by Jen Owen, N.P. | Dec 2, 2021 | Seasonal Health
Many years ago, I was the herbalist at a garden & nature center. Every year I would lead a workshop on Herbal Gift Making. I was thinking about these fun and informative classes and thought I would share these ideas with you today.
These are perfect gifts for those on a budget or those who wish to give something more personal for the holidays.
Herbal Potpourri Sachet:
Use a small (3 in x 3 in or 4 in x 4 in) piece of cloth. Place your herb blend in the middle, tie tightly with a rubber band, and then cover the band with a pretty ribbon or twine. It will look something like this:
Possible herbs to include:
Lavender
Roses
Chamomile
Mint
Sage
Lemon Balm
Lemon Verbena
Rosemary
Herbal Vinegar
Use an attractive clear bottle (old wine bottles work great). Add sprigs of fresh herbs and a couple of garlic cloves. Fill with vinegar (white, white or red wine, cider or other) and close tightly. Herb vinegars can be used in salads, sauces, or marinades.
Possible herbs to include:
Rosemary
Basil
Sage
Oregano
Tarragon
Mint
Thyme
Dill
Look for jars like these:
Herbal Tea
Place your herb blend in a small mason or decorative jar, pack individual tea bags 
, or include a tea ball with the gift 
. Instructions with the gift would say something like this: “Add 1 tsp. herb mixture or one tea bag to cup. Pour boiling water over herbs, cover and let steep 10-15 minutes. Relax and enjoy!”
Herbs to consider in a blend of your choice:
Relaxing Blend:
Lavender
Chamomile
Roses
Passion Flower
Blue Vervain
Catnip
Skullcap
Tummy Blend:
Mint
Sage
Chamomile
Fennel
Ginger
Licorice
Holiday Blend:
Cinnamon sticks
Peppermint
Ginger
Chicory
Clove
Nutmeg
It is fun and easy to make Herbal gifts.
If you don’t have time to make your own…
Buy Local!
Consider gifting a package of Flourish Tea (a mint & tulsi blend locally made in Portland).
Let me know if you’d like to pick some up. Packages are available in white and silver.
by Jen Owen, N.P. | Oct 8, 2021 | Integrative Medicine
I asked for suggestions for blog posts and found that many people would like ideas on how to beat insomnia (trouble sleeping). Insomnia can mean different things to different people. Some people have trouble falling asleep, some have trouble staying asleep, and some have both.
Insomnia can be caused by many factors and anyone who has followed me or seen me as a patient will know that I strongly believe in finding the root of the problem. It can be caused by stress, hormonal changes, adrenal imbalances, thyroid issues, food sensitivities, alcohol overindulgence, certain medications and more. If these simple tips don’t help you sleep, then you really need to see a practitioner who can help you get to the bottom of your sleep struggles.
Practical Sleep Tips
First, let’s look at some practical tips for insomnia.
~Avoid caffeine later in the day.
~Establish a regular routine of going to bed at night and rising in the morning. Many people sleep better if they are asleep before 10pm.
~Use a white noise machine or fan to block out noise.
~Make your room as dark as possible. Even a small amount of light, like from an alarm clock can confuse your system to thinking it is daytime.
~Don’t eat large meals late in the day and limit fluids after 8pm if you are getting up to urinate during the night and cannot get back to sleep.
~Add meditation to your life to help with stress.
Supplements for Insomnia
If you’ve tried all of those things and nothing helped, you can try some over-the-counter herbs and supplements for insomnia. My two favorite supplements to help you sleep are melatonin and magnesium.
Melatonin helps to reset your circadian rhythm, which affects your sleep/wake cycles. Melatonin resets your internal clock to tell your body when to sleep and when to wake. A dose of 2-3mg for a few weeks will often do the trick. For long-term use, I recommend a dose of 1mg or less.
Magnesium deficiency can cause excitability in the muscles and the brain. It plays important roles in the contraction and relaxation of muscles and less understood roles in the nervous system. I’ve found magnesium to be very beneficial for many people with insomnia, especially those who can’t sleep due to aches and pains or restless legs. It also seems to have a calming effect on the brain, allowing for more restful sleep. The dose of magnesium depends on the type you are taking. Check out this blog for more information on insomnia.
Herbs for Insomnia
As usual, herbs are my favorite remedies for insomnia. Herbs for sleep are gentle and work very effectively. Valerian is an old favorite for insomnia and is a non-addictive. The root is the part used for medicine and can be taken as extract, capsules, or tea, if you are brave. Valerian smells a bit like dirty old socks. Some people, including yours truly, are stimulated by Valerian, but this does not seem to be true for most people.
Skullcap is one of my personal favorites for insomnia, as well as mild anxiety. It doesn’t have a sedating effect, but works to strengthen the entire central nervous system. When the nervous system is strong, there’s much less nervous stress, thus inducing more restorative and peaceful sleep.
Chamomile is another great herb for insomnia and most people really enjoy the taste as a tea. Chamomile helps to calm the nerves and relieve tension. It also has anti-inflammatory effects, so can relieve mild aches and pains and digestive disturbances.
