Posts by Sara Szal MD
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,…
Read MoreOrgasm 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…
Read MoreSacred 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,…
Read MoreOrganically 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…
Read MoreOrganic 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.…
Read MoreMental 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…
Read MoreBreast 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,…
Read MoreAlchemist 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…
Read MoreThe 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…
Read MoreMiscarriage 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…
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