Preventative Health

Burlington Vermont Nutritional Counseling for Gut Health

There are about 40 trillion bacteria in your  body, most of which are found in your gut- they are known as your gut microbiome, and they're incredibly important for overall health. Improving your microbiome and bacteria quality can transform your life and reduce many different symptoms you may be having. And as many people know who struggle with poor GI health, ica be life altering.  This is why at the Stram Center, we utilize tastings that help us get to the root cause of a health condition, and we start with the status of your microbiome in our nutritional counseling (read more about our nutritional counseling services here)... The following three powerful components are the first step to beginning your gut health journey.

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Don’t Get Ticked Off, Be Tick Smart

With the warm weather we are all starting to spend more time outside and venturing on to grassy playing fields and into the woods. We are not the only ones who emerge from hibernation with the warming temperatures, ticks also come out to play. We need to be aware of how to prevent tick bites and what to do if we get one! 

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What Can You do to Prevent Ticks?

Happy beginning of spring! With the weather warming up, we are all so excited to venture outdoors, set up our gardens, walk new trails, and enjoy all that mother nature has to offer. However, this is the time of the year where ticks are also increasing their outdoor presence. It is important to remember that ticks are not only present in deep wooded areas, but are also present in common places that you may be in every day, such as your yard. It is best practice to try to be as tick safe as possible whenever you are outdoors, even if you are not in the woods. 

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Strengthening Your Immunity

Our immune system is complex and has many parts and each plays a different role. Imagine your immune system like it is our military, with different branches that serve different functions. Some are highly specific in what they do, they may only consist of small, specialized, tactical teams, and others are more broad like an infantry of men. The small tactical teams are much easier to mobilize, but for an infantry of men it takes more effort and time to mobilize. In this winter season, it is as important as ever to support your immune health. There is the new COVID-19 variant, Omicron, on the rise and recent news that the current flu vaccine is not very effective against this year’s dominant flu strain.

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Gratitude and Chronic Illness

Living with a chronic illness can offer a special set of skills, emotional awareness, and shift in the ways in which we associate with gratitude. When we think about gratitude, what comes to mind is often our external world, rather than what is experienced inward.  With the grief that ensues in living with a chronic condition, our mind, body and soul begin to reconnect itself differently; what might have been no longer serves us now; we begin to adopt new practices of love, appreciation, and care. When it comes to treatment, chronic illness patients often experience a disconnect in what these mean versus what it may have meant prior to their diagnosis. Unfortunately, mainstream medicine offers only a narrow lens in healing, while most of us suffering with anything chronic (mental and physical) require an adaption of treatment and lifestyle embedded in our daily living....

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How to Recognize and Prevent Lyme Disease

This month is Lyme disease awareness month. As the number of cases continue to increase year after year, one must be knowledgeable about how to recognize and prevent this elusive and challenging disease. Lyme disease is a spirochetal bacterial infection transmitted by deer ticks. In the late 1970s in Lyme, Connecticut, a group of children started having symptoms that included rashes, fevers, and swollen joints. In 1982 a scientist by the name of Wilhelm “Willy” Burgdorfer, found spiral shaped bacteria while investigating deer ticks on Long Island. He then looked at deer ticks in CT and found the same spiral bacteria that are now known as Borrelia Burgdorferi

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Building Immunity Starts with Your Diet

Now more than ever, we need strong immune systems. Living through a pandemic with flu season upon us, a robust immune system can keep us healthy and help us rebound faster if we do get sick. So, what helps us build a robust immune system? Everything from adequate sleep and exercise, to proper stress management and nutrition. Nutrition plays a key role in helping or hurting us. And if we want a strong immune system, there are many foods and key nutrients that can help us build it. When we talk about nutrition, it’s important to recognize that both diet and supplementation can be helpful. While the diet can supply a plentiful dose of nutrients, we often need an extra boost of specific vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and antioxidants to ramp up our immunity. Some key nutrients for immunity include 

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Covid Prevention: How to Keep Yourself Safe During the Second Wave

The holiday season is upon us, but unfortunately, the rate for Covid infections, hospitalizations, and fatalities are at an all-time high. The U.S. is adding close to 300,000 new cases per day and close to 3,000 fatalities per day1. Until we can get vaccinated, we still need to take measures to prevent infection. A protocol based guide for recommended treatment and prevention of COVID was recently written by the Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS). In the guide, many of the recommendations for prevention are natural therapies. I will discuss two of the therapies recommended in this post, vitamin D and melatonin. By combining natural therapies with mask wearing and social distancing, we can help reduce the spread of infection. We know that vitamin D is an important vitamin for bone health. But vitamin D also plays a critical role in immune function

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Blood Sugar, Estrogen, and Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is directly connected to hormonal imbalance. When we talk about the complex world of hormones, we understand that many aspects influence them, such as stress, the food we eat, how we move our bodies (or lack of movement), and genetics. With breast cancer specifically, estrogen is a key player. So how does nutrition influence our estrogen?

By now you may or may not have heart of “estrogen dominance,” a condition where estrogen levels are either above normal levels or progesterone is too low. The typical estrogen dominant picture usually includes symptoms such as...

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The Fountain (or Food) of Youth

Nutrition is not to be underestimated when it comes to anti-aging. Food alone has the power to keep us feeling and looking vibrant or to actually do the opposite (though please don’t take this to be a scare-tactic). If we look at the multiple opportunities daily that we have to invest in our future self, well now that’s something most of us can get behind. Most of us can find some motivation there, too. Let’s talk about some key foods and key nutrients.

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