Cardinal Rule 3: Exercise – Good Nutrition’s Essential Partner

From Opening Hearts, Chapter 5’s Cardinal rules for healthy living: Rule 3 Exercise Human beings are created for activity; our bodies are made to move. Yet in our technological world too many of us spend most of our lives sitting. We sit in cars, at computers, in front of televisions and desks, and at sporting … Read more

Cardinal Rule 2: Maintain a Healthy Weight

Rule 2: Maintain a Healthy Weight From Opening Hearts: Chapter 5’s Five Cardinal Rules for Healthy Living; Weight – The Shape of Your Physical Self Weight literally shapes the person you see in the mirror. An underweight emaciated person appears gaunt or even skeletal while an obese person often resembles an apple or a pear. … Read more

Nutrition’s Nemesis: Sugar’s Outrageous Growth

Opening Hearts: Chapter 5 Nutrition’s Nemesis: Sugar’s Outrageous Growth If I could select one substance to decrease in our diet it would be sugar. This unhealthy substance feeds the inflammation that damages arterial walls and has a long list of other harmful health consequences including cancer. Yet the average American consumes about 150 pounds of … Read more

The Spirituality of Food Production and Choices

From Opening Hearts, Chapter 5’s Five Cardinal Rules for Healthy Living – Rule 1 Nutrition   When we consider all the gifts and resources we have available to us, we begin to understand that our food choices have spiritual as well as health consequences. Mindfulness and intentionality are just two of the spiritual aspects of … Read more

Opening Hearts’ Five Cardinal Rules: Keys to Healthy Living

Recently I had the great honor of being a guest on Connie Whitman’s internet radio program, Architect of Change to talk about Opening Hearts, the book I co-created with the amazing cardiovascular surgeon Lester R. Sauvage, MD (1926-2015). Connie and I discussed the advice Dr. Sauvage shared about how to nurture the body as part of living a healthy … Read more

Social Faux Pas & OBE Adventures

Social faux pas are an unavoidable part of international travel. And adventures, by their very nature, are unpredictable. Our first week in Costa Rica included social faux pas but our adventures were OBE (overcome by events). Friday and Saturday found us settling in, grocery shopping, and visiting a couple of local eateries. Sunday morning, we both … Read more

Scombroid Poisoning: When A Yummy Dinner Turns Toxic

There’s nothing as wonderful as a dinner shared with people you love and a menu of fresh-caught tuna and yellowtail broiled with herbs, spices, olive oil and butter. That is, until dinner turns toxic. Five of us shared this yummy dinner and all five of us suffered the symptoms of scombroid poisoning. If it sounds … Read more

Is Our Food Killing Us?

The Unhealthy Truth about our food supply

Is our food killing us? Asking this question is logical given what’s happened since the introduction in the mid-1990s of genetically modified seeds to increase production – some say so we can feed the world, others say so that agribusiness can reap higher profits. During this same timeframe the rate of food allergies and obesity … Read more

Fad Diet Hunger Games

Many Americans will try almost any new thing to lose weight. The problem is fad diets NEVER work . . . at least not in the long term. Any diet can help you lose water and even muscle weight in a very short period of time. But in order to maintain the loss, you have … Read more

Is Fear Making Us Fat?

There is no disputing that as a nation we are becoming more obese each year. The CDC has an interesting graphic showing the dramatic increase in obesity over the last 20 years http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html. Right now, the even healthiest state in the union, Colorado, has an obesity rate of over a 20% with the unhealthiest states … Read more