Abandoning The Guilt Trip

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.

Read more: Abandoning The Guilt Trip

Changing the Game Plan to Live Your Passion

Sometimes the signposts that re-direct our lives come in unexpected ways.  We always have a choice – to acknowledge and follow those signs, or to ignore them because they don’t fit in with our “plan.”  Especially when it comes to discovering our ultimate purpose in life, it’s never too early to pay attention and change the game plan.

Why wait until you’ve spent 30 years in the wrong job to discover what the universe has been trying to tell you?

I truly believe that we’re constantly being sent messages to guide us on our path, and we just have to look for them to know what our path is.

Sometimes these signs come in disguised packages.

One of the things I’m most grateful for in my life is that I discovered Ayurveda when I was 22 years old.  Though I had planned to do community development work in South Africa, my life took a turn when I became introduced to Ayurveda  through The Yoga of Herbs by Dr. Vasant Lad.

Here’s the juicy story:

Read more: Changing the Game Plan to Live Your Passion

How Simple Nutritional Changes Can Radically Improve Your Pet's Health

As a nutritionist, it should have seemed obvious to me that I could heal my dog by changing his food. But honestly it took me a little while to realize just how radically important it was. I've always bought high quality food for my dog, but even organic, all natural pet food may cause problems if your pet is sensitive for some reason or another. Here's some very interesting facts I learned with my dog Rascal. If your pet has any health issues, consider our story and perhaps you can also heal them by switching their food!

A year ago, my 2 year-old Doberman, Rascal, developed a wart above his eye. It grew very quickly and was nearing his eyelid, so I scheduled him with the vet to have the wart removed. Three months post-op, the wart began to grow again. A repeat surgery was out of the question because his heart didn't do well under anesthesia. I had to think of another treatment. At that time, I was feeding him Whole Foods brand dry dog food with salmon oil drizzled on top. I thought that perhaps switching him to the more expensive grain-free dog food might make a difference. Sure enough, within a few days, the wart started to shrink. Within a few weeks, it was gone.

Fast forward to a few months later, Rascal started to seem stiff when he'd get up out of his armchair or off of his pillow. The stiffness appeared to progress into pain, to the point that he would rarely get up. Once he was up and running around, he seemed ok. But the pain and stiffness seemed to get worse and worse. I really didn't think it could be arthritis in such a young dog, but we tried glucosamine supplements, different fish oils, and probiotics. Nothing really seemed to help. Then I thought, maybe I should buy the very best raw meat dog food. The one I bought was called VitaEssentials, and contained the organ meats as well. Amazingly, within a week or so, we noticed that he was perkier and got up more easily. As the weeks went on, he just got better and better. I couldn't believe it, and at the same time, I thought "Of course!" I see good nutrition make such a huge difference for people on a daily basis. Why wouldn't it be exactly the same for my dog?

Eventually we decided to start to make the raw meat (and our cash!) go farther by combining the dry grain-free food with the raw meat. He did really well with that for a long time. Last week, however, we noticed a fast-growing wart on his nose. So... Rascal is back to all raw food. Now he's getting Steve's which combines raw meat with veggies and coconut oil. I'll post an update when the wart goes away, which I'm guessing it will!

Moral of the story: Good nutrition makes a radical difference with our pets just like it does for us humans. If your pet has any health issues, such as allergies, pain, skin conditions, or digestive trouble, consider paying more at the pet food or grocery store than at the veterinarian's. It's very likely that your pet will improve radically given the right food. Perhaps try grain-free to start, and then progress to all raw if that's not enough. You can buy it or make your own. My guess is that if you're reading this article, you care a lot about what goes into your mouth and will want the best for your pet as well.

Please share your story below if you've also healed your pet with food. I'd love to hear more stories like this!

The Sure-Fire Ayurvedic Treatment For Seasonal Allergies

Even the most die-hard natural health devotee can be tempted to buy pharmaceutical allergy medication when the symptoms get really bad.  Some just plow through the fatigue and congestion while constantly trying different herbal products to see if they'll help.  If you're suffering from allergies because you still haven't found an effective natural remedy, you're in luck.  Over the years I've put together an allergy treatment protocol that is easy to use and that really works.  I'm going to lay it out step by step so that you can start your allergy relief program right away.  Follow these steps and you'll be breathing and thinking clearly in no time.

