Proper digestion is critical for overall health and wellness. One of Hippocrates’ most well known quotes is “all disease begins in the gut”. There is a lot of truth to this statement. Digestion is the mechanical and chemical breakdown of food, which is ultimately used to provide energy and nutrients to every single cell in our bodies.
Read MoreHow Orthorexia Prevented Me From Truly Finding Health
Was I just stuck in a pseudo-recovery stage and was my obsession with being healthy actually orthorexia? Was my orthorexia actually making me worse and preventing full recovery? Maybe I was onto something. Maybe I had found the answer to heal once and for all.
Read MoreGut Health Facts Everyone Should Know (Part II)
Instead of being taught nutrition and how to find the underlying cause for disease, we are sold on what medications will make us feel better. This creates a bias that has been perpetuated by the medical community. As a population, we are over-prescribed medications. Granted, I understand that sometimes they are necessary, but a lot of times they are not.
Read MoreGut Health Facts Everyone Should Know (Part I)
Our microbiome consists over about 100 trillion living microbes (bacteria, fungi, and viruses) which mainly live in our gut (i.e. the large intestine). These microbes have a symbiotic relationship with us; we could not exist without them and they without us. They help us to digest our food, crowd out harmful bacteria, maintain the integrity of our gut lining, help the body absorb nutrients, modulate genes, and neutralize cancer-causing compounds.
Read MoreThoughts on Life and Digestion
Life hasn’t been all butterflies and rainbows, trust me on that. I have had some challenges this year that have brought me down and that I’m continuing to work through. But what has changed recently is my mindset around these challenges. I have finally come to accept that challenges exist so that we can grow and become better versions of ourselves. They are an inherent part of life. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be where I am today without all of the health challenges that I’ve faced.
Read MoreAre Obesogens Making Us Fat?
When we think of our waistlines and how to lose weight, we commonly focus on exercise and diet. If we don’t eat “x” food we’ll lose some pounds, or if we only would start running we’ll finally slim down. That’s what all the blogs and magazines have certainly led us to believe. I am all about the importance of exercise and diet on health, but what if I told you there was something else just as important that many of us overlook?
Read MorePrescribing Fresh Food for Weight Loss
Imagine this… You are struggling with losing some extra pounds and may have a chronic health condition (or two). Your medical bills just keep rising and the number of prescriptions you take just grows. You feel like absolute crap and can’t get motivated to stick to an exercise and diet plan. You are stuck in a rut and need some serious help.
Read MoreAre We Too Clean?
Is our obsession with being clean, shunning dirt, and taking antibiotics every time our nose gets runny or we feel under the weather actually hurting us? Are we overdoing it with the anti-bacterial soap and the pill popping? Some expects in the field of medicine certainly think so.
Read MoreIs Healthcare Good For Our Health?
TWhile social determinants account for 80% of our health, 88% of healthcare investment is in clinical care and doesn’t even consider these factors. This is a huge disconnect. Our medical system currently only treats the symptom, the clinical issue at hand. It does not take into account the other factors in a patient’s life that may be impacting their health in a big way, which are usually these social determinants.
Read MoreWhat is Functional Medicine?
I like to call our healthcare system a “disease-care” system because that’s what it is. We excel when it comes to trauma care, but when it comes to long-term health and wellness, we stink. In general, Americans aren’t taking off their shoe to remove the rock and find the true source of illness and disease. Most of us just go to the doctor and get a medication to deal with the problem. A short-term fix, if you will, to get rid of the symptom. Then 20 years down the road we end up on 10 different medications and wonder how we got to where we are.
Read MoreNatural Ways to Heal from a Winter Cold
My homemade bone broth - recipe below!
It starts with a sniffle and a cough, then another cough. Soon enough everyone around you is coughing. And then you start to feel it too… This was me last week at work and may have been you recently too. I felt great one day, a little tired the next, then BAM, it hit me. The dreaded winter cold.
Read MoreImproving School Lunch Programs
As an educator of health and wellness, I get really excited when I read about organizations and programs that are making a difference in our world by reducing food waste, educating people on nutrition, working to improve school lunches and finding other innovative ways to improve our food systems and our health.
Read MoreWhat's Really In Your Makeup Bag
Did you know that The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no authority to require companies to test their cosmetic products for safety? Or that the FDA also does not review or approve the vast majority of products or ingredients in our makeup before they hit the shelves?
Read MoreWhy Gut Health Matters
Hippocrates, the ancient Greek physician known as the father of modern medicine, once said that “all disease begins in the gut.” It’s taken us a while, but I think we are finally realizing that this ancient medicinal wisdom is actually true.
Read MoreNatural Solutions for Thyroid Health
While we can’t change our age, we can work on our sleeping habits and stress and we can eat a healthier diet to improve the health of our gut and get adequate levels of minerals our thyroid needs.
Read MoreWhat is Hypothyroidism?
Why is hypothyroidism commonly undiagnosed? Well there are two main reasons. First, the range on lab tests for “normal” thyroid function is very large, so you may be struggling with an underactive thyroid but still be considered “normal”. This is what happened to me; I went to 3 doctors before I found one who agreed with me that my results weren’t “normal”.
Read MoreEmotional Eating Manifesto
For years I avoided thinking of the term emotional eater, because that is what I was. Yep, I freely admit it to the world. Believe me, saying it makes me inwardly cringe. Big time.
Read MoreIt's Just a Number
Also impacting me is the commonly held idea that weight directly determines health. But for me and many athletic girls out there, that’s just not true. Weight is just a number, not the be all end all indicator of health. It is an important one yes, but not a number that should be considered all by its lonesome self.
Read MorePrescription Drug Problems
As a society, we depend on prescription drugs to treat any ailment we may have. But has anyone stopped to think about the underlying problem that caused said ailment? Prescription drugs generally only treat an existing problem, try to lessen its symptoms while not necessarily always solving it. Don’t you think the better approach is addressing what is really causing the problem in the first place?
Read MoreLearning from the Blue Zones
You may have heard of them. These places around the world where people seem to live much longer than the average human. Not only do they live longer (inhabitants reach the age of 100 at a rate ten times greater than in the U.S.), but their quality of life is better and the rate of disease is much lower.
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