Ah, summer - it's travel time again. You've been doing well with your diet, making healthier food choices, and even beginning to notice an improvement in your health. And then vacation time rolls around - should you make that trip? How will you keep up with all of your changes - you certainly don't want to backslide and have those symptoms come back!

In our always-busy lives, vacations and time away can be every bit as important as the food we eat. Time away from our routines is vital to our wellbeing. However, we all know that travel tends to involve lots of "convenience" food - usually highly processed, with little or no nutritional value. However, with a little care and pre-planning, you don't have to be left at the mercy of junk food.

Don't let your food prevent you from getting away and staying healthy!

Give LSW's road-tested travel snacks a try and see how easy eating right anywhere really is!!

Snacks and mini-meals:
Nuts, dried fruit, apples and baby carrots keep well, are easy to pack, and pack a punch nutritionally as well.

Protein:
Canned salmon, tuna, sardines - just peel back the lid and eat! Nut butter or hummus travels well if you have access to basic air conditioning.

Complex Carbohydrates:
Blue corn chips, rice crackers or soft corn tortillas plus any of the above protein items makes a great mini meal. At a conference and only have access to hot water in your hotel room? Try bringing instant oatmeal or quinoa flakes - just add boiling water or microwave and voila! Break the afternoon cookie attack by bringing a small Tupperware container filled with a cooked grain wherever you go - it's lightweight, keeps well, and can be a lifesaver if you end up getting stuck somewhere.

Free Vacations!
Can’t get away for a full vacation? Plan a weekend trip, or even just a day away. If you live in a city, make plans to get out of it, if only for an afternoon. Bike to the park, or use the public transportation that’s available in most metropolitan areas. Just be sure to pack a lunch!

Tell us how you travel
What foods are essential for you when traveling? What are your favorite vacation, weekend or one-day getaways? Share your questions, thoughts and experiences with the LSW community at our blog, and an LSW counselor will respond!

LSW recognizes the importance of indulgence, pleasure, and sensuality for every woman's menstrual and sexual health. We help you find the right medicinal foods for healing your condition, and we support you to understand, accept, and enjoy your woman's body and your feminine energy.

Did you know that fibroids affect an estimated 20-50% of all women? These benign uterine growths can range in size from that of a pea to that of a melon, and symptoms can vary from none at all to heavy or painful periods, bleeding between periods, pain during intercourse, and lower back pain - to name a few.

According to Western medicine, no one knows for sure what causes fibroids. What we do know is that they seem to be affected by our hormones - in other words, excess estrogen in the body seems to make them grow, and they will often decrease in size after menopause (when overall body estrogen is lower). For women exhibiting symptoms, doctors will most often offer the choice of controlling growth through drugs, or removing the fibroids through surgery.

There is another option
If you've been diagnosed with fibroids, and are looking for an alternative to drugs and surgery, consider this: There are ways to minimize the size and symptoms of fibroids by using food therapeutically.

How do we do this? First of all, we work with you on food choices - finding those foods that will support your body in healing itself. In general, fresh whole foods - which are higher in fiber - help the liver in its job of processing and removing toxins from the body, including excess estrogen.

Stored emotions
Next we look at the flip side of the coin.

Dr. Christiane Northrup (author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom) calls fibroids an "illness of competition." At LSW, we believe that fibroids represent stored emotion - most typically anger or resentment. As modern women, we often don't have an outlet for the stressors in our lives, leaving them to be stored in our bodies as unprocessed emotions.

Investigating your relationship with these important emotions and finding healthy outlets for their expression can be a key component in your healing journey.

First steps
If you are suffering from fibroids, call us for a free consultation and find out more about how we can help. But in the meantime, start with these basic steps:

* Increase: whole grains, green vegetables
* Increase: rest, play time, down time
* Decrease: sugar, alcohol, caffeine
* For symptomatic relief: apply a hot water bottle - filled with warm to hot water (NOT boiling) - to the abdomen

Questions about fibroids?
Ask questions and leave comments at in our comments section below, and an LSW Counselor will respond. If you’re dealing with fibroids, this is a great opportunity to get your questions answered!

LSW is committed to helping you understand the amazing natural healing options that are available to you, so that you can make knowledgeable, powerful choices about how to care for your body and your menstrual and sexual health.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a study by researchers at the Mayo Clinic, stating that removing a woman's ovaries before the age of 45 can raise her risk of death within 30 years by 70 percent. 70 percent! That's a lot. And why are all these ovaries being removed in the first place?

Ovaries are often taken out during hysterectomy procedures. Hysterectomy (surgical removal of the uterus) is still one of the most common surgeries performed on all women today, both pre- and post-menopause. Doctors are in the habit of snipping out the ovaries too, to prevent these women from (their tiny risk of) ever contracting ovarian cancer.

So here's yet another medical practice that treats women's bodies like they are only baby-making machines. If our fertile years are over, surely our pelvic organs serve no further purpose, right? They only exist for a baby's wellbeing, not for our own?

Here's a telling excerpt from the Journal:

"Most doctors practicing today were taught that ovaries don't serve any real purpose after menopause. If a woman is going to undergo a hysterectomy anyway, doctors typically advise her to go ahead and have her ovaries removed as well. What's so surprising about the data is that it directly contradicts the widely held belief in the medical community that removing a woman's ovaries will prolong her life. 'We were all shocked when we saw that there was such an advantage to leaving her ovaries in for long-term health,' says the lead author of the study."

Why were they shocked to discover that we function better with our organs left intact? Sadly, many medical doctors have been off the mark about women's anatomy for centuries. Since classical times men's bodies have been viewed as The Ideal, while women's bodies have been seen as smaller, less perfect men's bodies, with some baby- making apparatus thrown in.

In fact, women's pelvic organs and brains are in constant communication. The interplay between hormones from our uterus and ovaries and signals from our hypothalamus and pituitary in the brain creates a complex system that regulates not only our hormonal health but also our cardiovascular health, the strength of our bones and connective tissue, our emotional wellbeing, and more. This hormonal dance goes on before, during and after our fertile years, keeping our systems balanced and healthy. Removing a key part of the system can cause many health disruptions.

Obviously, thinking that our pelvic organs are useless unless we're giving birth with them is out-moded and arcane. This is 2007 (for crying out loud!), and women are whole people, without disposable parts! Yet old attitudes persist, with the result that many women have been poorly advised and poorly served by the medical system. Women deserve a new way forward in healthcare, one that understands, appreciates and respects their bodies.

A great place to start is to connect with your own body, become an authority on your own health, and share what you know with other women. Here at LSW, we understand the critical biological connection between the pelvic organs, the brain, and emotional health. We offer a natural, diet-based approach as a surgical alternative and help our clients to connect with, appreciate, and heal their menstrual and sexual health concerns. Want to talk about it more? Call us today: 212-581-0001.


Wishing you a week of health,

Alisa Vitti
Director, Laughing Sage Wellness Group

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Laughing Sage Wellness Group offers a revolutionary model of hormonal health for women. Rather than masking or eliminating a woman's natural hormonal function through drugs or surgery, Laughing Sage counselors use food medicinally to heal, nurture, and balance our clients' hormonal health. Our holistic health group pairs clients with insightful and compassionate counselors who are trained experts in holistic nutrition and women's self-care. For more information contact the Director, Alisa Vitti, at 212-581-0001 or alisaholistic@yahoo.com.