Nutritionist Helps Community Get Healthy

Michele Moelder has had her fair share of health problems, and found her way to good health through a changed diet. Seeing the positive impact that food had on her health, Moelder opened a health food store to help others achieve good health.

Michele Moelder has had her fair share of health problems, and found her way to good health through a changed diet. Seeing the positive impact that food had on her health, Moelder opened a health food store to help others achieve good health.

As a certified nutritionist, Moelder offers consulting services next door to her business, Health Beat Natural Foods and Deli, where she said in a recent interview a shopping trip more closely resembles a family visit.

QUESTION: How did Health Beat Natural Foods and Deli start?

ANSWER: In my young years, I had a lot of health problems. It was just chronic. I would get colds, then I would have pneumonia. Then I would have fainting spells. I didn't know back then that I had low blood sugar, and I would black out. I was constantly not feeling good.

So when I was in my twenties, I was at my future mother-in-law's, and she had a magazine called Prevention, and I thought, "Wow, food affects the way you feel?" I had no idea.

I started cleaning up my diet and exercising, and I was just amazed at how fantastic I felt.

I started a little business inside of a workout club, where I made protein shakes, granola and yogurt pies. From there, I opened Health Beat.

While opening Health Beat, I thought it was important to get an education in nutrition. So I started my education, just so I could be knowledgeable in the store, but little by little, people wanted to sit down and be put on a plan. It just blossomed into a whole separate business for me.

Q: How does your private practice work in conjunction with Health Beat?

A: I will recommend products, and I also teach cooking classes at Health Beat. This way, not only am I putting someone on a plan, but they can go next door (to Health Beat) and my staff is very knowledgeable, too. We're always doing education and webinars. We have the deli, so they could taste foods.

Because of how I gained my health, I want to do whatever I can to help somebody get that better health — to teach them to eat better and exercise. The mission of Health Beat is to spread the word about health, and help people maintain or get healthy.

Q: What does Health Beat have to offer?

A: Everything. We have the whole food deli, so you could come in for lunch or dinner. We have probably 150 different product lines for vitamins and herbs. I'm really picky, I hand pick them. I do have some professional lines, also, that I sell in my practice and also dispense through the store. We have books.

Personally, I don't shop at a grocery store unless I run out of a vegetable because we have packaged items, fresh items, fish and meats, and it's all organic.

Q: How is Health Beat different from a grocery store?

A: The knowledge and the service. People are reading, or they hear from somebody else, they're eating this or that, they don't know how to prepare it. That's why I do the cooking classes.

Customers can try the food, and then they can go home and prepare it. It's really a lot of education. You can find a lot of items in the grocery store, but we have a little bit different selection because I don't order in mass quantities. So if there's one person that comes in for a specific item, I can stock it for them.

Q: What kind of research do you do in selecting products to sell?

A: I might go out of town and do some continuing education and learn about a new product or a new protocol for something. We go to these trade shows in Baltimore, which are so much fun. There are thousands of vendors; it takes three days to see everything. They'll have new products and you taste things, and that's how we bring it in. It's something you won't find at just a regular grocery store. It's really nice because you meet like-minded people and you get to know where your products are from. We do a lot of local — we get local milk, cheese, eggs [and] vegetables.

A lot of companies will also approach me with a product and I'll look at it, but if it's repetitive, or I'm just not familiar with the company, I won't bring it in. I only bring a product in if I know it's something that is going to help and it's something that I would be comfortable taking. Otherwise it doesn't go on the shelf.

Q: How do you approach fad foods or diets?

A: If it has research behind it and if I'm familiar with it, I will bring it in. But people will come in with a long list of items — say, for weight loss. I will talk to them, and I will get to know them a little bit and say, "You really don't need all of these things."

For me, the first thing is exercise and diet. There are some things that will also help and not be harmful, but I really screen that. I don't go with every fad.

Q: What is the size of your staff?

