Lifestyle
Dr Dilis wide awake to the benefits of healing sleep
Lifestyle – Judy Murphy talks to a GP and herbalist who has turned her focus onto sleep problems
You know the feeling. You fall in to bed before midnight, eyes heavy with sleep, only to find that while you had been snoozing blissfully on the couch an hour before, now you couldn’t be more wide awake.
Or maybe you manage to drop off, only to wake up in the middle of the night and find that sleep eludes you until it’s almost time to get up.
Anecdotal and statistical evidence shows that sleep deprivation is one of the biggest problems of modern society. Whether it’s because of small children, using high-tech gadgets, shift-work, stress, or generally poor lifestyles, many of us are facing into each new morning almost as exhausted as we were when we fell asleep.
Dr Dilis Clare, a qualified GP and herbalist, who runs Health and Herbs in Galway City’s Sea Road, says she can help, courtesy of a dedicated Sleep Clinic which she has just launched.
For some cases, it may take time to find a solution, but they do exist, she stresses.
“If someone has 33 years of sleeping problems you can’t expect to be better in a month, but if you aren’t sleeping better after three months, then I’d fire myself!”
Entering her shop and practice in Sea Road is to discover a world where natural medicine reigns supreme. There is an array of tinctures and dried herbs for a variety of conditions from the menopause to stress and, of course, insomnia. These are all made by Dr Clare, who also produces a range of skin creams and teas, using herbs and other natural ingredients.
Just inside the door, there is a dispensing drawer containing a selection of the most popular herbs that people can buy individually, including elderflower, rose, slippery elm, marigold and sage. These were available to people long before the recession, says Dr Clare, who set up on Sea Road in 1992.
But, as she points out, she is also qualified to prescribe more conventional medicine as she is a qualified GP.
Her Sleep Clinic, which was launched by Consultant Respiratory Physician, Dr JJ Gilmartin, follows on from a Heart Clinic, which she also runs out of Health and Herbs.
it’s all part of raising awareness of Health &Herbs, where both herbal and pharmaceutical medicine are offered – integrated medicine is how Dr Clare describes it, saying it offers the best of both science and tradition.
One in every three people will die of heart disease, but most won’t do anything to prevent it, because heart problems don’t hurt until you get an attack, she observes. But lack of sleep does hurt, so people look for help.
Broken sleep can be caused by various factors, she explains. It can be stress, it can be pain such as arthritis, it can be problems with digestion – there are many reasons. If there’s a problem with sleep apnoea she will refer people to Dr Gilmartin’s Sleep Clinic, which specialises in that area. Dr Clare deals specifically with insomnia and sleep problems – although people who have these may also have sleep apnoea, she points out. In any case, everybody here is treated individually.
The first step with a client is a consultation with nutritionist Michelle Hanley, who studied at both UL and NUI Maynooth, and who has been working with Dr Clare for five years. Clients will keep a three-day food diary and then have a diet and lifestyle analysis with Michelle. Working from their food diary, she will offer practical help on changing eating habits, providing menus, shopping lists and recipes for food that will help aid sleep.
She will teach them the benefits of eating certain food, including fibre and essential fatty acids – people forget how important these are in maintaining health, she says. Any food intolerances will also be analysed – it might just be that someone is eating too much of a certain type of food and needs more variety.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
1923
Optimistic outlook
The optimism of Mr. P. J. Boland was a refreshing thing at the inaugural meeting of the Galway Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday. He saw great good in Galway: it was a delightful place to live and in a place worth working for.
It possessed the elements of greater good in the future; a prideful local patriotism; a desire to see things better done here than elsewhere.
That was a factor that should be availed of but was not. Why? Because men talked and talked of what should be done, but had no organised driving force to translate their ideas into action. Hence the present effort to establish a Chamber of Commerce.
This optimism is a heartening thing, and it will be justified if the new members enter the Chamber of Commerce in the spirt shown by the chairman of the inaugural meeting.
When the Sligo Chamber was being inaugurated of the 29th December last, a Senator A. Jackson, D.L., who presided, pointed out that there was scarcely an important town in England, Wales or Ireland, and certainly not a seaport town that had not a Chamber of Commerce in existence for many years.
