I’ve always hated going to the doctor. I vividly recall being held down my 3 nurses at age five, so that they could inject me with numerous vaccinations. I kicked; I screamed; I felt like I was being personally invaded.

That’s still what I think about traditional medicine: It can be severely invasive. Are objects and chemicals meant to be stuck into our bodies? To me, it just seems a bit unnatural, not to mention painful.

Since establishing my own set of ideas about life, society and health, I’ve become immensely involved with holistic healing. I know, I sound like a total kook; but this stuff is not only interesting, it’s also effective. I swear.

Our whole lives we have been poked and prodded, whether it be due to an injury or simply because we are female. Every sickness we’ve had has been treated alone as if the body is incapable of attacking the problem itself. Truth be told, our bodies definitely need some assistance with the big bad ones, like cancer, heart disease, etc. But not in the way we’ve learned. Evidence is mounting that diet and lifestyle are the best cures for our worst afflictions.

The latest scientific studies, according to www.altmed.com, show that “simple choices that we make in our lifestyle — what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support — can be as powerful as drugs and surgery.” I think this makes so much sense. Just think how amazing you feel post-workout, when laughing with friends, or when hugging your mom … All of that is healing.

“When you eat a healthier diet, quit smoking, exercise, meditate, and have more love in your life, then your brain receives more blood and oxygen, so you can think more clearly, have more energy, and need less sleep. Your face gets more blood flow, so your skin glows more and wrinkles less. Your heart gets more blood flow, so you have more stamina and even begin to reverse heart disease,” says Deeprak Chopra, the author of more than 50 books on mind, body and spirit.

So how can you get more holistic? Yoga, acupuncture, and ayurveda. Read More »

You know how you can rub a lamp and a genie will come out and grant you three awesome wishes (I mean, in theory)? Well, according to some people, if you rub a staple shoved into the “upper cartilage of [your] left pinna” — the visible part of the ear — three times a day, you won’t want candy and you’ll lose weight.

I’m serious.

Acupuncture has been around for a while, but this type of acupuncture has recently become more popular with lazy people who would rather get foreign objects stapled into their body then move around and eat more vegetables. Ear Stapling is connected to the idea that piercing the upper ear cartilage, “provides constant stimulation for the vagus or pneumogastric nerve, a very lengthy (the word vagus means wandering) nerve that supplies motor and sensory information from the mouth and larynx down to the large intestine and colon“.

Even though some people swear it works, one can really prove anything scientific when it comes to the practice of Ear Stapling. Maybe it’s real. Maybe it’s the Dumbo’s Feather affect. Whatever the case, if you’re asking someone to shove a staple through your ear to lose weight…you’ve got more to worry about than a propensity for donuts.

I mean…leave your ears alone, lift some weights, and cook more stir-frys. Honestly, friends…it’s not that hard.