Blog Original - Confluence Wellness

Jun202024

Gut Feelings: How your microbiome influences your personality

It’s well known that there are as many microbes in our intestines as there are cells that make up our bodies. It makes sense that the balance and distribution of microbes in our intestines affects our digestive health, and vice versa. Research has increasingly shown that the microbiome, as the collection of microbes is called, should be considered as another organ in our bodies, one that needs to be healthy as much as any other organ, and can contribute to…

Jan12024

Creating Yourself

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw Season’s Greetings! We hope you had sweet and satisfying holidays filled with serendipitous delight. After the holidays, many people make resolutions about how they want to improve. Our Personal New Year’s Practice Periodically we like to look at ourselves honestly, and compare how we have been doing with how we would like to be doing. We often realize that there are some character traits that would…

Dec72023

The Annals of Matrix Repatterning

At our Thanksgiving dinner, our nephew told a joke He said that his back had been hurting, and he needed to come and get treated. “But,” he said, “knowing you, you’re probably going to tell me that it’s a problem with my earlobe.” Ha Ha! Farfetched? Maybe… Recently a patient came in with some back pain that was unusual for her. She said it came “out of the blue” without any provoking incidents. “Nothing out of the ordinary in your life?…

Nov232023

Thanksgiving 2023

How to be thankful despite a stressful world This is a hard time in the world There are wars, political churlishness and nuttiness, climate change, pollution on many levels, financial stress from inflation, all sorts of stressful things. How can we even begin to deal with all of these things? Stoic philosophers provide the answer Stoic philosophers like Epictetus realized that although we can’t control what is going on around us, we have the ability to control how we respond…

Sep132023

Cool shoes or cruel shoes?

Above is a picture of my foot between my hiking boot and a fashionable shoe from a local store. Which one would you want to wear all day? Americans seem to have a sort of foot fetish. A study by the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons of 1000 women found that 80% of them were wearing shoes too small for their feet! As if smaller feet are the keys to more success in life and love. This does not…

Aug292023

What’s in your underwear?

Now that I’ve got your attention, I want to talk about a bizarre but serious issue. Recently someone came in to see me again for a neck problem that hadn’t gone away even after I had treated it several times with what should have worked. I couldn’t discern anything that might be causing her problems to continue, and this situation caused us both to be frustrated. I knew there had to be a reason her neck kept tightening up. On…

May162023

The truth about nutritional supplements

How can we be sure we’re getting what we pay for from nutritional supplements? There are many places where you can buy nutritional supplements, and there is an overwhelming number of brands for sale. Prices and options vary widely. How can you make the best choices to fulfill your nutritional supplement needs? And why might buying the least expensive supplements available end up costing you more? Is there really a difference? Several studies have investigated the nutritional supplement market. A recent…

Apr272023

How to protect your brain against dementia

Alzheimer’s disease shrinks brains – but so do Alzheimer’s disease drugs! So what can we do? In my last blog I pointed out that a review of 31 recent clinical trials of Alzheimer’s disease drugs concluded that rather than protect patient’s brains, the drugs accelerated brain atrophy! This suggests the unlikelyhood of a successful drug-based approach to treating Alzheimer’s disease, and the necessity of a different approach. As I told you, the degenerative brain changes that occur in Alzheimer’s disease…

Apr182023

Alzheimer’s Disease shrinks brains – So do Alzheimer’s drugs!

Headshrinking is alive and well A review of 31 recent clinical trials of Alzheimer’s disease drugs concluded that rather than protect patient’s brains, the drugs accelerated brain atrophy! OOPS! This points out the failure of the orthodox medical approach to Alzheimer’s disease. The conventional drug-oriented medical approach targets a substance called Beta Amyloid, which is something that accumulates in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients. However, it turns out that Beta Amyloid deposits are actually a symptom of brain degeneration,…

Mar72023

Choose your pickle juice wisely – an Enlightened Resolution

Helpful principles for making supportive, reasonable, sustainable, and enlightened resolutions that can energize you rather than add to your stress: Instead of beating yourself up for what you do wrong and want to change, acknowledge yourself for what you’re doing right, and want to keep doing. Do more of the things you love, if they are things that will support you in amplifying your joy, your life force, and your health. You’re more likely to keep doing them. When there’s…

Mar12023

Fortify Yourself – an Enlightened Resolution

Our first three principles of making supportive, reasonable, sustainable, and enlightened resolutions that can energize you rather than add to your stress: Instead of beating yourself up for what you do wrong and want to change, acknowledge yourself for what you’re doing right, and want to keep doing. Do more of the things you love, if they are things that will support you in amplifying your joy, your life force, and your health. You’re more likely to keep doing them.…

Feb212023

Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly – an Enlightened Resolution

