Fertility Kitchen

"A natural alternative to the standard over the counter drugs and first aid products."

Last weekend I took a group of about 15 brave adventurers out into the Marin Headlands to locate and identify medicinal and edible plants that grow wild in the Bay Area. Part deux of our annual Plant Walk is our in-house Herbal Medicine Cabinet workshop, happening tonight. All of the proceeds from the workshop will go to the efforts of Acupuncturists without Borders and their work in Haiti!

You're still welcome to join us, but in case this last minute invite doesn't work for your busy schedule, here's some information about your Herbal Medicine Cabinet.

What Does This Have to do with Chinese Medicine?

In case you didn't catch my last post, I graduated from the California School of Herbal Studies before I started my Chinese Medicine training, and I have always been a great advocate of using herbs and natural remedies to heal.

We created this workshop because we saw a need in our clients to have intimate access to Chinese herbal remedies at home. Maybe they are dealing with acute back pain, but their next acupuncture appointment isn't until the end of the week. Our Burns, Injuries, and Pain kit has all the remedies you need in the moment to stop the pain and bring relief.

The main focus of tonight's workshop will be to create a healing salve—from scratch—that will remedy cuts, bumps, bites and stings. So for those of you that can't make it, here's the basic gist.

Healing Salve

1. Soak comfrey, plantain and calendula flowers in almond and jojoba oil. Immerse the flowers completely to keep them fresh.
2. Seal it up, place it on a warm windowsill, and wait 2-3 weeks, shaking the jar periodically.
3. Strain the oil through bundled up cheesecloth, separating the oil from the herbs, and collecting the oil in a bowl.
4. Melt 3 tablespoons of beeswax for every 2 cups of oil in a low heat double boiler.
5. When the wax has melted completely, mix in the oil. The beeswax will temporarily re-harden. Patiently warm the oil slowly until the solution is again clear and the wax fully melted.
6. Add a teaspoon of Vitamin E oil to the mixture for every 2 cups of oils you originally started with.
7. Pour your mixture into small jars to cool. Add a few drops of essential oil for a wonderful scent. Voila, salve!

Those who attend the workshop will get all the ingredients needed to make this salve. If you're trying it at home, a natural food store with a bulk section is a good place to start hunting down the goods.

Herbal First Aid Kits

We also put together five first aid kits (in adorable tote bags!) that are available at Acupuncture Kitchen to treat the following areas:

1. Burns, Injury & Pain
2. Colds & Flu
3. Outdoor & Gardening
4. Healthy Digestion
5. Natural Pet Care

If you'd like to order one, come on in or give us a call!

Although the sun's rays are inarguably damaging to our skin, in a twist of fate, they are also crucial for our body's whole health.

The good news? There apparently is such a thing as a "natural sunscreen."

Astaxanthin is a naturally-found carotenoid that acts as one of our most powerful "internal sunscreens." It's a food supplement sourced mainly from microalgae. Like most antioxidants, it's an anti-cancer agent because it protects cells from free radical damage.

Astaxanthin was originally used by fish farmers to color the flesh of their salmon a deeper, more palatable red. Along the way, its health benefits were discovered. It's now available as a supplement in natural food stores.

However, just popping a few of these pills won't make you automatically immune to the damaging effects of sunlight. It's thought to take some time to build up a good amount of antioxidant activity in your cells. It's always a good idea to get instructions from a qualified health care provider (alternative or otherwise) when trying new things.

By the way, other powerful antioxidants with this ability include Acai, Pomegranates and Blueberries.

The sun gets a bad rap in the health community, particularly in regard to its effects on our skin. But sunshine is absolutely essential to our health, not just for reasons of mood, but because it's the primary way that our bodies acquire Vitamin D... a prohormone we certainly can't live without.

Vitamin D is particularly important to bone strength. D deficiencies lead to nasty disorders such as rickets and osteomalacia.

Vitamin D is not naturally found in many foods. To some extent, it can be gleaned from fish, eggs, fortified milk, and cod liver oil. However, with fish being a variable in our diet, milk causing a lot of people lactose issues, and cod liver oil being, well, disgusting, chances are you're not getting adequate D from your food.

In fact, our bodies were designed to manufacture D from sunlight.

What does Vitamin D have to do with fertility?

One study has found a link between low levels of Vitamin D and problems with ovulation. The relationship between Vitamin D and ovulation was presented at an American Society for Reproductive Medicine meeting in San Francisco.

The team from Yale University School of Medicine took Vitamin D measures from 67 infertile women. Only 7% of them showed normal Vitamin D levels, and the rest had either insufficient levels or actual clinical deficiency.

Current research is suggesting that a bolster of up to 4,000 IUs of Vitamin D should be tried to improve ovulation. This research may offer one solution for women to try on their own, or in conjunction with their current fertility treatments.

