How Organic is your Organic Milk?

Where do the more commonly available (at least in Los Angeles) organic milk brands of Trader Joe's, Horizon, Whole Foods (365 Organics), Costco, and even Ben and Jerry's stand in terms of integrity in an independent survey? See for yourself!

A friend of mine hooked me on to a very useful site that rates organic milks. The scorecard was created by Cornucopia.org and they have a full report on the state of organic milk farms, industrialized milk farming, USDA enforcement, and consumer guidance on organic milk-buying, among other issues. The ratings alone can be found here but to fully understand their ratings I recommend you read the report.

As for me, I think I'll begin supporting 365 Organics and Straus more.

Acupressure Face Lift and Recipe to Beautify Yourself

For those of you who want to beautify naturally, here are couple tips from this month's Iyashi Wellness Newsletter.

To sign up for this free monthly e-newsletter, go to my website, Iyashiwellness.com.

Past newsletter subjects have included:

Smoking Cessation

Heart Health

Acupuncture and Headaches

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Acupuncture

Enjoy!

The 5-Minute Acupressure Face Lift

Here is a 5-Minute Acupressure Face Lift to smooth wrinkles and firm up the face.

To draining the lymph system and smooth the skin

• Begin at the center of the forehead using the thumbs, and stroke across the eyebrows. Repeat 3 times.

• With the pads of the thumb, move from the outside edge of the eyebrows to the hollow in front of the ear (Fig 1).

• Using 3 inner fingers of both hands to massage the back of the neck from middle towards outside for 30 seconds with circular motion.

To lift and tone the face, chin and neck

• Stroke upward in lines from the eyebrows into the hairline. Repeat 3 to 5 times (Fig 2).

• Press on DU20 (the point on the very top of the head) to bring energy upward. Repeat 3 to 5 times.

• Using the pads of the thumbs, stroke in a circular motion from the eyebrow to temple to jawline and to the points below the eye. Repeat 9 to 12 times (See Fig 3).

• For neck wrinkles: Stroke upward from the collar bone to the jawline. Repeat 3–5 times (See Fig 4).

Recipe for Nourishing Beauty - Sweet Rice Congee

Sweet black rice, when cooked with longan berries (euphoria longana) and Chinese dates, becomes a congee that nourishes blood and Qi.

In the Oriental medicine system of food cures, these three foods work together to enhance beauty and longevity.

• The sweet rice promotes the flow of liver Qi, which helps keep angry feelings at bay and leads to calmness.

• The Chinese dates (different from the Mediterranean variety) nourish blood and spleen, promoting restful sleep and mental clarity.

• Longan fruit, a blood enhancer, was used by the ancients to add luster to the skin. From a Western perspective, we know that longans contain large amounts of Vitamin C and phenolic compounds, which may help to detoxify and protect the liver.

Sweet Rice Congee
(Taken from Ancient Healing for Modern Women, by Dr. Xiolan Zhao, C.M.D.)

Ingredients:

6 cups water
1 cup black sweet rice (wash before using)
½ cup dried longan fruit
10 Chinese dates
2 tablespoons raw sugar
½ inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

Instructions:

In a large heavy saucepan, add 6 cups of water, black sweet rice, longan fruit, dates, and raw sugar. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat and simmer for two hours, stirring occasionally. Garnish with ginger. Makes four servings.

Note: All ingredients are available at most Asian grocery stores.

Author: Elizabeth G. Lynch

Rate hikes withdrawn!

Great news to insurance holders of Anthem Blue Cross!

In February, I blogged about Anthem's request to raise their rates (to read, click here and here), but now, they have decided to withdraw their proposed rate hikes of up to 39%. According to Los Angeles Times reports, state regulators said the plan was "seriously flawed" with numerous errors in its rate filings. Anthem is still planning to propose new rate hikes in May, but they declined to comment when and how much. But it looks like for now, insurance holders have won!

To read the full report, click here.

Career Day at Beverly Hills High School

Last week, I participated in a fantastic Career Day event at Beverly Hills High School. I was invited by my colleage Dr. Jonathon Herbert, D.C., to join him in explaining the ins and outs of our careers. We were in a classroom with students interested in learning about our careers. We each gave about a 15 min talk plus Q&A of what it takes to be - and what it's like to be - a Doctor of Chiropractic and Physician of Chinese Medicine. The students asked many interesting questions. It was a nice reminder for me to see how far I've come in my private practice to be able to mentor these students about my career, and in a more large scale, to see how far I've come as an adult! Sometimes, it just feels like yesterday that I was a teenager, completely lost and trying to find my place in this world!!

Beverly Hills High School (BHHS) has been organizing this event for 15 years now, and each year, it grows. They have keynote speakers each year to motivate students in finding their path (I unfortunately missed the keynote speaker's speech). The organizing committee is made up of both administration and students and the BHHS Career Center, and the planning takes a year, culminating in a fabulous event once a year with individuals from all industries and professions. In addition to myself and Dr. Herbert, there were other medical professionals, law enforcement individuals, people from the military, actors, musicians, artists, marketing executives, lawyers, culinary pofessionals, engineers, professors, bankers, and the list goes on. It says a lot about this event that of the 152 confirmed participants, 151 showed up to the event.

