Most people only think about rhubarb in terms of pies, crisps or crumbles, but there is much more to rhubarb than dessert.

This hardy, sour plant (rhubarb isn’t exactly a fruit or a vegetable — it’s the stem of a perennial plant) originated in Eastern Europe where it was enjoyed by the Germanics and has been used for medicinal purposes by the Chinese since 2700 B.C., according to the Washington Rhubarb Growers Association.

Rhubarb, which once grew along the banks of the ancient Volga River, literally means “barbarians of the Volga River,” and is also another word for a serious disagreement.

But there’s no need to fret over this unique edible plant … it’s healthy, tasty and incredibly easy to cook with (and grow!).

Click to find out more about rhubarb!

You’ve pushed yourself to the limit — jogging, lifting, dancing or whatever it is you do to exercise — and have no sooner wiped the sweat from your brow when it hits you: sore muscles and fatigue … the variety that make you wonder, “Why am I doing this to myself?!”

What causes sore muscles and fatigue after a workout? Many things, but often it occurs because you’ve exerted yourself and your body needs time to adjust.

To be fair, muscles soreness often doesn’t occur for 12 to 36 hours after a workout. This type of soreness, called delayed-onset muscles soreness (DOMS), is more likely to happen when you’ve just intensified your workout or started a new activity. It’s caused either by a buildup of energy waste products in the muscles or microscopic tears in muscle fibers.

With DOMS, you may think you’re out of the woods, and then be hit with muscles soreness, stiffness, weakness and fatigue.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

Over 1 million Americans suffer from eye injuries each year, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO), and 90 percent of them could be prevented by taking the appropriate safety precautions.

We do come equipped with a bit of protection in the form of eyelids, eyelashes, tears and a bony facial structure, but when it comes to flying debris, chemicals, ultraviolet light, sports and more, these protections simply aren’t enough.

What are the most common causes of eye injuries?

Click here to find out.

The era of antibiotics, where deadly bacterial infections are knocked out completely in a matter of days, may be coming to an end soon, according to more than a handful of media headlines referring to a new paper in the Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal. However, all hope is not lost.

Walsh told The Guardian:The paper, by Professor Tim Walsh and colleagues, refers to a type of gene called NDM 1, which easily transfers between enterobacteriaceae bacteria (which includes E. coli and other types), making such bacteria resistant to antibiotics. NDM 1 is already widespread in other areas of the world, such as India, but it’s now showing up in the United States as well.

“In many ways, this is it … This is potentially the end. There are no antibiotics in the pipeline that have activity against NDM 1-producing enterobacteriaceae. We have a bleak window of maybe 10 years, where we are going to have to use the antibiotics we have very wisely, but also grapple with the reality that we have nothing to treat these infections with.”

Click here to read more.

A raw food movement has sweept across North America, advocating a diet of anywhere from 70 percent to 100 percent raw foods.

Raw foodists claim that switching to a predominantly raw food diet will give you more energy, slow down aging, improve your skin, boost your mood, and fight a host of chronic diseases including chronic fatigue syndrome, Crohn’s disease and even cancer.

A true raw food diet consists of only raw foods, traditionally vegan ones like vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. However, some raw foodists also eat raw dairy products, raw eggs and even raw meat.

“When you cook something, you destroy the enzymes,” said Karyn Calabrese, a well-known raw foodist in the Chicago-area in an NBC5 article. “You need enzymes for every metabolic purpose in your body. When you lose enzymes, that’s when you die.”

Click here to read more.

A quick web search on the term “graceful aging” brings up phrases like:

“Combat the signs of aging…”

“Who said that we have to age…”

“Defy the aging process…”

More often than not, aging is viewed as something to be fought off for as long as possible. Regardless of how liberated we’ve become, many women and men still experience aging as a threat to their sense of self–worth and quality of life. It is pretty much expected that middle age will bring a “crisis” and far too often we hear seniors lament that “I thought these were supposed to be the golden years.” Whole industries are built on the attempt to stay young – from hair colors to face lifts to Viagra.

There is a place for all of these things, of course, but if your reaction to the aging process has you racing to beat time, take a deep breath, relax, and give yourself some space to shift into a different perspective on aging.

What if aging were equated with “getting better” rather than worse? What if you lived in a culture which reveres the elderly and views them as a repository of power and wisdom? What if it was understood that women really come into their greatness after menopause? Since how we age has so much to do with our attitudes and beliefs, such a shift in perspective could make a world of difference.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

I was so delighted to see a feature news report about Gluten, in this past Friday’s NBC Evening News.

As an integrative physician, I’ve been aware of the importance of gluten sensitivity for many years. However, until recently we did not really have a reliable accurate way to test to see if people are gluten sensitive.

