Health | Wellness | Yoga

Aspartame is the most controversial food additive in history, and its approval for use in food was one of the most hotly contested in FDA history. The artificial sweetener was approved, not on scientific grounds, but because of strong political and financial pressures.With all the research now available on aspartame and its various ingredients, its hard to believe such a chemical would be allowed into the food supply, but it is, and its been silently wreaking havoc with peoples health for the past 30 years.Just to refresh your memory, aspartame has been linked to the following health concerns: Lymphomas, leukemias and brain cancer Neurological symptoms including headaches, depressed and anxious mood, seizures, memory loss, hallucinations and dizziness Weakness and fatigue Sleep disorders Abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea Asthma Visual changes Joint Pain Weight gain and diabetes Rashes and hives The truth is, aspartame should never have been released into the market, and a...

Rather than purchase chemical beauty products, you can turn to the produce aisle for ingredients to make your very own beauty products at home. Store-bought beauty products often include a laundry list of polysyllabic ingredients. Not only are these things hard to pronounce, some of them are downright harmful to your body. Whats worse, cosmetic companies arent even required to list everything that they use in their formulations. Cosmetics companies can claim that an ingredient is proprietary and leave it off of the label all together.Fortunately, with a little bit of know-how and a trip down to the grocery store you can whip up your very own, custom beauty products with no mystery ingredients in sight! 1. Tomato Scrub The gentle acids and nutrients in tomatoes are great for your skin, but you dont need to spend a lot of money on tomato skin products from the store. Instead, next time youre making a tomato sandwich, dont toss that tomato top into the compost right away. Instead, combine...

Scientist Michael Zasloff from Georgetown University Medical Center has published a letter in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology describing the unusual healing power dolphins have and speculating that it could teach us lessons or perhaps yield blueprints for making new helpful medicines.You have an animal that has evolved in the ocean without hands or legs, which swims faster than we can, has intelligence that perhaps equals our social and emotional complexity, and its healing is almost alien compared to what we are capable of, he wrote. (Source: MNN.com)When they suffer injuries to their skin and tissue, dolphins dont bleed to death because there is some mechanism that allows them to reduce the flow of the blood to the affected area. Also, their skin and blubber contain anti-microbial compounds that prevent infections. Dolphins have been referenced in another research project for their capacity for not developing cervical cancer, though they can harbor a variety of HPV co-infect...

By Melanie Haiken, Caring.com senior editorSome weeks ago I was writing about money-saving tips from our Depression-era family members. Now that were in the midst of what feels like Depression number two, we can learn a lot from those who survivedand, in some cases, thrivedduring the Great Depression.I started thinking about all the ways Ive started to channel my Midwestern mother and grandmother, and how when I make choices like the ones I know they made, my bank balance starts to build without my even worrying about it. Here are my top five think like Grandma strategies:Next: Tip 1 Think Like Grandma and Save Money originally appeared on Caring.com. < 1 of 6 >

Living with Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (#16 in a series)Their demeanor and level of empathy have a direct impact on your own state of mind. Their knowledge and degree of professionalism can be a matter of life and death. Nurses are on the front lines of every facet of health care.Our main experience with nurses is generally at the doctors office. They greet us and lead us to the examining room. They ask questions and take our blood pressure and weight. They are a part of the routine easily overlooked in the shuffle, as we patients concern ourselves with making good use of our time with the doctor and the mundane matters of health insurance and medical bills.Then comes the health crisis the big injury, the life-threatening illness, the trip to the hospital and everything changes. Nurses suddenly become a very important part of our lives, and they have the power to change everything about how we cope with that crisis.For me, triple-negative breast cancer is the crisis that pushed nu...

