Originally published in Well + Good

I would say the majority of the population has some degree of gut imbalance, due to a perfect storm of factors, such as excessive reliance on antibiotics, inflammatory foods in our diet, chronic stress, and the ubiquity of glyphosate (from the pesticide RoundUp) in our food and tap water.

The signs of gut imbalance are so common in modern life, a lot of us just assume it’s normal.

Without putting the pressure and guilt of ‘clean eating’ on yourself, it is worth recognizing that you can go a long way toward healing your gut by following your body’s intuition and shifting your food choices toward foods that agree with your body. It’s all an art of listening to your body and being gentle with it.

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Originally published in mindbodygreen

We love making something called “dirty rice”, which is rice cooked with chicken liver, bacon, carrots, celery, and five-spice seasoning. It’s a delicious, kid-pleasing way to get a ton of nutrition into a single convenient dish.

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My friend Gwen Dittmar recently brought up the question of whether podcasts, while wonderful, can contribute to our feeling overstimulated and oversaturated.  

Podcasts are obviously the best. You can get a free education and feel like you’re having an intimate conversation with the most inspiring thinkers of our day. I love listening to podcasts while I do dishes, fold laundry, and commute. When I pressure my husband to floss his teeth, that one time a month he actually does i, he gets through the 3-minute ordeal by listening to a podcast. It can make monotonous tasks enjoyable. And yet, it has been one more assault on the dwindling stillness and silence we experience as modern humans. 

Start to toggle between the two states: do the dishes while podcasting, and then occasionally do it in silence, mindfully aware of every aching moment. Notice the water and the soap. Notice the silence and the feeling of being alone with yourself and your thoughts. Invite and embrace whatever bubbles up. 

In the comments below, let me know your favorite podcasts, and let me know what pockets of your life (if any) you have carved out for total mindful silence.

Photo: from a silent disco Brooklyn Bridge Park

Originally published in Medium

Post-weaning depression is a real phenomenon. Many of my breastfeeding patients experience ‘blues’ after weaning. They sometimes feel sad, anxious, or irritable. This can be due to the hormonal shift, nostalgia, or the adjustment in your relationship with your child. 

One way to honor these feelings is to give yourself time to process it, rather than moving on with life business as usual. You can treat it like a small mourning process. It’s the end of one phase and the beginning of a new one. Be with the impermanence of it all. 

If you’re struggling, gift yourself in a few important ways: eat nutrient-rich foods, get to bed early so you can get more sleep, and outsource household chores wherever you can manage. 

The good news is that post-weaning mood changes generally only lasts a few weeks. If it continues, let that be a reason to seek help. 

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Photo: Peter van Agtmael

Originally published in mindbodygreen

The transition to fall is a beautiful opportunity to tune in to your body’s needs, which change with the seasons. I always see if I’m craving warmer foods or fewer raw vegetables or cold foods. I see if my body starts wanting more substantial, grounding foods. I sometimes find that as the weather gets cooler, my body starts wanting heavier foods. Be the squirrel stocking up on acorns as winter approaches.

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Many people on the bipolar spectrum are exquisitely sensitive to light. If this applies to you, help keep your mood stable by getting adequate natural light exposure during the day, and give yourself the gift of authentic darkness at night. Minimize screens and overhead lighting after sunset. This helps program a healthy circadian rhythm, which keeps your mood stable.

When someone asks me what’s my #1 tip for better health and well being, I usually say something like go to bed early, get the phone out of the bedroom, or err on the side of eating real food instead of fake food. But I realized today my real #1 tip is to always choose people. When you could spend a Saturday surfing social media, choose hanging out with people in real life instead. If you’re listening to a podcast while doing dishes, call someone you love instead. If it’s inconvenient or a hassle to share your space with other people, and they trigger you, and leave the toilet seat up and don’t use coasters (the horror!), choose to share your space with people anyway. Relationships are messy–embrace that mess. If you find it uncomfortable and vulnerable to put yourself out there trying to make friends, get vulnerable, rather than staying closed, cool, and safe. Just choose people, every. single. time. Unless you’re introverted, in which case, choose a hefty dose of solo recharge time, and when you’re ready, choose people again. This is really the only key to a fulfilling life that matters at the end of the day. I mean, along with gluten and blood sugar and sleep and stuff. But I’ll admit it–people matter even more.

Portugal has decriminalized drugs. Not just cannabis–all drugs. I think this is such an enlightened approach to substance issues. Rather than telling drug users, “you’re bad, you’re a danger to society, go to jail,” they say, “you have a problem, let’s help you rehabilitate.” The criminalization approach, like we have in the US, is expensive, it ruins lives, it doesn’t really “work” to deter people from using or help drug users get clean, and it is a systemically racist policy that disproportionately impacts people of color. The real beneficiaries of our prohibition state are the wine and spirits industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the prison-industrial complex. 

One day in Portugal I saw 2 people in uniform responding to a seemingly high, slumped over homeless person. Were they cops busting him? Nope. They appeared to be social workers or case workers, and they were asking him questions and taking notes on a clipboard. They were trying to HELP. Can you imagine?! It’s sad to me that it was such a foreign concept–government officials trying to help a substance-abuser. 

My brilliant sister Anne Gerson had the following insight: cannabis is not a gateway to other drugs, it’s a gateway to criminality. In a prohibition state, if you smoke weed, then you know a drug dealer. Once you know a drug dealer, you have access to cocaine, opiates, etc. Introduce a particularly bad life stressor (e.g., withdrawing from prescribed opiates after a dental procedure), and you have a recipe for a problem. With decriminalization, resources can be put toward helping people rehabilitate. Safer substances become available. Social customs emerge around safe use. And substance use is no longer a path to criminality. We have a long way to go, America, but I believe we can get there.

Skin cancer risk is real. Premature aging due to excessive sun exposure is real, too (but should we be prioritizing vanity over health? Actually, don’t answer that…). But when it comes to the relative risks and benefits of sun exposure, I think we’ve tipped too far in the direction of fearing the sun. Our health has suffered as a consequence.

Some people are more at risk for skin cancer (fair skin, red/blonde hair, light eyes, family history of skin cancer), so for you folks, exercise more caution. But I think we have forgotten that sun also makes us healthy. It strengthens our immunity, boosts our mood, improves bone density, and promotes the production of vitamin D, which is a hormone critical to so many processes in the body, from preventing obesity, diabetes, and autoimmune disease to improving mood and sleep. And to be honest, I don’t think supplementing with vitamin D is a sufficient substitute for sunshine exposure.

When I see parents slathering their kids in sunblock like their lives depend on it, when I see people spraying the nanoparticle aerosol sunblock (negatively impacting air quality and lung health for everyone around you), feeling like they’re being a good and law-abiding citizen, I wonder if they’ve blindly accepted the sun-fearing party line without questioning whether it makes sense in all situations. Meanwhile, my practice is full of people suffering from illnesses that would all be improved with more sun exposure, and basically 100% of my patients have vitamin D deficiency. I believe well-meaning dermatologists and profit-incentivized sunblock manufacturers have swayed us too far. And for most people with melanin in their skin, the risks of vitamin D deficiency from inadequate sun exposure far outweigh the risks of skin cancer.

For all of us, our body usually tells us when we need more sun (does your skin crave the sensation of being warmed by the sun?) and when we’ve had too much (Get me out of here! Must find shade). Try a new relationship to the sun: be reasonable and responsible, wear a hat, sit in the shade during the times of day with the strongest sun, don’t get burned, and the rest of the time, let the sun kiss your skin and enjoy that feeling and all the downstream benefits to your health. 

For further reading, see this article.