Bodhimed

Have you ever wanted to make sea vegetables a part of your family's diet but just didn't know how?  Sushi is a common way to get seaweed into a meal, but it can be pretty time consuming.  I love the following recipe because it's really easy to make and totally delicious.  Sea veggies should be a regular part of your diet because they are high in minerals, trace elements, and B vitamins.  The high iodine content in seaweed makes it the ideal choice for anyone with thyroid issues.  And from an Ayurvedic perspective, the cooling energy of vegetables from the sea balance the entire body during the heat of summer.

Seaweed Saute Recipe

The best sea veggies to use in this recipe are hijiki or arame.  They are small and almost the same texture as the noodles they can be served with!

1/2 cup hijiki or arame

3/4 cup grated carrots

3/4 cup diced yellow onion

1 Tbs. coconut oil

1 1/2 tsp. tamari

1 Tbs. raw honey

1/2 tsp. grated ginger

pinch of cayenne

1 tsp. toasted sesame oil

1 Tbs. toasted sesame seeds

1 package of soba, udon, or rice noodles.

Rinse the seaweed with fresh water and then soak for 30 minutes.  Drain and rinse once or twice more. 

Saute the carrots and onions in coconut oil for 3 minutes.  Add seaweed to veggies and toss over heat for 2 minutes.  Add tamari, honey, ginger and cayenne.

Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove cover and simmer away any excess liquid.  Remove from heat and toss with sesame oil and sesame seeds.

Serve over udon, soba or rice noodles.  It's even good cold.  I promise you and your family will love this!

Summer is upon us, and thanks to climate change it feels hotter than ever in Santa Fe.  I wish I could tell you that the ancient medical science of Ayurveda holds the key to controlling the weather.  But the truth is that it does contain the secrets to staying cool when the temperature is reaching record highs.  Summer is fire season, and when you learn what to eat and how to act to balance this element, you will feel cooler and more comfortable all season long.

Cooling Foods

Ayurveda describes summer as Pitta season.  Pitta is made of fire and water, and its qualities are hot, sharp, oily, and light.  During summer season you can reduce Pitta heat within your own body by eating a diet of cooling foods.

While stress gets a lot of press because of its harmful effects on your health, guilt is usually overlooked as being equally destructive.  Whether someone tries to make you feel guilty or you succumb to it yourself, what good comes from feeling guilty?  Remorse for hurting somebody is one thing, but oftentimes we feel guilty because we ate cake, or because we think we're not doing something well enough.  What if we turned guilt around and practiced loving kindness toward ourselves, accepting that we are good enough and that we're all doing the best we can?  We might finally experience a new level of well-being and breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Guilt-Free Eating

One of the worst things we can do during a meal is to feel guilty about what we're eating.  Think of the mental stress we create if we're not enjoying our food, but rather feeling stressed about it?  I'm not advocating that you eat junk food and feel good about it, but that you choose food consciously and then savor it.  One of the explanations I like regarding why French people are generally thin is that they take time to really enjoy their food. In my blog post about learning this lesson with donuts, I share how I had to confront my desire for donuts so I could then let go of it and move beyond the guilt I had created around it.

These days just about everyone I know in Santa Fe is either suffering or just recovering from a nasty stomach flu.  It seems these little buggers have become stronger and more obnoxious because hardly any adult or child seems to be immune to it.  When this type of virus strikes, what can you do to shorten its duration?  Here's some natural health tips from various traditions to ease the suffering and an excellent Ayurvedic recipe for your first meal when you're ready to start thinking about food.

Probiotics To The Rescue

One of the most important things you need to do when you come down with a stomach virus is to take a high quality probiotic supplement.  We are exposed to harmful bacteria and viruses all the time, but they only "win" when either they are super-strength bugs, or when our own intestinal immunity is low.

I think it was Gilda Radner on Saturday Night Live who once said "It's always something."  Now it's hexane in my veggie burgers.  Remember hexane? It's an air pollutant and neurotoxin that is a byproduct of gas refining.  Before you start to feel overwhelmed and pessimistic, read on.  There are a few ethical companies who make chemical-free veggie burgers that you can be happy to buy from, or you can take the bigger leap and make your own with this easy, awesome, protein-packed recipe below.

Hexane and Soy

A recent article in Mother Jones magazine publicized an investigation by the Cornucopia Institute into the use of the chemical hexane to produce non-organic soy protein isolate, texturized vegetable protein, and soy protein concentrate.  Hexane became famous as an air pollutant associated with oil refineries and is also a neurotoxin. 

It's not easy for me to admit that I wasn't able to cure my son of his chronic stomachaches.  After all, I've spent the last 20 years studying and practicing natural medicine.  Putting my ego aside, I recently sought help from yet another doctor in Santa Fe who focuses on food sensitivities and heavy metal toxicity.  Now that the results are in, I want to encourage all parents of children who suffer from any chronic health problem to consider these tests.  It's a sign of the times that our children likely carry a toxic burden that makes them hyper-sensitive to everyday whole foods.  If your child gets headaches, stomachaches, or any illness regularly, you'll want to investigate food sensitivities and heavy metal toxicity with these reliable tests.

What if I told you that there was a way to satisfy your sweet tooth without actually eating anything sweet?  By changing what you think of as sweet, you can really accomplish this.  Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese medicine both emphasize the need to include all six tastes in your daily diet, so we still want to acknowledge the importance of the sweet flavor, just not sugar itself.  Here's a revolutionary way for you honor your sweet cravings without feeding the desire for sugar.

Empty Sweets vs. Full Sweets

Traditional Chinese Medicine makes a beautiful and radical distinction between empty sweets and full sweets.  Empty sweets are treats containing any sweetener.  I'm talking raw sugar, honey, maply syrup, agave, brown rice syrup, barley malt syrup.  You get the picture.  While some sweeteners are certainly healthier than others, the point is that they are still empty sweets.  They are called "empty" because while they momentarily satisfy a sweet craving, they do nothing to nourish our digestion, so we are left wanting it more and more.