Remember how you feel after a good body massage? Well, your digestive system feels much the same after a sequence of yoga postures. Your mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, small intestine and large intestine make up your digestive system, with your teeth, tongue, salivary glands, liver, gall bladder and pancreas acting as accessory organs. Throughout the day your digestive system is ingesting food, secreting fluids, breaking down and digesting fiber, absorbing nutrients and defecating waste. This is when it is all working correctly.Sometimes you might experience indigestion, acid reflux, bloating, pain, constipation or diarrhea. A regular practice of Hatha yoga can help prevent these kind of problems or aid in healing many types of chronic digestive complaints. There are certain simple, basic postures that you can easily incorporate into a regular practice. Putting them together in short sequences can be very effective and work within your time constraints. Lets take a look at three s...

By Melanie Haiken, Caring.com senior editorWhen you cant sleep, you know it. But what about when you can, yet you wake up feeling tired and achy or youre groggy again a few hours later? Whats that about? All too often, it turns out, the problem is one that doesnt keep you awake but does sabotage your sleep in more subtle ways, so the hours you spend in bed dont refresh and revitalize you the way they should. Here are seven signs that you have a sleep problem thats secretly stealing your rest. 1. You sleep poorly and wake with a bad taste in your mouth. What its a symptom of: Morning mouth can be a signal of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) or asymptomatic heartburn. Recent sleep studies have shown that up to 25 percent of people who report sleeping poorly without a diagnosed cause have sleep-related acid reflux. But because they dont have obvious heartburn symptoms, theyre unaware of the condition. How it interrupts sleep: Acid reflux causes the body to partially awaken from sl...

Many people are surprised to learn that not only can dogs enjoy vibrant health on a vegan diet, but just like people, their physical condition can actually improve as a result of eliminating animal foods.By genus, dogs are classified as carnivorous, but metabolically, they are actually omnivorous. This means that their nutritional requirements can be adequately met with a plant-based diet, as they can source or synthesize all the nutrients they require from plant foods with supplementation.Skeptical? Check out the story of Bramble, a vegan dog who lived to the age of 28 making her one of the worlds longest-living dogs.Still not sure? Consider this story from CNN, where six veterinarians agreed that the nutritional requirements of dogs can be adequately met with a vegan diet. The important thing is that you use a diet that has been shown to be nutritionally adequate for whatever stage of life youre feeding, and it is absolutely possible to find a good quality commercial pet food th...

Meat, meat, meat, occasionally corn, and more meat. Thats the dedicated job of many a grill, but it doesnt have to be that way. The surprising items listed here can become the components of a vegetarian barbecue dinner, or can be grilled alongside meat as accompaniments. 1. Salad Grilled salad, yum, the antithesis of a big slab of meat on the grill. You can grill many kinds of lettuce, but the heartier varieties hold up better to the char. Use romaine, endive or cabbageyou can separate leaves, use clusters of leaves, or cut the head in two and grill the halves face down. Brush them lightly with oil and grill over medium heat until just charred and not yet wilting into smithereens. There are many recipes online for caesar salad using grilled romaine, but you can make just about any salad you like. 2. Pizza Cooking pizza on the grill imparts some crispy charred parts of the crust akin to pizza cooked in a brick oven. Brush the grill with oil, stretch out the dough on the grill, brush the...

By Marlo Sollitto, AgingCare.com contributing editorFalls are the leading cause of death, injury and hospital admissions among the elderly population. In fact, one out of every three seniors falls every year.Several factors contribute to the fact that seniors fall so much more frequently than younger people: 1. Lack of physical activity. Failure to exercise regularly results in poor muscle tone, decreased bone mass, loss of balance, and reduced flexibility. 2. Impaired vision. This includes age-related vision diseases, as well as not wearing glasses that have been prescribed. 3. Medications. Sedatives, anti-depressants, and anti-psychotic drugs, plus taking multiple medications are all implicated in increasing risk of falling.(Is it dangerous for mom to take 12 different medications a day?) 4. Diseases. Health conditions such as Parkinsons disease, Alzheimers disease and arthritis cause weakness in the extremities, poor grip strength, balance disorders and cognitive impairment. 6 T...

