Inflammation is a very dangerous condition in the body that is unfortunately very prevalent in today’s world. Productive inflammation occurs when white blood cells jump to action to protect the body from threats of infection. Though this type of inflammation is essential to keeping the body healthy and removing harmful irritants, pathogens and cells, the majority of inflammation experienced by people today is not the beneficial type. Since more inflammation is often created in response to existing inflammation, it’s common for inflammation to become a self-perpetuating issue that causes other diseases and conditions. Continue reading Understanding How Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fatty Acids Impact Inflammation in the Body

More and more Americans are beginning to turn to holistic and integrative medicine practices as they pursue enhanced health and wellness. Both forms of medicine focus on the whole person and approach healing as an art and science. Whether you are suffering from chronic migraines, hormonal imbalances, depression, or any other condition, holistic and integrative medicine doctors offer treatment methods that solve the underlying issues rather than merely hiding the symptoms.

An Introduction to Holistic Medicine Continue reading The Most Important Principles of Holistic and Integrative Medicine

Breast health is a critical issue for women of every age, and we are lucky to live in a world where advanced technologies are available to comprehensively monitor and support breast health. Breast thermography, for instance, is an innovative risk assessment tool that supplements mammography to maximize breast cancer prevention

What is Breast Thermography?

Breast thermography is also known as thermal imaging. It uses a sophisticated camera to measure the temperature of the skin on the breast. Though the connection might not seem obvious, the temperature of breast tissue is actually very important because inflammatory and cancer cells increase blood flow and metabolism- and thus temperature- as they grow and multiply within the breast. If breast thermography uncovers patterns of temperature imbalance in the breast, it could help detect early changes which can then be reversed with natural regimens while preventing or quickly addressing breast cancer.   Continue reading What is Breast Thermography and Why Does It Matter?

The medical applications of laser systems have grown significantly over the last ten years. Lasers are now capable of doing everything from removing unwanted body hair and resurfacing the skin to improving vaginal health. FemTouch™ from Lumenis is an innovative non-surgical, non-hormonal treatment that uses advanced technology to support and improve vaginal health in a number of ways. Continue reading Is FEMTOUCH™ The Non-Hormonal Way to Relieve Vaginal Problems & Urinary Incontinence?

WATER:
Our body is made primarily of water. We must therefore drink and hydrate our body mostly with pure water, and not juice, soda, tea, or coffee. It is generally recommended to drink 1/2 our body weight in ounces of water throughout the day.
If we want to ensure a self sustaining clean environment, we may want to avoid the use of plastic bottles that pose a synthetic stress to our planet and to our body. When we drink water from plastic bottles, the water may have been tainted with toxic chemicals from the bottle that could have leeched into the water due to heat exposure from the sun or the environment. In addition, most bottled water companies simply serve purified tap water, a task we can all do at home at a much lower cumulative cost without the environmental threat posed by the shift of control of water supplies from governments to wealth building corporations.

FOOD:
Since food is a major source of energy for our body, it is crucial for us to be conscious of what we feed our body. In choosing healthy foods, we can use common sense principles to guide us. We want to chose balanced portions of a spectrum of colorful unprocessed whole foods that emphasize in-season, locally grown raw vegetables and fruits. If we like to cook vegetables, we may want to steam them lightly, as to avoid the breakdown of the biochemical molecules that occurs doing excessive heating or microwaving of food.  If we chose to eat meat or fish, we may want to indulge ourselves in free range, wild, organically grown or fed animals in order to avoid the potential contamination by artificial chemicals and hormones.
We may want to eat small frequent meals without ever filling ourselves in view of studies that suggest that caloric restricted diet has been associated with long healthy life. Eliminating sugars, dairy, and gluten (a major protein component of wheat) from our diet will often bring about improvements in variety of symptoms including excess mucus production by our body, or immune hypersensitivity response of our gut, skin, or joints.
As our body uses energy in the process of digesting and assimilating food, it is possible to reduce the demands on the body at times of stress. We can chose to eat soft, or liquid diets, eat smaller amounts of food, or even avoid altogether certain foods that may be stressful to our body. We may want to pay attention to our digestive process by ensuring a slow and adequate chewing process. There are many resources that we can refer to for juicing and blending of vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices . We may even want to become self sufficient, especially in harsh economic times, and grow a small vegetable and herb garden, with surrounding fruit trees of our choice.
It is of utmost importance to avoid prepackaged, precooked, preserved foods, that may have multiple ingredients that could be harmful to our health . Because knowledge is power, in order to be more knowledgeable about our health choices we must carefully read all labels on foods and continuously educate ourselves about health and healing.

NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS:
While it is desirable to support our body’s metabolic pathways with a balanced and synergistic blend of nutrients directly from food, it is not possible to obtain all the nutrients for optimal health from food.
There is widespread evidence documenting the need for supplementing our diet with micronutrients. Current intake of individual micronutrients is significantly below the established dietary reference intake levels. The soils used for farming are known to contain depleted amounts of essential minerals like selenium and zinc. As a result, the fruits and vegetables grown today have a fraction of the potency of nutrients that were found 20 years ago. Many foods ingested today have lost nutritional potency due to storage, shipping, freezing, and preservation methods that alter their biochemical makeup.
Increased stress in modern western society has been shown to reduce body stores of magnesium and other nutrients, with increased need for antioxidants to neutralize the increased number of free radicals induced by greater loads of external toxins and internal stress hormone breakdown products.
Nutritional supplements have been shown to strengthen the immune response and reduce the incidence of chronic illness compared to placebo supplemented subjects. Higher intake and higher blood levels of micronutrients in many prospective studies lead to decreased incidence of degenerative diseases and lowered death rates over a period of years.
Nutrient absorption has been shown to gradually decrease with advancing age, requiring greater intake of supplements.
Many of today’s pharmaceuticals originate from plants. Digitalis, used to treat congestive heart failure, initially came from the leaves of the foxglove plant. Taxol, from the yew tree is used for chemotherapy. Belladonna is used for respiratory and gastrointestinal complaints, and many other medications are extracted from nature.
With advances in the science of nutraceutical medicine, supplements can be given to the body reversing a variety of targeted disease causing chemical reactions.
Supplements include minerals, vitamins, herbs, concentrates, and homeopathic remedies .

Science is beginning to discover the ancient knowledge of the power of our intention in initiating any physical manifestation including the power to heal ourselves.

Anything that has ever been achieved by humans was first a thought in someone’s mind. Anything that is created in our life, mainly our health and well-being, begins in our mind and is influenced by our conscious and subconscious choices of thoughts and emotions.

In order to take a more active role in the creative process of our lives, we must become aware of our words and thought patterns. We also must be aware of the following known universal principles:

* Self Healing – The mind and body system has an innate ability to heal itself. The healing arts and sciences just assists the process by accelerating the innate ability.
* Universal Energy – Everything visible or invisible is energy and is all interconnected. The dictionary defines energy as the strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity, from Greek energeia, from en- �in, within� + ergon �work.�. Our inner thoughts and emotions are forms of energy, and they can become words, which can shape our actions, habits, and character.
* Cause and Effect – Anything created has an impact. Since our thoughts, words, and actions are creative we are responsible for their impacts. Like causes attract like effects, so that negative thoughts, words, and actions  attract negative outcomes, and wholesome thoughts, words, and actions attract positive outcomes.

To create vibrant health, we must therefore take responsibility and consciously reprogram our mind by choosing positive thoughts, words, and actions. We must also let go of negative, or non supportive conscious or subconscious beliefs. The path to achieve such a mastery of our mind and body has been called “enlightenment”, and is a natural progression of our ability to control some of our thoughts. In the natural process of evolution, we come to realize that gaining mastery of the self is simply stepping out of the way and allowing without resistance the self healing mechanism of life to lead us to wholesome health and happiness.

The field of psychoneuroimmunology and the works of Drs. Candace Pert and Bruce Lipton have suggested that the “mind� is part of every cell, and emotions exist both as energy and matter in the vibrating receptors on every cell in the body. The mind can then produce a wide variety of mind-altering chemicals.

“Mind Body Medicine” therapies have been reported to be effective in many conditions including pain control, migraine, rheumatoid arthritis, ADHD, epilepsy, hypertension, peptic ulcer, anxiety, depression, and diabetes.

Tools to help us in the process are:

Emotionally Charged Positive Affirmations
Positive Goal Setting
Balancing Life Sectors
Accelerated Learning
Biofeedback
84% of migraine sufferers can control their headaches when they learn temperature control of the index finger (the least difficult biofeedback technique according to Norman Shealy, MD, PhD)
Breath Techniques
Guided Imagery
Meditation
In the 1970s, Dr. Herbert Benson first reported on the physiologic benefits of meditation known as the “Relaxation Response”.  Benson demonstrated that individuals who did 20 minutes of deep relaxation twice a day had a 50% decrease of both stress related catecholamine production and insulin requirement for the entire 24-hour period.
Yoga

Maintaining your health and vitality as a woman isn’t always easy, especially as you age and encounter new challenges and obstacles. Fortunately, there are natural and holistic solutions to the common problems that women experience over time. Natural progesterone is one such solution that can improve many bothersome conditions like heavy menses, breast tenderness, and hormonal acne.

What Is Progesterone? Continue reading 3 Ways Natural Progesterone Can Improve Women’s Health

The art of detoxification dates back to ancient Roman, Greek, Indian, and Native American civilizations. Each culture utilized different processes, such burning sage, acupuncture, and the strategic use of herbs. Today, toxins exist in far greater quantities than they did in ancient times, which dramatically increases the importance of detoxification to the human body.

What is Detoxification?

Detoxification is the process of cleansing and nourishing the body from the inside out. As toxins are removed and eliminated, the body is able to more efficiently overcome illness, fight disease, and function with renewed vitality. The liver, kidneys, intestines, lungs, lymphatic system, and skin all play central roles in sustaining the body’s natural detoxification. Continue reading The Best Ways to Rid Your Body of Toxins

Unfortunately, we live in a world saturated in toxins. It is virtually impossible to find air, water, or food that has not been tainted with chemicals and pollutions. Even the most unsuspecting products like shampoos and fabrics are often laden with dangerous chemicals. When too many toxins accumulate in the body, the body’s natural detoxification systems become compromised and fail to protect against the diseases and illnesses that toxins can cause. This is why it is so important to use a structured detoxification system to flush toxin from the body and reverse symptoms of illness.

Toxins in the Body Continue reading Why Does Your Body Need Detoxification?