Good quality sleep is so important. We cannot be the best we can be if we are not restoring all of our systems each evening. We should all be getting 7-8 hours of sleep each night and a little more when we can. If you are not sleeping well, give these suggestions a try. I have a few other tricks up my sleeve, as well if they do not work and you would like to schedule a consultation.
Like what you are reading here and want more? Sign-up for my weekly newsletter on the bottom of this page and I will send weekly health and wellness information right to your inbox. Please share this post with your family and friends who may benefit from the information.
Wishing you blissful beauty sleep!
by Jen Owen, N.P. | Sep 10, 2021 | Mind-Body Medicine
Getting Comfortable with Joy
How comfortable are you with feeling joy?
I know that question might seem silly, and you may be thinking, ‘Of course I’m comfortable with feeling joy’.
The truth is that most of us aren’t.
From a young age, we’ve been doing things on our own, proving our worth with effort, and feeling like we have to cross one barrier after another.
We are comfortable with struggle and effort.
When things in our lives start to slow down, when we finally reach our biggest goals, when we have everything we’ve been wishing for, we often don’t know how to enjoy it all.
This was definitely true for me.
After a divorce, 2 nursing degrees, single motherhood, and maintaining a home with an acre of land on my own, things changed for me.
I found my life partner and I created the integrative practice of my dreams.
I had someone to help me care for my home, support me in motherhood, and help me with all the things it takes to own your own practice.
I had love and support from many angles and my patients were thriving.
I basically had, “it all”.
Yet, I found it hard to enjoy it. I couldn’t get comfortable with the joy.
I realized that my comfort was in struggle, effort, and proving myself.
When struggle is our norm, the brain receives its reward from more struggle. We feel good when we accomplish things, when we defeat odds, and when we get more done.
Reward doesn’t come from things like rest, play, pleasure, and joy.
When we want more joy, happiness, and satisfaction, we have to reward these things in big ways. We have to retrain our brains to look for more of these things rather the opposite .
If the only reward your brain gets is from struggle, you may be unintentionally creating more of it so that your brain feels safe and comforted.
If you want to get more comfortable with joy, you must reward yourself for it.
Relish in rest.
Delight yourself with pleasures when they come your way.
Savor every bite of delicious food.
Do more happy dances when things are feeling good.
Get used to good feeling emotions and allow them to flood your being.
If you want more joy in your life, you literally have to allow it.
You have to make it comfortable.
Schedule an appointment now or consider joining my signature, transformational program, The Flourish Way™ Experience for guidance on feeling more joy in your life!
by Jen Owen, N.P. | Aug 27, 2021 | Integrative Medicine, Mind-Body Medicine, Seasonal Health
For years, I’ve been checking hormone panels for females experiencing many different hormonal symptoms. Overall, the most common pattern I’ve seen is referred to as estrogen dominance. The estrogen level is normal while the progesterone level is low. This creates symptoms such as bloating, breast tenderness, low sex drive, headaches, irregular periods, decreased sex drive, mood swings, fatigue, trouble sleeping, weight gain around the abdomen and hips, foggy thinking & memory loss, and PMS.
This pattern often occurs when the person is experiencing a higher-than-normal stress level. Because progesterone naturally provides some of our cortisol (stress-managing hormone), during times of increased stress, the body will “steal” progesterone to make more cortisol.
I’m very used to seeing this and treating this.
What I’m not used to seeing is a pattern that has become quite prevalent over the past 1.5 years during the pandemic and other issues of these times.
In almost every hormone panel I’ve checked, another hormone is elevated: DHEA.
DHEA is short for dehydroepiandrosterone (D-hi-dro-epp-E-an-dro-ster-own), a hormone made by the adrenal glands located just above the kidneys. Of the more than 150 hormones made by the adrenal glands, the most abundant is DHEA. DHEA is generally converted into testosterone and estrogens.
Most of the time, when I check this hormone, it’s low. I’ve supplemented it many times in females to increase low testosterone and low estrogen.
Because DHEA is also produced from the ovaries, in the past I would see elevated DHEA associated with abnormal hair growth (think beard), acne, and PCOS.
Not now.
DHEA is appearing high across the board and not just a little high, it’s often double or triple the level it should be, without any of the usual and expected symptoms.
Now, this is not all bad news. Some studies suggest that DHEA may elevated as a counterbalance to elevated cortisol, so it’s likely a healthy adaptive response by the body.
At the same time, it means that the body is overloaded with stress hormones, and it’s working diligently to manage this and bring the body back to balance.
I’ve talked a lot about managing stress since COVID began. If you missed my previous posts, see the bottom of this page.
During the first year of the pandemic, I gave everyone a pass. I appreciate personally how hard it’s been to adapt to all of it; how challenging it’s been to eat right, find new ways to exercise, and avoid getting into negative habits to help manage our stress.
Now, we must face the reality that not much is likely to change anytime soon. We have to find ways to adapt, to manage our stress so that our bodies don’t take the toll from all of this.
