Miles Naturopathics, PLLC

04/07/2026

With Vitamin D, it's not merely about the bones...

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Most people think of vitamin D as a bone nutrient. It is. But your muscle fibers have vitamin D receptors too, and what happens when they go empty may matter as much as the bone story for most adults.

Vitamin D enters the muscle fiber and binds a receptor in the nucleus called VDR. That receptor does two things. It activates the signaling pathway that builds new muscle protein, and it regulates the calcium machinery that powers every contraction. Without it, the fiber can't grow efficiently and it can't contract properly.

The part almost nobody talks about: vitamin D deficiency doesn't shrink all muscle fibers equally. It targets type II fibers specifically. Type II are your fast-twitch fibers. They're the ones responsible for explosive movement, generating power, and the rapid corrections your body makes to prevent a fall. Biopsies from deficient adults show shrunken type II fibers with widened gaps between them. Type I (slow-twitch) fibers stay largely intact.

This is the mechanism behind the vitamin D and falls data. The problem isn't starting with weak bones. The muscle that catches you when you stumble is physically smaller.

To make it worse, VDR expression in muscle drops with age. So an older adult with declining vitamin D levels and fewer receptors to respond to it faces two problems converging on the same outcome: progressive loss of the fibers they need most.

The animal mechanistic data here is strong. The human data on whether correcting levels reverses the atrophy is mixed, likely because most trials don't separate people who are actually deficient from people who are already sufficient.

Girgis et al., Endocrinology, 2014.
Bass et al., Mol Metab, 2020.

04/05/2026

This is why Magnesium deficiencies and insulin resistance tend to go together…

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When insulin arrives at a cell, it doesn't just open the door for glucose. It binds to a receptor on the outside, and that receptor has to pass the message inward. The first thing the receptor does is activate its own internal switch, a kinase that phosphorylates itself. That switch is what kicks off the entire chain that eventually tells GLUT4, the glucose transporter, to move to the cell surface and let glucose in.

That switch requires magnesium to work.
Suárez et al. (1995) showed this directly in rats. When magnesium was depleted, insulin still bound to the receptor normally. The GLUT4 transporter was still present in normal amounts. Everything looked fine structurally. But the receptor's internal activation dropped by 50%, and insulin sensitivity was significantly reduced. The hardware was all there. The signal connecting insulin to glucose uptake was weakened.

This isn't just a rat finding. Two large meta-analyses of prospective human cohorts found that higher dietary magnesium intake is consistently associated with lower type 2 diabetes risk. D**g et al. (2011) found a 14% reduction per 100 mg/day across 536,000 people. Fang et al. (2016) found a 19% reduction per 100 mg/day across over 1 million people. These are observational, not proof of causation, but combined with the mechanistic data showing exactly where magnesium sits in the signaling chain, the picture is consistent.

The RDA for magnesium is 310-420 mg/day. Roughly half of US adults don't meet it. If insulin resistance is a lock-and-key problem, magnesium isn't the key or the lock. It's the spring inside the lock that makes the mechanism turn.

Suárez et al., Diabetologia, 1995.
D**g et al., Diabetes Care, 2011.
Fang et al., BMC Medicine, 2016.

03/16/2026

Good Sleep--the Fountain of Youth? Focus on getting high quality, consistent sleep!

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Most conversations about sleep loss focus on one thing at a time. Testosterone drops. Or insulin sensitivity gets worse. Or you lose muscle. But the controlled restriction studies tell a different story when you line them all up.

Restrict healthy adults to 4-6 hours a night for as little as one week, and the damage shows up everywhere simultaneously. Cortisol rises 51%. Glucose tolerance drops 30-40%. Insulin sensitivity falls 20%. Muscle protein synthesis drops 19%. Leptin (your satiety signal) falls 18% while ghrelin (hunger) rises 28%. Testosterone drops 10-15%, equivalent to roughly a decade of normal aging.

The part that gets missed: these aren't independent findings from different contexts. They all pull from the same deficit. One variable, seven systems, all moving in the wrong direction at once.

Most of this data comes from young, healthy men. Zuraikat 2024 is notable because it's one of the first to confirm insulin resistance from short sleep specifically in women. The evidence base is growing, but it's still narrower than the headlines suggest.

