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If you're a seasonal allergy sufferer, you know that few things can drain the joy out of spring and summertime like the misery of red, itchy eyes, continuous sneezing and post-nasal drip. Airborne pollen is the most common cause of seasonal allergies, also known as hay fever or allergic rhinitis. Allergies can mean more than general misery for asthma sufferers, whose bouts can be much worse during allergy season—even life-threatening, in some cases. Allergy-driven asthma affects 10 million Americans, rates that have doubled since 1980.

Most of us ignore our digestive system unless there’s a problem. For whatever reason, we rarely consider the role it plays in our overall health. But if it isn’t functioning the way it should be, life can be miserable.

By now most people have heard about a “paleo”, “primal”, or “caveman” diet, but what is it really all about? One of the most thorough looks into "Stone Age" nutrition was done by Dr. Loren Cordain, author of The Paleo Diet and considered to be one of the world's leading experts on Paleolithic nutrition.

Unfortunately, modern life isn’t very friendly to the human libido. Contemporary challenges to a healthy sex drive are many: obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, thyroid dysfunction, adrenal exhaustion, poor nutrition, prescription medications, hormonal birth control, too much stress, and too little sleep.

Chronic inflammatory diseases are a common day epidemic. Every year the number of individuals with debilitating chronic inflammatory diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome, interstitial cystitis, mental depressive conditions, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome grow.

Not surprisingly, the most important thing a woman can do when she finds out she is pregnant is eat nutrient dense foods. Despite the fact that food cravings are real, and that most women will gain at least 30 pounds while pregnant, pregnancy is not an excuse to eat whatever you want- it is instead the most important time to truly nourish yourself and your baby.

With all the propaganda about plant based diets, I believe most people are unaware of how nutrient deficient a strict vegan diet can be, without substantial thought and planning.

For those of you that are just ready to have more energy and feel better, I’ve put together a review of the best and worst ways to stay hydrated, improve your metabolism and recover from your workouts. From Vitamin Water to Gatorade, mineral water to alkaline water, the unfounded health claims, misinformation and mega-marketing campaigns abound, leaving most Americans flat out dazed and confused when it comes to hydration. But the good news is that with a little common sense and self-awareness, you can learn what beverages, and how much, is right for you.

As another year begins, we all look for ways to “start anew”, ways to improve our health and reach our personal goals. Here are some tools to help you shift your focus from "external validation" (such as the bathroom scale and the opinions of others) to that of "internal validation" and the true source of lasting change in your life, yourself!

Although many new studies support what your grandparents knew, there is still a major misconception and a lot of misinformation promoted by the media that you must avoid foods like eggs and saturated fat to protect your heart. While it's true that fats from animal sources contain cholesterol, this is not necessarily a health hazard.

Another Holiday Season is here, often the shopping flurry increased as we tried to find that “perfect gift” for our spouse, children, relatives and friends. Sometimes our Holiday can become about “things” that we give and “things” that we get.

There are many delicious ways to improve your health, and the first place to start is with good, ole fashioned bone broth. Bone stocks are so important to rebuilding our strength and health.  Bone broth is a flavorful liquid made by boiling the bones of just about any vertebrate you can think of, typically poultry, beef, venison, bison, lamb, or fish, in water for an extended period of time (typically anywhere from 4 hours to 40 hours).

Like it or not, it’s that time of year again- cold and flu season. We all know it, because most everyone during the fall or winter season has succumbed to the viral malady that can last 1-2 weeks and cause sneezing, scratchy throat, low energy, stuffy head, and a runny nose.

Did you know that you don’t have to buy into the myth that unprocessed whole foods are expensive?  The vast majority of US food expenditures are on processed, prepared, and packaged foods which, typically, do not nourish our bodies as much as we’d like them to, for the amount we spend on them. Have you seen the price of a case of soda, frozen pizzas, or sugar-filled boxed breakfast cereals? 

Eating healthier starts with cooking healthier dishes, and in order to make healthier dishes you must use healthier ingredients. Healthy ingredients are “real foods” in and of themselves, such as butter and cream, as opposed to refined and processed compilations of denatured food products, additives and preservatives, such as canned cream of mushroom soup.

Thanksgiving is here, and shortly thereafter we have the Yuletide season. It's a time of year when family, friends, festivities, and most of all food takes center stage in our lives.

Every Thanksgiving we take time to be thankful for all that we have in our lives; our families and friends, our neighbors, and our careers that allow us the means by which we can provide for our families.

