Shortest Midterm Week Ever?

It's Monday, sorry I missed my usual Sunday post, but I'm here right away! It's a bit of a busy time right now with CCNM midterms. Again, I'm in third year, so this is going to be my fifth midterm period at CCNM! Time sure flies. This is a really odd one though, because for the first time, midterms are not the week of Thanksgiving (I may have mentioned that in my last post, if so, sorry, I forgot). So we have midterms over five days instead of four. However, third year is a little different than first and second; we have a lot more assignments, so we have less midterms. So right now, I've only got three midterms - I know, my undergrad self would be crying if I had three midterms in a week, but at CCNM, when you're used to five to six exams in four days, three exams in five days is really not so bad! Anyway I've got Nutrition on Tuesday, Men's and Women's Health on Thursday, and Physical Medicine on Friday. I'll try to debrief these exams a bit on my next Sunday post.

Nutrition is going to be a little strange, because it's actually an open book exam; to my knowledge, my first open book exam ever in seven years of post-secondary. We can bring in whatever we want, and for me that means the course textbook, the Gaby "Bible of Nutrition" (honestly this book is over 1300 pages, it has so much information!), and course notes. The exam is all short answer instead of multiple choice, so it'll be a little different, but I think it will be okay. Critically think instead of memorize. What a concept!

Men's and Women's Health is regular multiple choice, there's a fair amount of material, but I don't think it will be too bad. Lots of overlap with other courses, and stuff we have done in the past. There is a lot of therapeutics to know though...oh third year.

Finally Physical Medicine, it's going to be a little weird as a multiple choice exam. This is the type of course that you really see as more of a practical based thing, and the final will be just that. But for the midterm, we've got about 400+ pages worth of material, all sorts of physical exams and conditions and dermatomes and trigger points. So much information! But at least it's at the end of the week, so there's lots of time to prepare for it.

Anyway, on to something that is not just school. I've recently been doing lots of self-development, with books and podcasts being a big part of that. There's so many interesting and useful little tips you can learn, and I thought it would be nice to share some of those through my blogging. So for this week, I wanted to share a pretty cool one I learned today, called "block breathing." This is something I had learned in the past, but modified. Basically, you breathe in for 3-4s, hold your breath for 3-4s, breathe out for 3-4s, and hold again for 3-4s. While you do this, you can imagine drawing a square with your finger, or even actually draw one. Each side of the square is a portion of that breathing. This is a great exercise for helping draw you back to your breath, become more mindful, get into a parasympathetic state, and just relax. The simple things are always the best aren't they? The cool twist I learned today though, was to do block breathing while walking. Walking can be especially stressful if you are in a rush or in a big crowd of people. It's also something you have to do all the time, so why not use it as an opportunity to be more mindful and relaxed? So in this scenario, instead of using 3-4s for each side of the square, you can breathe in, hold and breathe out based on the number of steps you take. 4 steps is a pretty standard number, but depending how fast you walk, you can switch between 4-8 steps and have a pretty good rhythm.

So give that exercise a try next time you're out walking, and let me know how you feel. I'm off to study again, see you Sunday!

Remember to breathe properly! Breathe with your diaphragm and not your chest to get the best airflow, and better relaxation. This is as easy as putting you hand on your stomach while breathing - ensure it pushes out while breathing in, and comes in when you breathe out. Enjoy!

Thursday, and the most posts in a row ever!

It's Thursday, which means only one thing....tomorrow is Friday! Let's just say it's been a long week, the first full week of the year - well technically last week was, but I was still kind of recovering from unity summit and dragon boating (things I'll hopefully touch on in future posts), so it didn't really count haha. Anyway here are the courses for today

Nutrition 3 - As this is a big class, we've got it twice a week, so just the same stuff, though Dr. Prousky tends to get us working on a case together in little groups for part of class on Thursdays.

Asian Medicine Theory 3 - Taught by Dr. Kassam again, here we're learning the more advanced treatment and theory stuff that we'll later on apply in our practical. For fall, the theory and practical class are side by side, and you have the choice of doing them in either order; but no problem, the stuff we do in practical is based on last weeks lecture, so if you have practical first, you aren't in trouble. Having lecture first is beneficial because we start class at 1, meaning we have a break from 11-1; but having practical first is beneficial becauase you end class at 4 instead of 430.

Asian Medicine Practical - Here we get to actually practice all the stuff in theory class. So far we've just been working on acupuncture, doing some advanced techniques, and then advanced points. Today we did the more advanced points that we didn't do in first and second year, the most infamous of course being Stomach 1, 2 and Urinary Bladder 1. These points are infamous due to the fact that they are right around the eye. It was actually completely fine though, you feel these points less than you feel points in your arm. Once you get over the initial fear, and realize the safety and your control, they are no problem. In the future we're also going to do fun stuff like moxabustion and cupping, and we're also going to start doing cases with each other. These will be great because we'll be able to take everything we've learned and and practice developing appropriate treatment protocols. I'm excited!