Read more: The Sure-Fire Ayurvedic Treatment For Seasonal Allergies

Who Am I? - Revealing The Difference Between Your Ayurvedic Constitution And Your Present Imbalance

There are so many theories about why we each are the way we are.  While there's no one answer to this, the ancient science of Ayurveda offers a very logical, simple explanation based on the universal five elements found in nature and within each of us.  People in the West are now becoming more familiar with this Ayurvedic concept of constitutional types, and you can easily find quizzes that are supposed to help you determine which Ayurvedic type you are.  But it's actually very hard to discern the difference between your original constitution and your present imbalance.  There are a million reasons why we might be experiencing a present imbalance.  Here's an explanation of the difference between who you are meant to be, i.e. in a balanced state, and who you may be today.

How I Learned That I Wasn't Who I Thought I Was

My first exposure to Ayurveda was in 1991 through Dr. Vasant Lad's book, Ayurveda The Science of Self-Healing.  I took the quiz in the book to determine which Ayurvedic type I was, and after answering all of the questions, I concluded that I was predominantly Kapha (earth + water).  I began to identify with all of the attributes of a Kapha person and started to see myself in the world as that.  There was a great deal of comfort in finally understanding why I was the way I was -- sometimes lazy, sometimes greedy, usually even-tempered, always congested, and adoring of my bed.

Read more: Who Am I? - Revealing The Difference Between Your Ayurvedic Constitution And Your Present Imbalance

Six Essential Elements of an Ayurvedic Cleanse

Do you ever feel like you're walking and thinking in a mud bog?  Can you relate to feeling sluggish or stagnant, less vibrant than you know you can be?  Maybe you suffer from extra weight or allergies? All of these are symptoms of your system being clogged. Before doing my first Ayurvedic detox, my "normal" was congested, lazy, and bloated.  But after the cleanse, I experienced such a heightened level of mental clarity and physical vitality that I've made it something I do several times each year.  It's actually pretty easy, and totally worth it, to take 8 days of your life and do everything in a different, clean way.

The Root Cause of Disease

According to Ayurveda, the root cause of all disease is the accumulation of toxins produced by improper digestion.  The traditional method for removing deep-seated toxins is a seasonal cleanse called panchakarma.  Nowadays you can go to Ayurvedic spas and clinics worldwide and spend significant time and money receiving this 2500-year-old detox treatment.  You also can adapt these ancient principles and receive huge benefits by doing a home version on your own schedule.

Read more: Six Essential Elements of an Ayurvedic Cleanse

The Root Cause of All Disease According to Ayurveda

According to Ayurveda, the root cause of all disease is improper digestion. Why exactly? Because when we don't fully break down food and assimilate nutrients, we accumulate this undigested, toxic material that in Sanskrit is called ama.  When we have ama, our pipes get clogged.  All kinds of pipes. Physical and mental.  This is a big deal, because any number of bodily functions may be compromised. The bad news is there are many, many causes of ama.  The good news is that there are plenty of things you can do about it.  Here we go.

Read more: The Root Cause of All Disease According to Ayurveda

Magical Vata Digestive Spice Mix

One of the most beautiful things about Ayurveda is the way spices are used not only to make food more delicious, but also to heal and balance your body.  Autumn is the season dominated by Vata, otherwise known as Wind. You can easily keep your body, mind, and spirit in balance with the Vata season by including Ayurvedic spices in your cooking. Here's a recipe for a Vata spice mixture that you can carry with you when you eat out, or add to your meals at home.  You can also take 1/2 tsp. of this mixture with warm water in between meals any time you're experiencing gas and bloating.

Vata Digestive Spice Powder

Grind the following spices and combine in decreasing quantities:

Cardamom seeds, fennel seeds, cumin seeds, dry ginger powder, turmeric, sucanat, mineral salt, hing (aka asafoetida). 

