Author: osaintegrative
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Vitamin K: Your Bones’ BFF
Dear Osa friends, Calcium and vitamin D get a lot of airtime when it comes to bone health, but vitamin K, a fat-soluble micronutrient, is also an essential player in this game. While calcium needs to be ingested and vitamin D ensures calcium gets absorbed into the bloodstream, it is vitamin K that directs the Read more
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Stop Chasing that Same Old Wagon
Dear Osa friends, I hope you have enjoyed a beautiful summer! I’ve returned with some wholehearted inspiration to help guide you through the “back to school” transition from summer to fall. Keep on reading through to the end for a delicious recipe for this ripe time of year. Enjoy! The Fifth Season 🍅 Do Read more
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New Ideas for Summer Mood & Food
Dear Osa friends, In my last post, I mentioned briefly the meandering energy of summer, and how it beckons us to try new things or go in new directions, without any pressure or expectation. As the solstice passed over the weekend and we are now fully in the summer season, I have been thinking about Read more
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GLP-1 & Nutrient Sensing
Dear Osa friends, The warmer spring weather is ushering in a wandering summer energy, and I hope you can harness it to try some new avenues in your health journey in the coming weeks and months. Maybe this post will even give you an idea or two! We’re continuing a discussion of satiety and GLP-1 Read more
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Leveling Up Cardiovascular Disease Risk Assessment
Dear Osa friends, As promised earlier this year, we’re talking lipids! I’ve got a brief primer on lipidology for you and a breakdown of a few tests to consider beyond your standard lipid panel, and then we’ll walk through a study that illustrates the growing nuance that has emerged around saturated fats, carbohydrates, and lipids. Read more
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Detoxification and Brassicas
Dear Osa friends, The sun is showing its face a bit more these days, the bulbs are peeking out of the ground, and the birds are chirping in the dawn light. Spring feels near! Time to lighten the load and clean up a bit. We’re going to do both in this week’s letter! Thanks for Read more
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Love Your Mouth
Valentine’s Day is just one day, but here in the Bear Cave we’re celebrating hearts all month long because February is American Heart Month! They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but a growing body of research is explaining that you might not even need to go that far: another Read more
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Appetite, Mood, & Endocannabinoids
Dear Osa friends, TBE is back to, well, essentials this week with a look at omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and a lesser known function of these essential fats: activation of the endocannabinoid system. This fascinating internal “feel good” system impacts diverse physiological and mental functions including mood, pain sensation, inflammation, and appetite. Research shows that Read more
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Where We’ve Been & Where We’re Going
Dear Osa friends, Happy 2025 to you! In the process of brainstorming where to go with The Bear Essentials (TBE) this year, I took a look back at topics we covered in 2024. It was so much fun to revisit the newsletters that I decided to create for you a quick one-or-two sentence synopsis of Read more
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Happy New Year from Osa
As we ready ourselves to welcome a new year, I wanted to offer some food for thought for your health journey in 2025. Some of these tips come from my clinical experience, and others from a re-visiting of James Clear’s excellent book, Atomic Habits, which I read for the first time a year ago and have Read more
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Boundaries and Cranberries
We have made it to the threshold of the holiday season, and–if you live in the Pacific Northwest–this means wading through leaves and puddles when out and about and feeling damp a lot of the time. As the trees shed the last of their colorful leaves, and critters prepare for hibernation, I find that it’s Read more
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Fermented Foods vs. Fiber for Microbiome and Immune Health
Happy Halloween greetings from the Bear Cave! This week I have a couple of learning opportunities to share with you: First, I published a guest post on the Vibrant Wellness blog on the topic of omega-3 fatty acids and muscle health in aging! Protein gets a lot of attention when it comes to muscle, but Read more
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Benefits of inefficiency: Mitochondrial uncoupling
Dear Osa friends, I hope you are enjoying the beginning of this autumn season. I love the gentle reminder that the change in colors and the falling of leaves offers us to shed what we no longer need and to shore up for the inner remodeling of the winter season. In this spirit, I want Read more
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Optimizing Protein Timing
The issue of how much protein to eat has been a major topic of conversation and some controversy in functional medicine circles over the past couple of years. The controversy has stemmed from a larger conversation and focus in the functional medicine community on the science of longevity. There is a large body of evidence, Read more
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GLP-1 and Your Microbiome
As summer draws to a close, I hope you have been able to return–in your heart or otherwise!–to an anchoring habit or comforting place, as we talked about in last month’s Bear Essentials. Now, as we are preparing to transition to the fall season, I’m shifting gears with the newsletter and starting a series of discussions Read more
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Summer Reading + Returning
Dear Osa Community, I hope you are all enjoying a beautiful summer. I have been pulled in many different directions by my family’s usual summertime wanderings, which have involved returning to some familiar places–the Olympic Peninsula, the Oregon coast, Lake Chelan–and along the way I’ve been thinking about how grounding it is to return, because there Read more
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Fisetin and Prostate Cancer
Dear Osa friends, This week we’re saluting the end of Men’s Health Month with a discussion of research involving a particular phytonutrient which holds promise for mitigation of prostate cancer growth. Enjoy! Fisetin and Prostate Cancer Lycopene, a carotenoid found in high quantities in cooked tomato, is perhaps the best known chemoprotective plant compound in Read more
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Actionable Steps for Low Testosterone
Dear Osa friends, Happy summer to you! I’m back from my test prep and am excited to break open a new conversation this week around a sometimes overlooked topic in men’s health: testosterone. We’re going to discuss a few nutritional factors that can affect testosterone levels, in addition to touching on one of our most Read more
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Simple Functional Hydration
Dear Osa friends, As we welcome summer and warmer weather, I’m taking a break from my CNS exam preparations to share a few simple tips for staying hydrated–no expensive electrolyte sachets required! Enjoy. Proper hydration is foundational for essential bodily functions including maintenance of internal temperature, oxygen and nutrient transport to tissues, and waste Read more
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Calling your guide + Embracing rest
Dear Osa friends, With Mother’s Day this weekend, I am reflecting this week both on the ways we have been nurtured by our mothers and also on the ways in which we can all continue to “mother” ourselves, and I’m also cracking open a discussion on why rest is a necessity, not a luxury. Enjoy! Read more