Leproult & Van Cauter, JAMA, 2011; Buxton et al., Diabetes, 2010; Spiegel et al., Lancet, 1999; Saner et al., J Physiol, 2020; Spiegel et al., Ann Intern Med, 2004; Zuraikat et al., Diabetes Care, 2024

02/19/2026

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Homeopathy proposes that illness is not a collection of isolated faults to be silenced, but a meaningful expression of imbalance within a living, adaptive system.

By addressing the person as a whole and working with the body’s innate capacity to reorganize and restore equilibrium (to heal), homeopathic treatment seeks resolution rather than management, resilience rather than dependence.

In this light, the choice between suppression and stimulation, between managing symptoms and supporting systemic healing, is not merely a clinical preference but a philosophical one.

It asks us to consider whether lasting health is best achieved by overriding the body’s signals or by listening to them and responding in kind.

12/10/2025

Want to reduce your risk of dementia? Quit alcohol...I know this is not what you want to hear, but new genetic evidence links all levels of drinking to dementia...!

11/27/2025

Perhaps, we all ought to eat some traditional sauerkraut at our Thanksgiving meal today!!!

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Germany's sauerkraut bacteria eliminated anxiety disorders within 6 weeks completely, while benzos create dependence

German psychiatrists discovered that specific lactobacillus strains from traditional sauerkraut fermentation eliminate anxiety disorders by resetting gut-brain axis signaling that causes pathological anxiety. Patients with severe anxiety achieved complete remission within 6 weeks of probiotic therapy without any psychiatric medications.

Anxiety disorders increasingly appear to originate from disrupted gut microbiome composition that sends constant stress signals to the brain via the vagus nerve. The sauerkraut bacteria produce GABA (the brain's calming neurotransmitter) and other compounds in the gut that signal the brain to reduce anxiety responses. When patients consume therapeutic doses of these specific strains, the bacteria colonize the digestive tract and continuously produce anxiety-reducing signals. Brain imaging shows normalized amygdala activity and reduced stress hormone production. Within weeks, patients report their anxiety simply disappearing. It's like replacing the gut bacteria that scream danger constantly with bacteria that whisper calm.

The global anti-anxiety medication market exceeds $20 billion annually, dominated by benzodiazepines (Xanax, Va**um, Ativan) that patients become dependent on and require for life while facing cognitive impairment and addiction risks. A probiotic that cures anxiety in 6 weeks threatens this pharmaceutical market. Research funding flows toward new psychiatric drugs rather than gut microbiome solutions, despite German data showing superior outcomes with zero addiction potential.

American anxiety patients take daily benzodiazepines for years, becoming dependent while their anxiety never truly resolves. German anxiety patients consume sauerkraut bacteria for 6 weeks and achieve lasting remission without drugs. The microbiome cure works better and has no addiction risk—it just doesn't create lifetime pharmaceutical customers.

Why take addictive anxiety drugs forever when sauerkraut bacteria cure it in 6 weeks?

📊 Source: Psychosomatic Medicine, 2024

11/24/2025

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A new Virginia Tech study reveals that strength training is more effective than endurance in improving insulin sensitivity in obesity and Type 2 diabetes models.

🔬: Fralin Biomedical Research Institute
🔗: https://brnw.ch/21wXJno

11/04/2025

Grief is not a diagnosis...rather it is a time when human beings need compassionate presence.

For far too long, grief has been treated as abnormal, especially under traumatic circumstances. Today, normal reactions to extraordinary tragedy are being diagnosed, contained, or corrected by systems of supposed-care.

But, as I have said for more than three decades, grief is not a disorder that needs to be fixed or abbreviated or rushed. This type of coercion is imperialist coercion, and it adds to the extreme loneliness and despair that many grievers report.

When clinicians view those who are bereaved as problems they need to fix, they fail to see the sacredness of deep emotional experiences. Right after my own child died, I wrote, "Our love is worth every tear I shed." That remains true today; for me, and for anyone who has lost someone so beloved that our 'house' has become a 'house' of sorrow.

