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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.
Cleansing As Honeymoon Between You + Your Body
Here’s a trick I’ve learned. When people at social gatherings ask why you’re not eating toxins and drinking a glass of wine with them, look them in the eye and tell them, “I’m on honeymoon with my body.” You have an exclusive pleasure coming your way of serving your body the foods that are most…
Homage to Betty Ford: We'd Have No Dr. Drew Without You
When Gerald Ford became president in 1974 after Nixon’s resignation, I was seven years old. Sadly, it took Betty Ford’s death last Friday, July 8, 2011, for me to understand fully her legacy and how aligned her worldview was with mine. Here’s what pierces my heart. In 1964, Betty became dependent on prescription pain pills,…
Orgasm Balances Your Hormones: According to Hippocrates + Modern Research
You know the Hippocratic Oath? I took it back in 1994. Do No Harm. Got it. Hippocrates got it, too – and he wanted you to get some. Turns out that during Hippocrates’ time and right up until the Freudian era (the 1930s), doctors prescribed orgasm as a treatment for women with various “ailments” such as hysteria…
Sacred Socks & Pablo Neruda
Maybe you didn’t quite get just how obsessed I am with knitting. Here’s an example: I could not properly express the joy I feel with my new socks, knitted from delicious “soft girl” yarn from local Petaluma sheep, until I came across Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Socks, excerpted way below in English and Spanish. Thank you,…
Organically Jeaned: Change Up the Paradigm
Learned today that the European Union has rigid boundaries on the type of cotton they import – no toxic dyes, no cheap cotton laced with DDT, as several cottons from China and India were recently demonstrated to contain. The EU regularly tests their imported textiles carefully; we in the US do not. One of the worst…
Organic Right Up Next to Your Skin: Undies
Perhaps the most important layer in my organic experiment is my undies. Right up next to your privateness, you want no endocrine disruptors or heavy metals. Surprisingly, I found this to be one of the harder items to procure before January 1, 2011 when my experiment begins. Here in Berkeley, there’s a foxy brand called Pact.…
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…