The two-way relationship between inflammation and mental health symptoms has never been clearer.Factor in immune system effects during the pandemic- and it gets even more complex. There’s a paradigm for that – psychoneuroimmunology! 

Cytokine News You Can Use 

Inflammatory cytokines like IL-6, IL-12, CRP and TNFα are well-known to NDs. But how do these cytokines impact mental health symptoms – and vice versa? If you haven’t been keeping up on the research, no worries - Dr. Joy Dertinger, ND has done the work for you! She will share which cytokines have strong relationships with several mental health conditions including: 

• Depression 
• Stress and anxiety
• Eating disorders
• Panic 

Are Your Patients Taking Psychiatric Medications? 

A year into the pandemic, some of your patients may have turned to medications to help them cope. Although you can’t prescribe these meds, you need to understand how they may impact patients. Learn what the research is saying about the effects of commonly prescribed meds including: 

• SSRIs 
• SNRIs 
• Lithium 

Evidence-Based Naturopathic Protocols  

Chronic inflammation, mood imbalance and the complex interplay between them is truly where Naturopathic Medicine shines. But are you finding that your go-to protocols that worked just fine before the pandemic, are no longer effective? Change up your strategy by learning which naturopathic therapies show the most robust research. That’s not all - get practical info on dosing and possible side effects for interventions including: 

• Strain-specific probiotics 
• Nutrition considerations 
• Curcumin, omega 3s and vitamin D 
• Key anti-inflammatory herbs and supplements 

What you will learn:

1. A new paradigm to understand mental health disorders that will inform how you understand your patients’ risk, progression and treatment possibilities.  
2. How to evaluate if your patient has mental health symptoms associated with specific inflammatory cytokines and possible sources of the inflammation (root cause): questions NDs need in their intake and relevant testing. 
3. Understand how different psychiatric medications may or may not be helpful in a patient with mental health symptoms related to inflammation. 
4. Nuanced understanding of which Naturopathic treatment options are useful for this subset of patients, including lifestyle, diet, herbal, nutraceutical and specific probiotic recommendations. 

This course is approved for 0.25 Pharmacology and 1.25 General Category A Credits with the College of Naturopaths of Ontario (CONO).