Great Way Weekly

From Great Way Blog

The Wall Street Journal has published this interesting commentary by Deepak Chopra about the real benefits of alternative medicine and lifestyle changes to improve our health and reduce our health care spending. I like how he emphasizes that our current, ineffective system is focused on treating disease after it strikes rather than on working to prevent health problems. Prevention gets talked up a lot in the press, but I sure haven’t seen anything change in how my MDs treat me or my patients. Some of the most debilitating and expensive-to-treat health problems are preventable in a large percentage of the population. Why aren’t we focusing on that as we look to fix our very broken medical system? Hopefully, someone in the Obama administration will take a look at this and maybe start requiring insurers to cover things like acupuncture. I suspect they’ll find that it’s much more cost effective than what we’re doing now.

Read the full commentary here.

From Great Way Blog

Mushrooms like Reishi, Cordyceps and Poria have long been used in Chinese herbal medicine as tonics for the body. Modern research has shown that these and other varieties of mushrooms have immune building, cancer-fighting and anti-inflammatory capabilities. It’s important to try to include some in your diet–no need to try to over do it, just to have them be a regular part of your weekly or monthly diet.
Here’s a post from Dr. Andrew Weil about some mushrooms to try to incorporate into your life. Cordyceps is a great mushroom, but I haven’t had much luck finding it outside of my Chinese herb suppliers. When you can find it, it’s incredibly expensive (too expensive for me to stock it in my pharmacy). Reishi is pretty easy to find and much more affordable, so I would choose that over cordyceps. Shiitake and Maitake (also called Hen of the Woods) are expensive to buy fresh, but relatively inexpensive to buy dried. I add some dried shiitake and maitake to any soup stock I make (or, if I’m in a hurry, I boil them along with some whole garlic cloves in some Imagine Foods No Chicken stock for a quick almost-home-made tasting stock). I get my dried mushrooms from MountainRoseHerbs.com.

Here’s Dr. Weil’s post, and you can go the original here:

Mushrooms are a big favorite of mine because they’re delicious and often have medicinal properties. If you’re not allergic and don’t find them hard to digest, try these:

1. Cordyceps: A Chinese mushroom used traditionally as a tonic and restorative. You can add whole, dried cordyceps to soups and stews, or drink tea made from powdered cordyceps.
2. Maitake: This delicious mushroom provides anti-cancer, anti-viral and immune-enhancing properties, and may also reduce blood pressure and help regulate blood sugar. Find it dried or fresh in Japanese markets, gourmet stores or upscale supermarkets.
3. Reishi: Too woody and bitter to eat, reishi mushrooms are available in tea bags, capsules and liquid extracts. Animal studies have shown that reishi improves immune function and inhibits the growth of some malignant tumors. It also acts as a natural anti-inflammatory agent.
4. Shiitake: The shiitake has been found to have immune modulating, anti-viral and cholesterol-reducing properties. Certain extracts of shiitake mushrooms are used in Japan as adjunctive therapy to strengthen the immunity of cancer patients during chemotherapy and radiation. Find it – fresh or dried – in grocery stores and Asian markets.

Note: I advise against the regular consumption of cultivated white or “button” mushrooms because they contain natural toxins that may act as carcinogens.

I woke up this morning feeling not-so-great. I had a sinus headache, and felt tired an achy despite a good night’s sleep. I decided that I was officially under the weather (sort of inbetween being sick and being well), and decided the best course of action was 2 aspirin, a sinus rinse with my neti pot, and a hot herbal/epsom salt bath.
I like to use a lot of epsom salts in my bath–at least 2 cups. Epsom salts are magnesium sulfate, and they help your muscles relax (magnesium helps the muscles relax, and calcium helps them contract). I also took 2 large handfuls of one of my herbal mixtures, and boiled them for about 5 minutes. As an herbalist, I have bags of herbs around my house, so it’s easy for me to whip up an herbal bath or facial steam (this bath used a blend of jasmine, chamomile, rose, spearmint, passionflower, lavendar and comfrey), but you can use tea bags to make an herbal bath–try 3-4 bags each of chamomile and mint.
I’m happy to report that I’m feeling much better, and ready for my work day!

The New York Times Health blog, Well, recently re-posted a list of the “11 best foods you aren’t eating.” It’s culled from a list of 150 healthy foods that appears in a book by Jonny Bowden.

I agree with everything on this list, but I do question the inclusion of cinnamon and tumeric. While I believe that both have medicinal benefits, and while I use both daily in the herbs I prescribe to my patients, I doubt that you can get a medicinal dose by using it as a flavoring agent.

One thing I would add is that eating a diet rich in these sorts of foods is fantastic for your skin, along with everything else. A bright, glowing complexion is the visible reward you give yourself for committing to eating a whole food diet rich in antioxidants. Of course, that’s just the cherry on top–your true reward is how great you’ll feel.

Reposted from New York Times, see original here:

1. Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.
How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.
2. Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.
How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.
3. Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.
How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.
4. Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.
How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.
5. Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants.
How to eat: Just drink it.
6. Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with antioxidants.
How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked.
7. Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death.
How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.
8. Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.” They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.
How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.
9. Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,” it may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.
How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.
10. Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies.
How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.
11. Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories.
How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Our annual holiday trip to New Orleans to visit my family is always a big food-fest. Like anyone visiting New Orleans, we do our best to eat as much of the wonderful local cuisine as we can. I should point out that though this is a health blog, I would not call New Orleans cuisine “healthy” It’s full of butter and cream and lots of fried things. So, occasional indulgence is o.k., but we always have to “detox” with lots of fresh veg and brown rice when we come back to Boston!

We had a fantastic meal of raw oysters and perfectly fried seafood at Casamento’s on Magazine St. in the Garden District. This is definitely an old-school, family-run restaurant. They aren’t open every day, and don’t serve both lunch and dinner every day. If you go, you should plan to wait at least 30-45 minutes for a table as the place is tiny and no one (employees or customers) is in a hurry. We found the wait worth it–the oysters were amazing and came with a set up to make your own cocktail sauce with Ketchup, horseradish, tabasco and a lemon wedge. My husband and I shared a fried seafood platter that had fried shrimp, oysters, catfish, and crab claws. It was probably some of the best fried food I’ve ever eaten–it was completely grease-less, and almost seemed light!
For those of you avoiding gluten in your diet, please check Casamento’s out! Their fried seafood is gluten-free, though you should be sure to ask them to leave the bread off of the plate.

We also ate at Deanie’s seafood in the French Quarter and had grilled oysters and blackened redfish (both also gluten-free).

Sadly, crawfish were not in season when we visited, but we made sure to eat as many boiled shrimp as we could on this trip. In New Orleans, we boil our seafood whole (that’s with the head and tail intact), and we like it spicy. If you’re lucky, you can also get some potatoes, onions or maybe corn on the cob that’s been boiled in the “crab boil,” as we call any spicy boiling mixture. Boiled seafood is another good option for people with food sensitivities as it does not contain gluten, soy or egg (or corn, unless the restaurant boils corn cobs–just ask).

We visited Chinatown on our last trip to NYC because I wanted to visit a Chinese herb pharmacy. We found this rather large, well-organized pharmacy, and were drawn in by the big barrells of ginseng that they had on display. The rest of the shop was filled with hundreds of different patent formulas (Chinese herbs prepared in pill form), as well as raw herbs that one of their pharmacists could use to fill a prescription.