Benefits of Vata Spices

Vata is cold and dry.  In autumn when it's also cold and dry, it's important to keep your body warm with good circulation.  Warming, pungent spices accomplish this by keeping your digestive fire stoked.  Ayurveda also teaches that for optimal digestion, all 6 tastes (sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter, and astringent) should be present in a meal. This spice mixture has all tastes except sour, so just squirt a little lemon or lime on your meal to round it out.

Why So Many People Are Allergic To Dairy And Soy

I was recently asked about the epidemic numbers of people suffering from food allergies, specifically dairy and soy products.  This population in the U.S. is so large that in fact the foods themselves have come to be considered generally "bad."  While certain natural substances are indeed toxic, these foods are not, in and of themselves, actually the problem.  The problem lies, as you will see, in the conditions in which these foods are produced, as well as the condition of most people's digestion in modern society.  Below are the many reasons why dairy and soy have become such serious food issues, some of which come from the traditional wisdom of Ayurvedic medicine, and some of which are explained by modern environmental and nutritional science.

Read more: Why So Many People Are Allergic To Dairy And Soy

5 Tips for Keeping Vata in Check This Autumn

Autumn is upon us, and so is the cold and flu season. In Ayurveda, this is known as Vata season. Vata is translated as Wind in Tibetan medicine, and in many climates we are likely to see some windy weather and some "windy" nervous systems as well!

There are many easy steps you can take to keep your nervous system grounded and your immunity strong during this transitional time.

If you find yourself having any of the following typical Vata symptoms then you will definitely want to take preventative measures.
*lack of concentration, distractibility
*dry skin, hair, and sinuses
*irritability
*insomnia
*thirst, gas and bloating
*stiff, achey muscles and joints
*constipation

Prevention Tips:
1. One of the best Vata pacifying therapies is abhyanga = warm sesame oil self-massage. This is best done before a hot shower. This therapy not only moisturizes the skin, but more importantly it nourishes the muscles and joints, grounds the nervous system, promotes restful sleep, and strengthens immunity.

2.  Nasya = Herbal oil nasal drops. Again, this therapy calms Vata at its point of entry, and also lubricates the sinuses so that the dryness of autumn doesn't cause inflammation and reactivity to dust, smoke and pollens.
If you suffer from nasal congestion, sinusitis, or respiratory infections, this is the number one preventative therapy for you.

3.  Superfood tonics. My favorites are Maca root, Chinese 5 Mushroom Formula, and Blue-Green Algae. All of these strengthen your immunity in different ways. Taken regularly, these superfoods prevent illness and provide maximum nutrition on a cellular level. They are also adrenal tonics, which helps to combat the effects of stress and fatigue.

4. Seasonal Foods = If you shop at the farmers' markets, you see winter squashes, sweet potatoes, beets, and kale.  These foods are perfect to balance Vata and keep the body warm and well nourished. It is best to transition away from raw foods and fruit smoothies and move into warm soups and stews as the weather gets colder. This keeps your digestion in peak health.

5. Regular acupuncture treatments. My patients that receive weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly treatments get sick the least. It is most effective to get regular acupuncture even when you don't have an acute issue. When we address subtle imbalances before they become full-blown illness, it is much easier to treat.

I hope the tips in this article help you to stay in balance with the seasons and our natural environment. This time of year is so glorious, I want you feel great so you can be out enjoying it!

Ayurvedic Secrets To Keeping Cool In Summer

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.

  Most people regardless of their Ayurvedic constitution will feel more comfortable during the summertime by following a Pitta reducing diet.  The best foods to keep you cool during summer are watermelon, cucumber, mint, coconut, summer squash, fennel, cilantro, and aloe vera.  It's best to avoid spicy, acidic and greasy foods during summer as they will increase the heat in your body and make you feel hotter.  For a complete list of Pitta reducing foods, open the food guidelines PDF here.

Cooling Yoga

It's important during every season to exercise regularly, but the type of exercise you do should be in balance with the time of year.  During the heat of summer, it's best to swim and do gentle yoga.  If you prefer biking and running, try to save it for the early morning and evening when the temperature is slightly cooler.