He pointed to the significant, but fairly well-established fact in the matter of projected legislation far more importance was paid to representations from Chambers of Commerce than to representations made by municipal bodies or harbour boards.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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Iomar Barrett has many strings to his bow. A former champion footballer, retired teacher, and part-time auctioneer, the Mountbellew man is also a talented musician and composer. But because he doesn’t write down his tunes, many have been lost. His friends Chris Kelly and Proinsias Kitt were determined to record some for posterity as JUDY MURPHY learns.
During Iomar Barret’s younger years, back in the 1960s, legendary musicians like Paddy Moloney (Chieftains) and music collectors including Garech de Brún of Claddagh Records and RTÉ presenter Ciarán Mac Mathúna regularly visited their family home in Mountbellew. The Barretts had a pub and ballroom where traditional music was played and nurtured, and Iomar has many fond memories of those days and nights.
His father Paddy (PV) Barrett, originally from Killimor near Portumna, was a talented fiddle player who was involved in setting up a branch of Comhaltas in Mountbellew, along with other local Irish music enthusiasts.
But while PV played fiddle and Iomar’s mother, Philomena, played piano, Iomar says that it was his first music teacher, Tommy Mulhaire, who gave him a real grá for the button accordion and the tradition generally.
The legendary composer and fiddle player Paddy Fahey from Kilconnell was another major influence on the young Iomar even if he didn’t realise that until later.
Like Paddy Fahy, Iomar is also a composer and his second CD, Sweet Mountbellew Town, is being launched next week in Galway’s Town Hall Theatre, with the legendary Máirtín O’Connor doing the honours. The event is a fundraiser for COPE,
This album was recorded with conjunction with Mountbellew guitarist Chris Kelly, while Castleblakeney man Proinsias Kitt also features.
Nobody could accuse Iomar of rushing his second album as it’s been 25 years since his debut offering, Fresh Notes, with Chris Kelly having played a major role in its creation too.
Like most traditional musicians, Iomar wasn’t trained to read music and while he composes lots of tunes, he doesn’t commit them to paper.
If he gets an idea for a tune, he’ll pick up the accordion and start composing on the instrument.
“Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it’s middling and sometimes it’s awful and you throw it out,” he says of his creations. “If something is good enough it’ll stand the test of time.”
By that, he means a tune will remain in his head until he’s familiar with it.
And music isn’t his only talent. In his youth, Iomar shone at sport, playing football at club and county level and winning a Minor All-Ireland football medal with Galway.
His day job was as a maths teacher in Ballinasloe’s Garbally College until he retired, and the family had a hardware business in Mountbellew. These days, Iomar “does a bit of auctioneering”. He never wanted to play music for a living but it has always been central to his life.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Health, Beauty and Fashion with Denise McNamara
Jewellery can be a very difficult thing to buy for anybody else as my husband will duly attest. It’s very hard to turn around and say you don’t like what they agonised over buying you. And to sense that somebody isn’t crazy about what you bought them.
An interesting article came in which purports to help narrow that choice based on astrology.
Probably the greatest load of guff but it makes for fascinating reading. I do happen to agree with their jewellery choice for me, a Leo.
I can never resist reading my star signs predictions if I happen upon them in a newspaper or magazine. And I’m not alone. Last month alone 862,000 people searched for ‘zodiac signs’ across the water.
There has been an 85 per cent increase in searches for zodiac jewellery in the last year, prompted no doubt by the likes of Meghan Markle, Hailey Bieber, Bella Hadid and Rihanna sporting jewellery of their or their loved ones’ zodiac signs.
A Zodiac sign refers to the constellations through which the sun passes and has been used for years by astrologers to predict a person’s personality traits. The 12 different Zodiac signs are spread out across the calendar year and you will fall under the sign if born on a specific date.
Astrologer and celebrity psychic Inbaal Honigman has partnered with British company Hatton Jewellers to zone in on what the best match would be for each zodiac sign when it comes to jewellery.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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