Saliva contains an enzyme that helps to break down starch (chemical digestion), while your teeth break apart food into smaller pieces (mechanical digestion). Anyone experiencing digestive symptoms may benefit from eating slower and chewing more than usual in order to trigger this first stage of digestion.

Many Naturopathic Doctors utilize herbal medicines as they can be gentle, effective, and have limited side effects. However, certain herbal medicines can have significant interactions with prescription drugs, or can lead to changes in blood clotting. It is vital to report all medications, herbal medicines, and supplements to all of your healthcare practitioners, including NDs and MDs.

The suprachiasmatic nucleus, within the hypothalamus, helps to regulate our circadian rhythm, or 'internal clock', and is largely influenced by light exposure. Long story-short, when light hits our eyes, our brain thinks it is day and this has major implications for hormonal regulation, including melatonin. So far, research suggests that taking exogenous melatonin does not simply 'right' the clock. (1)

If you've seen a Naturopathic Doctor, you've probably been asked to complete a 'diet diary', or 'meal tracker' - a week-long record of what you eat and drink. Partly, this is to help us understand your starting point, but an added - and sometimes even more useful - benefit is that writing down what we take in creates awareness.

Generally, we're not great at estimating what we eat, or what a 'serving size' is. (2) But through the act of writing down our intake, we may discover our individual nutritional stumbling blocks, such as eating more than we expected, taking in very little of a key nutrient, eating a combination of foods that leads to a blood sugar crash, or drinking very little water.

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REFERENCES

1. https://bit.ly/3lonSO9
   
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK546664/