A lot of people who do yoga love Bikram's hot yoga, but I would encourage switching to a cooler type during the heat of summer. Specific yoga postures and breathing exercises are more cooling than others. Moon Salutation is more appropriate during summer than Sun salutation for example. For instructions on how to do Moon Salutation, click here.

Cooling Massage

Ayurveda is big on oil, both internally and externally. I've written before about the calming effects of massaging warm oil into your body before bathing, but in summer it's important to use a cooling oil made with cooling herbs.  Especially if you have trouble sleeping because of the heat at night, you'll love rubbing Brahmi Oil made from coconut oil and brahmi (gotu kola) into the soles of your feet and the scalp to calm the mind and promote restful sleep. You can use it on your whole body as well to counteract summer dryness and dehydration.

Keeping It Cool

I hope you try some of these suggestions from Ayurveda for staying cool this summer.  Of course, if you tend to be cold no matter what or you live in the Arctic, then you should follow a plan appropriate to your particular situation.  Most people, however, will notice a real difference in their experience of summer heat when they take action to keep their internal cooling system working at its best.

Mindful Eating - A Journey

Nutrition has always been my thing. My true love. What I find most fascinating about being in a body. "We are what we eat" is such a no-brainer, yet nobody knows what to eat anymore. Literally 85% of my patients have no idea what they should be eating to feel their best and avoid or cure disease. For myself, I recently revamped my vegetarian diet to stop with the dairy and eggs that I was continually feeling yucky about. What I didn't realize when I made that shift in my diet is that the change was part of a larger awakening I was experiencing to the sentience and plight of animals altogether. I've always been an animal lover (and kind of a dog whisperer!), but more and more I've begun to literally feel their suffering. My heart breaks every time I hear, see, or think about what animals are enduring so that people can eat them. So really this nutrition post is more about compassionate food choices and mindful eating. It is my sincere hope that the good intentioned mindfulness many people apply to their daily behavior and relationships will someday direct their food choices as well.

Why the dilemma about what to eat?  Endless well-qualified experts appear to be offering contradictory, yet scientific proof that we should eat meat or not, grains or not, fat or not, etc. People see their friends at the gym losing weight eating lots of meat, so it must be good for you, right? And isn't grass-fed beef humane? When my patients show up confused about what to eat, I offer them what I believe to be true about the uncompromising importance of green veggies, or how they could cook wholesome meals instead of fast food, or if they are leaning away from meat how to do it with grace and good nutrition. I can cite the research, the ethics, the energetics, the environmental toll, but ultimately it comes down to a matter of personal choice. But one which I believe should be based on the open-hearted exploration of what kind of energy is going into our mouths. If we turn our mindful eye to where our food truly comes from, we make different choices, don't we? Why is it so scary to so many people to actually look at where their food comes from? Because there are stories and emotions intimately, and I mean intimately, tied to that fried chicken or cheeseburger or poached salmon. That's why. (A great book on this subject is Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer.)

But consider that times have changed. The world we live in is not the sames as that of our Paleo ancestors. Nor is it Vedic India, where the cow was sacred and the general lifestyle revolved around meditation and the path to enlightenment. We live in the here and now, which on the level of form, in the physically manifested world, means that wheat is no longer our grandparents' wheat, and dairy is not that of the sacred cow that feeds Krishna, and industrially growing animals to feed meat to our obese population three times a day is quickly causing planetary and personal health destruction.  In the here and now, our oversaturated minds and bodies don't need more animal foods. In fact, it's what is killing the majority of us in the industrialized countries. And now we are finding that animal agriculture is the leading producer of greenhouse gases and the largest contributor to climate change.  Even grass-fed cattle ranches require running off or killing the wild animals in the area, contribute to pollution, and in the end the animal still feels fear and desperation as they are cruelly slaughtered. Believe it or not, we have a choice.

