Personal care products—cosmetics, skin care, body lotion, soap, shampoo, etc—are often the last thing we think about when it comes to cleaning up our personal environment. Many of us read food labels and even pay attention to our food storage containers; yet, we’re washing our hands ten or more times a day with soap with chemicals that have been shown to cause harm to human health, most commonly causing chronic disease. Here are some of my favorites to get you going.

While everyone in the health and wellness space is talking about how to deal with the influx of highly processed sugar via trick or treating, I want to both educate about sugar from the Chinese medicine model, as well as share how we deal with Halloween candy at our house. (Read on to learn about the Switch Witch).

In general, we tend to think of exercise as a positive thing; however, there are times where we may be exercising too much or doing a type of exercise that is actually making our health worse. Moving our bodies is important to prevent qi stagnation, to build strength, and related to qi stagnation, elevating our mood & mental wellness; however, when we struggle with migraines, we need slow, gentle exercise not high intensity-type workouts.

The primary channels exist to manage the organ system and express the emotions of their respective organs, and when this doesn’t happen, for example being told to suppress your feelings or keep secret experiences that need to be brought to light, the complement channels step in, specifically the divergent channels

When classical practitioners treat patients with cancers, what we are doing is not treating the cancer per se but restoring the mediumship needed to keep it at bay. This is not a recommendation for any particular type of treatment but rather is an explanation of the ways we can support and rebuild mediumship at home in our daily lives from the Chinese medicine perspective. These suggestions will also be helpful for people with other chronic, degenerative diseases like autoimmune conditions.

This time of year, we're inundated with messages about tackling the new year with a vengeance, goal setting, and other (seemingly dubious) New Year's resolution(s).