food as medicine

Mushrooms are valued in many parts of the world as nutrition and medicine. Cardiovascular health is one reason among many to eat mushrooms regularly, and science has been figuring out just what it is that mushrooms do to keep the heart and blood vessels healthy.  Some easy to obtain heart healthy mushrooms include delicious edibles like shiitake, maitake, oyster and button mushrooms.  Other medicinals like Reishi and Turkey Tails are also great for the heart but not so chewable!

You may have read my recent article about how to topically treat cold sores (oral/herpes simplex 1), which offers five helpful topical remedies for quick and effective healing. In that article, I promised to write a follow-up article about herpes/cold sore prevention, which is of equal if not more importance. While it is great to have remedies on hand when these outbreaks occur, how much better would it be to avoid them altogether?

It is widely accepted that diet greatly influences one’s overall health and well-being. While the specifics of which diet is best for which population is constantly studied and debated, fresh vegetables and fruits as well as other unprocessed foods are generally seen as being on the healthier side of the spectrum.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, you’ve probably heard that the future of nutrition is living, raw, plant-based foods. Especially if you’re an athlete, certain superfoods are best equipped to feed the complex layers of your biological makeup, not just your wayward taste buds—whether you’re training for your first half-marathon or your sixth Iron Man.

Great medicine awaits in your grocery store’s produce section!  As you can gather from the title, I’m talking about mushrooms: rich in protein, essential amino acids, fiber, B vitamins and vitamin D.

It might be almost back-to-school time, but that summer sunshine is still shining brightly in a lot of places.  And even when it’s not, those UV rays can sneak through clouds and chilly weather.  While a little sunshine is certainly good for your vitamin D levels, too much can lead to skin cancer, aging skin, and sun spots.  You’re already

This slightly sweet, buttery nut is one of my favorites. I love popping a bunch of raw cashews in the oven and then lightly toasting them for an afternoon snack. I also like to sprinkle them on cereal or anything that needs a crunch. 

Mushrooms have been eaten as food and used as a healing aid since pre-history starting in the Neolithic period. They were first found in in the prehistoric lake dwellings in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. Truffles were found in Greece and Rome where they cultivated the small Agrocybe aegerita on pieces of poplar trunks. In China and Japan they’ve grown shitake mushrooms on rotting logs. In 1678, a French botanist demonstrated the cultivation of mushrooms by transplanting their mycelia.

Strawberries are the ultimate summer fruit. I remember going strawberry picking with my family every year as a kid. We would make a whole day out of it and at the end we would get freshly-made strawberry ice cream right from the farm itself.

Tofu.  The very word instills disgust in the mouths of many omnivores, and even in some who abstain from meat products.  And with good reason!  Since the 1960s, the idea of “tofu” has been used in U.S. media to conjure up images of gross, weird, vegetarian and vegan food – in the collective psyche, it’s almost a four-letter word, one that’s practically synonymous with vegetarianism itself.