the HUB - Hawthorn University's Blog: July 2019

Watch All About Alumni: Flora and Vine Wellness: Fertility, Prenatal, Pediatric Nutrition and Lactation Support with Angela Montoya, MS

Angela Montoya graduated from Hawthorn University with her MSHN in order to help women understand the importance of optimal nutrition before and during pregnancy, as well as during lactation and early childhood. While offering services for people who suffer from diabetes and autoimmune diseases, she pursues her passion for providing the best possible foundation for babies’ health by teaching women alternative forms of fertility enhancement, prenatal nutrition, and balancing hormones through nutrition and stress management to help with natural birth and lactation.

Angela Montoya joins us for her All About Alumni presentation Flora and Vine Wellness: Fertility, Prenatal, Pediatric Nutrition and Lactation Support. The recording of Angela's presentation is now available to review in our Webinar Archives.

In her presentation, Angela discusses why and how she got into her particular niche, as well as the challenges and successes she has found along the way.

Angela Montoya is the owner of Flora and Vine Wellness where she focuses on women's health. Angela educates women on the use of nutrition for natural fertility and dealing with PCOS. She helps pregnant women understand the importance of a healthy diet and lifestyle during pregnancy and while breastfeeding in order to set their children up to have the healthiest life possible. Angela is an endurance athlete with 4 children. With her personal experience and expertise, she hopes to improve the rate of success with breastfeeding and to dispel myths about lactation difficulties due simply to supply or exercise. She believes if we all understood just how much nutrition affects our hormones; we would more often pursue more natural methods of fertility and be healthier as a whole.

Disclaimer: The webinars may present information that does not fully reflect Hawthorn University’s philosophy. Nonetheless, these presentations have been chosen because of their overall quality of information.

Angela Montoya, MS
Master of Science in Holistic Nutrition (MSHN)
Degree Program Graduate, 2018

Watch Explaining the Unexplained: An Integrative Approach to Unexplained Infertility with Katherine Alexander Anderson, DACM, MBA, L.Ac, FABORM

It has been shown that unexplained infertility may affect up to 30% of couples worldwide. Yet, even with such a high percentile, diagnosis treatment and management of these cases are often ill-defined, inconsistent and erroneous. A true diagnosis of unexplained infertility requires a skillful clinician and sufficient diagnostic testing.

Dr. Katherine Alexander Anderson joins us for Explaining the Unexplained: An Integrative Approach to Unexplained Infertility.

Dr. Anderson's webinar presentation recording is now available for review in our Webinar Archives.

Lack of standardized diagnostic protocols in infertility cases leads to non-identification of explainable cause and therefore improper treatment and loss of time. Western medical treatment approaches typically involve drugs, procedures and surgery as a way of dictating the reproductive system. But many reasons may exist for why the body is not conceiving even though it’s not showing up diagnostically. This presentation will explore what unexplained infertility is and isn’t, how to question the status quo when a patient has been labeled with this diagnosis, as well as how to assess and treat this condition with an integrative mindset.

Katherine Alexander Anderson, DACM, MBA, L.Ac, FABORM, is a Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, and an international speaker and President Emeritus of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine (ABORM). She currently holds the position of Executive Director of ABORM, and is leading the organization to ensure fertility patients worldwide receive care from the most knowledgeable and highly skilled practitioners.

Katherine has over 25 years experience in healthcare and understands an integrated approach to health. Her private practice is dedicated exclusively to reproductive issues and women’s health with clinics in Maine and New Hampshire. In addition to leading ABORM for the past three years and running her busy clinics, Katherine is currently completing her PhD in Chinese medicine gynecology. Her doctoral thesis is a study of the clinical efficacy of menstrual cycle regulation on infertility and time to conception. Connect with her at her clinic at http://www.rhythmsforwomen.com and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thefertiletruth/.

Katherine Alexander Anderson,
DACM, MBA, L.Ac, FABORM

Trying to Manage it All? How Stress Can Affect Our Health

by Amy Panetta, MA NC

In our society, it has become a normal practice to “do it all” and balance the pressures of earning an income, success in our career, managing a home, taking care of children, and nurturing a relationship. Because of this, we feel stressed out, tired, wired, mentally foggy, and weighed down with worries, as well as being weighed down with excess weight.

Some of us struggle to get through the day without a generous amount of caffeine and overeating on sweets, or savory calorie-dense meals and snacks. In the morning we struggle to stay awake and alert, but when it is time for us to rest we have trouble falling asleep because we are ruminating about the day’s events. We struggle to fall asleep and stay asleep, whether it is due to these worries, or by young children waking us throughout the night.

Often, we maintain a chronic stress cycle, with our “fight or flight” stress mechanism stuck in the “on” position. During the “fight or flight” response, the sympathetic division of the nervous system is engaged to deal with the situation at hand, either by entering into conflict, or running away. A state of “freeze” is also possible where we stop in our tracks, like a deer in headlights, unsure what our next move will be.¹

In the midst of the stress response, the hypothalamus in the brain releases corticotropin-releasing hormone to the pituitary gland. The pituitary then releases adrenocorticotropin to the adrenal glands which signals that they flood the body with cortisol, epinephrine (adrenaline), and norepinephrine.²

This sympathetic state in the nervous system will cause blood pressure and heart rate to rise temporarily. Glucose and lipids, such as cholesterol and triglycerides, are released into the bloodstream.³ While this may be relatively harmless when stress is acute, when stress is ongoing, it can create the risk for heart attack, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, as well as a myriad of other conditions.⁴

While so many adults cope with a full schedule, how can we have time to support our body’s ability to deal with stress? Stay tuned to find out 5 Simple Ways to Ease Tension and Lower Stress Hormones in our next blog article!

