First the bold news: I hacked my growth hormone with exercise and raised it 53%. Results just in: I rocked my growth hormone from a respectable level of 219 last year to 334 ng/ml. Even with my agro lifestyle of completing my book with Simon & Schuster, running my integrative medicine practice full time, and trying… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
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… [Continue Reading]
Here’s a great question from a member of our community named Amy Fleischer, pictured here on the beach with her husband. Amy’s question popped up in response to the September Vogue article on hormones by Ginny Graves.