Right now, I have eight employees. I've been in business 32 years. My cook, Cindy, has been with me about nine years. She took a one-year break to do something different and came back. It's like a family, and we all live the lifestyle.

It's all about helping people. How can we tell people when we don't practice it?

Q: What is the greatest health concern right now?

A: I think people are just stressed. I like to teach them that they can help their bodies avoid the physical ramifications of being stressed — recommending yoga, or different supplements, an exercise program, some people have even changed their job because they've realized that their job is stressful. But when you arm your body with nutrition, and the supplements, you can tolerate the stress much better.

I also have a large clientele right now that have Lyme disease. It's devastating, because it's very difficult to diagnose. I'll have people come in with all different pain issues, gastrointestinal issues, their blood work, and some of them have seen 25 doctors. Because I'm familiar with Lyme now, I'll send them to get tested, and 99 percent come back with Lyme.

I offer Ondamed treatment that helps with pain issues, and you want to eat very clean, so I usually have them avoid dairy and gluten for a while. We do a lot of supplementation, a lot of detoxing, which can be done right along with your medication.

Q: What kind of detoxing do you encourage?

A: I don't believe in the quick cleanse, it's more long term, gentle. Not just doing it once in a while, but maintaining on a daily basis. There are a lot of things you can do with food. More greens, garlic and onions will help with liver health, and making sure you get enough fiber for the bowel helps as well. We always focus on the food here.

Q: What is the most important feature at Health Beat?

A: We're approachable. I always stress to my employees [that] when somebody comes in that door, they're

coming in for a reason, so we always help. We know when they come in, it might be all new to them, and they just want some ideas. We're not salespeople.

I know the people so well that come in, I know them by name. I've been in their weddings, I've had them at my house, because it's more like a family. We all have the same interests: We want to feel healthy, we want to remain healthy.

I really get to know their lifestyle, because you always have to consider that. If you've got a busy mom, you have to figure out a plan for her and her family. We start slow, because it could be overwhelming. We might start looking at the food that she keeps in the house, looking at the patterns of the food that the children are eating. I might recommend bringing the kids to the grocery store with you and having them pick out a new fruit or vegetable each week. Get your fresh stuff, and get them involved in preparing. Sometimes if they prepare it and see it, then they'll eat it.

Q: What's been the greatest challenge for you as owner of the business?

A: When I opened Health Beat, that was 32 years ago, so there weren't a lot of people that were really familiar with it. The reason I opened a health food store was there was nowhere really to go. That, too, gave me access to being able to continue educating people. When we first started doing cooking classes, we went to people's homes. That was always really important to me, being hands-on with people.

The struggle always is economics. I have a lot of overhead. That's why we always emphasize shopping locally. I do all my shopping locally. Especially for supplements, I would be leery. People will bring things they bought online and who knows whether its expired, and I don't know how its handled. When you spend money locally, it stays in your area, it helps everybody.

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Yoga as Post-Trauma Therapy

Most people have heard of the physical benefits of yoga. The word means "union" in Sanskrit, and the ancient practice of combining breathing and physical postures builds core strength, flexibility and alignment. As a fitness activity, yoga is comfortably in the mainstream now, with more than 25,000 yoga (and Pilates) studios in the United States as of 2014, according to an IBISWorld report.

With studios in every corner of the state, Vermonters are clearly on the bandwagon. In Burlington alone,

nearly a dozen venues offer hundreds of classes per week in manifold yogic lineages. The sight of a person strolling down Church Street with a rolled-up mat is as unremarkable as that of a snowboarder headed for the mountain.

Our full understanding of yoga's benefits is still evolving. But recent scientific studies confirm what yogis have been saying for more than 2,000 years: The practice can calm and soothe the mind as well as strengthen the body. Those therapeutic properties have led to a new emphasis on yoga for mental health — and some practitioners are taking the principle further, offering yoga as a prescription for trauma.

