Food does more than fill a plate. It brings us together, connects us with traditions, and gives our bodies the nutrients they need to function. That is the useful idea behind “food as medicine”: recognizing that what we eat can play an important role in caring for our health. It does not mean every ingredient
3 Ways Food Supports Your Health-One Everyday Choice at a Time Read More »
The simple law rules behind weight loss is that the human body requires energy (measured in calories) to function normally, to lose weight, you need to spend more energy than you consume. People who are more physically active tend to burn more calories, so walking more can naturally help with weight loss. The more you
Is Walking Effective for Weight loss? Read More »
Autumn brings plenty to look forward to: colourful leaves, warming meals and the first hints of holiday plans. It also brings fuller calendars and more time spent together indoors. Looking after yourself can easily slide down the list – until you wake up with a scratchy throat or realise everyone around you seems to be
Cold and Flu Season: Everyday Ways to Support Your Health Read More »
Ask someone where they feel grief and they will almost always touch their chest. Grief tightens the throat, makes the breath catch, and pulls the shoulders forward over the lungs. We sigh without meaning to. Chinese medicine noticed this long ago and filed grief under the Lung, the organ of autumn. The question I want
Grief and the Lungs: What Chinese Medicine Means by “Sorrow Dissolves Qi” Read More »
Every year around this time, many of us notice the same three things at once. Skin that feels tight after a shower. A nose that is dry or bleeds a little in the morning. And bowels that have slowed down for no obvious reason. Most people treat these as three separate problems. Chinese medicine has
Autumn Dryness (秋燥): Why Your Skin, Nose and Gut Dry Out at Once Read More »
Walk through a Chinese kitchen in autumn and you will notice the change before anyone explains it. The quick summer dishes disappear. A clay pot comes down from the shelf. And something sour starts showing up at every meal: pickled mustard greens, a dish of black vinegar, a bowl of plums. That habit follows a
What to Eat in Autumn: Add Sour, Slow the Cooking Read More »
Ask ten people how vividly they remember last night’s dream and most of them will pause, look slightly embarrassed, and tell you they don’t really dream anymore. They do. Everybody does. You spend something close to two hours a night in REM sleep, and the dreaming happens whether or not any of it comes back
You Didn’t Stop Dreaming. You Stopped Catching Them. Read More »
Search “foods that help you sleep” and you’ll get the same list every time. Kiwifruit. Tart cherry juice. Magnesium. Warm milk. Turkey. I went and read the actual studies behind that list, and I came back with a more complicated answer than I expected. Some of it holds up. Some of it is one small
Eat for the Second Half of the Night Read More »
There is a chapter in the Huangdi Neijing, the foundational text of Chinese medicine, that is entirely about dreams. Not as omens. Not as messages from ancestors. As clinical information. The chapter is Ling Shu 43, 淫邪发梦 (Yín Xié Fā Mèng), usually rendered as something like “Pathogenic Excess Generating Dreams,” and it reads like a
What the Oldest Book in Chinese Medicine Says About Your Dreams Read More »
“I dream all night long. Every night. Full movies. And I wake up like I never went to bed.” I hear a version of this constantly, and almost always with a note of confusion in it, because the person saying it has usually been told that vivid dreaming is a sign of good, deep sleep.
When You Dream All Night and Still Wake Up Exhausted Read More »
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