After class today, I had my regular clinic appointment at the RSNC. I think I've mentioned it in a previous post, but self care is extremely important, especially in this intense program. The RSNC provides extremely affordable naturopathic care for students (free if you're on the student health plan), and it's a great opportunity to learn about what you will be doing soon from people who were in you shoes just 1-3 years ago. It's also nice to act as a patient so to provide more practice for the interns, and of course it can benefit you immensely, helping work on all sorts of issues. I personally have been doing lots of MSK related stuff in my own visits, but some mental/emotional stuff comes up too, and it's always great to have someone non-judgemental to talk with about anything.

Ok it's 11:15 and I'm going to bed a little bit early today! Here's my funny cartoon for the day, see you tomorrow.

Tuesday! And I'm back for the second one, telling the truth!

Back again to summarize Tuesday's courses. I actually just finished doing some homework, the first homework I've really done all year! It's only the third week, I'll get in the groove I swear.

So the classes for today:

Health Psychology 3 - As our third health psych course, the expectations are getting a little higher, and there is a fair bit more practical work. This year is interesting though, because we actually have 2 SP cases for our group, and every practical, we will continue with those patients. Our first session was today, I fortunately didn't have to go as doctor (I'm a little too nervous to go first!), but it was a great experience to watch my classmates work with the biopsychosocial interview, as opposed to the more clinical focused one we watched yesterday in primary care. It was also interesting to see some of the homeopathy interviewing skills we've learned come into play here. Psych is cool though because you have a little more freedom than homeopathy to probe in different areas, but I find using those homeopathy skills helps really dig deep into what a patient is feeling, and what they actually mean when they speak. I'll also note that CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) is a big focus this year, so we'll be working on that type of therapy with our patients in future sessions. Lucky for me, I got the textbook for free - it was actually a gift from a family friend of mine, cool enough he is a social worker who actually knows the author Judith Beck (her father is kind of the "father" of CBT as it is, and she has played a big role in it's development and popularity. I'm sure he'll be a good resource if and when I get more advanced and want some help getting better at using CBT. Oh ya I forgot to mention the professor - this one is taught by Dr. David Denis again, our professor from 2nd year. He is really great, a true counselling focused ND. He provides such a great presence when doing demos, and when helping as he floats through the different practical rooms. A wonderful resource to have in this course.

After health psych, we have a 3.5 hour break until nutrition. During this time, all the breakout rooms we use for primary care are scheduled out for the 3rd years, so we can use them for whatever we want, with IT and primary care work the main focus, if we want of course. Today however, I had to go to an exam policy meeting - 1 of my duties as one of the VP Academics for the NSA Executive Council. I'll definitely remember to do a post in the future reflecting on my experience on the exec council so far, as it has been pretty great. The meeting was a little boring, but also interesting. You can really see the faculty working hard to develop good policies to benefit the students, and also push them to better academic success. It's also interesting seeing professionals work in discussion group like this, because even though they are older and more experienced, they still have disagreements, multiple conversations and multiple people speaking over one another, all that fun stuff that happens when you do group work in school. A little more professional for sure, but it's interesting.

Nutrition 3 - Our final nutrition course is taught by none other than Dr. Prousky, who is the chief medical officer of the RSNC. It's pretty cool, because he is just a huge wealth of knowledge with many years of experience, and lots of scientific data. He is similar to Dr. Phil (from second year nutrition) in his strive for evidence based treatment, but he is also a little less intense, and worries about using a combination of evidence based medicine and individualized medicine. He is also big on orthomolecular medicine, which generally involved very high doses of vitamins and nutrients for therapeutic benefit. So this year will have a little less focus on diet and lifestyle that Dr. Phil provided (fish oil, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a handful of nuts, and 30 minutes of walking a day will fix anything!), and instead look at more therapeutic use of nutrients. I think that a combination of these two courses will provide a pretty good foundation for using nutrition to effectively benefit many patients for many different conditions.

That's all for today, back to a little more homework before bed, but I'll be back tomorrow to talk about Wednesday. For now, enjoy this funny CBT cartoon I found.

Carotenoid "Glow"

             Monday’s botanical medicine lecture was pretty interesting. We just continued looking at different types of phytochemicals, but we also got to smell and taste a lot of essential oils. Some of them have very intense smells! One of the phytochemical categories we looked at today was tetraterpenes, also known as carotenoids (such as beta-carotene and lycopene). This brought up an interesting discussion about something known as the carotenoid glow. In addition to many of the health benefits that carotenoids provide (e.g. some carotenoids are “provitamin” A), they are also pigment molecules that can have an effect on the colour of your skin. The yellowish colour of your skin is influenced by melanin (which changes in response to the sun) and carotenoids. In a recent study in Evolution and Human Behaviour, researchers found that people found skin that was yellowish due to carotenoids looked healthier and more attractive than skin that was yellowish due to melanin. This is great news because it means you can eat healthy to get all the health benefits of carotenoids, and also have better looking skin without needing to do lots of unhealthy tanning. So get out of the sun so much and make sure you eat lots of vegetables, your body will thank you, and your skin will look great!

(the face in the middle shows the woman’s natural colour, the face on the left shows the effect of sun tanning, and the face on the right shows the effect of eating more carotenoids over two months. What do you think looks better?)