The United Nations has declared that there is a famine in Somalia, due partially to a terrible drought in the region. About 3.7 million people are in a crisis and ten million in the Horn of Africa region are at risk. Over 100,000 Somalians have fled to refugee camps in Kenya. Tens of thousands might already have died.A UN official said, Even if the world starts acting as it must, now, lives will be lost. But there are many more lives that can be saved if we see the level of response that is desperately needed. (Source: CSMonitor)Complicating matters is the fact Somalia is a dangerous place for relief workers. Fourteen UN employees helping with various relief efforts have died there in the last several years.If you are interested in donating to help the starving the United Nations has a web page set up for that. They list several examples of what donations can purchase:$7: food for a malnourished child $50: a feeding kit that feeds five children $100: survival kits with a blanket, mat...

By Katherine Butler, MNN.comIf you love animals and you are allergic to them, caring for pets can seem like walking an endless tightrope. Given the bottles of allergy medication lining your medicine cabinets, you feel as if youve half-earned a medical degree in dosages, side effects, and pet dander. Just one pet and then Ill wash my hands is a phrase common in the mind of an animal allergy sufferer. Then there is the frustration level when dealing with over-eager pet owners who dont understand your allergies . But not to worry we have a list of some animals that are a little friendlier to your allergies.Despite many claims otherwise, veterinarians urge that there are no completely hypoallergenic pets. While no dogs are allergy-free, some experts refer to hypoallergenic dogs as breeds that produce less allergens than some others. In fact, there are some breeds that may incite a lesser reaction in allergy sufferers and here are 10 of them! (If you are allergic to ani...

By Alyssa Ford, Experience Life Turn on the local news, page through a magazine or scan a website, and youre bound to be inundated with nutritional advice. The problem is that much of this advice sounds like abstract dictums Eat healthier! Make nutritious choices! that arent very helpful at the grocery store, where youre faced with an empty cart and lots of tough calls.To help us navigate this dilemma, five well-respected nutrition experts have graciously allowed us to (figuratively speaking) tag along on a routine shopping trip. They answered all kinds of questions about their personal grocery-buying habits, which we hope will provide some helpful inspiration and guidance on your next trip to the store.Heres our team: Liz Lipski, PhD, clinical nutritionist and the author of Digestive Wellness (McGraw-Hill, 2005), lives in Asheville, N.C. Kathie Swift, MS, RD, nutrition director at the UltraWellness Center, lives in Pittsfield, Mass. David Katz, MD, public health profes...

If you have been suffering from acne, rashes, heartburn, acidity and frequent fits of anger, your ruling dosha or humor, according to Ayurveda, is Pitta. Pitta dosha is composed of the elements of fire and water. So, everything in your personality, right from your skin and hair type to your moods and actions, is fiery in nature. If you are a pitta type: Your skin is fair, soft and warm to the touch It has a lovely, rosy glow which can turn an angry red when the dosha is out of balance You have fine, straight hair. Likely colors: red, sandy or blonde You tend to have several freckles or moles You have a hot temper You are ambitious, focused and aggressive Pitta Skins Typical Problems: You are prone to fiery issues such as rashes, rosacea, acne, liver spots and pigmentation.You cannot bear the sun for long, and your skin can suffer sun damage very quickly.Emotional stress causes your skin to breakout.Tanning and heat-based therapies such as steam and sauna are an absolute no-no for youY...

No, they arent the same bath salts used in a bathtub, but they have been called that to allow them to be sold legally. Plant Food, Ivory Wave, White Lightning Hurricane Charlie are some of the other names. They are sold in some smoke shops and mini-marts, and are a stimulant similar to cathinone compounds found in the Khat plant from eastern Africa. Some reports say bath salts are manufactured in China. With all the health issues associated with food in China lately, one wonders about the quality control of such a dubious product as bath salts. They may also be entering the U.S. from Europe.The effects are supposedly similar to cocaine, amphetamines or MDMA (ecstasy). Agitation, paranoia, hallucinations, chest pain, suicidality. Its a very scary stimulant that is out there. We get high blood pressure and increased pulse, but theres something more, something different thats causing these other extreme effects, said a physician who has observed some of the patients. (Source: WebMd)The ...

