Blog - Dr. Christina Bjorndal

Who is driving the bus – by Dr. Christina Bjorndal, ND

If you had to guess what month has the highest rates of suicide – would you guess the month of June? When I read that, I didn’t believe it – even me – someone that has attempted suicide 3x – and two of those times were in the month of June. The circumstances leading up…

Supplementation for Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a mental illness that affects around 2.5 million people in the US and Canada. (17)(21) It is characterized by fluctuations of low mood and high mood. Times of low mood often last weeks to months and high moods lasting often several days to weeks. As someone who has been diagnosed with bipolar…

Natural Ways To Manage Bulimia

Bulimia or bulimia nervosa is one of the eight defined eating disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). (1) It is defined by periods of binge eating and then purging at least once a week for 3 months. (3) Bulimia generally starts in adolescence and is 10 times more prevalent among…

Eat For Your Cycle – 15 Helpful Hormone Tips (Part 2)

This is part 2 of the 15 helpful nutrition tips to support your hormones. Enjoy! 9. Identify and avoid food allergens – discuss testing with your Naturopathic doctor. 10. Do not drink out of plastic water bottles or to go coffee or tea cups. Use stainless steel, glass or ceramic cups only. 11. Consider reducing your intake of…

Eat For Your Cycle – 15 Helpful Hormone Tips (Part 1)

Here are 8 simple nutrition tips to help support your hormones! Be sure to check out part 2 for the last 7 tips. 1. Eat a variety of local, fresh, unprocessed and unpackaged foods. 2. Strictly limit sugars, sugary foods and refined grains i.e., white bread, white sugar, instant oats, white rice and instant noodles. These simple…

Canada Day

As I reflect on this country today, the day that Canada became an independent nation, there are many things that come to mind that make me grateful to live here and there are also some things that we definitely need to improve moving forward. Canada, as a whole, is blessed with gorgeous landscapes from the…

Beyond the Label

It is often hard to pinpoint the exact moment when mental illness begins in one’s life. A question we are taught to ask patients is: What was going on in your life when you were first diagnosed? I find that the answers I receive in response to that question vary — some people remember a…

Love For Yourself

Ultimately, it is our feelings about ourselves and how we treat ourselves that are critical to our mental health and well-being. I ask every patient how they much they love themselves on a scale of 1 to 10, and it is rare for me to get a response over five. The most common response I…

The Journey into Me via my Knee

Recently, I injured my knee in a ski accident. The last time I had a knee injury, it was a 16-month process from injury to MRI to surgery to recovery. And during that time my mental health took a nose dive. My old friends of depression, suicidal ideations, anxiety & fears of weight gain all…

Train your Brain For Willpower

(adapted from Kelly McGonigal’s book: The Willpower Instinct) It took evolution millions of years to develop a prefrontal cortex that is capable of everything we humans need. So perhaps it’s a little greedy to ask this, but is it possible to make our brains even better at self-control, without having to hang around for another…