Mind-Body Approach Beats Usual Care for Back Pain
I've written about how chronic back pain is best treated with a mind-body approach. This week a JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) article shows that mindfulness, yoga, and cognitive behavioral therapy outperform usual care when it comes to low back...
Heart Wisdom … A Solution Right Under Our Noses
The pace, pressures, and traumas of life pull us out of our heart and into our head. Living in our head keeps us in control and at a safe distance from reality and the creative, often vulnerable, felt wisdom of the heart. The heart's wisdom communicates as an energy...
The Perils of Ignoring Your Body’s Wisdom
We tend to live in our heads, safely divorced from the sensations and feelings that emanate from the life of our bodies as if only thinking mattered. Thinking is easy because it's automatic ... but we do have options. Learning to connect with the felt life of your...
Supplemental Ketones to the Rescue
Earlier this year I read the account of a Dr. Terry Wahl who recovered from Progressive Multiple Sclerosis through diet. She documented her amazing story and the specifics of the diet in The Wahl Protocol. The good news is that it's possible to do the medically...
Breast Health and Iodine
This post is a follow-up to The Iodine and Hypothyroid Dilemma that discussed the safe use of supplemental iodine for thyroid health. In this post, we'll take a brief look at the role iodine plays in breast health. Here are some interesting facts regarding iodine and...
The Iodine and Hypothyroid Dilemma
The symptoms of underactive thyroid function, starting with weight gain and low body temperature, dry skin, depression, constipation, fuzzy thinking, fatigue, headaches, high cholesterol and fibromyalgia, are epidemic. Thyroid experts suggest that up to 90% of the...
So My Heart has a Brain?
For those of us who tend to be left brain oriented, myself for one, the HeartMath science can be the evidence we need to more fully acknowledge and trust the wisdom of our hearts in the pursuit of healing. This post about the heart is the first in a series addressing...
Energy Medicine for Cravings & Addictions
Often willpower isn't enough to successfully overcome an addictive craving. Old habitual behaviors can seem to be running on automatic making it much easier to repeat and reinforce them than to alter them. Over time, this is a pattern that not only keeps us stuck but...
EFT & Energy Psychology Research
One of the most effective healing techniques I've experienced, which also happens to be one of the easiest to learn, so easy you can teach it to your children, is also one of the most difficult to explain or to make sense of from a western scientific point of view....
Anxiety and Sleep Medications … The Real Dangers
In his new book Deadly Psychiatry And Organised Denial, Professor Peter Gøtzsche reveals that psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death in the United Kingdom behind heart disease and cancer. I would suggest that this holds true for the U.S. as well. In an...
Probiotics for Anxiety
Common experience tells us that anxiety can have a detrimental influence on our digestive tract. For example, when we're anxious our stomach can become upset, or our bowel can become disturbed in one way or another. We might say that a certain anxious episode made us...
Rewiring Your Brain: From Negative to Positive Thinking
Our brain is programmed with a bias towards looking for the negative or the threatening, rather than the positive. This is a survival oriented trait that keeps us prepared to defend ourselves. This helps to explain why negative thoughts are so easy to entertain....
Your Ability to Feel Equals Your Ability to Heal
A key theme of my blog posts is that ignored, avoided, and especially, unconscious feelings trigger a stress response that's largely responsible for the breakdown of mental, emotional, and physical health that's so prevalent. Recently a meta-study that was...
Low Thyroid, Adrenals, and Iodine?
There's a lot of conflicting information around the use of iodine supplementation. There is conflict surrounding whether or not supplementation is helpful or injurious, as well as, which forms of iodine are best. Since iodine is necessary for the proper function of...
Support for Stressed Adrenals
The adrenal glands bear the brunt of our overly stressed lifestyles. Adrenal overwork and fatigue help to explain how 'stress', something that can seem so mental or emotional, leads to physical illness. Chronic stress disrupts the balance of the adrenal hormones which...
Body Awareness Quiets the Mind
Have you noticed how a mind can be a terrible thing? A busy mind can torment us in many ways, negatively influencing both our psyche and body. The mind is busy, often negative … worrying or obsessing, and the body is tense. Many of us are so hypnotized by our minds...
How Do I Quiet My Busy, Anxious Mind?
A busy mind, one that disturbs our peace of mind, or sleep, or makes us anxious, is a reflection of a deeper imbalance. A busy mind reflects a stressed nervous system and brain with negative implications for our mental, emotional and physical health. A busy mind can...
Anxiety and the Breathing Cure
When you're anxious you tend to over breathe versus breathing silently and slowly through your nose. When you breathe too much you tend to exhale too much carbon dioxide and this actually lowers the amount of oxygen that is available to your tissues and especially to...
Talking to … Versus Drugging Chronic Pain
The author of Eat, Pray, Love Elizabeth Gilbert recently shared her account of how she dealt with chronic, severe knee pain that hadn't responded to treatment, natural or otherwise. She decided to get very quiet and simply ask her knee what it needed. The response...
Combating Stress-induced Food Cravings
It becomes more difficult to exercise self-discipline when your brain function and body chemistry are negatively influenced by stress. During the stress response, which could be triggered by something as ordinary as an upsetting phone call, our neurology and chemistry...