Health Article: The Rest and Digest State!

HOW YOU EAT IS AS POWERFUL AS WHAT YOU EAT!
By Brittany Wood Nickerson, Practicing Herbalist

Our digestive system takes in and breaks down food and experiences. It is through the process of digestion that bits of food are transformed into vital nutrients – complex chemical processes work to extract vitamins and minerals, break down fats into lipids, and proteins into amino acids. A well functioning digestive system has the wisdom to break down, absorb and utilize the nutrition it needs from the food we eat and let go of the parts and pieces that it does not.

Book Review: BEYOND BROCCOLI: Creating a Biologically Balanced Diet When a Vegetarian Diet Doesn’t Work

BEYOND BROCCOLI: Creating a Biologically Balanced Diet When a Vegetarian Diet Doesn’t Work
By Susan Schenck, Lac
Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

For those who are, were, or might become vegetarians, this is a useful book. Written by a woman whose earlier book The Live Food Factor extolled the nutritional benefits of raw plants. Courageous woman! When she found after six years of raw veganism that she didn’t thrive, she looked “beyond broccoli,” and, once her health was restored, she wrote this book.

Health Article: The Power of Peppermint

A favorite herbal medicine of the ancients, peppermint leaves have been found in Egyptian pyramids dating back to 1,000 BC. Modern scientific investigations have now confirmed that this remarkable plant has over a dozen healing properties.

In our continuing effort to educate folks to the vast array of healing agents found in the natural world around us, we are excited to feature peppermint, a member of the aromatic mint family that you may already have squirreled away somewhere in your kitchen cupboard. While most have experienced peppermint as a flavoring agent, or perhaps as a comforting cup of herbal tea, few are aware of its wide range of experimentally confirmed therapeutic properties.

Book Review: Coping with Heartburn, GERD, SIBO, and IBS

Coping with Heartburn, GERD, SIBO, and IBS
Fast Tract Digestion by Norman Robillard
Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

For anyone puzzled about GERD (Gastro-esophageal reflux disease) or SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) or IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) – puzzled despite reading books and seeing doctors, Fast Tract Digestion by Norman Robillard may help.

This ‘alphabet soup’ of digestive ailments is very likely one brew connecting different symptoms that vary according to where you feel the distress. Excessive and painful belching oresophagus is called GERD. If the symptoms are intestinal cramps, diarrhea, constipation, bloating, and flatulence – it may be either SIBO or IBS. (N.B., IBS differs from IBD, inflammatory bowel disease, in that IBD is considered an autoimmune disease and a more serious problem.)

Health Article: Green Tea Changes Estrogen Metabolism and Breast Cancer Risk

By Case Adams, Naturopath, posted on greenmedinfo.com 03/09/2013

New research from the U.S. National Institutes of Health shows that the biochemicals in green tea change a women’s estrogen metabolism, revealing at least one of its mechanisms for reducing the risk of breast cancer.

The study comes from the NIH’s National Cancer Institute, and was led by Dr. Barbara Fuhrman. The researchers tested the levels of urinary estrogens and metabolites among 181 healthy Japanese American women from California and Hawaii. Of the group, 72 of the women were postmenopausal. The remainder of the group was premenopausal.

Book Review: The Breakthrough Depression Solution

James Greenblatt, a local psychiatrist practicing in Waltham, MA gives special attention to the role nutrition can play in mental illness.

He works with both adults and children and, though fully prepared to prescribe medications when useful, he also points to the statistics showing the limited effectiveness of such drugs. In the last twenty years the number of Americans on psychiatric disability leave has trebled. What’s wrong with this picture?

Book Review: AN EPIDEMIC OF ABSENCE

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff
Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

Moises Velasquez-Manoff is a journalist – a science writer primarily — who has taken on the job of translating an ambitious scope of research for the non-medical reader. The central thesis is that we evolved with parasites, mostly insects and worms, and without their stimulus our immune systems get restless and look for targets that often end up being some part of ourselves. This sort of ‘friendly fire’ becomes allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases. It’s important to point out that the many examples in the book are based on correlation, not causality. The correlations are indeed compelling, however. One, for instance, is that mothers who live on farms with animals have children with less asthma and fewer allergies. Another correlation links the end of malaria in Sardinia to a rapid rise in two autoimmune diseases, multiple sclerosis and type-1 diabetes. This book is dense with such examples.

Book Review: COULD IT BE B-12? An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses

By Sally M. Pacholok & Jeffrey Stuart

Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

“Epidemic of Misdiagnoses,” the subtitle of this book, sounds like hyperbole. But to some of those who have been misdiagnosed it may, on the contrary, seem tame, especially if psychotic or demented or paralyzed from nerve damage because the lack of vitamin B-12 was not noticed by their doctors. Similarly, wouldn’t a parent whose aloof and silent toddler is labeled autistic – instead of being cured with B-12 injections — find that subtitle reasonable? So think the authors of this book.

Vitamin B-12 is essential to the human diet because we don’t manufacture it but we need it. B-12 is functionally diverse, playing a significant role in the nervous, cardio-vascular, gastric, immune and mental systems.

Who is at risk for B-12 deficiency? Vegans and those who avoid animal products; people who take pills to suppress stomach acid; people with intestinal or other problems that interfere with B-12 absorption; and people whose dentist has used laughing gas instead of Novocain. There are also some with a genetic anomaly that gives them pernicious anemia, the name of the blood disorder, which results from B-12 deficiency.

Click here to download the full review.

Book Review: Perfect Health Diet: Four Steps to Renewed health, Youthful Vitality, and Long Life

By Paul & Shou-Ching Jaminet, YinYang Press, 2010

Reviewed by Rosalind Michahelles, Certified Holistic Health Counselor

If you’re interested in the so-called “paleo diet” or if you’re interested in knowing why we might benefit from eating as our distant ancestors did, those ancestors who evolved before the development of agriculture, then this book will interest you. Even if you feel perfectly healthy on another regime, you might well be interested in reading in these pages about ways to combat disease through diet.