Most vitamins and herbals are sold as “food supplements” to augment nutrition and promote wellness. The more recent term nutriceutical is a blend of the words nutrient and pharmaceutical. Nutriceuticals are also food derivatives, but sold for their medical properties to treat various problems. Often there are research studies supporting their use treating a target …Read More
Category: Health
Holy Basil (Tulsi) – Stress Relief
Holy Basil (also known as Tulsi) is a member of the mint family and closely related to sweet basil used in cooking. Originally from India, the plant is considered sacred and has many uses in Ayurvedic medicine. As an adaptogen, this herbal remedy is thought to bring the body back to balance. Stress Relief According to WebMD, holy …Read More
Nocebo Effect and Medical Hexing
Many people have heard of the placebo effect, but fewer have heard of the nocebo effect. The Double-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial The gold standard for medical research studies is the double-blind randomized controlled trial (RCT). The simplest RCT study might take a target population (e.g., patients with high blood pressure) and then randomize them into …Read More
Kelly McGonigal: Getting Good at Stress
With so much of the country facing the stress of natural disasters, we see communities coming together and neighbors helping neighbors. However, in the face of tragedy there is also the other side of humanity. Stress brings out both the best and the worst in all of us. For years, health professionals have been telling …Read More
Matthew Sanford: Transcending Trauma with Yoga
“Mind-body integration is more than a personal health strategy. It is a movement of consciousness that can change the world.” ― Matthew Sanford At 13 years old, Matthew Sanford was paralyzed from the chest down in an accident that killed his father and his sister. Trauma, he says, happens not just to an individual but to …Read More
Symptoms and Syndromes
Marcia kept getting a rash all over her body – red, raised, itchy. The welts or hives would fade away, and then quickly come back. The itching and redness would resolve with Benadryl, but when it wore off, the welts would come back. She changed to a mild soap that was hypoallergenic. She changed her …Read More
Eat Your Greens
Eat your greens! Yuck! It’s pond scum. It’s dark blue-green spiral-shaped algae, harvested from lakes in warm climates, and a nutrient-dense superfood! Yuck! It’s pond scum. It’s good for you. It’s spirulina. Yuck! When I was growing up, one of my cousins (who shall remain nameless, but you know who you are!) … she …Read More
Storytelling for Business
What’s your story? (the negative) “Your story” is sometimes thought of in the negative context (see yesterday’s post with Byron Katie). The mind is good about “making up stories” about why we do what we do, endlessly rationalizing the emotional reactions that we sometimes do without a second (or even first) thought. “Well, of course, …Read More