Posts by Sara Szal MD
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…
Read MoreWhat 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…
Read MoreRoad 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…
Read MoreDigital 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…
Read MoreWill Sleep for Thyroid
We all know sleep is a good idea. But just how important is sleep when it comes to thyroid health? Turns out that your thyroid’s production of hormone is dependent on several other hormones, in particular the right amount of cortisol, melatonin and growth hormone. Step 1: Nail down your cortisol. I see a lot…
Read MoreEat a Brownie and Overdose on Melatonin
Did you catch the NYT front page article yesterday on new snacks that deliver a walloping dose of the hormone melatonin? 8 mg per brownie. People, this is massive. This is madness. And it’s available at Walmart, 7-Eleven and the Harvard Coop. Where’s the voice of reason, here? Even the NYT seemed to think it…
Read MoreAre Vegans Low in Irony?
I’m flirting with veganism, again. Seems every Spring I feel a recurring stirring. A gentle tug to eat differently. I consider the sweet mother cows whose babies are taken from them so they can produce tons of milk for you and me (and not their calves). But before I go all Alicia Silverstone on you,…
Read MoreReframe Food with Reverence and Restraint
It’s time to stop the madness with weight and food. Women aspire to thinness and this leads to distorted relationship to eating. We seek peace with food, yet we’re going about it all wrong. We starve ourselves on a new diet each Monday, and then binge by the weekend. Eighty percent of American women are on a…
Read More5 Tips to Reclaim Your Thyroid Mojo
Today I’m manhandling 5 mojo-zappers. Five things that I often find are depleting the energy of patients in my integrative medicine practice. Five things I want on your radar. Five things I want you to remove from your life. Now. 1. Dial in your free T3. Free T3 is the active form of your thyroid…
Read MoreThyroid Questionnaire
I love this questionnaire from Dr. Hotze, another integrative physician. It gets to the heart of whether you should be tested for thyroid dysregulation, even if your conventional doc has dismissed your concerns. I also like to use these questions to build a tracker for how you improve with different therapies, as trial-and-error continues to…
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