Cyndi Gilbert, B.A. (Hons), N.D.

NATUROPATHIC

DOCTOR

Phone: 416.817.2385

Email: cyndi@cyndigilbert.ca

Blog

Constitutional Hydrotherapy

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water dropsThe restora­tive pow­ers of hydrother­apy may not be well known out­side the spa envi­ron­ment in our time, but the use of hydrother­apy is well doc­u­mented through­out his­tory in Egypt­ian, Roman, Chi­nese, Japan­ese, and many other cul­tures. Hip­pocrates, an ancient Greek physi­cian, pre­scribed bathing in spring water as a med­ical treat­ment. These tra­di­tions have con­tin­ued and can be found in the prac­tice of bathing in hot springs and cold water baths around the world today.

Con­sti­tu­tional hydrother­apy, a tech­nique devel­oped by Dr. O.G. Car­roll, is par­tic­u­larly effec­tive at stim­u­lat­ing the immune sys­tem, achiev­ing total body detox­i­fi­ca­tion, and stim­u­lat­ing the body’s own innate capac­ity to heal itself. The word “con­sti­tu­tional” refers to the whole-body effects of this treat­ment. Although use­ful in almost any con­di­tion, it has been found specif­i­cally well suited for the treat­ment of diges­tive con­cerns, res­pi­ra­tory dis­eases, female repro­duc­tive prob­lems, immune sys­tem bal­anc­ing, cir­cu­la­tory con­di­tions, neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions, and envi­ron­men­tal tox­i­c­ity. Read More »

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in Hydrotherapy on February 1, 2012 – 11:59 | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Warming Socks

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wool socksRunny nose? Sore throat? Chills? Fever? Sneez­ing? Con­ges­tion? Headache? Any or all of the above? Use the warm­ing socks treatment.

Warm­ing socks works by stim­u­lat­ing the body’s nat­ural heal­ing responses dur­ing acute infec­tions. In hydrother­apy terms, the tech­nique is a kind of “warm­ing com­press”, which encour­ages the body to increase over­all blood cir­cu­la­tion in order to warm up the cold socks. In doing so, it draws pref­er­en­tially from areas of con­ges­tion in the upper res­pi­ra­tory pas­sages, head, and throat. It is also effec­tive for pain relief.

A safe treat­ment for the whole fam­ily, includ­ing the youngest of kids, warm­ing socks is per­fect at bed­time, or nap time, as it has a sooth­ing and sedat­ing effect, help­ing you to sleep through the night even when you’re feel­ing less than par. Read More »

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in Home Treatments, Hydrotherapy, Kids on December 13, 2011 – 21:12 | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off

A Holistic Approach to the Holidays

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Although this time of year is about gift-giving and receiv­ing for many peo­ple, we don’t always think about those who are very much in need all year round. As my kids are think­ing about what they want for Chanukah, I’m think­ing about ways to mit­i­gate the ram­pant con­sumerism so obvi­ous in Decem­ber with a greater sense of gen­eros­ity, char­ity, and a respect for peo­ple and our planet that is bal­anced all year round.

Recent events high­light the need for a more holis­tic approach to our per­sonal and uni­ver­sal prob­lems. Talks in my house­hold have been as much about poverty and other socioe­co­nomic issues as raised by the Occupy move­ment, as well as the inad­e­quate promises to curb cli­mate change made in Dur­ban this week, as they are about plan­ning and dec­o­rat­ing for hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions. Com­ing from a place of respect and empa­thy, and extend­ing the natur­o­pathic prin­ci­ple of Tolle Totum (treat the whole) from the indi­vid­ual per­son to the com­mu­nity, soci­ety, planet and uni­verse, we can help bring bal­ance and heal­ing into the fore­front. Read More »

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in Nature & Culture, Philosophy on December 13, 2011 – 12:55 | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

Gluten-free Chocolate Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Icing

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Four years old is a big mile­stone. First it was find­ing out from his friends that Hal­loween actu­ally involved candy, and not just parad­ing through the neigh­bour­hood in cos­tume. The fol­low­ing week, K declared that a birth­day party was all about friends bring­ing you presents (It’s ok, kids are sup­posed to be this nar­cis­sis­tic.) and cup­cakes. His spe­cific request was choco­late cup­cakes with vanilla icing and sprin­kles. You can’t blame a kid for hav­ing a vision. Being both a natur­opath and a mother, I revised some recipes to cre­ate a (rel­a­tively) whole food and gluten-free ver­sion of what he wanted.

