Posts by Sara Szal MD
The Cortisol Switch: How Cortisol Makes You Fat and Angry, Plus 7 Practices to Rock Your Stress
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…
Read MoreYour Boobs on Booze: How Alcohol Affects Your Breast Health
Darlings, first the good news. You have a choice about how estrogen works for or against you in your body. The bad news is that the latest, best evidence shows that 3 or more servings of alcohol per week may increase your risk of breast cancer quite seriously. Three. Per week. Most women I know…
Read MoreGame Changers: 7 Women Who Rock My World (+ Connect Me to My Higher Purpose)
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…
Read MoreWhy I Love Michelle Obama: Humility. Grace. Integrity. Subversive. And Those Arms!
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…
Read MoreAddiction to Struggle: How It Shows Up (with thanks to Jung) + 3 Tips to Settle Down
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…
Read MoreMedicine Woman Meets Medicine Woman: Talking Shop with Ana Forrest of Forrest Yoga
Recently I received an extravagant gift: an interview with my favorite yoga luminaries, Ana Forrest. Ana Forrest is not your typical international yoga rockstar. In fact, she’d probably correct me if I called her a rock star, and insist that she is a modern Medicine woman. (Actually, as I get to know Ana better, I bet she’d…
Read MoreTop 7 Myths of Hormones + Sex (News Flash: Myth Busting Ignites Healing)
What’s your Greater Purpose when it comes to your health? What myths have you busted on your path to robust health? (Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.) Transparency Heals Perhaps you’ve noticed this too. The more honest I get about what I most desire, what I most feel and need, about the ways in which I overprovide, and…
Read MorePleasure, Food and Stress
By Guest Writer Daphne Cohn If there’s one thing I know for sure it’s that eating and living without pleasure = stress. And stress leads to: Weight gain Overeating Exhaustion Moodiness Irritability Overwhelm Loss of passion And way less beauty But the tricky thing is most women I know don’t think pleasure is that important.…
Read MoreHow's your trust fund? I mean…your trust fund in your bones
It’s Valentine’s Day. Time to love up your bones. What’s that? You’re asking “why?” “Why” is not a spiritual question. “How?” is a spiritual question. But I digress. When I first learned that women reach peak bone mass at age 30 to 35, I thought: Help! It’s like a trust fund that peaks too early and ruins the kid. Later…
Read MoreNeed a ReWire to Pleasure, Not Stress? Got Your Marching Orders Right Here!
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…
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