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Why all the cool kids are growing pineapple
There are pineapples growing in my garden. As a Canadian who was always struggling to get even tomatoes and peppers to grow in my short summer season, this is the height of tropical decadence. As a nutrition fiend and herbalist, there are some major health benefits to growing this fruit and I thought I would share a couple of them here. Pineapple has gained respect in the past couple decades or so in the health field because of the enzyme bromelain. Bromelain helps with the digestion of proteins, so it is sometimes found in digestive system supplements or weight loss products, but it also works to break down dead protein…
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Emotions in Muscle Testing
Specialized Kinesiology work is incredibly cool. Not cool in the kind of way that translates to throngs of people screaming your name, adrenaline rushes, or crazy sex appeal, but cool in a “did that really just happen?” kind of way. Cool because it is hard for us as a species sometimes to get our logical linear brains around just how much influence our thoughts, emotions and subconscious desires have on our physiology and health but SK work just drags it out into the open. People are sometimes skeptical of this, but it makes sense when you think about how we are wired. There is an obvious interface between our musculature…
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Moving to Costa Rica – Welcome to the Jungle
We have begun this new chapter in Costa Rica. Life here is simultaneously simpler and more complicated than we were used to in Canada. Our cabinas were open to the elements, moldy, full of insects and the evidence of the bats and lizards that had been hanging out here before us. We still have house geckos of course, all of which our 3-year-old calls Little Buddy and chases after. We spent the first few days scrubbing walls and floors with bleach and brushes, then painting the interior walls white, filling in the gaps at floor and ceiling to try to minimize the bugs. Two of the three cabins are sorta…
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Best Supplements for Everyday and Someday
I often see people grumpily pacing the aisles of Health Food Stores, bewildered by the sheer vastness of selection. When I give presentations to large groups, inevitably someone will ask during the Q & A “What supplements do you take?” I believe that supplements fall into three categories: the first are the things that you take every day for maintenance and general good health, second are things that you take for a specific length of time to address a certain issue and then don’t need again, and the third are things that you should keep on hand for occasions when they are needed. Think of it like your spice rack…
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3 Herbs to start Wildcrafting
Tis the season for wildcrafting. If this is a term you are unfamiliar with, ‘wildcrafting’ means to find medicinal and culinary herbs and plants in their natural habitat and harvest them in a sustainable (read: not picking every last flower or enraging the Lorax) way. I am lucky enough to live in the Central Okanagan in an area where two ecosystems brush up against each other; one being desert like, and the other a wet rich cedar forest. Between these two areas there are many medicinal plants to be found, most of which people think of as weeds. While it can be dangerous to simply start picking and eating plants…
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Why You Need to Laugh Today
A good laugh and a long sleep can cure almost anything. This is a subject close to my heart because (as is stated on this site repeatedly) I firmly believe that health should be fun. Therefore the idea that having fun can be as beneficial for your health as eating right and exercise appeals to me. Click here to see a short video about a couple of the health benefits of laughter. This isn’t just a hippy-dippy natural health practitioner idea though. The Mayo Clinic has published a list of both short and long term benefits of laughter and they’re, like, real doctors who don’t mess around, so you can…
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Emotional Rescue: Bach Flower Remedies
Ever hear about something that just seems too simple to be real? As in “if it was that easy then surely someone would have realized this before!”? Bach Flower Remedies have that effect on people. These flower remedies are a basic system of homeopathy that was created by Dr. Edward Bach in the 1930’s to balance your emotions. There are many wonderful resources out there if you wish to learn more about the way these are made or what specific remedies are for (www.bachcentre.com is a good one to try). This is not that resource though: this is a place for telling stories. I was first introduced to Bach Remedies…
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Why No-One Should Eat Wheat Ever
Health practitioners and naturopathic doctors tend to shy away from sweeping statements, so when someone like Dr. Joseph Pizzorno announces flat out at a lecture that no one should eat wheat, it tends to stick with you. Dr. Pizzorno is well respected in the health industry. Among his many credentials, he has authored the definitive Textbook of Naturopathic Medicine, and is the co-founder of Bastyr University. His statement that no one should eat wheat came during a presentation about gut permeability and the damage it can do to the body. Alas, it also came during the dessert course at a beautiful winery, so it put a bit of a damper…
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3 ways to Deal with Dreams Coming True
The craziness of having all your dreams come true. When we work with goals in Specialized Kinesiology, there is an understanding that, for a goal to be worthwhile, there needs to be a certain amount of stress on it. If there isn’t any stress on it, than it’s not really a goal, it’s just a to do list that you are procrastinating about. Most of the time, the stress results from how far away our goals seem to be from reality; for example the man living paycheck to paycheck will show a lot of stress on the goal of being financially secure, as it just seems so unlikely. In our…
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Decadent Chocolate Mousse
I was in the grocery store (shout out to Nature’s Fare Kelowna!) yesterday with my toddler and there was a display of avocados on sale…