One of the easiest ways to sum up a potential mates shortcomings is with the simple phrase, Hes just not my type. But why do we have types? Most people can write down a list of must-haves and must-not-haveseverything from job status and music taste to eye color and shoe preference (mandals are a surefire deal breaker). But the reasons why people have types and the things that drive their finicky tastes are less clear. Rules of Attraction Its not hard for scientists to determine the traits that make people attractive: a good waist-to-hip ratio;symmetrical features; for men, a masculine jaw and a deep voice; for women, a high voice. All these characteristics relate to hormone levels and overall genetic fitness. Were attracted to people with whom well have a good chance of having healthy offspring, even if were only looking for a fun night or two.Scent also plays a large role in what we consider chemistry and relates to how our own immune system matches up with a potential suitors.But rar...

Ayurveda is a science that focuses on balancing the bodys life energies (vata, pitta, and kapha) rather than focusing on individual symptoms. Because of this, Ayurveda helps your body to arrive at its natural weight. It makes you feel calm, relaxed, and most of all, balanced. Ayurveda is also a very green way to eat because it works on the basis of seasonal eating.Ayurveda Equals Weight Loss 1. The Timing of Your Meals Is Crucial The biggest meal is always in the middle of the day. This is because the liver digests your food in the middle of the night and if you eat and drink tons of food at night then it will be overloaded. If you wake up groggy in the morning, it could be because your liver was unable to effectively digest all of your intake. You should ideally eat your last meal of the day before the sun goes down. This will obviously vary depending on the season, but its a goal to shoot for. The meals should be in the Slow Food style of eating without too many distractions. When yo...

Ah the humble cucumberit sits patiently in the crisper drawer while its flashier cousins are being scooped up and devoured for dinner. The cucumber just waits and waits in all of its watery, melon-tinged mild manner. Maybe someone will make some pickles, maybe Mom will slice off a few rounds for her tired eyesbut really, aside from pickles and eye treatments, what is a cucumbers claim to fame?Maybe its the spike in temperature here in the now-steamy Northeast, but I have been going gaga for cucumbers latelyI never knew how fond I could be of the fresh-tasting and cool, albeit sometimes lackluster, fruit. Its been taking center stage in chopped salads, finding its way into dips, and providing the base of a number of chilled soups. But why stop there? The cucumber is really a pretty amazing piece of work, both in the kitchen and in the bathroom where it can perform a multitude of beauty tasks.The flesh of the cucumber is mostly water, but also contains ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and caffe...

By Melanie BatesI recently lost my mojo. I dont know what else to call it but, as Ive been devouring the contents of the Owning Pink website recently, Ive decided that they are on to something BIG. Mojo means different things to different people. According to Owning Pink, for some, mojo is sexual, for some, mojo is being present in the now. For me, mojo is that inner glow, the one you often see on pregnant ladies. Mojo is that smile inside of you that shows on the outside. Its that inner spark, that feeling of connection to everything and everyone around you. Its feeling truly alive. When youve lost it, things feel gray and dingy, and its as if that tinge of hope within has buried itself somewhere and is too busy licking its wounds to present itself.After days of blah and meh, I wasnt sure what to do and, damned if it isnt superficial, I dashed to my black Beetle and raced to the salon. Once there, I hobbled up to the counter, my pasty skin stretched into a grimace, with hair that look...

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Today my mother, Ariel Wolfe, would be 79 years young. Two years ago as my sister Jaime, her daughters and myself held hands with the matriarch of our family, she took her last breath. We all stood motionless not knowing what to expect and numb with fear at losing the leader of our female clan. None of us had ever experienced the loss of someone so near and dear. Each one of us had our own unique connection with her and time would tell how each one of us would deal with this loss. This family of women loves fiercely and it would not be easy.Within 48 hours of my mothers transition, we all had to be on a plane to Chicago from Arizona. Like the true diehard spiritual warrior that she was, my mother in her infinite wisdom, passed away just in time so our family could be in Chicago to run our annual Celebrate Your Life conference. For 15 years, my mom and I worked side by side and created a company called Mishka Productions. We started with a phone line her dining room and grew into someth...

