Help Yourself- Dr. Thatcher's Links & Info for Patients

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Water is the life force, and most of us do not drink enough of it.  My patients most commonly complain that taste is the main reason they cannot comply with 6-8 bottles per day...

Solutions:

-sample all the types of bottled water in your local store! (My favorite has always been Dasani)

-filter your tap water at home (brita pitcher, tap accessory or a modern water filtering refridgerator)

-look up your local public water annual testing report (you may be surprised to see the results)

-have your water tested by an independent source

One simple tenet I learned in medical school that gets repeated by me a lot on the wards:

"Your heart runs on fat, Your muscles run on sugar."

A little simplistic, but to the point.

Thus for our sugar-challenged friends, you have to move your body to burn carbs, or else you should be minimizing your carbs.

For our overweight and undernourished family &  friends, it's a matter of calorie counting AND getting your heartbeat up to burn extra fat (think marathon runners).

How do you like to exercise?  If you are physically impaired in some way and unable to take yourself for a walk daily (i.e. after-dinner stroll with the family) due to knee pains, dizzy symptoms, heart failure) here are some mindful tips:

-Any movement is better than none.  In our home, we typically put on our favorite music and have a dance party (kids and pets included in the fun)

-Try getting up out of the chair during every commercial, do some jumping jacks if you can, or just raise your arms over your head for 10-15 reps.  You can easily get four sets in during your favorite show!

-Try to do some free standing squats or even skip a jump rope.

-Head to your local YMCA, and tread water or swim laps- it takes the pressure of gravity off your joints & can be done year round!)

-For the more advanced, take a deck of cards, grab a partner, and perform activities based on the values (Ii.e. situps,  pushups, squate thrusts) to "keep the muscles constantly surprised" as Arnold Schwarzeneggar once said

Best Practices in COVID era

Zinc containing foods Almonds, Cocoa, Grass Fed Butter, Grass Fed Meat

Quercetin foods Apples, Onions, Elderberry, 

Magnesium Malate

Vitamin C

Vitamin D

Curcumin

Glutathione

Probiotics

ECGC/ green tea

Aloe Vera Juice

Melatonin

Prebiotic Foods like garlic, vinegar, oregano, parsley, 

Lots of Sunlight, Calisthenics, Yoga or Tai Chi

Jump Rope with the kids!

Cartoons or Comedy!  Rally around the family!

Wash your hands, fecal oral route of spread too!

ACE2 receptors concentrate in the heart, kidney, lung, nasal, oral, nasopharynx, stomach, small intestine, colon- that's where the spike protein latches on and also where it does it's damage.

If you are chronically ill and have never heard of ILADS, you came to the right place.  Here is a link to the website:

http://www.ilads.org/

Our society is leading the way to educate the public on a global epidemic that affects over 300,000 US citizens and their families every year.

As one brilliant mentor told me in 2015, "Lyme disease today is where Psychiatry was in the 1960s."  The proverbial pot is about to boil over...

A term coined by one of the pioneer clinicians in treating Lyme disease and other tick borne illness, click here to learn more:

http://www.lymeactionnetwork.org/msids/

Life is about learning lessons.  Most people don't have time to live healthy (or so they think) but typically can find time for a movie...

It took for me to be laid up with the flu during my training to have enough downtime to fall down these 'rabbit holes'... Find these movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu or other streaming source and they might just change your life:

-Genetic Roulette

-Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead

-What the Health?

-Under Our Skin

if there is a movie that changed your life, feel free to suggest it!

You send us your question, and we will post the most relevant ones here.

Also, feel free to provide us feedback on the site and how we can make it better for you.