We have to find new ways to experience joy, appreciation, love, and freedom.
When people come to see me, I can feel how much they want a quick fix to what they’re feeling. It’s frustrating to hear that stress is the underlying cause of their symptoms.
Yet, here we are and it’s been true for almost everyone I’ve seen.
The good news is that my stress-management toolkit is deep and when my patients implement the plans we develop together, they feel better.
Start with one thing…what’s the one thing that you could change in your life right now, that if you changed it, it would make a really big difference? Do that first and let it be for a few weeks. Then, work with the next thing. Trying to make a bunch of changes all at once simply creates more stress and likely, more DHEA.
If you’d like my help, schedule an appointment here.
Check out these articles to understand the stress response more fully and for more ideas of how to manage it:
Are You in Fight-or-Flight or Rest-and-Digest?
Self-Care for Stressed Times
Health Basics Check-in
Stop and Breathe…
How to Handle the Strain and Drain
My Top 5 Herb Choices for Stress
Exercise Can Be Fun
5 Tips to Protect Your Energy
by Jen Owen, N.P. | Jul 9, 2021 | Food Medicine, Mind-Body Medicine
This blog is about returning to the basics.
I’m not sure what it is about our society. We seem to have an “all-or-nothing” approach to health. If we’re not greatly restricting food, exercising in a bootcamp style, or majorly pushing our limits, we don’t really do anything.
I see this time and time again. People show up to my clinic exhausted. When I ask about their health habits, they tell me they try to do those things I mentioned above, but haven’t been able to maintain them.
Well, of course they can’t, and I couldn’t either.
When people focus on hard core health changes and can’t keep with it, they feel like they failed and then they forget to do the very basics to keep their bodies and minds well.
So, today as you read this blog, I want you to do a check-in about each area of life I discuss.
How are you doing in each category?
If any of the basic categories aren’t being fulfilled, start there.
If you’re doing all of these things every day, then come in for an appointment and we’ll dive into what else might be going on.
Water
I know this probably sounds very basic and yet, we all need water to survive. The old adage of drinking 8 glasses of water each day still works pretty well for most people. Yet, when I ask my patients how much water they’re drinking every day, the response is often 2-4 glasses.
And, remember that caffeinated drinks and alcohol are actually dehydrating, so you need extra water if you drink those.
Check-in: Track how much water you drink today and increase if needed.
Tip: Use an opaque water bottle or mason jar for your daily water so you can literally see how much you’re drinking.
Air
Another basic one, I know. During the vitals signs assessment, I check the oxygen saturation of my patients. The level that should be 100% (yes, even with a mask on). Most people come in around 95-97%.
This means that they are likely shallow breathing a good portion of the time.
When we’re running around in fight-or-flight all the time, we don’t take enough deep breaths, so we don’t circulate adequate oxygen to all of our parts. This leaves us feeling even more tired and when our brains don’t get enough oxygen, we can feel light-headed or experience foggy-thinking.
Check-in: Are you getting enough deep breaths in throughout the day?
Tip: Check out this blog and Stop and Breathe.
Food
Another interesting societal norm is that when we want to change our eating patterns, we almost always start with taking things away.
I actually recommend adding things in first. And, I start with the most obvious foods: fruits and vegetables.
Fruits and vegetables are full of the antioxidants our bodies require for proper cellular function and detoxification.
Check-in: Are you eating every color of vegetable/fruit every day?
Tip: Start first by eating the “Rainbow Diet”. Read more about that here.
Sleep
I know you know sleep is important for every cell and system in your body. Yet, it’s often one of the least valued components of flourishing health.
Many people stay up too late or don’t take advantage of times when they can sleep in.
I work with a lot of parents of small children who tell me that after the kids go to bed is the only time they have alone together. I get this. Time alone together is important. And, is there another time you could work out to be alone together? Maybe you could trade with another couple and each take each other’s kids once a week? Get creative.
Sleep truly needs to be at the top of the priority list.
Check-in: How much good quality sleep are you getting every night?
Tips: Sleep when your kids sleep. Go to bed early and relax with a good book if you don’t feel tired yet. Practice good sleep hygiene (Google this term if you don’t know what this is.)
If you still can’t sleep, come in for an appointment and we’ll get this sorted.
Next steps:
Once these four basics of human body function are met, you can start looking into body movement, love, joy, etc.
Those are basic human needs as well, yet when we’re not breathing, drinking water, eating foods that nourish us, or sleeping, not much else can fall into place.
At my clinic, I focus on treating the whole person and my practice has gotten more and more simple over the years. I’ve realized that more than anything people need help with life.
They usually don’t need complicated protocols or extensive health plans. They need help finding balance, peace, and more FUN!
Please stop beating yourself up with restrictive diets and rigorous exercise regimens.
Start with the basics and you’ll be amazed at how much small shifts in your daily life can bring about big changes.
Ready to dive deeper into the basics?
My online program, Health Transfomations is for you!
Work at your own pace on your own time and transform your life in 8 weeks.
Join the program and get started now!
Recent Comments