Two weeks later, K’s birth­day has come and gone, and he’s still talk­ing about when I’m going to make them again. I can safely say that my gluten-free choco­late cup­cakes were a huge suc­cess. Here’s the recipe so you can make them too. Read More »

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in Recipes on November 17, 2011 – 09:18 | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off

It’s Cold Out There. Cover your Windgate

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On my way to drop off the kids this morn­ing, I noticed frost on the ground for the first time this sea­son, a sig­nal to finally put away our fall rain coats and make sure that all our win­ter gear is front and cen­ter in the hall. It’s also a good reminder to make sure that every­one has got their wind gate cov­ered when they’re going outside.

Although the name “wind gate” is the lit­eral trans­la­tion of a spe­cific point on the blad­der chan­nel (UB 12, Feng Men, or 風門 to be exact) in Tra­di­tional Chi­nese Med­i­cine (TCM), it is often used to talk about the entire back of the neck and upper back. Accord­ing to TCM, exter­nal pathogens enter the body through the wind gate. In other words, we are most sus­cep­ti­ble to envi­ron­men­tal forces such as wind when our necks are exposed to the ele­ments. Read More »

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in Nature & Culture, Traditional Chinese Medicine on October 28, 2011 – 10:37 | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

You Say Naturopathic, I Say Naturopathic

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I’d been involved in natur­o­pathic med­i­cine, as a stu­dent, a clin­i­cian, a pro­fes­sor, and a con­fer­ence attendee for almost a decade before I noticed it. I was lis­ten­ing to a talk by Joseph Piz­zorno at CCNM about gas­troin­testi­nal health and detox­i­fi­ca­tion, and one of the things I found most strik­ing wasn’t the con­tent of his pre­sen­ta­tion (as great as it was) but his pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the word “natur­opa­thy.” At first I assumed it was pro­nounced dif­fer­ently in the US — this hypoth­e­sis seemed plau­si­ble enough. But it dawned on me that I had heard this pro­nun­ci­a­tion before by Cana­di­ans too, but only by a hand­ful of NDs who grad­u­ated in the 80s. And then I con­sid­ered the semi­otic implications.

The way Dr. Piz­zorno pro­nounces it is lin­guis­ti­cally closer to the root word “nature,” as it is said with a long ‘a’ sound (ney-chuh-rop-uh-thee, or neɪtʃəˈrɒpəθi). The other pro­nun­ci­a­tion (nach-uh-rop-uh-thee, or nætʃəˈrɒpəθi) con­nects back to the word “nat­ural,” spo­ken with a short ‘a’ sound. So what’s the dif­fer­ence? Read More »

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in Philosophy on September 25, 2011 – 20:10 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Changing Seasons

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Accord­ing to tra­di­tional Chi­nese med­i­cine, fall marks the shift into the yin time of year, a time thought to be ideal for recharg­ing and nur­tur­ing your­self and retreat­ing to qui­eter, inter­nal pur­suits. For many peo­ple, fall is a time for new begin­nings and new endeav­ors. In nature, leaves and flow­ers are dying and energy sinks, becom­ing con­cen­trated in the seeds and roots of plants. Dur­ing this time, we are par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble to colds and flu.

