non-toxic-medicine

The health care debate is making me sick. How about you? Wonder when they’re going to get around to talking about really reforming health care instead of how to shuffle the dollars? Well you know what? (I know you do) Ain’t gonna happen.

But, we can talk about reforming our own health care, because the bottom line is that we’re the ones who need to take charge of our own health. You and I. We’re the ones who can go into our health care providers’ offices and sit down and act like we are partners and participants in the process of getting us well instead of leaving it all to them.

We’re the ones who make choices moment to moment about what we put in our mouths, whether we move or we behave like slugs, if we don’t sleep enough, or if we let stress drag us down. It’s your body, you have to live in it; you have to take care of it unless you don’t mind feeling bad to awful, being on scads of medications with known and unknown side effects, and conceding that each new compromise in quality of life is “a natural part of aging”. Hogwash!

It’s Your Body! by Judy Stone, local nutritionist, holistic health care practitioner, and author is a new column advocating do-it-yourself health-care reform. Real health doesn’t come in 15-minute office visits and prescription bottles. It comes from understanding how your body works, and what might be happening when it’s not working so well. It comes from scratching beneath the surface to find the research and controversy in health care that isn’t finding it’s way to you. And it comes from you seeking out solutions that support your body’s natural ability to heal.

It’s Your Body! will address a wide range of topics, including digestive health, depression, toxins and detoxification, cancer, gluten intolerance and food sensitivity, fatigue, hormone imbalance, osteoporosis, and heart health. I’ll be looking at health care research and news that makes the front page, and probably more importantly, the stories that should but don’t. All with the goal of helping you take better care of yourself. Because it’s your body! Are you with me?

Judy Stone, CN, MSW is the owner of Nutrition Magician www.nutritionmagician.net, and the author of "Take Two Apples And Call Me In The Morning: a practical guide to using the power of food to change your life" www.taketwoapples.com. In addition to agitating for informed and empowered health care consumers, she also gardens and raises chickens in Ann Arbor.