This changed about a year ago when a new stool test that looks for gluten anybodies was released. For many months I used that test and found great benefit for my patients.

However now, the last six months, we have had available at the office a new extremely sensitive test for finding those patients who do NOT have Celiac Disease, but who are gluten sensitive. This test is run by Cyrex Labs, and you can read more about it on their site.

I have had some of the most gratifying complete successes in my practice in the last six months by identifying gluten sensitivity in patients with a list of problems that have baffled their conventional doctors.

If you think you are gluten sensitive, please to talk to me about it when you next see me for an appointment.

Of the people I test for gluten sensitivity somewhere between 50 and 60% of them do truly turn out to be gluten sensitive. Everybody asks why is gluten so much in the news?  Part of it is our expanding knowledge and recognition of the problems with gluten. However, another part of it is the food industry, who is hybridizing the wheat we eat in order to increase the gluten content. Supposedly a higher gluten content makes the bread taste better.

In any case people are now overwhelmed by an enormous amount of gluten when they consume wheat products. This accounts for part of the sensitivity. For if you expose a person to any allergen whether it’s pollen or gluten in a high enough concentration, their body will begin to react.

The important thing to remember with gluten sensitivity is that over 50% of people with gluten sensitivity do not have digestive symptoms. However, they have many other symptom complaints, that are not obviously connected with gluten.

Wheat Belly is a most informative book about how wheat causes obesity and is not your friend!

Without doing the blood test I mentioned above, you can test yourself for gluten sensitivity by 100% (not 99%) avoiding gluten for 6 to 8 weeks and then reintroducing it and see how you feel.I was very pleased by this short news snippet which you can watch HERE. They rightfully point out, which I point out to my patients, that a lot of gluten free foods at the “health food store” are full of other junk, including lots of sugar and fat. Be careful when something says gluten free on the label!

I hope this video is informative to you. I also would to refer you to my 3 part podcast interview of Dr Tom O’Bryan, and expert in gluten sensitivity. The first of these 3 podcasts is HERE

Two  weekends ago, I was very honored to be on a panel with Lissa Rankin, M.D., the author of the new bestseller Mind over Medicine. The two-hour panel discussion was held at Golden Bridge Yoga Center in Hollywood California.

It was organized by my friend Mastin Kipp and his website The Daily Love.

On the panel with me were Patricia Fitzgerld L.Ac., a Chinese medicine expert, Elisa Hallerman, addiction/recovery specialist, and Tommy Rosen, founder of Recovery 2.0, along with the author Lissa Rankin, M.D.

In Mind over Medicine, Lissa  reviews her own personal life as a physician. She worked in a traditional medical practice for many years. She was driven out of that because of the large number of  patients she had to see per day and a recognition that she could not give the patients what they were coming for.

She was then offered a job at an Integrative Medical Center in Northern California. This suited her much better as she was able to spend 45 minutes to an hour with each patient and really get to understand them. However she realized, for her, that she was not getting to the roots of the patients’ medical issues. She therefore began to read and study, and take a very close look at her own life.

Left to right in the above photo are Lissa Rankin, M.D. Dr Soram, Patricia Fitzgerld, L.Ac., Elisa Hallerman, Tommy Rosen and Mastin Kipp

She came to realize that many of the things in her life were not “right” for her-not true to her heart. This led her to leave the practice of medicine as she was doing it, and she began to work with people on a much much deeper level.

She came to realize that we need to attend to our emotional health, as well as tapping into our own wisdom and finding our own voices inside ourselves.

We, as Integrative Physicians,  are now realizing that consciousness, mind, and spirit are an essential part of healing and in this book Lissa shows why.

I feel that increasingly medicine will be going in this direction, specifically Energy Medicine, which can help us to heal our deepest emotions, which then allow our body to be healthy.

This book is packed with references from the traditional medical literature, documenting every step of the way what she is saying, about the need to heal our mind to hear our body. In her book, Lissa shows us our own internal healing powers and how we can use them to heal ourselves. She presents several cases of patients of hers who have had “spontaneous remissions” by using the techniques she shows in this book.

Lissa has withdrawn from the practice of medicine and does not see patients anymore. However she has created a huge training program, that is already oversubscribed, for medical doctors and other health practitioners to learn her techniques to integrate in their own practices.

I encourage all my patients and readers, to read and learn from this book. Also be sure to take a look at all the resources on her website HERE

I want to let my patients and my readers know that I too am (again) realizing the importance of healing the mind and emotions in order to heal the body. I’m studying this subject deeply. In the months ahead I look forward to sharing what I am learning with you.