These days, most of us know that what we eat (including what your food has eaten!) has a profound impact on our health. The old saying "You Are What You Eat" has never before carried such weight.

It may seem obvious that sleep is beneficial. Even without fully grasping what sleep does for us, we know that going without sleep for too long makes us feel terrible, and that getting a good night's sleep can make us feel ready to take on the world.

There are many things you can do to boost your immune system and bypass the yearly colds that usually seem to begin this time of year. From delicious warming and naturally immune-boosting soups, to taking time to rest when you feel run down, there a number of natural strategies that will have you up and running again in no time.

As fall harvest season begins, many gardeners find themselves with bushels of tomatoes, baskets of cucumbers and armfuls of lettuce. So when your garden is overflowing with produce, how do you make the most of your harvest?

Cauliflower, a cruciferous vegetable, is in the same plant family as broccoli, kale, cabbage and collards. It has a compact head (called a "curd"), with an average size of six inches in diameter, composed of undeveloped flower buds.

What do diabetes, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, IBS, ulcerative colitis, food and environmental allergies all have in common? Besides being chronic conditions that can be life threatening, or at least greatly reduce your quality of life, researchers are now learning that chronic inflammation plays a large part in both the on-set, and continuation, of these and many other conditions and diseases.

Over many years I have found that preventing or reversing inflammation is all about listening to your body. From that listening you can begin to learn first-hand what increases or reduces your body’s inflammatory response. You can cool your body’s inflammatory response and keep it healthier over time by taking one step at a time, at a pace that feels right for you.

When it comes to weight loss, there’s no lack of fad diets promising fast results! But such diets limit your nutritional intake, are usually unhealthy, and tend to fail in the long run. The key to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight isn’t about short-term dietary changes.

The idea of making fresh vegetable juices came from Norman Wardhaugh Walker (January 4, 1886 – June 6, 1985). He was a British businessman and pioneer in the field of vegetable juicing and nutritional health. He advocated the drinking of fresh raw vegetable and fruit juices, both to regain and to maintain one's health.

There is nothing better than coming home after a long day to dinner already prepared and all you have to do is heat it up! You know what I am talking about…You had a long day at work, followed by several activities for the kids, which means you don't get home till 7:30pm, or later! It can be hard to find the motivation or desire to get into that kitchen and cook on days like this.

In our quest to eat healthier and include more fresh fruits and vegetables in our diets, one of the first dilemmas we face in the grocery store is whether or not to buy "organic".  While we know organically grown means less (or no) pesticides and chemicals in our foods, there have been numerous articles written about what "organic" really means, asking us if it is really worth paying more for organic.

We have all heard for years that “diets don’t work”, yet millions of us every year are willing to try yet another diet. Many seem desperate to believe the claims that “you can lose 30 pounds in 10 days”, that “you can lose inches while you sleep”, or that “you can reverse the clock without having to move a muscle.”

Strawberries have grown wild for millennia in temperate regions throughout the world. While cultivation of strawberries doesn't date back this far, it still dates back hundreds and hundreds of years. It was not until the 18th century, however, when cultivation of strawberries began to be pursued in earnest.

Gluten, a protein found in grains such as wheat, rye, barley, and spelt, wreaks havoc in people with celiac disease, triggering an immune reaction that damages the small intestine and prevents absorption of nutrients.

As a Holistic Health Coach, I constantly meet people who want to lose weight, have more energy, and overcome a variety of health challenges. These are highly intelligent, motivated people, many of whom are successful in their respective careers. Over the years, they have invested an enormous amount of time and money in their education, their careers, their homes, and their automobiles, and are rightly proud of what they’ve achieved. They knew that those achievements would not come free, cheap, or easy, and they CHOSE to INVEST both the time and money that those achievements required.

Despite what most people think, quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) is actually not a grain; it is the seed of a plant that is related to the spinach family. When cooked, quinoa is light, fluffy, slightly crunchy and subtly flavored.

As the weather turns colder and we head into fall, we hear more and more about the “cold and flu season”, and signs for flu shots pop up all over town, suggesting that you won’t make it through the winter without a shot. Many now believe that if you SUPPORT your body’s natural defense system, instead of overriding its ability to keep you healthy with vaccines and drugs, you will make it through not just this winter, but many, many more to come.

