Eating disorders are a difficult thing to identify and treat, not to mention to live with. Unlike other mental health conditions they can be life-threatening, but we also need to eat everyday and therefore our interaction with the substance of choice is something we need to learn to negotiate and to work with as we heal.

Dr. Alexandra Sisam is a fellow naturopathic doctor with a focus in eating disorders. We talk about how to identify disordered eating patterns, from anorexia and bulimia to binge eating and just a high-stress relationship around food. We talk about body image, diet culture and restriction, how a focus on food is a way to cope with intense pain and negative emotion, and often healing the eating disorder is just the beginning, and how to seek support.

We talk re-feeding and how naturopathic medicine can offer the tools and resources to help patients who suffer from high-stress relationships with food and their bodies heal.

We have both noticed an increase in emotional eating and binge eating in our patients as a result of the pandemic and social distancing measures and we discuss why this might be the case. We also talk about Alexandra's Five Pillars for treating eating disorders and supporting patients through healing their bodies and minds from disordered eating.

Alexandra is a fellow Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine grad, like myself. She also has an undergraduate degree from my alma mater, Queen's University, which is pretty cool.

She works at the Orenda Clinic in Toronto and has a special interest in using the mind-body connection to support mental wellbeing and a low-stress connection with the way we nourish our bodies.

Find Alexandra at:

http://alexandrasisamnd.com/
https://www.theorendaclinic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alexandrasisam.nd/