I have been vegetarian since I learned about animal cruelty in college, with vegan times here and there. Experimented with meat while nursing my first son to see if I'd have more energy, but guess what, when you're not sleeping all night, nothing you eat will make you feel like you are.  Now I'm back to being vegan, but I prefer to call it "whole-foods-plant-based." While there's no short way to say it,that accurately describes the lifestyle that I've made into my new norm.  I get to eat like a gorilla ((mounds and mounds of greens), enjoy the genuine taste of whole foods, experiment with legumes and nuts in whole new ways, and shed a few pounds in the process. I honestly feel like I'm finally living in integrity with what I always felt but wouldn't admit. If I had allowed myself for a millisecond to consider where the cheese on my green chile came from (most likely a commercial dairy farm where those poor cows are hooked up to machines for their whole, short life), I surely wouldn't have eaten it! But now I look back and realize that I absolutely did not consider it. My taste buds, habitual patterns, and general sensory override of my heart won out every time. I experienced that denial to an even great degree when I started eating farmers' market, local, organic meat during that nursing time in 2003. I rode that slippery slope from the farmers' market meat to the restaurant meat, and enjoyed the new found variety of menu choices, ease of fitting in with the family and friends, etc. Then I literally woke up one day thinking, "What the hell are you doing???" It wasn't sitting right with me all along but my sensory gratification overrode the ethical dilemma within myself until that point. And I've never missed eating an animal since that moment. The desire evaporated. But like I said, I kept eating dairy and eggs until it hit me the same way this past August.

My two lineages, Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda, have quite different takes on eating meat. During the Vedic Era in India, when Ayurvedic medicine was divined by the sages because their physical bodies were beginning to experience disease, it was a vegetarian culture based on their adherence to non-violence of body, speech, and mind. (Of course there is harm to the plants, but we have to eat something and it's far less cruel than what's done to loving, sentient animals.)  However milk and butter and ghee were held in the highest regard as highly nutritive tonics that kept a skinny yogi pliant and grounded. Ayurveda still teaches that today. In the Charaka Samhita, the 2500 year old Ayurvedic medical text, the attributes of all foods they had at that time are itemized.  Dairy is recommended for certain types of people, eggs rarely are, and meat only for specific ailments. A varied diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, seeds and nuts were and are predominant still in India. In China, however, meat was and is considered a staple when it can be had. That used to be not very often. China has a long history of famine. It's also a very Yang culture in terms of their styles of government. So it comes as no surprise that TCM teaches that the best way, perhaps the only way according to some, to build strong qi and blood is to eat meat. (They didn't have examples of plant-based endurance athletes and body builders like Rich Roll, Brendan Brazier, and Patrik Baboumian) Yet the reality for them was that it turned out to be a fairly rare occurrence. And it's fair to bet that it was local and organically raised farm animals. Not factory farmed meat. Not cheeseburgers. Now it may be in urban China, but not when they wrote the medical books.

Modern society has taken this theme - that you need to eat animals because our ancestors did and it's the only way to have strong qi - and gone totally over the top. Animals are raised, tortured, and slaughtered in horrific conditions, without any regard for their sentience at all, with disastrous effects on personal health and the earth's environment and atmosphere.  All of our most chronic, expensive diseases-- diabetes, heart disease, and cancer -- are directly linked to the excess consumption of a high fat, animal protein diet. Yet because of people's attachment and addiction to eating animals, even mindfulness practitioners and environmental activists don't want to look at it. I personally couldn't hide from the reality of the animal cruelty anymore.  And I feel that as a doctor, I have a duty to my patients -- a duty to find an opening in my their hearts to have this conversation about mindful eating. For their own individual health and to alleviate the mass suffering of over 56 billion animals each year. It's a win-win.

This is a tough subject for most people. And it's not always so easy to make the transition away from animal foods if that's what you're inclined to do. But these days there are so many resources and recipes to make eating still fun and yummy. Click on any of the highlighted words above to link to articles explaining my point. I'll include more recipes next time or leave a comment below if you need help with that. I'm also available by phone or skype for nutritional coaching.

In the next post I'm going to discuss how I (try to) deal with living with and cooking for my husband and two boys who all eat meat. It's challenging on many levels! I'd really like to hear your thoughts on what mindful eating means for you. Please leave a comment below!