality food. The more you succeed in providing fresh, local, whole, unrefined, non-GMO, organic foods the more your children will benefit. 

Anything processed or refined, by definition, provides less nutrition and saps the body of nutrients. Wheat, for example, has several parts: the germ, the bran, and the endosperm. To make wheat bread, the endosperm is separated from the germ (nutrients) and the bran (fiber) and ground into white flour (sugar). Most breads are essentially glorified sugar providing little of the fiber or nutrients that would support their digestion and overall nutrition. Know that food products such as “whole wheat” can have up to 70% of the germ removed. Understanding labels requires some training these days!

3: Provide quality supplementation. I have come to rely on several products to support my family. Both myself and my children take Living Fuel (available direction from the company or at the 360 Wellness Clinic) daily. It is, hands down, the highest quality food supplement on the market. Cod Liver Oil, controversy aside, can be of benefit. 
When we need an additional boost, we make a fresh dose of Sodium Ascorbate. Stir and drink:
1 tsp  Ascorbic Acid crystals (with nothing else added) 
Half tsp  Baking Soda 
1 x 8oz Cup  Water
This is the equivalent to about 4000mg of Vitamin C. The difference is that it is more easily absorbed by the body and is generally well digested. If you need it, you can feel it within minutes. (Note: This boosts your system so much that it is not to be taken before any type of surgery and may interfere with medications. Consult with your chosen health care practitioner before you take it.)

4: Use homeopathic remedies. One for consideration may be Boiron's Influenzinum. From the Boiron website: This homeopathic medicine is not a vaccine. It is a homeopathic dilution, prepared from the approved seasonal inactivated influenza vaccine. It is authorized for sale in Canada without therapeutic indication. As a manufacturer Boiron cannot substitute health care practioners who may recommend a specific protocol. 

5: This last point is for those parents who are interested in taking health care to another level, as they realize there may be another contributing factor to why children get the flu and that it isn’t just because of germs and immunity, although these are also important. 

If this is you, consider what was happening in your child’s life approximately 3 days before the onset of flu symptoms (could be 1, could be 4, but generally it’s 3) .
The flu has been associated with a preceding experience of feeling weak or of feeling uninvolved, not feeling part of the group or even feeling excluded from a group of interest. Of course, this may not be the case, and that is fine. But if it is, then becoming aware of it promotes increased understanding of the effects of such circumstances. If the circumstances and the result are repeated, a pattern can be discerned. A calendar is helpful! From here, there can be increased awareness for both the children and the parent. If you get to this point, as a parent, you’re likely to run with it and if at all possible, change the circumstances!

Stay warm and stay well!

Edited by Ivy Lishman, Staff Writer for Lisa Torres, Homeopath

One technique to help you understand your child's behaviour

There are many different possible contributing factors to a child's behavior. These include lifestyle, nutrition, recreation, sunlight, sleep, hydration, electro-magnetic frequencies, stress, medications, inherited pre-dispositions, individual constitution, family dynamics, and more.

The technique I share today applies to those behaviors which are related to the little spoken of or understood area of family dynamics. When applied within this jurisdiction, it not only provides a means to understanding a negative and generally chronic aspect (you name it) of your child's behavior but it can also provide a clear direction about what you can do to improve the behavior. If you implement this idea correctly and with sincere intentions, your life and that of your child's may change dramatically for the better. Certainly, mine has!

Here's what to do:

Select a button-pressing annoying chronic behavior which you think may not be related to lifestyle or medications at the very least. (Recall that this technique only applies in the jurisdiction of family dynamics, which means that it has something to do with family dynamics. One clue to when this is the case is when a behavior is particularly annoying to you whereas others are not as affected by it.)