Lynn Hughes and her closest friends shared a problem. They all wanted to lose weight and stick to an exercise program, but they were finding it difficult. Though they were scattered across two different states (half lived in Florida, the others in Indiana), they shared the same obstacle: Something was always getting in the way of going to the gym. So the group which included four of the womens husbands created a motivational strategy called the Indiana/Florida Challenge.The friends split into two geographically defined teams and set goals, deciding how often they would exercise and how much weight they would lose. The challenge quickly moved into full swing, and months later its still generating enthusiasm and results. Perhaps most important, the competition keeps all the participants focused and motivated enough to stick with their respective programs.Every Sunday, all of us report our weight and the number of times weve exercised, explains Hughes. Five points are given ...

Wayne Dyer said, When you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out because thats whats inside. When you are squeezed, what comes out is what is inside.Having children, for me at least, was like agreeing to live in a damn juicer. There were times it felt like everything in every moment of every day, put the squeeze on me. In times of great squeeze like my sons obsession with anything he could swipe and put in his mouth or his great love for parking lots and streets full of fast-moving cars what came out was violence. I was deeply moved to scream at him about cigarette butts being nasty. I driven to beat a fear of streets into him.Most of the time I didnt fall for it. Usually, I was able to breathe instead of scream. Often, I could just retrieve him from danger and feel grateful he lived through it. Sometimes, I lost my cool and violence was what oozed out of me. Sometimes, I yelled. On a few rare occasions, I actually spanked my children. I hated myself for that. I dont believe in h...

Ever since yoga landed on our western shores from hot and humid India some 50 years ago it has gone through quite a few transformations. New styles have emerged to shape the bodies and minds of students of all ages. Yoga is now being taught in gyms, spas, office buildings, schools, universities and private yoga studios. In these settings it is often difficult to control the temperature in the practice room, and so large numbers of yoga practitioners never get to experience the full dimension of their practice due to an air-conditioned environment.The work of pioneering yogi Bikram Choudhury is legend amongst the yoga community. His class consists of 26 postures performed in 105-degree heat for one and a half hours. Bathing suits replace yoga clothes, towels replace rubber mats, and the squish of damp carpet underfoot becomes the background music. Bikram makes a number of claims as to the physical benefits of doing yoga under heated conditions including weight loss through improved meta...

Do you remove your shoes before entering your home? Some people forbid shoes in their homes, while others consider being asked to remove their shoes nothing short of offensive. I have friends with Please Remove Shoes Before Entering signs brazenly taped to their doors, while I have other friends whod prefer to stay out of someones no-shoes-allowed home rather than be required to expose their socks.Much of it has to do with cultural tradition. In many places across the globe removing shoes before entering is a deeply ingrained practice. As a kid growing up in southern California, I always entered the house in socks. Although not because we had a rule about shoes, rather, my preferred style of footwear had wheels attached and roller skates were tricky on the carpet. But somehow I evolved, over time, into an adult who doesnt wear shoes inside. For me it started off as a matter of comfort, but upon further reflection it has become reinforced by a number of other factors.Here are five reaso...

Explore the slow sex movement with Nicole Daedone,author of Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm .Nicoleis a speaker, author, and educator focusing on the intersection between orgasm, intimacy, and life. She is the founder ofOneTaste, a cutting-edge educational company bringing a new definition of orgasm for both women and men. She is the author of Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm (Grand Central/Hachette, May 2011) and has appeared on ABCs Nightline . Her work has been featured in the New York Times , the New York Post , the San Francisco Chronicle , and 77 Magazine, among others.The practice at the heart of her work is called OM or Orgasmic Meditation. OM uniquely combines the tradition of extended orgasm with the practice of Zen Buddhism, mystical Judaism and semantics. Helping to foster a new conversation about orgasm one thats real, relevant, and intelligentshe has inspired thousands of students to discover the pleasure available to them by making OM a ...