The image above is from the movie of the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun, which featured the Irving Berlin song Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly. This song title highlights the third helpful principle of enlightened resolutions In our last email we added a third strategy for making supportive, reasonable, and sustainable new year’s resolutions that energize rather than add to your stress. In addition to the first two: Instead of beating yourself up for what you do wrong and want to change,…

Feb142023

Nurture your relationships – an Enlightened Resolution for Valentine’s Day

Principles of enlightened resolutions We believe there are effective ways of making supportive, reasonable, and sustainable new year’s resolutions that energize rather than add to your stress. Two good ones are: Instead of beating yourself up for what you do wrong and want to change, acknowledge yourself for what you’re doing right, and want to keep doing. Take every opportunity to give yourself the gifts of things you love, that will support you in amplifying your joy, your life force,…

Feb282018

Living in the Present

“Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.” – Thich Nhat Hanh We live in a goal-oriented society where we are taught from a young age to strive, to aim for targets, to set intentions, and to actively root out our imperfections. Many of us start every year with so called New Year’s Resolutions only to find out that a mere three months into the year the…

Apr32017

One Cause for Cold Sores and Bladder Infections?

Research is continually discovering how more and more health problems are associated with imbalances in the microbial population living in our intestines, a situation referred to as intestinal dysbiosis. I have reported about links between imbalanced gut microbes and diseases as diverse as acne, diabetes, anxiety, depression, obesity, and Alzheimer’s disease. But there’s more. Current research links recurrent bladder infections in sexually active women to the presence of imbalanced vaginal microbes, a condition called bacterial vaginosis. And the imbalanced vaginal…

Mar272017

Acne, Alzheimer’s, and Diabetes, Oh My!

I saw a patient recently for a newly developed case of acne. The patient was surprised when I noticed that the acne started after a long course of antibiotics. Antibiotics affect the microbes in your intestine, and there is a connection between the health of your intestine and the quality of your skin. As many people know, antibiotics commonly exterminate the healthy gut microbes you need, even if they work to handle the infection you are taking them for. Having…

Mar272017

Sonia’s Adverse Drug Reaction

Many of you have asked us about our recent vacation. In truth, it was not a vacation. We were in Atlanta at a specialty clinic seeking care for our daughter, Sonia, whom many of you have met. Sonia is unfortunately dealing with a serious health issue.

Jan192016

Let Your Food be Your Medicine: Eating to Lose Weight and Gain Health

Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, is known for many wise sayings. Two of our favorites are “In the first place, do no harm,” and “let your food be your medicine.” And we think that one of the best ways to do no harm in medical treatment is to let food be your medicine, so we stress nutrition in our practice. We believe that many chronic illnesses which are referred to as “diseases of civilization,” things like allergies, digestive problems,…

Jan192016

Why Psychotherapy is Not Enough

Traditional psychotherapy is comforting to both the client and the therapist, but by itself it very rarely, in our experience, empowers people to effectively alter their lives. Understanding your problems is useful, but in itself it doesn’t create change. Most people develop habitual ways of thinking and behaving that control us just like we are driving through ruts on an icy road. We can know the ruts are there and even understand how they were created, but that understanding doesn’t…

Jan192016

Matrix Repatterning

Matrix Repatterning is a revolutionary new way of fixing physical problems and restoring optimal function, literally at the molecular level. There is nothing else like it. Everything else works on the symptoms of your problem. Matrix Repatterning corrects the cause. Matrix Repatterning is unique because it is based on the understanding that living tissue is constructed of a continuous fabric of cells, all pulling on each other, with tension in all directions. This cellular fabric acts as a strong, flexible,…

Jan192016

How Emotions Affect Health

In the Western world we tend to think of the mind and body as separate entities that operate under different and unrelated rules. Our view is that the mind and body represent different dimensions of the same thing, different realms in the same space. This is part of a concept we call the four worlds of healing. We have seen that things that change the mind and emotions change the body, and vice versa. Emotional responses to significant life events…

The Bioenergetic Matrix

Scientists have discovered that living organisms have an electromagnetic nature. In fact, the presence of an electromagnetic field is one of the requirements for life. Living things generate electromagnetic fields is from the process of electrochemically charged particles moving through their bloodstreams and tissues. Electromagnetic fields are also generated by our molecular architecture, because all living things are made up of a liquid crystalline molecular matrix that interconnects all of our individual cells into one continuous fabric, and generates an…

Balancing Body Chemistry with Functional Medicine and Clinical Nutrition to Enhance Immunity and Heal Chronic Disease

