Last week, I explained how preventing heart disease has very little to do with simply lowering cholesterol with statin drugs. Our current thinking about how to treat and prevent heart disease is at best misguided, and at worst harmful. We believe we are treating the causes of heart disease by lowering cholesterol, lowering blood pressure, lowering blood sugar with medication. But the real question is what causes high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar in the first place.[i] It is certainly not a medication deficiency!

Q: My doctor says there's nothing he can do about my tinnitus. I can't keep living like this—what can I do?

Simply, no, and allow me to explain. 

Questions like these often come up when people see the small bag of pills I take with every meal because it shocks them to see a person of my age and health taking so many pills.  Pills are reserved for sick or “old” people.  Often they ask, “What are those?” and “Are you OK?”  After these questions I spend the next few minutes telling them that our food is filled with nutritional holes, covered in poisons, our bodies are under more stress than ever before, and I’m getting old. 

All you want to do is climb into bed, crawl under the covers, and make everything go away. The throbbing pain in your head, the searing light, the intense nausea. Make it all go away.

But you can’t. You’re having a migraine. And they never just “go away” by crawling under the covers.

Over the past decade much has put attention on the use of herbs in the treatment of mental and emotional difficulties. Probably the most well known herb now, because of all of this commotion, is Saint John’s Wort.

As a long time medical herbalist, I look over all that goes on and hope that more understanding is developed about the effective use of herbs.

Q: Last month I tried a two-week detox diet, and to be perfectly honest, I felt horrible. By dinner on day one I had a dull headache that felt like a mild migraine, and the next morning nausea set in. To make a long story short, I was so miserable I didn't make it past day three. I want to try again, but only if it's possible to ease the pain.

Kidney stones (renal lithiasis) can be one of the most excruciatingly painful conditions you can experience. In the United States, about 10-15 percent of adults will be diagnosed with a kidney stone in their lifetime.

Roughly 1 million Americans develop kidney stones each year. Once you have had one kidney stone attack, your chance of recurrence is about 70 to 80 percent.

Anxiety disorders affect nearly 40 million U.S. adults. Teenagers and young children with high stress from ever demanding schedules or family problems are also increasingly affected. Anxiety disorders are more than simple fearfulness or worry. They are crippling fear reactions that cause suffering and interfere with daily responsibilities, family life and social ties. At its worst, the sufferer may be unable to even leave the house.

Today, most doctors insist that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease as they dole out dangerous cholesterol-lowering drugs.

But few ever realize that vitamin C deficiency plays a major role in heart attack and stroke.