By Annie Tucker Morgan, DivineCarolineMany people believe the weather in San Francisco, where I live currently, is just about perfectnever too hot, never too cold. But as a born-and-raised New Englander, I cant get over the absence of four distinct seasons in the Bay Area. After twelve years here, I still yearn for fall foliage, winter snow, spring blossoms, and hot summers in which I can actuallytake a swim in the ocean without having to wear a wetsuit. Something about the ups and downs of enduring eighteen-degree days in February and 70 percent humidity in July simply suited my psyche better than the lack of climatic variation in Northern CaliforniaI guess I just find the cycle of punishment and reward inherent in East Coast weather more exciting. Whatever the reason, when I leave my house in San Francisco on the fourteenth foggy, fifty-degree day in a row (especially if its a day in August), it really gets to meI feel antsy, glum, and sluggish. The majority of researchers concur tha...

I know an imperfect woman who makes lots of mistakes, fails to live up to traditional models of what a good woman would be like, and insists upon doing many things people think she shouldnt do. The House Lets take housekeeping, for starters. She lives in a beautiful home but shes really a slob. She sort of plunders and strews her way around the house, leaving socks and stray papers and empty tea cups in her wake. The children scatter marbles. There are wet towels on the floor. The dishes are mostly clean mostly but not always. Except for the hour after the housekeeper comes, her house is always in a sort of happy chaos (read pigsty.)But shes brilliant in the kitchen. She feeds her family divine meals, concocted from organic produce hand-picked at the farmers market and lovingly crafted without recipes. The down side is that this only makes more dishes, which her husband washes, right after he picks up her towel, cleans up the marbles, and straightens the stray papers.She has exquisit...

Spinach was a powerfood even before there was the term powerfood .Were referring of course to Popeye the Sailor Man. TOOT TOOT! One can of the green stuff and he turned into muscle popping tornado of energy.Even without Popeyes recommendation, spinach contains more nutrients per calorie than any other food on the earth. 8 Benefits of Spinach: 1. Loaded with Vitamins : like A, K, D, and E and a host of trace minerals. 2. Good Source of Omega 3 Fatty Acids : the kind most of us need in North America. 3. Anti-Cancer and Anti-Inflammatory Antioxidants: Researchers have identified more than a dozen different flavonoid compounds in spinach that function as anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer agents. In a recent study on the relationship between risk of prostate cancer and vegetable intake (including such healthy vegetables as broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprouts) only spinach showed evidence of significant protection against the occurrence of aggressive prostate cancer. 4. Alkalizes the B...

I remember hearing back in the day that the secret ingredient in McDonalds milk shakes waswood. What?! Many people chalked it off to urban myth, but as the ingredient listed as cellulose began popping up with increased frequency, myth seemed less likely.As it turns out, wood cellulose is used in everything from milk shakes to salad dressing, from muffins to pancake syrup.Food manufacturers use it to thicken and stabilize foods, replace fat and boost fiber contentas well as to reduce reliance on more expensive ingredients like oil or flour.Powdered cellulose is made by cooking virgin wood pulp in chemicals to separate the cellulose, and then purified. Modified versions go through extra processing, such as exposing them to acid to further break down the fiber. Then its mixed into popular foods, and unwittingly devoured by the consumer.Even organic-food products arent safe from the taint of cellulose. According to a story inThe Wall Street Journal,Organic Valley uses powdered cellulose ma...

While research in the West gives high scores to brown rice for its bran and fiber content, Ayurveda recommends the long-grained, fragrant basmati rice. That is because basmati rice is easy on the digestive system. Also, it is saatvic (pure, and balances the physiology). Basmati rice builds body tissue and is very high on praana or vital life energy, explains vaidya Ramakant Mishra, eminent ayurvedic physician.Vaidya Mishra goes on enumerate more benefits of rice: Rice contributes the sweet taste to your daily diet. Ayurveda recommends getting six basic tastes on your plate at every meal: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent. Rice balances Vata and Pitta doshas. Kapha types, however, should avoid eating rice too often. Dry-roasting it before eating will reduce the heaviness. (Find out which Ayurvedic life type you are by clicking here.) Rice can be cooked in an amazing variety of ways. Combine it with beans, nuts, vegetables, fruits, and...