"It's a stealth thing," jokes Bob Luce, a longtime yoga teacher at Burlington's Tapna Studio and an attorney at Downs Rachlin Martin. Tapna specializes in Bikram, a style of yoga in which students progress through a set series of 26 postures in sweat-inducing heated rooms. "We get them in the door with this promise of fitness, but what they really get delivered is so much more," Luce says.

While some students may use downward dogs to lift the spirits, others come with graver issues. Some local yoga practitioners have begun offering workshops and private sessions to mitigate the mental, emotional and physical effects of trauma. They address potentially crippling symptoms — depression, anxiety, substance abuse, insomnia — that are generally relegated to psychiatry and other mental health treatments.

"This is yoga in service of healing," says Deb Sherrer, a yoga instructor at Laughing River Yoga in Burlington and a psychotherapist at the Vermont Center for Integrative Therapy in South Burlington, where she also teaches trauma-sensitive yoga to clients. "It's very gentle. It's very slow. And it's yoga in the broadest sense, in that this is all about self-care," she says. "This is about tuning in to your body, reconnecting and listening to what it needs."

Sherrer works with individual clients and leads groups for women who have been victims of trauma. Trauma-sensitive yoga differs from regular classes, she explains. While students in the latter are generally encouraged to keep pace with the instructor, "one of the basic tenets of trauma-sensitive yoga is that you're given complete permission to do what you need to do," Sherrer notes. "The whole situation is set up based on safety."

Simple flow sequences, such as undulating the spine between cat and cow poses, are favored over more active and stimulating sequences. The goal is to use yoga to help people regain a degree of ownership and control over parts of their bodies where they have experienced trauma — whether caused by an assault, an accident or life in a war zone.

The principles of trauma-sensitive yoga were developed at the Trauma Center at the Justice Resource Institute (JRI) in Brookline, Mass., where Sherrer received her certification in 2009. That's where clinical psychologist Bessel van der Kolk, an internationally recognized expert in psychological trauma, conducted groundbreaking studies with trauma victims.

Though post-traumatic stress disorder has generally been considered a mental health issue, a growing body of research indicates that trauma also has profoundly physical effects. In a 2014 study of yoga as an "adjunctive" treatment for women with PTSD, researchers found that sufferers experience a "loss of body awareness" that makes it difficult for them to control emotional reactions to external stimuli. Symptoms such as panic attacks trigger the sympathetic nervous system, which stimulates the fight-or-flight response, Sherrer notes.

Some scientists suggest those findings point to the value of somatic, or body-centric, treatments for PTSD sufferers, along with appropriate medication and talk therapy. (Insurance nonetheless doesn't cover therapeutic yoga.)

"Psychiatrists just don't pay much attention to sensate experience at all," JRI's van der Kolk told journalist Krista Tippett in a 2013 appearance on her public-radio show "On Being." A well-rounded treatment, he argued, ought to acknowledge the physical nature of trauma and its symptoms.

"If people are in a constant state of heartbreak and gut wrench, they do everything to shut down those feelings to their body," van der Kolk told Tippett. "One way of doing it is taking drugs and alcohol, and the other thing is that you can just shut down your emotional awareness of your body."

That's where yoga — and other mind-body activities such as tai chi and qigong — comes in. Preliminary studies at the Trauma Center and elsewhere indicate that yoga's physical effect on the body is almost diametrically opposed to that of trauma. Yoga promotes mindfulness and calmer states, which counteract the fight-or-flight impulse and make it easier for one to control one's reaction to triggers. Overall, as van der Kolk and his colleagues concluded in the 2014 study, yoga can help "improve the functioning of traumatized individuals by helping them to tolerate physical and sensory experiences associated with fear and helplessness, and to increase emotional awareness and affect tolerance."

Sherrer concurs with that assessment. "Trauma is something that affects our whole being — it's not just in our minds," she says. "Trauma, by its nature, is an extraordinary experience that overwhelms someone's regular coping mechanisms, and then, when it gets stuck in their system, ends up resulting in this host of symptoms that we think of as PTSD."