On request, here is my recipe for Change of Sea­son Soup. This deli­cious herbal chicken soup is a great toni­fier, gen­tly sup­port­ing the immune sys­tem dur­ing times of stress, and espe­cially dur­ing the change of sea­sons. It enhances the body’s abil­ity to remain bal­anced dur­ing times of tran­si­tion by increas­ing our innate abil­ity to adapt to change. As an immune sys­tem tonic, change of sea­son soup is an ideal way to mark the autum­nal equinox (this Fri­day Sept 23), improve your resis­tance to colds and flus, and pre­pare your­self for the colder sea­sons to come.
Read More »

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in Nature & Culture, Recipes on September 21, 2011 – 15:24 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Nature in the City

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Great Blue Heron
Last Sun­day, K’s agenda for the day was to move Ducky from the bath­tub to a pond. Despite Ducky’s exis­tence as a phthalate-free bath toy, I couldn’t dis­agree with K when he stated that ducks actu­ally live in ponds not in bath­tubs, so we trucked out to the Ever­green Brick Works to bring Ducky to his nat­ural envi­ron­ment, with the caveat that he would have to return home with us too.

On every trip there, the Brick Works shows me that it is pos­si­ble to truly re-naturalize Toronto’s water­shed ecosys­tems. While hav­ing a snack by one of the ponds, we spot­ted the first of two Great Blue Herons, wad­ing (and wait­ing) at the water’s edge. A few min­utes later, we saw the sec­ond swoop down and land in a nearby pond. After track­ing it down, we watched it fish­ing in the waters from a dis­tance of less than 10 feet. K & E can’t yet appre­ci­ate how spe­cial it is to see these birds liv­ing in the city just a short bike ride away from our house, but they def­i­nitely were in awe of mak­ing eye con­tact with a wild ani­mal, and happy to be there to con­grat­u­late it on catch­ing such a large fish.

Moments like these remind me of how grate­ful I am to be rais­ing my chil­dren in the heart of the city, yet still have plenty of access to nature. So many kids, and adults too, expe­ri­ence nature deficit dis­or­der, espe­cially when liv­ing in an urban set­ting. Time spent in nature has been linked to bet­ter out­comes for asthma, stress, and ADHD, but is equally impor­tant for fos­ter­ing envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship, and facil­i­tat­ing our body’s nat­ural abil­ity to heal itself. I always feel bet­ter after a walk in the woods, don’t you?

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in Nature & Culture, Philosophy on August 19, 2011 – 21:08 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Why Dose Matters

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Last week, media out­lets were quick to pick up the story of a research study[1] that showed cran­berry extract isn’t as effec­tive as antibi­otics for the pre­ven­tion of recur­rent uri­nary tract infec­tions (UTIs). The head­lines were con­sis­tent: “Antibi­otics beat cran­ber­ries,“[2] “Don’t bet on cran­berry,“[3] and “Cran­ber­ries lit­tle help“[4].  Unfor­tu­nately, what is lack­ing from many of the med­ical news reports is a crit­i­cal review of the study’s method­ol­ogy and thus the valid­ity and applic­a­bil­ity of its results. Read More »

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in Health Research on July 30, 2011 – 23:25 | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)

In my garden: Blue Vervain

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Verbena hastata flowersAside from the aes­thet­ics of hav­ing beau­ti­ful plants grow­ing in my front yard, one of the main rea­sons I chose to grow spe­cific plants was to learn more about their ther­a­peu­tic uses by get­ting to know them.  Ver­bena has­tata, or Blue Ver­vain, has been cap­tur­ing my atten­tion lately, its blue flow­er­ing spikes extend­ing higher and higher, con­tin­u­ing to bloom for what seems like an eter­nity for a peren­nial plant.  Hav­ing rarely used it in my clin­i­cal prac­tice, I know Ver­vain pri­mar­ily as a Bach Flower remedy.

One of the twelve orig­i­nal reme­dies used by Dr. Bach, it is help­ful in mental/emotional states where there is an anx­ious ten­sion and phys­i­cal exhaus­tion related to strain­ing one­self in sup­port of a good cause.  It is for peo­ple with fixed prin­ci­ples and ideas, over-achievers who put every­thing into their under­tak­ings, push­ing them­selves to take on too much, their minds con­sis­tently run­ning, unable to slow down or stop.  Read More »

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By Cyndi Gilbert, ND | Posted in In My Garden on July 27, 2011 – 20:45 | Tagged , , | Comments Off