As a token of appreciation from BHHS, we were provided a delicious lunch prepared by the BHHS students enrolled in the culinary program. Delicious, healthy food!

I really enjoyed speaking to the students and helping them see a possibility in a medical career. This was a superbly organized event and the BHHS students are truly lucky to have such an amazing resource available to them to prepare them for the future. Go BHHS students!

Acupuncture for dental work

An article just came out on LA Times that talks about the calming effects of acupuncture for patients having to go through dental work. The study found that within 5 minutes of a few needle insertion in the head, the anxiety scale of patients dropped more than 50 percent! This is true in my non-dental clinical experience because day in and day out I see stressed, anxious, or wound-up patients coming in, and within minutes of my needle insertion, most of my patients' anxious energy levels drop significantly. One minute they are engaged in a lively conversation, then the next, their eyes are shut and they are profoundly relaxed. So if you have never tried acupuncture before and suffer from anxiety, insomnia, not being able to shut off your mind, or stress-related disorders like IBS (irritable bowel disorders), PMS and more, try it! You'll be amazed how peaceful you'll feel lying on the treatment table with needles in you.

Since acupuncture has been shown to improve immune function, it is also very effective in pre- and post-surgery care (both dental and otherwise). It prepares the body before surgery to be in the best possible shape given its circumstances so that there will be minimal surgical complications and requirement for pain killers. And by doing acupuncture post surgery, healing time, scar therapy and infection rates can be reduced significantly.

And the author of the article is correct in guessing that acupuncturists require extensive training to become licensed in the US, particularly in the state of California. Unlike dentists who use acupuncture and require only a minimum of 80 total hours of acupuncture training (50 hours in didactic instructions and 30 hours in clinical training) Licensed Acupuncturists in the state of California require a minimum of almost 4000 total hours of training (minimum 3000 hours in didactic instructions and 800 hours in clinical training) plus passing the country's most rigorous licensing exam conducted by the state's acupuncture board. So rest assured, when you're getting care by a Licensed Acupuncturist in the state of California, you are seeing one of the finest in the nation.

Happy Hour Hiatus

I have had numerous people ask me about the status of my Acupuncture Happy Hours that I was holding weekly on Wednesdays at Casa de Tree during the latter 6 months of 2009. I was going to resume in late February/early March of this year once the days became slightly longer, allowing for more light in the cafe which tended to have a darker mood lighting at night. Unfortunately, I found out that Casa de Tree has shut down operations as the owners are returning to Japan this year.

So for now, I'm sorry fans, my Acupuncture Happy Hour is going to be on indefinite hiatus until I can find a new location. Come back periodically to the Iyashi Wellness website for updates on this.

Good insurance news - for now

A moment of reprieve for Anthem Blue Cross insurance holders here in California. The State Insurance Commissioner has been able to secure a delay in the spike of premium increases until May 1st. This will allow outside health-insurance actuarial experts to investigate whether Anthem has violated any California law with its implementation of increases rates.

Let's hope the Commission can come to a long term agreement based on this analysis to minimize future insurance rate increases.

39% insurance premium increase

Several news agencies have written about premium increases being placed on policyholders of Anthem Blue Cross here in California. The purported increase can be as high as 39% for some holders, even with Blue Cross' parent company, Well Point, seeing profits soaring at $2.7 billion just in the last quarter of 2009. Nonetheless, the company is citing increases in health care costs as their reason for rate increases. (An ironic note made by my colleage Dr. Kevin McNamee: Even with all these profits, Blue Cross has paid the same out of network rates to healthcare providers since the 1990s.)

Unfortunately, there's not much we as insurance holders can do, because it was Congress who in the early 1990s allowed health insurance providers to become For Profit. So even though the Obama administration is looking into this, until Congress and the Senate require insurance providers to become not for profit, there's very little we policy holders can do about these insurance hikes.

I encourage you, especially if you are an Anthem Blue Cross member, to speak to your insurance broker to see if moving to a different insurance company would be a smarter choice. Also, speak to your Congressional representative and Senator to require insurance companies to become non-profit again. Power in numbers

Foods You Should Be Eating

There was recently a wonderful article in Well, a New York Times Healthblog. It talks about 11 foods people should be eating but most likely aren't. Luckily, all of the listed foods are easy to find at your local markets, and especially farmers markets.

Since the article already lists what the foods are good for and how to prepare it, I decided to do a twist on those foods from a Chinese Medicine perspective. So here it goes:

Beets: these pee-staining (and you know what I mean if you've eaten them!!) roots nourish the blood, strengthen the heart, calm the mind, lubricate the intestines and cleanse the liver. What does that mean? It's excellent for anemia, restlessness, constipation and for liver intoxification from drugs or alcohol. I like to eat it by boiling the beets in water until tender, peel skin and then eat as is with no seasoning. It comes out so sweet, you don't need any seasoning! I also like to cook the beet greens in a sauté, whether stir fried, or water fried with other hardy greens. Caution when consuming it raw. I one time drank a cup of raw beet juice with nothing else, and I immediately threw it up! Its detoxing abilities are so strong, you have to consume it mixed with other fruits and veggies juices.