Pretend you are talking to a close friend. Write out how you would describe the behavior to them. And now reverse the pronouns. Here's a recent example from my personal experience: “My son has taken to wailing on the sofa claiming how hungry he is. He is soooo hungry that he can't get off the sofa to feed himself. And asking me why on earth was I not feeding him?” This was a hair-pulling situation for me. My son was perfectly capable of accessing the kitchen and preparing himself a meal. After a couple of repetitions of the sofa scene, I finally completely stopped what I was doing, I breathed deeply, and observed my son, with gratitude and inquiry. I wrote out his behavior, as above. Then I reversed the pronouns. And I re-read what I'd written: I had taken to wailing on the sofa claiming how hungry I was. I was soooo hungry that I couldn't get off the sofa to feed myself. And why wasn't my son feeling me?” It may not seem like much when read literally. The trick is to read it metaphorically and with introspection. In my case this meant: I'm stagnating frustratingly, claiming I need others to satisfy my needs. I was sooo needy that I couldn't even provide for myself. And why on earth was I not ensuring that my own needs were met? Now that hit home, hard. I went to the cupboard, dusted off an old bachata (Latin dance rhythm) CD, placed it in the machine and started dancing. Dancing has always been a way for me to feed my soul, and I'd given it up. I knew I needed to feed my soul in other ways. But for the time being, dancing was the quickest way to determine if I'd gotten the message. I immediately started to feel better. Actually, I cried. And within minutes my son got up off the sofa and started to dance with me. I took the remaining steps I needed, and there have been no more hair-pulling couch scenes.

There's much more to this strategy of course, but this is likely enough to get you started. Jean Venema http://en.presentchild.com/ has developed an entire program and therapeutic approach around it. But the basics of it are found within Comprehensive Care or Natural Wellness sessions offered at 360 Wellness Clinic. Basically it comes down to being having clarity of mind, being mindful and responsible. It today's day and age, we don't come by such abilities naturally, so a bit of help can go a long way!

Written by Lisa Torres HOM

Help! My child isn't sleeping well!

This is such a common experience that we think it's normal and most times accept it as a part of parenting. But there is something that can be done about it.

 In order to make an effective and safe shift from being sleep deprived to sleep fulfilled, you need to understand the cause or contributing factors affecting sleep. Knowing the cause or contributing factors, will give clear indications on how to address the situation and obtain the desired results.

Possible causes of sleep challenges that I have seen include:

•        External influences

o   Light (This may be not enough natural light during the day or too much artificial light through the night. There are light receptors on all our skin cells and these affect the cycle of hormones which affect our sleep.)

o   Activity (Often children's sleep these days would benefit from more outdoor active play. Sometimes, however, it is related to too much activity in the evening rather than quiet activities before bedtime.

o   Electro­magnetic frequencies (This may be from a router, computers, other electronics. Sleep challenge from EMF's are easily determined by prompt improvement following elimination of the offender.

o   daytime or before bedtime visual or auditory stimuli (This may be from evening TV, radio, or video games exposure, or even from challenging dialogue. Clearly, this may become an emotional trigger. Otherwise, it may be useful to experiment with variations of exposure to stimuli before sleeping, aiming for the most heart- warming type comfortably possible.)

o   Active or disturbed digestion (This is from eating foods that don't agree or eating much too close to bedtime. Consider and experiment with nutrition and times of eating to determine if this is the cause.)

o   Other effects of medications (Look up other effects of medications at www.drugs.com and other effects of herbs at http://naturaldatabase.therapeuticresearch.com/home. Note that an interactive effect of drugs or herbs may be a factor.)

o   A bang on the head two to three days previous to the onset of the symptoms (This type of sleep challenge is generally, but not always, characterized by initial restlessness falling asleep with waking at 4AM. Some investigation may be required to determine if there was such a bang as parents are not always privy to such information! If this is the case, do make an acute booking and that challenge should be gone within two nights.)

·         Internal experience

o   Emotional (This may result from an unprocessed emotional experience. Nightmares are sometimes related to a fear event. A clue to this being the case is if the nightmares started after a certain event, often a couple of nights after. As parents, we may or may not be aware of a causal event without some investigation.

o   Family dynamic (This is probably the most challenging one to figure out on your own because as parents it can be too hard to see the forest through the trees, in addition to the fact that it requires some training to perceive. An example of this may be where a child has restless sleep which is reflective of a parent who is challenged by emotional processing of some sort. It may also be seen where a child wishes to see his or her parents together and this only time this is possible is at night.

o   Constitutional response to external influence or internal experience (This is another area which is more easily determined by a Homeopath as it is specifically related to Homeopathic diagnosis. Basically, there are several main remedies which fit both children and sleeplessness. Some of them are Pulsatilla, Phosphorus, Calcarea-carbonica. And Sulphur. Find more information here about Homeopathics and sleep in general.

o   inherited pre­disposition (to be considered especially if similar sleep challenges are known in other members of the family)

Needless to say, the external experience factors are generally in your hands. Use them and be well! If you are dealing more with the internal experience factors, that is what professional help is for. Most health care professionals have chosen the profession because of challenges they faced and overcame a certain way. This is my case as well. My first child kept me up for weeks until I was finally able to ascertain the true cause (family dynamic, the most challenging one), and address it head­on. May you be empowered to surmount all the challenges in your life. And a good night's sleep will certainly help!

