Tag Archive for: natural remedies
Does the heat make you cranky? Or wipe you out? Heat can do that.
We’re a part of nature, and the heat of the summer can flare our internal heat as well, exacerbating any inflammation, redness, irritability, anxiousness, sharp or burning pain, skin rashes, insomnia, constipation, acid reflux, small intestine issues, UTIs, and heavy periods. Not fun. But there are things we can do in our daily lives that will make the hot weather more (or less!) bearable.
First, here’s how to increase the heat (or what NOT to do.) I’m including this list because if you think about it, you might realize that your intuition is steering you away from these things already, and your own inner wisdom deserves some credit.
- Exercise vigorously, especially during the hottest part of the day.
- Eat the heaviest, greasiest foods you can. Fry everything and skip the fruits and veggies.
- Drink lots of coffee and alcohol, especially hard liquor and red wine.
- Lie in the hot sun and avoid water like the plague.
- Use heating spices like cinnamon, dried ginger, chili powder, cayenne, and chipotle with every meal. Go nuts with garlic and onions too.
- Schedule every minute of these super-long days. Move even faster than you usually do, and don’t give yourself any downtime at all. If possible, put even more pressure on yourself and hold yourself to ridiculously high standards.
And here’s what to do instead:
- Exercise during the coolest parts of the day: early morning and late evening.
- Enjoy lots of seasonal vegetables (at least 50% at every meal), especially the watery ones like zucchini, cucumbers, romaine lettuce, kale, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, daikon radish, and seaweeds.
- Eat more raw food, and spend less time cooking (longer cooking times increase the heat).
- Season your food with cooling herbs like mint, parsley, cilantro, basil, cumin, and coriander.
- Stay hydrated with plenty of water. Spice it up with a mint leaf or a splash of lime juice. Or if you want to really get crazy, allow yourself fizzy water. Or coconut water. Or watermelon juice. Or this smoothie.
- Spritz yourself with rosewater.
- Annoint yourself with peppermint essential oil. Put it on a fire point like PC 8, located in the center of your palm, where your middle finger lands when you make a loose fist.
- Allow space in your day for spontaneity and time to take it easy. Practice self-compassion.
A Cooling Smoothie Recipe for hot summer days:
Big handful of cilantro
Big handful of parsley
Big handful of mint
Juice of half a lime
Fresh ginger (4-6 inches by 1/8th inch)
Fresh turmeric (3-4 inches by 1/8th inch or 1/4 tsp. dried)
1/3- ½ an avocado: (essential for texture!)
1 TB hemp hearts or sesame seeds
1 cup spinach
1 cup strawberries or blueberries
1/4 cup chopped beet
1 cup coconut water
1 cup water
Summer is here – hopefully you have a get-away or two coming up. While I absolutely adore going new places and visiting friends and family, traveling itself can be stressful. Plus, trips tend to disrupt the healthy routines I have in place at home.
Recently I flew to Dallas for a 3-day conference. Between airplanes, changing time zones, hotel beds, a packed schedule, and Texas’s reputation as not-exactly-a-hotbed of organic, plant-based eating, I was a little concerned about how I was going to take care of myself.
Here’s what I took with me to help feel my best while traveling:
- My neti pot and some sea salt. When I arrive at my room, among the first things I do is take a shower and rinse my sinuses to rid myself of the skeevy airplane air.
- Lavender and peppermint essential oils. I anoint points on my wrists and neck to give myself my own bubble of germ-killing air on the plane. A drop of peppermint on my neck and shoulders also helps me stay alert, relaxes muscles, benefits digestion, and treats headaches. A few drops of lavender on my pillow or inner wrist comes in handy for relaxation and sleep.
- My breakfast-in-a-bag: Before I leave, I assemble the following in a ziplock bag: 3 TB rolled oats, 2 TB chia seeds (protein), a sprinkling of shredded coconut (good fat), a handful of raisins or goji berries (antioxidants), ½ tsp. cinnamon (balance blood sugar, enhance digestion), pinch of salt, 1 tsp. hemp seeds or sesame seeds (protein and essential fatty acids, plus they’re intestinal moisteners that prevent constipation), a pinch of ground ginger or cardamom (or both) to kindle digestion. I actually multiplied this recipe by 4, one for each morning of my trip. Use the in-room coffee maker to heat water, and it cooks itself in 10 minutes.
- A spoon and pyrex with which to eat my breakfast. They’re smaller and lighter than my Vitamix!
- Some fresh food: A gallon-sized bag of cut up carrots, celery, and cucumber ensures I’ll have the vegetables my body’s used to getting while I travel. A couple of apples and a small bag of almonds make easy, packable snacks.
- Favorite Chinese herbs: I bring Free and Easy Wanderer to help adapt to the changes in routine, Suan Zao Ren Tang for sleep, and some emergency Gan Mao Ling in case I feel a cold coming on.
- A few tea bags of tulsi tea for its stress-relieving and immune-booting properties
- Good walking shoes so I could make sure to take a 15-minute walk during every break in the action. If you’ve ever spent a weekend in a conference room cave, you know how important it is to get outside and move.
- Workout clothes – and I made sure to hit the workout room early each day.