Cabbage: it's excellent in clearing heat, lubricating the intestines and stopping cough. When we say clearing heat in Chinese Medicine, it means heat symptoms present in the body, from constipation (you're all dried up, right?), thirst, fever, acne (it's usually red like fire, right?), body odor (fetid food has smell, right? so if you're consuming heat-producing foods, you're more likely to have B.O. than not), hypertension, hot flashes, to anger (that's a form of emotion rising up onto the surface, exploding, like a volcano, right?), and so forth. I like to eat it by julienning it and then sprinkling a little bit of vinegar and salt to it. I then mix it really well until it become a little like pickles. In Japan, there was a craze for a while of the Cabbage Diet. All people ate was cabbage to help them lose weight because of it's high fiber content and aid in promoting bowel movements.

Swiss Chard: Like all dark green leafy vegetables, it has a cooling ability, so like the cabbage, and similar to spinach, it can clear heat. It also nourishes the blood. So it's excellent for anemia, blood disorders, constipation and detoxing. I like to water-fry it with a little bit of garlic and salt, or mix it into some quinoa with kale and salt. Simple but delicious!

Cinnamon: Cinnamon, or rou gui, is used extensively as a medicinal herb in Chinese herbology. It is a warming herb, so we use it for conditions like the common cold, abdominal pain that gets better if you put warmth to it, PMS cramping and low back pain. Think about it, when do you usually use cinnamon in your cooking? During the Fall and Winter right, for that yummy pumpkin pie, in soups, in hot cocoa or hot coffee. Why? Because it's warming, and for Americans, it reminds them of feeling all cozy on a cold winter day. I like to throw a whole cinnamon twig into the boiling water that I use to prepare steel cut oatmeal. Not only does it make it fragrant, but it sure adds that punch of core-warming heat to my oatmeal. For PMS cramping or stomach pain, drink cinnamon tea.

Pomegranate Juice: pomegranates promote urination, reduce inflammation (especially of the throat, mouth and urinary tract), and is mildly nourishing to the blood. It's good for urinary tract infections, like cranberry juice, because its sour and cooling, and like aforementioned, promotes urination and reduces inflammation in the urinary tract. I like to drink pomegranate juice, but like with any fruit juices, because of its high sugar content, I usually dilute it with water. It's best, like with any juices, to eat the real fruit, so if you can find it in your market, buy the real fruit. It's time consuming to get to the seeds, but well worth the effort. Just be careful staining your clothes.

Dried Plums: ok, I don't eat dried fruits, again, because like fruit juices, they are high in sugar content. So if I'm going to eat dried plums, I'm going to choose the real fruit. They are the yummiest during the summer. It's excellent at supporting the healthy functioning of the liver, and helps to keep the qi ("energy source" in Chinese medicine) flowing smoothly throughout your body. Some expressions of stuck qi is irritability, moodiness, PMS, easy to anger, and menstrual problems. Plums are also a digestive aid and relieves thirst.

Pumpkin seeds: it's an anti-parasitic and diuretic, so it's excellent for intestinal worms, diabetes and prostate problems. The raw seeds are excellent at calming nausea and bloatingduring pregnancy.

Sardines: like with fruit juices and dried fruit, I like my fish fresh. In Japan, we eat sardines all the time, broiled. Because it can be quite bitter, we like to eat it with some grated daikon and soy sauce to cut the bitterness. Sardines are wonderful qi tonics and yin tonics. What is yin?, you might ask. It encompasses the notion of body fluids, cooling energy, female energy, night, sleep, calmness and so forth (as opposed to yang energy, which is aggressive, explosive, muscles, male energy, and day). It also nourishes the tendons and bones. So sardines are great for menopause, thirst, bone fractures, osteoporosis, tendonitis.

Tumeric: like cinnamon, this is an herb we use extensively in Chinese herbology. Known as jiang huang, we primarily use it for menstrual disorders like amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea, cramps, and for arthritic conditions.

Frozen Blueberries: ok, frozen fruits and vegetables are my exceptions. I do keep frozen blueberries in my freezer to use in my smoothies or oatmeal -- if I can't get access to fresh ones, or if it's not summer. Blueberries nourish the blood and tonify the qi, so it's good for anemic conditions, amenorrhea, and fatigue. Like with cranberries, it also aids in relieving urinary tract infections. I love to eat fresh, sweet blueberries also with some home-made whipped cream! Mmmm!

If you want to learn more about food from a Chinese Medicine perspective, a wonderful book to own is called The Tao of Nutrition by Maoshing Ni and Cathy McNease. Much of the information in this particular post came from this book.

And one last thing I'd like to say about eating these and other foods is to choose organic, locally grown foods as much as possible.

Enjoy healthy eating!!