Amy Panetta, MA NC, is a 2019 Hawthorn University graduate in our Nutrition Consultant program. Amy empowers women who are feeling stressed, weighed down, and exhausted to find balance, lose excess weight, and feel vibrant. In her thesis, Amy focused on the connection between chronic stress, allostatic overload, and obesity in women. She currently works with clients individually or in groups to create their own transitional approach towards a diet filled with lots of whole foods, helpful supplementation, and lifestyle changes. She offers nutrition consulting online, as well as outside of Montreal, Quebec and in the Burlington, Vermont area. More of her articles can be found on her blog: http://www.amypanetta.com/blog.

¹Schmidt, Norman B et al. (2008). “Exploring human freeze responses to a threat stressor.” Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry vol. 39, 3: 292-304. doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2007.08.002
² Dhabhar, Firdaus S. (2018). “The short-term stress response - Mother nature's mechanism for enhancing protection and performance under conditions of threat, challenge, and opportunity.” Frontiers in neuroendocrinology vol. 49: 175-192. doi:10.1016/j.yfrne.2018.03.004
³ Wannamethee, G, and A G Shaper. (1994). “The Association between Heart Rate and Blood Pressure, Blood Lipids and Other Cardiovascular Risk Factors.” Journal of Cardiovascular Risk, U.S. National Library of Medicine, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7621302.
⁴ Ryan KK. (2014). “Stress and Metabolic Disease” Sociality, Hierarchy, Health: Comparative Biodemography: A Collection of Papers. Weinstein M, Lane MA, editors. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK242443/

Watch Alzheimer’s Disease: the Silent Plague – A 21st Century Precision Medicine Approach with Dr. Mary Kay Ross, MD, FACEP

Alzheimer’s Disease has become an immense topic as of late, as more and more individuals are affected by it, whether directly or indirectly with a loved one. Dr. Mary Kay Ross, MD, FACEP joins us to discuss the current status of Alzheimer’s disease in the U.S., along with the stigma and misconceptions associated with the treatment, as well as causes and outcomes available today. Dr. Ross will review the known causes (or drivers) of the disease and the lifestyle changes necessary to help stop its progression. Dr. Ross' webinar, Alzheimer’s Disease: the Silent Plague – A 21st Century Precision Medicine Approach, is now available for review in the Hawthorn Webinar Archives.

Dr. Ross will discuss how to evaluate a client with cognitive decline, as well as the labs and necessary workup for the proper evaluation and assessment. She will also discuss how to design a program for a client and will conclude with case studies and outcomes.

At the conclusion of the lecture, attendees should be able to recognize a client with cognitive problems, assess the client correctly and be able to determine the drivers of the disease. Participants should be able to initiate the appropriate workup and prepare a reasonable functional program for all clients with cognitive decline. Finally, she will discuss future potential treatments and adjuncts to assist with ongoing treatment.

Dr. Mary Kay Ross obtained her medical education at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and completed her residency training in emergency medicine in 2000 at Wright State where she served as chief resident.

Following graduation and for the next eleven years, Dr. Ross worked as an attending physician in trauma centers in both Virginia and Georgia. She has held faculty positions at both Eastern Virginia Medical School and Mercer University teaching residents and medical students. During this phase of her career, working long and sometimes grueling shifts - she realized that there was something terribly wrong with the current medical model. It was obvious to her, that the hospital system was being overburdened by patients with chronic illnesses that were not being treated effectively. The door of the emergency room was in fact a revolving door.

In 2012, Dr. Ross found herself on the other side of the medical system. Her own real-life lesson came when she herself became a patient in the ER domain she oversaw. She suffered a serious illness as a result of a very serious mold exposure that produced debilitating symptoms. She ultimately found herself in the cardiac cath lab. This illness eventually led Dr. Ross to give up the emergency room work she had loved so much. Desperately seeking answers to her own illness from physicians that were her peers, and disappointed with limited treatment options, she sought in another direction searching for answers and better options.

Dr Ross quickly realized that many chronic health problems could be prevented. She learned that only by treating the underlying causes of chronic illness, could true healing be achieved. As this paralleled the mission of Functional Medicine, she devoted herself to learn as much as she could about this new approach to healing. She enrolled in the Institute for Functional Medicine and completed all of the modules as quickly as possible. Though Dr. Ross was voracious for the knowledge, her primary mission was an effort to save her own life.

This experience would change her practice of medicine and her career forever. Dr. Ross founded The Institute for Personalized Medicine in Savannah, GA late in 2012 committed to treating her patients using Functional Medicine.

In 2016, she teamed with Dr. Dale Bredesen. Together they applied her knowledge and clinical expertise with his scientific research gained from over 30 years in the lab. As a team they sought to bring the best solution to patients impacted with cognitive decline. Dr. Ross proudly served as the Founding Chief Medical Officer for MPI Cognition until August of 2018 when the company was ultimately sold.

Dr. Ross is presently the Founder and CEO of the Brain Health & Research Institute (BH&RI) in Seattle, WA. The Brain Health & Research Institute is honored to be partnered with the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB). This esteemed research facility is headed by Drs. Leroy Hood and James Heath. The partnership represents the marriage of science and medicine. It is their goal that research results from the laboratory, will be able to be quickly adapted into clinical practice. BH&RI will open its doors to patients on September 1, 2019.

Today, Dr. Ross is actively engaged on enhancing a multimodal, precision medicine approach addressing all aspects of brain health. She firmly believes that this is an exciting time to be practicing medicine. Dr. Ross has assembled a team of the brightest and best from across the country to deliver care at her new institute. She is committed to her beliefs and is passionate about the medicine she practices. She is a tireless patient advocate and is relentless in her pursuit for solving complex medical cases.

Dr. Mary Kay Ross, MD, FACEP