digestion

Are your fingernails brittle? Textured? Flecked with white spots?

“What’s in a name,” Shakespeare said. And call a rose whatever you want, it will still smell as sweet and be as healthy. So here’s to making your own rose water, and using it for beauty and health…

Wandering the streets of India, I notice the smell of cardamom fills the air, especially when approaching a sweets shop. I had never been immersed in its heady fragrance before my sojourns to India, but now it is one of my favorite scents and flavors. Perhaps it is because in all of its uniqueness, cardamom encourages a sense of self-responsibility, an owning of what is.

Iodine. It’s a component of thyroid hormone, critical for fetal and childhood growth and development. It also regulates metabolism, digestion, heart function, reproduction and many other aspects of adult health. Hypothyroidism (an underactive thyroid) will result if someone is deficient in iodine, and can also result from other issues. Most of us in the West have enough iodine, though studies have found that a significant number of pregnant or lactating women in the U.S.

When folks think of medicinal plants, they usually picture herbs, flowers, and such.  But don’t forget about trees!  Many tree species are great medicine; an entire book could be written on them. I’ll take it easy on you and cover just 5 really good ones here. Most likely one or more of these can be found near you.

There are lots of good reasons to eat seasonally: when fruits and vegetables are fresh, their nutrition is at its peak, and it’s more environmentally sustainable, for starters.  Ayurveda encourages eating seasonally too, and if you’re growing your own food, then it just makes sense to eat seasonally.  But it can be difficult to eat the fruits and vegetables that are in season if they’re new to you, or if yo

Recently, the New York Times published an article denouncing yoga pants. Titled “Why Yoga Pants Are Bad for Women,” the article detailed all the ways in which the popular, though pricey, black tights contribute to the idea that fitness is an everyday-all-the-day activity.

Passion fruit is a member of the family of Passifloraceae in the genus Passiflora and is native to the wild regions of subtropical South America. It was introduced in Hawaii and Australia but succumbed to viruses and could not be sustained as a commercial crop in either region.

When I first started studying botanical medicine, I was at work and got a call from my then-boyfriend asking which plant in the yard was yarrow.  He had cut his hand and wanted to do some first aid to stop the bleeding and prevent infection. This wasn’t the first time.  Having a garden of first aid plants really comes in handy.  Beyond adding beauty to your surroundings, you have at hand easy and effective remedies for everything from cuts and abrasions to insect bites, burns and digestive distress.  H

In Chinese medicine, different parts of the tongue reflect what’s going on in different Organ systems.  In the first 3 parts of this series on the basics of tongue diagnosis, we got into what tongue body color, tongue shape, and tongue coat ha