I've always been a traditional medicine type of girl and thought anything else was kind of woo but recently I attended a local women's retreat and one of the speakers was a naturopathic doctor who introduced me to the functional medicine matrix. 

I immediately knew that this was something I wanted to explore more. If you're unfamiliar, the matrix is a tool to help clinicians examine the body systems, symptoms, and risk factors associated with their patient’s health conditions.

It takes into account mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of health and lifestyle factors. Whereas traditional medicine aims to assess symptoms, seeking to name a diagnosis and prescribe medication, functional medicine is more focused on finding the root cause(s) of a health condition.

When I heard the doctor speak, I was drawn to her. Her mother stood in the back of the room, walking in and out while bouncing the doctor's baby on her hip while the woman up front shared with us her...

If you're a mom, you know that stress is just a part of life. But what happens when stress becomes chronic? How does it affect you and your family? And most importantly, how can you manage it?

Chronic stress is defined as any type of stress that lasts for more than a few months. It can come from many sources, including work, relationships, finances, and even your daily commute. And while a little bit of stress can be good for you, chronic stress can have a serious impact on your health.

So how does chronic stress affect you? Well, it can take a toll on your physical and mental health. It can make you more susceptible to illness and disease, and it can also lead to anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. It can also affect your relationships, your work performance, and your ability to parent.

So what can you do to manage chronic stress? Well, there are a number of things you can do to make your life a little bit easier. Here are a few tips:

Identify the sources of your...

Being chronically stressed can lead to an inability to rest, but lack of rest can make you more susceptible to stress. It’s like the chicken and the egg scenario, where each supersedes the other and it’s hard to tell which comes first. What we do know, however, is that it is super important to break this cycle so that we minimize the harmful effects on our physical, mental, and emotional health.

When you are experiencing constant stress, you will often find that your anxiety and worry increases. The anxious thoughts may keep you up at night or even if you manage to fall asleep, they keep you tossing and turning and not getting the sleep you need. Sleeplessness impedes your ability to cope with what life throws at you, which naturally leads to an increase of stress. And thus the cycle continues unless you interrupt it.

Physiologically, when a person is in a stressful situation, the body releases certain hormones, particularly cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline, which...