By Melanie Haiken, Caring.com senior editorThe state of your hands and fingernails can tell you surprising things about your overall health. Here are seven clues your hands reveal about health.Theyre one of the most important parts of our body when it comes to day-to-day activities; without them we couldnt cut vegetables, grip pliers, or text our friends. Theyre revealing, too: Not only do scars and age spots recount our personal history but mystics all the way back to prehistory have read our futures in their lines and whorls.But what if your hands could say more about you than that? What if, looking down at your palms and the five digits attached to them, you could discover early signs of dangerous diseases you didnt yet know you had? It used to be common for doctors to look at the hands for important clues to overall health, says endocrinologist Kenneth Blanchard of Newton, Massachusetts. We need to get back to that, because hands can tell you a great deal about circulation, hormone...

Reality is gentle and beautiful when you lean in close. Betty PeraltaI was practicing The Work by Byron Katie the other day, trying to see into the places where my thinking keeps me trapped in my own discomfort. In addition to applying the basic questions that most of our thoughts deserve, what was most remarkable about the conversation was the realization of how many of my beliefs have come to be from a distance. I dont think I am unusual here. We make judgments based on the limited information we have about life, whether it concerns people or situations.Opening up those judgments is not really a process of right or wrong as it is, lifting the thought long enough to lean in closer to the situation. Up close, even the most terrible situations have a tenderness and beauty that is lost when we look from a distance. We dont see the beauty in poverty or war. We dont see the tenderness that happens between people in third world villages. We just see the problems, which are deep and pervas...

Looking at a satellite photo of our mostly blue Earth, its hard to believe that dwellers on our planet could ever worry about water. And yet more than 2 billion people live in regions that are water stressed, where, according to the United Nations Environment Programmes definition, the demand for water exceeds the available amount during a certain period or when poor quality restricts its use.The U.S. Agency for International Development predicts that by 2025, one-third of all human beings will face serious and chronic water shortfalls. And according to the World Health Organization, contaminated water is implicated in an astounding 80 percent of all sickness and disease worldwide.Because the most dramatic challenges have affected the global South, the water crisis can seem far away another sad Third World dilemma. Yet there are plenty of Americans for whom the water crisis is very real.California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in early 2009 ...

By Paula Spencer, Caring.com senior editorIf skin were merely a sausage casing for the rest of you, it wouldnt be nearly so useful. An organ itself (your bodys largest in terms of both weight and surface area), skin protects against invasive bacteria, regulates body temperature, and picks up information from the stimulation of touch, pressure, pain, heat, and cold. Little wonder, then, that when theres something wrong with you on the inside, your skin sometimes sends up the first warning flare.Diabetes, for example, is generally a silent disease, but it can lead to distinct changes to the skin. So the skin may in fact be the first indicator of whats happening, notes dermatologist Amy Newburger, MD, of Scarsdale, New York, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Dermatology.Heres the skinny on ten dermatologic oddities worth watching for in yourself or someone you love. 1. Red flag: Yellowish skin, orange palms and soles What it means: The cartoonish skin hues of carotenemia can be t...

I posted this article back in January, but I thought that summer was prime time for a repost since if you all are anything like me, you cant get enough of open-toed shoes and bare feet.The more natural I go with skin care, the more natural I go with everything I put on my body. My latest green switch is nail care. I am a big fan of painted nails. In my jewelry career, that was limited to my toes, as it was pointless to paint my fingernails they were never long and were in constant use. I was watching a rerun of my favorite guilty pleasure, Gilmore Girls, and Lorelais nails were painted this great fire-engine red. This was about a week before Christmas and I thought, Perfect! I ran to my bathroom, got my fave O.P.I. red and started to paint. Then, I noticed the smell. My husband has what we like to call dog nose (thanks to a funny line in an even funnier book, Diary of a Mad Mom-to-Be by Laura Wolf). This affliction causes him to smell things more deeply and strongly and than the re...