Latest Blog Posts

Trademarking Tradition: the Fire Cider® Controversy

By Ryn Midura

Note: This was posted in January 2014. In 2019, the term “fire cider” was ruled to be generic. [For the purposes of this discussion, let’s use fire cider to refer to the traditional herbal medicine preparation, “fire cider” to refer to the term, and Fire Cider® to refer to the company who have trademarked the…

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Paleo Pumpkin Muffins!

By Katja Swift

It’s almost Thanksgiving and that means, among other things, PUMPKIN! Pie isn’t the only thing you can do with pumpkin – in fact, I like pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins much better. If you do too, here’s a great recipe – it can be bread or muffins depending on which baking implement you use! Start…

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Men’s Cycles and Self-Reliance

By Ryn Midura

Often, discussions of “women’s health” or “men’s health” are limited to the reproductive systems. When I teach about men’s reproductive health, I like to include an overview of common problems for men, because sexual function is dependent on the vitality of the rest of the body. But even before I get to that, I start…

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The Beauty of Imperfection and a Tea for Gracelessness

By Katja Swift

I teach, a lot. Life as a teacher essentially means being on stage, most of the time. My students and my clients have images of me in their minds, and I’m quite certain that those images are better than what I really am, or that they are taking their image of my Best Self and…

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Chamomile by Simon Blackley

Gut-Heal Tea

By Ryn Midura

Eliminating food allergens from the diet can bring substantial relief from inflammatory gastrointestinal disorders such as IBS, Crohn’s disease, and celiac. These ill-tolerated foods – the gluten in wheat and other grains, the casein and lactose in dairy, and others – can initiate destructive processes that irritate the stomach lining, compromise the intestinal wall, and…

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Enough.

By Katja Swift

We are a culture of More. We like words like SuperSize, Maximize, and Fullest Potential. We like, whether we admit it or not, concepts like Planned Obsolescence, because it allows for words like New, Shiny, Improved, and of course, Shopping. We believe things like “You can never be too rich, or too thin”. We, as…

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On the Merits of Plain Speech

By Katja Swift

Words are pretty amazing things. We can use them to make people feel good about themselves, or awful. We can use them to bring people together, or to divide. The way we speak when we’re working with people – regardless of profession – says a lot about not only what we think of our position…

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Green Cleaning

By Katja Swift

When I was a kid, we had “Mr. Yuk” stickers. Mr. Yuk was a sickly neon-green and black circle with a very distinctive frowny yuck face, and was, before emoticons and internationalized language-free signage, a recognizable symbol for children to say that this item was poisonous.

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On the Merits of Fluctuation

By Katja Swift

This week, one of my pharmacy students stayed after class to ask for help. She wanted me to explain about the way insulin is supposed to cycle in the body again, because she has a friend who is a young doctor, and they had gotten into a disagreement. The young doctor friend claimed that a…

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Classroom Experiment: Kadha (Fried Dumplings)

By Katja Swift

Today my Pharmacy students and I tried out a Thanksgiving experiment. Last week two students referenced a traditional Iraqi/Iranian treat, which is made with dates and almonds. We all agreed that replicating this recipe in paleo fashion would be just the thing for the week of Thanksgiving – and we were right!

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