Search Results for tuesday's Natural Health

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"It's Time to Retire the Pyramid."
The Food Guide Pyramid, beloved by lunch ladies and health teachers, isn't working in real-life America. The Power Plate may be the answer. Promoted by The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, The Power Plate shows the only necessary food groups for a truly healthful diet are fruits, veggies, grains and legumes (beans, lentils, peas, nuts and seeds). Animal products are optional foods, w
The Skinny on Sleep
How many hours of sleep do you get on average? For most people, even those of us who pride ourselves on living a healthy lifestyle, the answer is: Not Enough. But even a minimal lack of sleep has been linked in some studies to both obesity and a higher risk of diabetes. Just three nights of staying up too late and getting up too early increases insulin resistance, accordin
Another reason to love vegan bacon
This story about how high-fat foods re-wire our brains to overeat was so good that it’s re-wiring my brain to crave a vegan BLT sandwich at 11 pm.
Champions of Breakfast
Vegan foods are some of the easiest, best and most nutritious of any breakfast options. A package of homemade vegan granolas arrived in my mailbox this week from from a friend in Virginia who is an amazing chef and the brains and craftswomanship behind MacShack Acres so I’ve been eating pumpkin seed-ginger granola or cranberry pecan maple granol
An apple a day keeps … arsenic in your child’s diet?
I’m the kind of mom who thinks about every element of my children’s school lunch. Every morning, I make sure I’m sending them off with the healthiest choices (that they’ll actually eat). I felt really good about that — until Iread the investigative report in the St. Petersburg Times that shows potentially unsafe levels of
Pandora’s Water Bottle: A must-read Audubon article
Worried about all those hormone-affecting, hidden chemical compounds in water bottles, baby bottles, our water supply, cosmetics, shampoos, kitchenware and more? Also worried that most information out there about BPAs and these other chemicals is either too heavy, dry or contradictory to understand? My hand raises on both counts. There’s hope in the March-April issue o
Speak up for our fellow Earthlings
A whistle-blowing veterinarian called USDA officials on the carpet today in testimony before Congress for what he says were covered up or ignored inhumane and unsanitary conditions at slaughterhouses  including ”butchering days-old calves that were too weak or sick to stand. He also describes being threatened with transfer or demotion after citing a plant for&
Easiest Cleanse EVER!
The Master Cleanse, as it’s called (maple syrup, lemon juice and cayenne), always seemed like a big hassle to me. But this organic Vibrant Cleanse powder simplifies one of the most oft mentioned cleanses for optimum health. (Note: Fasting and cleanses are not for everyone. Consult your doctor to decide if any health issues you may prohibit you from doing a cleanse.) Made by the
Watching Grass Grow is a lot more interesting than you think
This video by Liferegenerator (a.k.a. Dan the Man With the Master Plan) is a great primer in wheatgrass growing and juicing. I posted a few weeks back about my slow gravitation toward adding wheatgrass to my diet. Upon recommendation of my fantastic new accupuncturist (a.k.a. Dan at The Sanctuary), I started adding more greens into my diet last week, including wheatgrass. Now, I&rsq
Food Obsession
Some foods like meat, cheese, chocolate and simple sugars create an addiction-like craving that is almost impossible to withstand once you’re hooked, which usually happens to most of us with at least one of those common foods during childhood. Dr. Neal Barnard, founder of the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, wrote the book Breaking the Food Seduction 
Obama says no more fat kids
Finally kids get some nutrition help from someone in high places when their parents either don’t know how or won’t help kids who are overweight and unhealthy. Read about Michelle Obama’s plan to eradicate childhood obesity in one generation and be inspired. I only wish she would mention eating vegan more, most or all of the time as one major component to
Maca-mania!
People around here are crazy about Maca, a ground up root of a South American plant that apparently boosts energy, regulates hormone levels in both men and women, balance the adrenals, boost happy mood chemistry in the brain and, last but not least, increases sexual response in both men and women. (No wonder it’s flying off the shelves of the organic market where I
If you don’t eat animal products, are there still other foods you should “never, ever, ever, ever eat,” as discussed in this insightful list re-blogged here? I’d add this: Never, ever eat anything that you know will make you feel guilty. If you can enjoy that vegan Oreo every now and again without guilt, go for it. If eating something less-than-healthy brings on any self
A few BPAs with lunch?
