by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
I ended my last post commenting on how my treatment for MS helped change my perspective on my marriage. It allowed me to emotionally separate from my husband and to realize that he was likely going through a process that was truly his own and which had nothing to do...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In previous recent posts I’ve discussed my experience with MS. I’ve reviewed my experience of emotional deprivation in my marriage as a key touchstone in my own journey. Last post I reviewed the symptoms that led to my diagnosis. I chose homeopathic treatment as I had...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post I shared some of the emotional background to my onset of MS. The history, the symptoms and the neurological exam results (ie. Hyper-excitable reflexes, inability to walk foot to heel in a straight-line, hyper-sensitivity to heat) all led to my...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
I began to wonder whether I had asked too much of life, whether I should just accept my situation: learn to live without love. Of course, in the beginning, I was happily convinced that my marriage met all that was required in a proper match, but now nothing alleviated...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
When I first got MS, I was 21. A sudden bout of optic neuritis sent me to an ophthalmologist, thinking I had cut my eye with my contact lenses. My eye was blinded and the pain did not allow me to easily open it; when I did, I saw double. The ophthalmologist reassured...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In 1975, scientists Robert Ader and Nicholas Cohen demonstrated classic conditioning of the immune function in their experiments with rats at the University of Rochester. In the process the coined the term “psychoneuroimmunology.” (Ader & Cohen, 1975...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Bowen “moves” initiate and stimulate energy flow. That energy flow translates into a safe, rapid self-healing process which typically provides long term relief from pain and discomfort, for a wide range of conditions. BowenFirst™, allows the body...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
We started our first steps toward me telling you about my healing journey with MS. As preliminary to that, it was necessary to remind you of a couple important things. Including that each person’s journey will be individual. There are no cookie cutter solutions....
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Over the next several posts, I want to tell you the story of my personal journey and life-changing encounters with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). First, a disclaimer: I hope that I have made it clear that just as there is no such thing as the “right” life journey for...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In the last post, I introduced the notion that stress didn’t act upon our immune and nervous systems in an entirely unmediated way. The flip side of the mind-body connection is that effective use of the mind can benefit the well-being of the body. Skills to cope with...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In previous posts it has been well established that the immune system is susceptible to the cascade of effects produced by stress, but what makes one person’s immune system more susceptible? Can stress have statistically measurable and quantifiable consequences for an...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Numerous studies show that stressors can have profound emotional and physical health consequences. Stressful events trigger cognitive and affective responses, which in turn induce sympathetic nervous system and endocrine changes that ultimately impair immune function....
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
The high correlation between early childhood trauma and chronic diseases has prompted research on the body’s reaction to prolonged versus occasional stress and whether it could be measured through biological indices. According to Steven Maier: “Research shows that the...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
The last several posts have explored the biomechanics of stress memory. Reactions to all stressors are stored in memory. As stressors are activated or reactivated, the previously conditioned responses are retrieved from memory, primarily by the hippocampus, which is...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In the past few posts we’ve explored how sensitive is the neuro-immune system. This fact has been reflected by the large number of patients I see “wired” with generalized muscle tension which persists long after the initial injury. Many mechanisms appear to be in...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
My last post explained how stress memory could contribute to deleterious effects upon health. Research is finding that systemic or neuro-inflammation and neuroimmune activation play a role in the etiology of a variety of neurodegenerative disorders, such as...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
The “stress memory” also needs to be addressed, not just the original cause of the stress. Although removing the cause, exiting an abusive relationship for example, will alleviate triggering the stress feedback loop, susceptibility persists until the body releases the...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In the last post we saw how stress triggered cortisol and some of the deleterious effects of excessive, prolonged cortisol in the system. A less known effect of cortisol is its ability to divert blood glucose from the brain, in particular the hippocampus, to muscles....
