Lactium Supplementation A stress-management strategy by Dr. Penny Kendall-Reed $R�e; 6ICTORIA #OLEMAN IS A  graduate of CMCC and a BSc in Kinesiology specializing in Fitness Assessment and Exercise Counsel-ing. Working with patients over the years, it became her mission to teach people that everything you eat, breath, drink, and think affects your health. This fuelled her desire to further expand her career and continue her studies. She is an avid follower of the Institute for Functional Medicine and is currently working toward her certification in Functional Medicine. Dr. Coleman is also the president of Douglas Laboratories/Pure Encapsulations Canada. Stress is a key contributor to disease and illness. This is no longer just a matter of opin-ion, but has been supported by science. The management of stress is essential to optimal health. Well-respected naturopathic doctor Penny Kendall-Reed has worked effectively with her patients, managing their stress levels and dampening the negative effects on the body’s biochemistry. Lifestyle and nutritional support are important strategies to assist your patients in minimizing the negative effects of stress while optimizing health. The following article on this topic comes to us from Dr. Kendall-Reed and ends by outlining a potential role for supplementation with Lactium. T he human reaction to stress is designed as a survival mechanism for the body. It is a complex cascade of hormonal interactions that exert a profound effect on many physiological systems to help protect us from internal (illness) or external (sabre-toothed tiger) danger. Unfortunately, in today’s world, rather than a single fight-or-flight episode, such as running from a dangerous animal, our body is faced with a multitude of smaller but more chronic stressors such as unstable blood sugar levels, less than eight hours of sleep, bad traffic or excessive workload. We also suffer from perceived stress, our mental interpretation of an event, such as a wedding, which causes identical stimula-tion to our nervous system without ever truly being “dangerous.” Despite man’s many advances, our neurochemical and hormonal reactions to stress (the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal, or HPA, axis) have not changed greatly since our caveman days. Designed for acute stressors that resolve rapidly, our present-day, chronic, low-grade stress results in the continual release of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) from the hypothalamus, that area in the lowest region of the forebrain primarily concerned with survival. This chronic secretion causes dysfunction in the HPA axis, desensitizing the hypothalamic and pituitary receptors to negative feedback from adrena-line, noradrenaline and, particularly, cortisol. In this state, the hypothalamus also loses its ability to coordinate incoming informa-tion from the areas that control emotional behaviour, motivation and control of the www.canadianchiropractor.ca Victoria Coleman, DC s CANADIAN CHIROPRACTOR | JULY/AUGUST 2012
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor July/August 2012: Page 24
