9.8 C
Canberra
Saturday, May 18, 2024

Wes Smith

Wes Smith

Hay fever capital

Hopefully for you, spring produces moments when your heart swoons with the ephemeral beauty of Canberra’s blossom trees and the gentle warmth of sun on your skin. For one in four Canberrans,...

The Healing Power of Gratitude

What would make you happier? Advertisers really want you to think the answer is more stuff: a new car, a bigger house, fancier holidays or nicer clothes. Material things can and do...

Can ecstasy cure the effects of trauma?

Psychedelics were once the domain of hippie counterculture, but now ecstasy, otherwise known as MDMA (or 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine), is being hailed as a potential breakthrough treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). What is PTSD? PTSD...

Just another pill: the risks of polypharmacy

As you’d probably expect at a wellness centre, we have a lot of very health conscious clients. One of the benefits of taking care of your health seems to be that, in...

Relief from menopause naturally

Typically, as women approach or enter their 50s, they will first navigate perimenopause and then menopause, as the ovaries’ production of oestrogen declines and then stops and the menstrual cycle ceases. This...

Learning to love winter

How do you feel about winter in Canberra? Do you find it beautiful and invigorating or a season that has to be endured until the warmer weather arrives? Sure, the days are...

Beware the ‘dirty dozen’

It’s enough to have you choking on your green juice! The Environmental Working Group (EWG), the organisation that releases an annual list of produce containing the highest levels of pesticide residues, has...

Sleeping pills and insomnia

What do Valium, Serepax, Mogadon and Normison all have in common? If you guessed ‘they are all benzodiazepines, highly addictive and commonly prescribed medications for insomnia’, then you are correct. How common are...

Marijuana as medicine

What is medical marijuana? Marijuana, or cannabis, is a plant containing over 400 bioactive molecules. The two molecules that have been found to have the most therapeutic effects are delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol...

Get hygge with it

As the days get shorter and the temperature drops, it’s the perfect time to be getting all ‘hygge’. For the uninitiated, hygge (pronounced “hoo-gah”), is a Danish concept that can’t be translated...

Are you ready to ‘go keto’?

A ‘keto’, or ketogenic, diet is where you consume an extremely low amount of carbohydrates and high amounts of fat, kind of like a ‘souped-up’ paleo diet. The name keto comes from...

Stopping the ‘pain drain’

Chronic pain is a massive health issue in Australia, afflicting one in five Australians, with an estimated cost to the economy of upwards of $34 billion a year in medical costs and...