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Transform your life
Explore the latest articles by Dr. Sara Szal, where she blends science and holistic wisdom to address the most pressing issues in women’s health, longevity, and personal transformation.
Mental Vitamin: Sewing | Knitting | Cooking
Love this idea from neuroscientist Kelly Lambert, PhD’s book on depression, about choosing alternatives to the conventional quick-fix of changing your neurotransmitter mix with a prescription for Lexapro, Prozac or Wellbutryn or some new pill. “Lambert shows how when you knit a sweater or plant a garden, when you prepare a meal or simply repair…
Breast Cancer/Anti-Depressant Link: 5 Facts
Did you catch the news in April that anti-depressants are associated with an 11% increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer?* After pouring over 61 studies of anti-depressants, lead author Lisa Cosgrove of the Harvard Center for Ethics found several other titillating facts as well. Here’s my sum-up. 11% of the US takes an antidepressant,…
Alchemist Next Door: Organic Clothes That Heal
Hokahay! Today is a fine day to dye – natural dye, that is, in the back yard of our LEED-Platinum green home with a group of intrepid women gathered to learn about natural dye and integrative medicine. Our group – moms, artists, gardeners, professors, activists – learned first about the toxic and completely unsustainable conventional…
The Holy Trinity – Or Charlie's Angels – of Vitality: Estrogen, Cortisol + Thyroid (and why they've got your back + your rack, baby)
Step into my time machine. We’re nine years old. It’s 1976. We’re fledgling feminists (already!) and we’re mad-passionately-crazy in awe of a trio of crime-fighting, bad-guy-busting women with brains, brawn and physical agility. And they are just like the hormonal system, when it’s working FOR YOU not against you. They’re amazing. They’re Angels. (They even…
Miscarriage Sucks: What To Do + Say
My heart goes out to women who miscarry. The delight of a missed period, the pleasures of the fantasies we all spin about our future progeny, the online shopping. Then, when it doesn’t work… devastation. Profound grief. Grief that doesn’t get honored and ritualized like the grief of a lost relative or friend. Instead we lie on our…
Feed Your Face
“Maybe it’s because women in L.A. are overly concerned with what they’re eating, but when I opened my own dermatology practice, I started asking every patient to tell me about her diet. Over and over I heard variations on the same theme: “I know that my diet doesn’t have an effect on my skin, but…
What I Eat: From Kale to Forbidden Black Rice
Given all the ways that food serves as medicine, as sacred substance, as a boost to divine vitality, I often get asked by my patients, yoga students and tribe what I eat. Not vague generalizations and broad categories, but nitty-gritty specifics. I happen to do well with nitty-gritty specifics. Do you? I learned at the ripe…
Road to Hormone Health Paved with Good Intestines: Top 5 Tips for Cleaning Up the Gut
After 20 years of balancing hormones in women, I consider the gut as the key change agent, the missing piece to the puzzle of how to feel most vital and restored hormonally. As Hippocrates put it, “All disease begins in your gut.” Another ways to put it: If your gut ain’t happy, your hormones ain’t…
Digital Sabbatical + Your Hormones
I just resurfaced after a digital “shabbat” — that is, no online love from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. No email, no tweets, no Facebook Big Ideas. Result? Better relatedness with my husband and daughters, oxytocin-raising dialogue with girlfriends, and more mindful eating. But, wait, that’s not all! Cortisol comes as close as you can…