BY MICHELLE CLARKE

St. Jamestown is the north end of one of Toronto’s oldest neighbourhoods, Cabbagetown, snuggled between Castle Frank and Sherbourne. The home riding of Canada’s first Female Woman, Caribbean Descendant, and a neighbourhood that I myself frequented growing up and had many high school friends from and in and around that downtown.

The City of Toronto has acknowledged it the most diverse and densest populated neighbourhood in the GTA! Diversity and density are terms that people often ascribe to academia or politics, but these terms should be in our day-to-day vocabulary, as the world around us changes due to the neglect from the pursuit of modernization and industrialization of mass scale productions and natural resource extraction projects. We know that those changes will be experienced in our local communities.

St, Jamestown isn’t the exception, but because of its 20,000+ population compacted into nineteen apartment high-rise apartment towers and four low rise buildings built in the 1960’s, plus many other houses, and small apartments between Bloor, Castle Frank and Sherbourne Streets make the living environment and experience of members more difficult. Climate change is displaying how it affects people living in high-rise towers, still recovering from a massive building fire and struggling with also being one of Toronto’s poorest and overlooked communities.

Yet what I found instead as I led the Research and Development Knowledge Hub  Knowledge Hub, Community Climate Action  for the Community Climate Action project is that St. James Town was full of untapped and overlooked potential of people with high skills sets, education and work experience. ReThink Sustainability Initiatives (RSI), Trinity Life, The Government of Canada and The New Common focused on the City of Toronto Targets and factors that highlight and intensify climate change impacts and health related emergencies focused on St. James Town.

This includes three Climate Action Ambassador Training Workshops, and Green Careers Mentorship and Training Workshops (which I participated in and contributed to); with upcoming “Collaborative Climate Solution Discovery Workshops, Building Assessment Workshops, with On-going Communication Activities.” Community Action in our neighbourhoods is usually focused on gun violence and gangs, it is important for now and our future generations to start effectively addressing how our immediate living environments are also affected by ecosystem changes.

BY DR LYDIA THURTON

Somatization is when your body takes emotional pain and creates a physical problem. Patients will have all kinds of diagnostic testing only to be told that everything is normal. More than 80% of patients with dizziness, chest pain and fatigue have no medical explanation.

Patients are frustrated when they are told that a physical symptom is “all in their head.” To them, it discounts their experience and makes them feel crazy. This is not true at all! Your body is trying to talk to you in a way you understand. Everyone understands physical pain, not all of us will acknowledge feelings of sadness, grief and shame. Many of us are taught to disconnect from our emotional state, stuff down our feelings and put on a brave face. When we do this for a long period of time physical problems can result.

Think about your upbringing, with your parents. When you were sad or fearful, were you praised for identifying your emotions? And comforted? If not, then you probably have a tendency to avoid feeling and pretend that things are fine when they really aren’t. Most of our emotional reactions are learned in childhood. It is important to be honest with how emotionally intelligent your household was growing up.

If you have children think about your reaction to their emotional pain. This is especially critical for young boys. I feel much of the violence in our world is perpetrated by men who are hurting emotionally. And have no safe outlet.

Physical abuse or sexual trauma puts people at increased risk for somatization. If you have trauma in your history your body may use somatization as an ego defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms protect our minds from having to re-experience painful events. Instead of reliving the abuse you suffered, the body turns that pain into a sore back, or period cramps, or digestive upset. You are still experiencing pain, but body pain feels safer to us. Mental, emotional pain is much more unpredictable and complex to treat.

When a condition starts out of the blue take stock of your life. Are you upset at someone and biting your tongue? Do you feel powerless? Do you feel disrespected? Are you heart-broken? If you have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression or another psychiatric illness you are at increased risk to have your body talk to you. Digestion, sleep and physical pain are all very real consequences of mental illness.

When emotional problems are the cause, often illnesses will be in multiple body systems. For example, stomach cramps and headaches, insomnia and heart palpitations, painful sex and nausea. Symptoms can be vague and ever-changing. It can be very frustrating and scary for the patient because they know something is wrong but they hit a dead end with every test.

If this sounds like you, take an honest look at your emotional state. There is no shame is having emotional pain. Being a caring, compassionate human being means that there will be suffering and hurt. The more truthful you are with yourself and others, the better off we all are. If your body is talking to you, try your best to listen.

BY DR LYDIA THURTON

Sometimes I disappoint my patients. Some patients come to me because they want to use natural medicine to heal themselves and I have to be honest and tell them it just isn’t going to work. This is especially prevalent in my Caribbean patient population. They recall a great-auntie that had a bush tea that could cure anything. It’s a big let down when I refer them back to their doctor for pills or surgery.

One of my biggest pet peeves about some natural healers is that they sell people a dream of miraculous healing just to make a buck.  It makes me furious. My conscience won’t let me do that. If natural medicine won’t help, I have to be honest.

Cancer cures are a big one. Patients are afraid of radiation and chemotherapy, for good reason. And want to try to heal cancer with juicing, alkalinizing their diet and avoiding sugar. I have no problem with natural cancer care alongside main stream medical strategies. There are naturopathic doctors that assist in the care of cancer patients with intravenous vitamin C and mistletoe extract. If I had cancer I would look for this complimentary care myself. But at this time I cannot recommend natural cures for cancer without conventional care. Use both.

I actually stopped taking on cancer patients as a young naturopath after I watched a patient die. He was using natural therapies from the very expensive Gershen Institute in Florida. He spent his life savings and they starved him, made him vegan, when he shouldn’t have been and it accelerated his death via massive weight loss. It scared me, but opened my eyes to the down side of natural medicine.

Autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and irritable bowel diseases need natural medicine as an add on. The drugs are toxic and diet is a big factor in healing. However, once these destructive diseases start on a path of mayhem they need to be put in check with pharmaceuticals or surgery.

Let me give you an example. My best friend has Crohn’s disease. This is an inflammatory disease of the digestive tract that results in terrible pain, poor digestion and serious consequences like malnutrition and even colon cancer. She managed herself with diet and supplements, but there was one area of her intestine that was so damaged she developed scar tissue. That scar tissue was not fixable with natural medicine. She needed surgery and that diseased area of her bowel was causing intense suffering. After surgically removing that area of the bowel she could carry on healing herself with diet and yoga, which she did. This a great example of how to marry natural medicine with conventional. 

Some infections need antibiotics. Some cases of depression need antidepressants. Some pain patients need orthopedic surgery. We push our bodies harder than ever before. And our environment and food supply is more toxic than ever before and this means that sometimes natural means can’t overcome our illnesses. It makes me sad to disappoint patients that are fearful of surgery and medication and want to go the natural route. My biggest advice is that natural medicine works well when you nip things in the bud. When a disease festers it can progress to a point where natural just won’t work. Act quickly if you are adverse to conventional medicine. Seek to prevent illness whenever possible.