Watching CNN the other night, I was pleasantly surprised when Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the network’s chief medical correspondent, reported that he has reversed his previous position and now supports the legalization of medical marijuana. In a deeply apologetic mea culpa, Gupta said he had not adequately researched the health benefits of marijuana, and apologized for “misleading … Read more
When your child has a cold or the flu, you may be tempted take her to the doctor and get a prescription for antibiotics. Heck, we frequently do the same for ourselves. It’s a choice that science now shows us can have far-reaching and dire consequences. When penicillin was discovered in 1928 and sulfa drugs … Read more
You washed your hands. You drank your juice. You took your vitamins. But the flu bug got you anyway. Don’t despair! There are natural ways to ease your misery and get back on your feet fast. As soon as you feel the first hint of a scratchy throat, a sneeze or sniffle, grab these remedies … Read more
It’s a story we hear nearly every day: a man in his mid-fifties develops chest pain and shortness of breath. A visit to his doctor leads to an electrocardiogram (EKG), then an exercise stress test, perhaps later a visit to a cardiologist, more tests, and finally a diagnosis: blocked coronary arteries that require arterial stents … Read more
If you’re anything like me, music plays an important part in your life. I walk around humming singing out loud, serenading my horses in the barn and my dogs over their morning cookies. Pandora plays in the background much of my workday and occasionally I stop to look up the lyrics so I can belt … Read more
My readers are well aware how much I love curcumin for, oh so many reasons, and I’ve just found another one. Let’s back up a bit. I know that curcumin is a powerful anti–inflammatory. And I know that inflammation is the underlying cause of a wide variety of terrible diseases, including heart disease, cancer, arthritis … Read more
My grandma was a practical soul. Aside from her decades-long addiction to the soap opera, As The World Turns, Grandma was a product of the early part of the 20th century, when life was simple and when people learned to “make-do” as she’d always say. In addition to her incomparable strawberry jam and the tiny … Read more
It’s that time of year . . . when the trees and grasses are blooming. For many of us, it can be a time of miserable head congestion, sinus headaches, sneezing and coughing. These excerpts from my book, Food Is Medicine: 101 Prescriptions from the Garden offer some food-based ways to prevent and treat springtime allergies … Read more
On my recent wondrous trip to Peru’s Amazon River basin, we stayed in a retreat center far from any city. There was electricity only for a handful of hours a day from a generator and no waste disposal system. Because of the delicate ecology of this most precious part of our planet, we were asked … Read more
Excerpt from from Food Is Medicine: 101 Prescriptions from the Garden By Kathleen Barnes JOINT PAIN Your Garden Rx: chili peppers, oregano, spinach, cantaloupe, broccoli Joint pain is almost always caused by some sort of inflammation of the joints, usually due to wear and tear over the years that causes deterioration of the cartilage, a soft … Read more