Family Dynamics:

One way to know which one or more of these applies to you? Describe what you observe in your child. Note when was the first time,and subsequent times, you noticed what you described. Consider the possible causes listed above in terms of the times indicated.

Description of sleep concern	Possible Causes	Treatment
Doesn't fall asleep easily	Physical discomfort (too much light, noise, electro­magnetic frequencies from router or other electronic near­by, active digestion or disturbed digestion), Emotional upset, Banged head 2­3 days earlier
Needs to be held until they fall asleep	Constitutional, emotional
Can’t sleep alone	Constitutional
Can't sleep without the light on	Fear event 2­3 days before onset
Doesn't want to sleep	Constitutional or emotional
Falls asleep but wakes up screaming	Fear event 2­3 days before onset
Moves around a lot
Can't wake up in morning	Constitutional
Wakes up way too early	Bang to head 2­3 days before onset

An open-minded, observant and educated parent can do this, possibly more successfully with the following information.

Written by: Lisa Torres HOM.

A Guide to Infant Massage

Touch is critical to the growth and development of infants. What better way to get comfortable providing touch to your baby than through massage? You can use massage to bond with your baby, help with gas or constipation discomforts, and increasing sleep quality. Massage can be just as relaxing for you as it can be for your baby!

Try to choose a time when you and your baby are most calm. You will need a large soft surface to do the massage on. For mobile babies, this may need to be the floor! If they are no surfaces like this in your house, try placing a few blankets on the floor to soften it up. Make sure the room is a warm temperature so the baby does not get cold, and you may consider keeping toys nearby if necessary to keep your baby entertained. This is an excellent opportunity for you and your baby to spend some skin-on-skin time bonding through touch.

Next, choose an all-natural oil, we like The Honest Company’s organic body oil, but simple coconut oil works if you’re on a budget. Be careful not to use too much, especially if they’re mobile. You may have a very slippery infant on your hands, as well as oil stains around the house!

It’s good to make the same motion every time you begin massage with your baby, like rubbing your hands together or wiggling your fingers, so that they can learn that their massage time is about to begin.

You can use slow, rhythmic strokes on their back, or over their shoulders and then down to their feet. The slower your motions, the more calming of an effect you will have. If you are looking to calm your baby before a nap, this type of stroke may be ideal. Oppositely, faster motions will have a stimulating effect. You can gently use your thumbs to knead into the palms of their hands or the soles of their feet. You can massage their bellies in a clockwise direction (if you are facing them) to decrease constipation or gas pains. This works by massaging the large intestine, an upside-down ‘U’ shaped organ in the belly, which stimulates it to, ahem, ‘move things along’. Consider this technique toward the end of your massage sessions, so you can get a diaper on them before things ‘move along’ all over you!

Pay attention to your baby’s body language and the noises they make during your massage. Rigid, unsynchronized limb movements or grunting may mean the baby needs a break, is uncomfortable with the massage technique being used, or is over stimulated. Cooing sounds and direct eye contact mean your baby loves the massage!

Remember, massage should be fun and relaxing for both you and your baby. If you are not in the mood, your baby will sense that, and it may be best to wait until another time. This is a great opportunity to provide your baby with skin-on-skin contact that is essential for their growth and development, as well as for you two to bond together.

If you have any questions or are unsure of your techniques, we would love for you to book a massage at the clinic and bring your baby with you! We can spend your appointment time practicing infant massage and demonstrating techniques until you feel more comfortable practicing massage on your baby.

Written by Kelly Swift, RMT

What do Homeopaths know?

