Adkins. Vegan. Raw foods. South Beach. Ornish. Ayurveda. Zone. Nourishing Traditions. Candida diet. OH MY GOD. What is a person to do? Low-carb? High-carb? Low-fat? High-fat? A combination? Sometimes it feels as if jumping out the window would be an easier proposition. Ok, let me start off by saying all of these diets have some credibility and every single one will work for some people. Probably all of them will work for everyone for all least for a short period of time. But these (and all) diets are almost always completely the opposite of what a person had been eating (hence the probability toward weight loss–or weight gain, if that is what is needed in the situation). And because our brains are wired to maintain homeostasis–due to a little something we like to call “habits”–completely changing the way you eat can work for a little while, but soon enough your body is going to pull you back to the old way of doing things.

For thousands of centuries, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been treating illness and misalignments using many of the common everyday spices found in most common kitchens. This healing art uses different modalities to treat the body, such as acupuncture, acupressure, and herbs. Some medicinal uses of common spices include using cinnamon as a blood circulation stimulater, cloves to increase sexual potency, turmeric to help dissolve tumors, and ginger to calm indigestion. Within the last decade, acupuncture has become a booming business. With 3.1 million adults and 150,000 children choosing acupuncture as a form of treatment for illness or prevention, it has become more acceptable in medical practices.

It has to be one of the biggest contradictions of my life. I love animals (well, most anyway–spiders can make their way off this earth, thank you very much), and would never knowingly cause them harm. Although, as evidenced by the fact that I am a meat-eater, I obviously don’t have much problem with other people harming them for me. Recently, I have cut back a bit. In my younger days, I didn’t consider a meal a meal unless there was meat in it. Nowadays, meat features in my dinners only three or four times per week. Also, I now try (try!) to restrict my meat to organic, just so I know the animal lived as happy a life as it could before being sent to the slaughter house (hold your applause). But still, I try to justify it: humans have always eaten meat. We are meat-eaters, right?