True caring of the bereaved begins with reverence and compassion, not with symptom management and "treatment". Most bereaved need others to willingly sit beside them as they bear the unbearable.

We must change the pedagogical models and cultural responses to those who are bereaved. We have to change the lexicon. Bereaved parents, for example, don't usually appreciate the words “dysfunctional” or "disordered“ or "excessive" as it relates to their grief. And, importantly, every word either opens or closes the heart.

In one of my study's findings, the least helpful 'strategy' of therapists, amongst four other points, was the therapists' attempt to 'find meaning' for the client. This is bad therapy, and I encourage clients to find another therapist if they are being pushed toward meaning-making.

In the Compassionate Bereavement Care (tm) provider training (30 CEUs available), we teach clinicians how to let meaning emerge. How to invite stories that help clients process deep, traumatic grief, instead of imposing their own interpretations of the loss. We teach them when and how to ask about the love, the regrets, the fragments of beauty that still flicker - and the moments of terror that still rage - in the context of a resonantly safe relationship. We teach them how to listen for the mourner’s language and culture and context, not using the clinician’s standards or understandings or diagnostic systems of harm. We teach clinicians to practice sacred silence and sacred presence. We teach how to release the urge to direct or fix: silence will do her quiet work. We teach clinicians to bear witness to sorrow as an act of love, not pathology.

Caring for others in a professional or para-professional role is not a "treatment" for bereavement. Caring for others is an ethic, a way of seeing, bearing witness to tragedies that elude the conception of most.

For clinicians to honor grief is to remember that the one who mourns is not broken, but faithfully still loving, even when who they so deeply love is gone. The question is not how to make grief smaller but how to make our presence worthy of its immensity.

With compassion for all,
Dr. Jo

** Next training is April of 2026. More information can be found here: https://www.missfoundation.org/compassionate-bereavement-care-certification/ **

Please share if you know a clinician or peer counselor who may benefit from this training (online and in person, though I LOVE the in-person option because its held Selah Carefarm )

10/29/2025

Insulin Resistant? Pre-diabetic? Thinking you need some kind of expensive fancy supplement? Or maybe just 15-20 different supplements being marketed to you by your social media feed, cause yeah, that makes a lot of sense? Often it's the simple things we overlook as human beings. In my experience, we're often drawn to the flashy trends, the over-the-top "solutions" that sound ridiculous and "out there." Or sometimes it's just something we want to be told like... "Eat bacon every meal and it's good for your cardiovascular health." (spoiler alert--it isn't!). But oats? What's so glamorous about oats? Nada. And yet just two days of eating mostly oats, dramatically reset blood sugar control for diabetics such that they needed dramatically less insulin--the effects lasting nearly a month even after they returned to their presumably poor diet....Imagine what might happen if they transformed their diet to a whole food plant based diet long term...? Listen to the information yourself...

The surprising power of a very unassuming food.

10/26/2025

Visiting a health care professional can be quite challenging as an HSP, but it doesn't have to be if you seek out a professional that "gets you." Learn more about strategies when going to the doctor in this article. Naturopathic medicine and particularly homeopathy can be especially well suited to HSPs.



https://highlysensitiverefuge.com/why-doctor-visits-really-are-different-for-highly-sensitive-people/?fbclid=IwY2xjawNriX1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHvgLckoNjQMLnSNWDnCimdexEYxoeqHYnZvXhXG_xfCbgH3k5cpGnrMX1dNA_aem_LVDmRhq_SzqpysynXi4Alg

The reason starts with our nervous system: For highly sensitive people, it’s like the dial on our senses has been turned way up.

10/25/2025

Looks delish!! Have you tried this one? Tell me what you think of it in the comments!

10/13/2025

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day! 🌍 Today, let’s lean in to a more indigenous holistic understanding of our relationship to nature, to the planet, and to everything around us. First Nations cultures have an embedded respect for the entirety of nature and have been steeped in these traditions of respect for thousands of years. How one relates to the planet and other living things is seen as part of one's spiritual practice and relationship to the Divine. In our modern lives this beautiful practice of respect is often missing from our lives. For today let's ponder the words of the great leader Oglala Lakota and "Let every step you take on the earth be as a prayer."



https://wix.to/JpQHyuE