How those symptoms look depends on the individual, therapists caution. Laura Gibson, director of behavioral health at the Burlington Lakeside Community Based Outpatient Clinic, works with military veterans who suffer from PTSD. The disorder tends to manifest differently in each patient, she notes, though some patterns do appear.

"What I see a lot in the veteran population is hypervigilance," Gibson says. "They are very much on guard; they feel like they can't get a grasp or feel in control. They're constantly scanning for danger, looking at the rooftops or down alleyways."

Gibson, who joined the clinic in 2009, believes yoga is an important lifestyle and wellness tool, and a good complement to the range of treatments the Veterans Health Administration provides.

For the past few years, the Burlington Lakeside clinic has offered trauma-sensitive yoga classes (free for veterans) with Suzanne Boyd. The Huntington-based yoga practitioner is a military wife whose husband was twice deployed to Afghanistan. Boyd says she was compelled to get her yoga-teacher certification after her own practice helped her cope with her husband's second stint in a war zone.

"I knew from my own experience, with how yoga helped me manage depression, that it could be a valuable resource for people," Boyd says. "As I was going through the stress of having my husband deployed, I was seeing other families I know, spouses and children, going through the same stress. I knew it was something I could offer and tell other family members about that wasn't expensive."

One veteran, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells Seven Days that he suffered from depression following his retirement from the Navy, with which he had numerous deployments. The veteran, who also has bipolar disorder, says of Boyd's class, "Once a week, I get to do something positive for myself. They do a lot of pre-relaxation, and then you concentrate on breathing and stretching ... It helps me to get centered again." In that centered place, he explains, "your mind is clear, and you're more in control of your emotions."

Gibson says Boyd's classes have been popular; for some students, she adds, the experience is transformative. "I've seen people who, when I first mentioned yoga, looked at me like I had six heads — like yoga was the last thing on Earth they'd ever try," she says. "But with some persistence and a sense of humor, they went and, once they tried it out, they were hooked."

As a lab technician in the Air Force, Heather Satterwhite never saw combat. Nevertheless, she says that some of her military training involved "anxiety-inducing techniques," and that doing yoga at the Lakeside clinic has "been great for deprogramming and slowing down."

Satterwhite adds, "I've noticed a significant reduction in stress and anxiety and a better ability to act in the moment."

It's not just veterans who suffer from PTSD. As Tapna Studio's Luce notes, just about everyone has experienced some kind of trauma: negative experiences during childhood, unhealthy relationships, car accidents, sports injuries. Many of us walk through life spending more time than we should in states of stress or fight-or-flight mode, even if those states aren't severe enough to result in a diagnosis.

As a Bikram teacher, Luce says he has noted that students struggling with depression or anxiety are attracted to the rigor, discipline and community that the activity offers. With high temperatures and challenging postures performed in front of a mirror, his classes leave little room for the mind to wander.

As a litigator, Luce specializes in civil lawsuits involving brain and spinal cord injuries. He's also president of the board of the nonprofit Brain Injury Association of Vermont. Both positions require him to be up on the latest brain science, and he's something of a local expert on traumatic brain injury (TBI).

That brain science, Luce says, shows yoga creating a positive feedback loop that contributes to recovery. Though yoga and mindfulness aren't for everyone, he acknowledges, some of his TBI clients have benefited from such practices designed to bring people into the present moment, tailored to their post-injury body and level of ability.

"I find that the single greatest impediment to recovery, whether from a brain injury or another kind of injury, is depression," Luce says. "It's being unable to give up focusing on what you've lost, on what you can't do, and to be in the present and redefine yourself in the present."

The aim of therapy is to help those who've suffered trauma interact with the world based on their current situation rather than a memory. To that end, "practices like yoga," Luce says, "happen to be an effective tool."