As Homeopathy is a recently re-regulated health care profession in Ontario, education and training to become a Homeopath is in the process of being standardized. That said, as per Competency Profile for Entry‐to‐Practice Homeopaths Practicing in Ontario Approved by the transitional Council February 27, 2012. regulated Homeopaths are expected to demonstrate all the competencies necessary to provide safe health care to the public. In order to demonstrate those competencies, Homeopaths need to be knowledgeable in the following areas: 

Homeopathic Theory, Diagnosis, and Medicines.

Homeopathic treatment of the full range of acute and chronic illnesses.

And: 

·  Nutrition

·  Physiology

·  Anatomy

·  Pharmacology

·  Pharmacognosy (Herbs)

·  Drug-herb-nutrient interactions

·  Lab and test result interpretation

A supervised clinical component is part of any reputable training program.

The result of such training is an ability to:

·  understand the basics of conventional and alternative treatment,

·  understand how medicines and lifestyle, including nutrition, affect health,

·  understand how drugs, herbs, and nutrients interact and how they affect health,

·  interpret all the information of a case to determine the different causes of different symptoms

·  determine if their treatment is within the scope and practice of Homeopathy, and if so,

·  know how to treat them, non-invasively and safely.

Homeopaths, like other health professionals, continue their education. How they do so is optional. In my case, I have studied tongue analysis, Iridology, in-office lab medicine, German New Medicine, and energy medicine. There are many options in this vast field of health care! 

Written by: Lisa Torres, HOM.

What is "emotional release"?

 Photo Credit: http://atelierenews.blogspot.ca

It is well known that muscles and other tissues in your body hold tension and patterns from previous experiences. Most people associate this with traumatic physical events like falling from the top of a cheerleading pyramid or perhaps something as simple as twisting the wrong way when reaching to pick up a box. But did you know that there is also a certain amount of emotion held up in those tissues as well? It’s true! Your body, not just your brain, plays a key role in memory and emotional storage.

This can be a bit of a double-edged sword however. As I am sure you have noticed, in times of great emotional stress, you begin to feel physically stressed as well. If left unresolved, the buildup of stress can have long-term effects on your body, lasting long after the emotional stress has faded or been suppressed. Your body moves into a holding pattern that feels safe, even though it may be having a detrimental impact on your health and wellness. So what happens when you go to have the physical stress dealt with?

The term "emotional release" has been around in the massage therapy world for quite some time now. Perhaps you have heard the term but have never thought about what it really means. The fact is, most people have experienced emotional release during or after a massage and have had no idea that this is what they were experiencing. The body-mind connection is very strong. When your body finally tells you it has had enough and you go in for a massage to correct the ailment that is reducing your quality of life, things can get tricky. The therapist begins work on an area and suddenly whatever emotions you though had faded or been sufficiently supressed flood back to you. For some, there comes an image attached to the emotion that you can relate to; for others there is no rhyme or reason to it – you just feel. Whatever the emotion was that was tied into your tissues, it is suddenly being let go and you are left with emotions you didn’t know were there. This can be anything from mad, sad, glad, scared, or even frustrated. It can happen during or even after a treatment. This is called “emotional release”.

So why is it important for you to know what “emotional release” is? First, when emotions come up out of nowhere, you can be assured that it is normal – you are not the only one this has ever happened to and it isn’t something to be afraid of. Second, knowing what emotional release is helps you to process it better when it occurs to you. Third, it is important to know that the massage therapy treatment room is a non-judgemental, safe environment. Most, if not all, RMTs have dealt with some form of emotional release on the table. They know that it happens, and while they cannot counsel you through your emotional trauma, they will sit and be an ear to talk to if that is what you need, and they can help you to regain your focus. Finally, if you need your treatment to stop or change at any time to accommodate dealing with your emotional release, please say so. You have the right to stop or alter your treatment at any time. Some people need the RMT to keep working for them to deal with their emotions, and some need complete hands off time. 

Whichever you need, inform your RMT so it can be done: many times orthopedic conditions are held back from progressing by emotions that have not been dealt with because you didn’t know they were there to begin with – my suggestion would be to embrace it and figure out how you need to deal with your emotions on an individual basis. It is important for your body and mind to embrace emotional releases, however they come up. 

Written by Seana Collins Mander RMT