About four years ago, I ditched all of our food storage containers made of plastics. We refrigerated all sorts of leftovers and re-heated them in the plastic bowls with lids in the microwave quite often. But I had heard rumblings from European press that chemical compounds called BPAs were released from the plastics in those containers as well as baby bottles, lined food cans
Drinking Grass
I learn a lot at the fabulous health food store and deli where I work, and wheatgrass juice is my new favorite 20 questions subject: “Wow, really? It does all that for your body in just 1 oz? How do you grow it? How much does one of those wheatgrass juicers cost and why does it have to look so much like a meat grinder? Do I really want to drink something daily that tastes like I’m s
Walk this Way
A shoe changed my life. Odd statement, I know. But it’s true. For years, I struggled with significant back and hip pain. Pain that didn’t stop me from running a marathon and many half-marathons, 1oks and 5 ks, but did send me running to countless chiropractors, physical therapists, vitamin shops, pharmacies and mattress stores. Then about a year ago, a UPS man appeared on my do
Is Soy Always Healthy?
I’ve recently become a bit suspicious about an old standby favorite: Soy. Don’t get me wrong, my local orders to my tofu supplier won’t dwindle, nor will I be giving up my occasional Tofutti Cuties. But since reading Michael Pollan’s latest book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto I have cut back on buying most things for my family that contain &ldquo
The Winding Path to Perfection
Living a healthy, compassionate life isn’t a straight and wide path. Every day, there’s so many twists and turns that stand in the way. (There’s my serious coffee habit, to name one.) If I felt like I had to live the “Perfectly Healthy Life,” I think I would sit down with a big carton of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food (definitely not vegan — or healthy) and
Veganspiration In Children’s Books
I recently read an article in which a mother lamented that her grade school-age daughter weighed more than her older brother. The mom commented that she knew her family’s busy, fast food lifestyle contributed to her child’s weight problem. She had to admit to herself and the readers that her daughter wasn’t driving herself through McDonald’s many times a week. According
Steps to a Healthier Life
The American Medical Association launched a campaign last month called “Healthier Life Steps” to encourage us all to make small changes toward better health. The AMA focused on: 1) poor diet2) physical inactivity 3) tobacco use 4) and excessive or risky use of alcohol. These four personal lifestyle factors are “significantly related to heart disease, diabetes, cance
What’s the point?
Ashtanga Yoga is known to be the style for people who want to sweat buckets, twist as far as possible and who view yoga as another kind of athletics. In a yoga class I recently had the good fortune to attend taught by well-known Ashtanga instructor Bryan Kest, Kest took an intriguingly different approach to Ashtanga. He focused on the root purpose of yoga, and he asked everyone in the room to as
Astragalus in the Air
Last weekend, for the first time in eons, I traveled by air without my kids along. This meant no pouring of the complementary apple juice into a sippy cup for the toddler and playing Connect Four on the tray table with the preschooler while throwing a piece of gum across the aisle for the air-pressure challenged ears of the grade schooler. This meant I was sound asleep, mouth gaping open, catching
Happy 120th Birthday?
If you could live to 120 and beyond, would you want to? My answer depends upon how healthy and mentally vibrant I would be. My Great-grandma Sadie (that baby’s me on her lap in today’s photo) lived to be 100, but she struggled to get there. Nearly blind and in a nursing home by the time she reached 100, this poet and widow of a Civil War vet, swore her longevity came from a daily glass
Searching for the Big Mind
Have you ever had one of those maddening Inbox Moments that makes a calm, normal, chugging-along kinda day turn upside down with just one little click you didn’t necessarily have to perform on that bold one-quarter-inch line until, perhaps, later…tomorrow…next week…or just have happened to accidentally mark it as spam instead of opening?Okay. So I suppose you’ve gu
Give me a D!
No, not for Dana. For Vitamin D, the wonder vitamin. Studies have shown its important role in reducing the risk of many types of cancer, arrhythmias, MS, depression, autoimmune disorders and, of course, osteoporosis. Getting enough sun exposure makes sure Vitamin D synthesis occurs in the body. But these days, with warnings about applying sunscreen every moment you go outside, most people are
The Great Debate
I love to talk with people about what it means to them to be vegan or vegetarian, or to eat meat “ethically” or even why some people choose not to think about what they eat in those terms at all. Why? Because I’m still sorting out the issues myself. My view may change over time, but at the outset of this blog I’ll go on record as saying that after years of going back a
Here Goes the Sun.
For people like me who live in cold-weather climates and battle the winter doldrums, September’s daily shifts in weather and light are a small glimpse of what’s to come in the months ahead. Days are getting shorter, cooler and cloudier. The sun feels like it’s losing strength as we in the Northern Hemisphere tilt away. But Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), as the fall and