- My meditation and qi gong practices: no packing required, and yet so essential for me to feel grounded and connected to myself
What helps you stay healthy when you travel?
Part 2 in the Self-Care for Emotional Healing series (read part 1 here)
Guilt is heavy. Ever get a sinking feeling in your abdomen when you feel like you didn’t live up to your own standards? Or experience a sensation of something weighing on the conscience, like you were carrying something heavy? The weight of guilt has even been shown to make physically demanding tasks seem more difficult [1]. And letting go of it can be tough.
In Chinese Medicine, the mind, emotions, and the body are intertwined, and we can use the points on the body to help resolve emotional issues. Some of the most powerful points for dealing with guilt are found along the Belt Vessel, the only major acupuncture channel that runs horizontally. As its name implies, the Belt Vessel encircles the waist, but drops lower in front as though weighted down. This channel is like a basement: a place to stash things we haven’t quite figured out what to do with, or that we’re not entirely proud of. We don’t go there very often, and it tends to get stagnant and damp. (“Dampness” is the Chinese Medicine term for energy that’s turbid, heavy, cumulative, and difficult to get rid of – yucky stuff.)
To lighten up that damp basement and clean out the stuck emotional energy from the Belt Vessel, first, conjure up what you want to let go of and extend a feeling of forgiveness towards yourself. Then, bring your fingertips and thumb together, and with firm pressure, massage the following points:
- Ga
ll Bladder 41: on the foot, just outside the tendon that leads to the little toe, on the right side for women, on the left for men. This point opens the Belt Vessel. - Liver 13: on the side of your torso,
at the tip of the 11th rib - Gall Bladder 26: just below Liver 13, at the level of the belly button
- Gall Bladder 27 or 28: On the low belly, just inside the hip bones
To enhance the treatment, apply a drop of essential oil to these points. Neroli, cardamom, sandalwood, or bergamot help the body resolve dampness and guilt while fostering a sense of peace. Since guilt tends to linger, you’ll want to work with these points for a few days in a row, then take a break. Repeat that cycle until you feel a sense of lightness and liberation.
[1] Day MV, Bobocel DR (2013) The Weight of a Guilty Conscience: Subjective Body Weight as an Embodiment of Guilt. PLoS ONE 8(7): e69546. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069546
It’s getting to be that time of year where a remarkable number of people here in the Willamette Valley start sneezing, dripping, and itching with seasonal allergies. Fortunately, there are a number of natural steps you one can take to mitigate or even eliminate allergy symptoms without suffering the drowsiness and other side effects that often come with taking pharmaceuticals.
In Chinese Medicine, we distinguish between two main types of allergies: those where heat or cold predominates. Wind, joining forces with either heat or cold, invades the body from the outside, causing an acute attack of those symptoms we all know and don’t love: sneezing, nasal congestion or runny nose, itchy eyes, tiredness, and even diffiuculty breathing.
Symptoms of wind-cold type of allergies include very drippy runny nose with clear mucus and fatigue, while the wind-heat type is characterized by itchy eyes, itchy throat and thick yellow or green mucus. Both conditions are made worse by the presence of phlegm. Phlegm is which is basically accumulated turbid water that the body is trying to throw at what it perceives as a dangerous pathogen: the evil, invading pollen.
So what can you do besides hide indoors?
- Use a neti pot to rinse your sinuses to get the pollen out of your respiratory tract. Combine warm water and enough salt so that the water tastes like a teardrop, and rinse your nasal passages twice daily. Flushing the allergens out of your body gives the body a break from having to perpetually react to them. Plus, freeing the flow of qi in your sinuses makes it less likely for stuff to percolate there and become infected.
- Eat strategically: Making sure that you’re digesting well and therefore not creating more residual crud to hang out in your system as dampness or phlegm is very important. Keep damp-producing foods like dairy products, refined sugar, bananas, alcohol, and refined flour products to a minimum (Though yogurt and kefir with active probiotic cultures can help the immune system, you may be better off with fermented foods like miso and kimchi — or taking probiotic supplements– which are less mucogenic than dairy.) The taste of bitter helps to transform phlegm, so including lots of leafy greens in your diet can be helpful. If you have wind-heat type allergies, cooking with spices such as rosemary, oregano, turmeric, and mint can be helpful. For wind-cold type allergies, cook with onions and fresh ginger.
- Drink tea: Both green and black tea are especially rich in quercetin, a component of plant-based foods that has anit-inflammatory properties. Other foods rich in quercetin include red onions, lovage, capers, red grapes, and green leafy vegetables.Tea made from nettles can be highly anti-inflammatory: steep the leaves for 10 minutes in hot water (and handle with care!) Chrysanthemum blossoms (steeped covered for at least 5 minutes) is especially good to relieve itchy eyes.
- Take Herbs: Herbs are simply stronger foods. Ready-made Chinese herb formulas like Pe Min Kan Wan, Bi Yan Pian, or Xanthium Pills are all aimed at treating the wind-heat or wind-cold to decrease symptoms of allergies, and many people find to be effective symptom relievers without the side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs. (available at Life in Balance Acupuncture.)
- Get acupuncture. A study published in the Australian Journal of Medicine suggests that acupuncture provides safe, effective treatment for persistent seasonal allergies, even 12 weeks after the course of treatment. But you may already know that!