Living in our modern world makes us vulnerable to an onslaught of toxic chemical stressors, which can lead to imbalance and illness. These toxic factors range from pollution of the air, water, and soil, to the drugs, chemical additives, and preservatives we knowingly ingest. Harmful chemical changes can occur in our bodies because of our nutritionally deficient diets, and even because of our frenetic lifestyles. The end result is a departure from normal biochemistry, and often, the development of various…

Why we get sick, and how to get well

What is it that makes us get sick? Many years ago there was a painkiller commercial on TV that showed a big hammer hitting someone in the head. The hammer stopped whacking him when he took the right pill. That’s the picture most of us grew up with, that disease and bad health are things that just happen to you, and if you take the right drug (or get the diseased parts cut out) you will miraculously become well. Cause…

Aug102015

“In the midst of difficulty lies opportunity.” Albert Einstein

We were reminded of the profundity of this concept recently, when we were lucky enough to travel to Costa Rica for our nephew’s wedding. Afterward we had a bit of an adventure. In the middle of our trip we had a “difficulty.” When Allen was in the ocean Wendy was accosted by a hooligan on the beach who knocked her off her chair and stole all of our belongings, including the Allen’s driving glasses. (Unable to wear bifocals, he had one pair for…

Head Injury

Matrix Repatterning has been recognized as a key treatment for concussion and traumatic brain injury. (we are the only Matrix Repatterning providers in the Rocky Mountain region) Norman Doidge, MD, psychiatrist, neurologist, and author of the New York Times bestseller THE BRAIN THAT CHANGES ITSELF, is a strong proponent of Matrix Repatterning. In his newly released book, THE BRAIN’S WAY OF HEALING, Dr. Doidge refers to Matrix Repatterning as an important “first intervention” in the treatment of concussion and traumatic brain…

A Young Man Came in with an Embarrassing Problem…

Although he was basically healthy, fit, and buff, his breasts had suddenly started to grow and now looked more like a woman’s than a young stud’s. In addition, he had lost his sex drive and his ability to perform sexually. He was pretty disturbed. It turned out that he had recently begun taking a medication to help him regrow his prematurely balding hair, and this medication had somehow interfered with his hormones. Stopping the drug and starting a supplement program…

Do I Really Need Surgery?

A patient recently came in after a visit to his friend, an orthopedic surgeon, for an evaluation of his shoulder pain. The surgeon told him that his MRI showed some damaged tendons that would need surgery sooner or later, so he should get it now. He didn’t think anything else would suffice. He told the patient that the rehabilitation process would take 6 to 12 months, and radically hamper his very athletic lifestyle. The patient really didn’t want surgery, but…

Cat Ladies and You

Once we went to a woman’s house where we had arranged to board our dog for a few days. When we got there, the stench of cat urine was overpowering. It was incredibly vile. We were choking. We could not imagine how anyone could stay in that environment for more than a few seconds. The woman smiled and invited us in. It was obvious that, for her, nothing was out of the ordinary. She not only didn’t have a problem…

Treating Stomach Problems

Dear Dr. Berger, I have heartburn and stomach reflux. My MD recommended a drug to reduce the acid in my stomach. You told me that you have found that actually increasing the acid in my stomach helps these kinds of problems. I don’t understand. How does this make sense?

Overmedicated Kids?

According to a recent front page Denver Post article, 37% of Colorado teens in foster care are taking prescribed psychotropic drugs. The article states: “Foster parents and therapists say heavily medicated children are detached from reality – as though ‘walking in a cloud’,” and “…use of the drugs has been fueled by pharmaceutical firms pursuing big profits with the help of willing doctors.” According to a court appointed special advocate for children, the medication is prescribed to help “foster parents,…

Low Testosterone – A New Epidemic?

A recent editorial in the New York Times was titled “Overselling Testosterone, Dangerously.” It referred to a recently published study done by researchers at UCLA and NIH. It says “testosterone doubled the risk of cardiovascular disease in a cohort of more than 7,000 men who were 65 or older, essentially confirming findings in previous studies…..Testosterone almost tripled the risk of heart attacks in a group of more than 48,000 middle-aged men with a previous history of heart disease.” The Times goes…

Why Statin Drugs are NOT the answer

NEW STATIN GUIDELINES ARE GOOD FOR THE DRUG COMPANIES, BUT ARE THEY GOOD FOR US? This was recently published on Medscape.com: “The new American College of Cardiology (ACC) and American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines for the treatment of cholesterol would increase the number of individuals eligible for statin therapy by nearly 13 million people, an increase that is largely driven by older patients and treating individuals without cardiovascular disease, according to a new analysis.

Nov122012

Grateful Dad Interview

Doug Gertner, host of The Grateful Dad Radio Hour – a conversation about men at home, at work and at play, interviews Dr. Allen Berger. During Men’s Health month (November), this interview discusses healthy alternatives for men. A great discussion about the Four Worlds approach to healing.