Healthy Eats During Times of Stress

Healthy Eats During Times of Stress

Everyday stressors from parenting, work, community volunteering and otherwise spreading ourselves thin, create an ideal platform for the body to exist in chronic stress. We know what we need to do – be in nature, meditate, eat whole foods, exercise, sleep 8 hours per night. Instead, we skimp on self-care in order to simply survive.

Then a traumatic event occurs and our stress levels spike.

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Top 10 Foods to Enhance Simple Meals

Top 10 Foods to Enhance Simple Meals

The kitchen is my happy place, and I love cooking meals from scratch. I’m a darn good meal planner, so it’s unusual for me to be totally out of ingredients needed for school lunches, potlucks and Sunday brunches.  

Even with planning ahead, busy times and late notices pop up. I’ve found that a collection of go-to pantry and fridge-door foods helps to prepare quick, wholesome, healthy meals!

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Stress Don’t Digest

Stress Don’t Digest

While food can be both healing and destructive, so can our body’s ability to respond.  Thankfully, nature gave humans the ability to maintain whole body balance. When we ingest food sprayed with chemicals our digestive and lymphatic systems, plus liver and kidneys, are equipped to process and excrete these harmful toxins. Every orchestrated physiologic system is brilliantly designed to maintain whole-body balance, or homeostasis.

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Create A Common Table

Create A Common Table

The Wood River Valley is renowned for artful events and ultimate outdoor experiences. Our idyllic backdrop and high-class culture makes us a destination both for the elite and for adventurers seeking pristine wilderness.

However, as the nation’s ninth most expensive county in which to live, variants divide us: north and south valley, affluence and service strata, full time residents and part time holidaymakers, culture and ethnicity. We contribute time or money through local nonprofits, yet how else may we truly get to know our neighbors?

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Cannabinoids – A No-Brainer

Cannabinoids – A No-Brainer

Idaho state legislators this year debated House Bill 122, introduced to legalize hemp production and sales in our state. Passing the bill would have put Idaho on par with 41 other states that have legalized hemp, and the 2018 Farm Bill, which deregulates hemp and legalizes it nationwide. However, the law didn’t pass, much to the dismay of Idaho farmers and industries selling sell – or wanting to sell – hemp-derived products, such as CBD oil.

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A Case for Loving Liver

A Case for Loving Liver

For most of my life, just hearing the word liver made me cringe. I pictured a toxic exotic, inedible delicacy in a strange culture. I was a vegetarian, of course – and then vegan – for nearly half of my life so, liver certainly never appealed to me as a food. Fois gras? French pate? Non, merci.

But now that I understand the liver from a physiological perspective, I find this organ incredibly appealing!

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Road Food for Healthy Travels

Road Food for Healthy Travels

With all this snow in our mountain town, it’s hard to believe spring break is around the corner. Many of us are planning a warm and sunny vacation, yet are we making plans to stay healthy? It’s incredibly common to get sick while on vacation! During preparations and travels, we sacrifice our immune systems, which sabotages our good time. How can we avoid vacation illness?

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3 Tips for Everyone to Improve Nutrition

3 Tips for Everyone to Improve Nutrition

Recently a colleague asked me to share my top three tips for anyone who wishes to improve nutrition. Initially, I thought, “that depends.” Each person’s nutrition needs are unique.

But the more I think about it, several food enhancements absolutely drive my conversations about improving nutrient intake through customizable, flexible, and totally doable meals.

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Diet and Autoimmunity

Diet and Autoimmunity

Autoimmune disorders are more common today than ever in the recorded past, and 80+ types of autoimmune diseases have been identified1. Autoimmunity is part of the immune system’s natural way of protecting itself, and plays a major role in wellness. Still, every human possesses the potential to trigger an autoimmune disease (when the same autoantibodies that normally combat disease end up attack themselves).

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