Toxicologists have a saying: “The dose makes the poison.” In other words, there is no such thing as “toxic” or “non-toxic” — it always depends on how much of a substance you consume.
Using real, whole foods as the starting point for her recipes, Leanne Brown offers shopping tips and cooking techniques that help users optimize both the dollar and nutritional value of their meals. While the cookbook was conceived as a tool for SNAP recipients, who wouldn't like to eat better for cheaper?
One morning more than 26 years ago, Kathy Lubbers woke up and found that she could not bear to lift the sheet from her body because the pain was so great. Although she had been experiencing pain in both hands, nothing had prepared her for this.
Just as foods we are sensitive or allergic to can cause reactions in our digestive tract and lead to chronic inflammation, chemicals in our environment can also contribute to poor mood and physical problems. We have long known the correlation between neurological problems and toxic chemicals...
The future of food arrived at Waitsfield Elementary School — a tiny brick throwback in Vermont’s pastoral Mad River Valley — just after lunch on May 15, 2014. Rachael Young slipped into the kitchen as surreptitiously as possible. “Let’s see if we can do this on the sly,” she said to me. “I don’t want them to see anything ahead of time.”
Plaque on prehistoric human teeth offers a whole new perspective on our ancestors’ diet and their relationship with plants. The research suggests that prehistoric people living in Central Sudan may have understood both the nutritional and medicinal qualities of many plants, including the purple nut sedge (Cyperus rotundus), regarded as a nuisance weed today.
We all need to eat, and whenever we do, we make choices. We make these choices all day long. Cook at home or eat out? Fresh or frozen? Raw or cooked? Sweet or savory? Cheap or expensive? Healthy or maybe not-so-healthy? Real or decaf? Cream or sugar? Tall or grande?
When it comes to physical exercise, we don’t tend to take into account how important our brain is for keeping our whole body going. But our ability to control our muscles – to keep them contracting and relaxing – and move our bodies precisely how we want them to, is ultimately determined by our brain.
The Farmer needs more frequent meals and snacks compared with the Hunter. The varying dietary needs of Farmers and Hunters also means they are different when it comes to their most common health problems and diseases.
Chronic pain, defined as disabling pain that persists despite attempts at treatment and often without obvious cause, has become a serious challenge for health professionals. It is not surprising that someone suffering from this level of pain might become depressed, but most studies consider depression a “comorbidity”...
- By Nick Inman
There is a process going on inside me all the time that I don’t like to talk about, but which must be mentioned for the sake of completion. This is my identity of pain: the pattern of suffering that marks me out from everyone else as definitively as my fingerprints....
Can you imagine being so desperate for food that you would eat yourself to survive? Our cells do exactly this. When cells are deprived of energy and nutrients from their external environment, they look internally, packaging up and consuming their own components to survive until an energy source becomes available...
Today is the day you can ease your alarm about sudden memory gaps and quiet your fear that you’re on the cusp of dementia. Changes in memory and concentration at midlife are very common, but you don’t have to live with them. You can improve your...
Before I got sober, just shy of my twenty-fourth birthday, the last thing I felt was the freedom and happiness that the promises speak of. I was sick: not just physically sick from the amount of chemicals in my system, but soul-sick, completely bereft of a sense of...
The prevailing industrial age view of the human body as a machine whose parts occasionally break down, requiring repair only to that part without regard to the whole human being and the sources of the problem, is a health model that will increasingly be replaced by a more unified theory of what a human being truly is.
Our understanding of fats – including which ones are actually good for us – is evolving. We know for example that red meat and meat products, cakes and biscuits, which are rich sources of saturated fatty acids, are associated with an increased number of cardiovascular deaths.
At the end of the day, less pain, anxiety, and nausea, better sleep and more energy add to quality of life. That is what people with cancer seek. Researchers measure this variable usually with a written questionnaire and sometimes an oral interview...
There is nothing mysterious or even particularly clever or skillful about making healing formulations from plants. Intimidated by the pharmaceutical elite, we think that to be of any use a medicine must be made by a Ph.D. wearing a white lab coat. Not so! If you can make a cup of tea or cook a simple meal...
Some obese people may be able to remain metabolically healthy despite their size because their bodies produce low levels of a certain molecule. High levels of the molecule, called heme oxygenase-1 or HO-1, are linked to metabolic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as high blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol...
“It was believed that since fat is the most ‘calorie-dense’ of the macro-nutrients, a reduction in its consumption would lead to a reduction in calories and a subsequent decrease in the incidence of obesity,” he said. But turning to carbohydrates such as sugar and corn syrup has led to a parallel increase in diabetes and obesity in the US.
Most American adults say that they believe in God and that their religious beliefs affect how they live their lives. However, people have different ideas about life after death, belief in miracles, and other religious beliefs...
“Sunshine can be addictive like heroin.” The claim comes via a study published in Cell based on an experiment carried out on mice at Harvard Medical School. Researchers found that ultraviolet light exposure leads to elevated endorphin levels – the body’s own “feel good” internal morphine...
The question of whether to eat fish while pregnant has long been a slippery one. On the one hand, expecting mothers are told that eating fish regularly is good for fetal brain development. And on the other, they’re warned that fish contain mercury, which can cause birth defects.