Rock your fiber, but not for the reason you’re thinking. Eighty percent of women aged 35+ have estrogen dominance, and fiber is proven to lower estrogen levels (and prevent breast cancer). Mind the Gap I recommend (and Dr. Weil) 35-45 grams of fiber per day yet the average fiberintake among American women is less than [...]
Have you ever finished a gigantic project, and been surprised by how you felt the next day? A bit unsettled. Out of sorts, maybe? Adrift? That’s how I feel today. Baby is launched. But why such weirdness? And my enduring followup question: What’s the neurohormonal backstory? It’s been an 18-month arc of getting my book [...]
First the bold news: I hacked my growth hormone with exercise and raised it 53%. Results just in: Growth hormone climbed from a respectable level of 219 last year to 334 ng/ml at the end of April. Even with my agro lifestyle of completing my book with Simon and Schuster, running my integrative medicine practice full [...]
Have you heard of the “cortisol switch?” Here’s the scenario. When you’re stressed, you feel the positive vibe of cortisol – the rise of energy, the focus, the charge, the ascent. Cortisol is the main stress hormone made in your adrenal glands and it’s designed to get you out of danger. It has 3 main [...]
There, I admit it. It’s time to get brutally honest. After all, I’m in my forties, perimenopausal, and the best part about it is the newfound clarity, the lift of the hormonal veil–regarding the endless accommodation, the people-pleasing, the half-hearted enthusiasm for things you don’t really enjoy but you do them anyway. Such [...]
I am so very blessed. Here’s why. 7 Women. One Year. These 7 women have vaulted me to places I never thought possible in the past year, from the Fire Starter Sessions with Danielle Laporte (did her book, then did a live Fire Starter, and, WOW, life shifted to technicolor in so many delovely and [...]
Michelle Obama feels like a real person. No pretense. Not precious. She was not brought up in wealth and privilege – she came from a working class family. She attended public schools. Neither parent went to college. She rode city buses for 3 hours per day to get to magnet high school. She earned her [...]
In Portland last week, I was immensely enjoying dinner with my sister, her 11-month baby, and my elder daughter, now officially a ‘tween. We were having a magical time, hanging out at a hip Portlandia-esque natural foods restaurant called Blossoming Lotus, when the talk turned South. We were chatting about middle school, and the topic [...]
Last fall I had an epiphany. I was talking to Ellen Heed, the genre-bending anatomy teacher for Ana Forrest’s Yoga Teacher Training, about how we, as women, have to take responsibility for the fact that we are neurologically programmed for pleasure. Here’s the epiphany: our pleasure wiring is a use-it-or-lose-it situation. If you don’t use [...]
Peace. Stress hormones, particularly the queen of ‘em, cortisol, normalizes. Briefly. Not too high. Not too low. Tank full, even overflowing, and it’s the overflow I give to others—my family and friends, my clients, my book. When I’m in my equanimitous zone, I have time to meditate each morning for 20 minutes, to write, to [...]
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