Well , its not just our opinion that waterless cookware is the best! Read what another health coach has written:

Although many of us find it challenging to stay healthy during the year, the Holiday season brings with it its own set of special circumstances. Holiday parties, baking traditional Christmas goodies, traveling to see friends and family, and hosting guests in our homes all result in a higher consumption of sugary and high carb treats, and much less time to exercise.

Once a year, on New Year’s Eve, we, as a society, look back at our successes and failures of the previous year. It is the only time of year that we publicly give ourselves permission to assess our shortcomings, and “resolve” to do things differently in the coming year.

Good news for all of you that love chocolate, and those of you that are chocoholics (myself included!). Chocolate is a healthy super-food that is bursting with antioxidants.

Spring is an ideal season to clean up our act. A cleansing diet to eliminate toxins from our body is as much a rite of spring as sweeping debris from our home.

Few of us realize that a very simple and inexpensive solution to dramatically improving our overall health is easily within our reach, and that that solution is sprouts! Sprouts give us protein, important vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and anti-oxidants , as well as flavor and texture, to our often less-than-perfect diets.

Amazing Miso

Miso has been eaten in Japan and China for many centuries and has been attracting the attention of many of us because of its health and anti-aging benefits. It’s also quite delicious. When you aren’t feeling well a bowl of miso soup can be especially soothing.

Why not start a garden as a way of improving your health? There are so many reasons that gardening is good for us, including, of course, the harvest of our own organically grown vegetables at a fraction of the cost of supermarket prices. One of the main reasons that people garden is that vegetables from the supermarket cannot compare in taste, quality, or freshness with vegetables grown in the home garden.

Vitamin D3 is both a vitamin and a hormone. It acts as a vitamin when it binds with calcium for proper absorption, humans cannot digest calcium without adequate amounts of Vitamin D3. Sufficient Vitamin D3, along with diet and exercise, has emerged in the last few years as one of the most important preventive factors in human health.

Let’s say you are planning to make a healthy stir-fry or red beans and rice for dinner. Given the latest health information, you may want to reconsider the type of rice to cook with your meal if you usually choose white rice.

While you have probably heard a lot about healthy foods, beef does not normally top the list. While the beef cattle industry wants you to believe that beef is the meat you should eat, that it’s “What’s For Dinner”, most health experts agree that eating meat, beef especially, is not your best choice for improved health. But those opinions change when we come to American grass-fed (finished) beef.

One of the biggest challenges of eating healthy in a modern world has to do with reducing the amount of salt and sodium in our diets. According to the American Heart Association, consuming too much salt can cause high blood pressure. High blood pressure can cause heart disease and other health problems, and it is not surprising that The Dietary Guidelines for Americans suggest reducing salt/sodium in your daily diet.

In an effort to reduce calories and eat “healthier”, many of us are now using artificial sweeteners like Equal or Splenda. They are in diet sodas and drinks, yogurts, baked goods, ice cream, and everything in between, and are marketed as being “healthy”, “sugar-free”,  and  “a healthy alternative to sugar”. But are they really “healthy”?

In our quest to eat healthier and include more fresh fruits and vegetables in our diets, one of the first dilemmas we face in the grocery store is whether or not to buy “organic”.  

If someone told you there was a “magic” trick you could do that would almost instantly improve the way your body regulates blood sugar, and also reduce the spikes in blood sugar that occur after a meal (elevations in these spikes, known as postprandial glucose, or PPG, are associated with type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and death), would you do it?

If you are like most people, you are thoroughly confused about what oils and fats are good for you, and which are not. And with good reason!

Filling up on omega-3 fatty acids does a body good. These polyunsaturated fats, which play a crucial role in how your body’s cells function, have been shown to reduce harmful inflammation that could lead to heart disease, decrease triglyceride levels and blood pressure, and prevent fatal heart arrhythmia.

You’ve no doubt noticed that for about the last 60 years, the majority of health care officials and the media have been telling you saturated fats are bad for your health and lead to a host of negative consequences, including high cholesterol, obesity, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Broccoli is one of the easiest vegetables to find in supermarkets all across our country. While broccoli has gotten a bad reputation as being one of the most dreaded vegetables on the dinner plate for a child, there are actually many different delicious ways to prepare the vegetable with the alluring green stalk and bushy top.

Asparagus is one of those veggies that my family and I enjoy cooking and eating during this time of year.

Here are 10 of the Best Tips for becoming a healthier, and dare we say a happier, person. Every website out there seems to have a list and we all see some version of it on Yahoo. However, if you actually do these things on a regular basis, you will see wonderful changes in both your body and mind.