What else science says

According to the Mayo Clinic, "The major biologic function of Vitamin D is to maintain normal blood levels of calcium and phosphorus. Vitamin D aids in the absorption of calcium, helping to form and maintain strong bones. Recently, research also suggests vitamin D may provide protection from osteoporosis, hypertension (high blood pressure), cancer, and several autoimmune diseases."

How to make sure you're getting enough Vitamin D

According to the Weston A. Price Foundation,  it's important to get Vitamin D both from the sun and from diet.

I love this particular quote from their site: "Primitive peoples instinctively chose vitamin-D-rich foods including the intestines, organ meats, skin and fat from certain land animals, as well as shellfish, oily fish and insects. Many of these foods are unacceptable to the modern palate."

The reality is, we still have plenty of foods left to choose from that are acceptable to our "modern palate" and will provide Vitamin D. However, never underestimate the healing effects of our good old life-giver, the sun!

And speaking of the sun, here's a fun article about how mating turkeys take advantage of sunlight when wooing their beloveds...

To increase your breast milk supply:

• Plenty of rest and good nutrition are the most important factors in your body's ability to manufacture breastmilk.
• You can also make a barley/fennel tea by bringing a 2:1 ratio of barley:fennel to a boil. Let this tisane steep for 15 minutes, and drink it daily.
• (Nothing like a good old Guinness too—seriously, its a midwifery trick!)

For drying up breast milk when weaning, try sage tea. You can brew dried sage or buy sage tea at a natural foods store.

Evening primrose oil is known in natural medicine circles to facilitate labor induction because it contains prostoglandins which help to ripen the cervix. Once you have reached your full term, try the following for stimulating labor:

Take 2-500mg capsules 2 times per day and insert one capsule at night as a vaginal suppository starting 3 weeks prior to your due date.

It’s best to try natural remedies such as this under the supervision of your doctor, acupuncturist, or midwife.

I see many patients through the process of becoming pregnant at my acupuncture clinic, Acupuncture Kitchen. I continue to see many of them through a healthy (or, less often, a tricky) pregnancy. Occasionally, a patient will come to me for labor induction at the end of their pregnancy.

Chinese medicine can be excellent at inducing labor and is a safe, alternative method of preparing the body for birth in lieu of typical Western induction drugs like Misoprostol and Pitocin. These drugs—while proven to safely induce labor without health risks to the baby, for the most part—can cause a cascade of intervention events during birth.

Because they speed up labor, pharmaceutical labor-inducing drugs cause a higher risk of increased bleeding, hemorrhaging, and vaginal tearing.

Doesn't sound pleasant, does it?

While Western drugs sometimes do become necessary, it's a good idea to first try to induce labor with the less invasive techniques of acupuncture and Chinese herbs.

What Science Says

Acupuncture is widely thought to help reduce the need for medical intervention in post-term pregnancies.

"In a randomized, controlled trial involving 56 nulliparous women (women who had not previously given birth) carrying a single fetus, at 39.6 weeks or greater, with a Bishop Score of less than 7 [a pre-labor scoring system used to predict whether an induction of labor may be successful] treatment of acupuncture was found to reduce the mean time to delivery (21 hours sooner), increase the likelihood of going into labor spontaneously (70% vs. 50%), and decrease the likelihood of delivering by cesarean section, as compared to subjects who did not receive acupuncture and only received standard medical care."

"A randomized controlled trial of acupuncture for initiation of labor in nulliparous women," Harper TC, Coeytaux RR, J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med, 2006; 19(8): 465-70. (Address: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of North Carolina, NC, USA).

More Inventive Ways to Induce Labor

Incidentally, those in the alternative medicine know have come up with a whole list of labor-inducing "wives tales." Some of these are more valid than others, although they are all pretty interesting:

• Essential oils such as oregano and basil (Some say that eating these herbs toward the end of a pregnancy can also be effective.)
• Sex (It's true. Semen contains prostaglandins, which, theoretically, cause the cervix to soften.)
• Red raspberry leaf tea (referred to as a uterine "tonic"—in other words, it helps tone the uterus)
• This one, while it sounds the most farfetched, is actually widely recommended by midwives in the know: stimulating your nipples! This causes the body to naturally produce oxytocin, the hormone that stimulates uterine contractions. Warning: the nipples must be stimulated for quite a while for this to work. Ouch.
• A midwife or Chinese medical professional can often recommend other herbs and tonics known to stimulate uterine contractions and induce labor.

As with any medical advice, it's important that you follow these suggestions with the go ahead and care of a licensed medical professional.

Honey is not only antibacterial, but also a humectant, which means it draws moisture to a wound to help repair the flesh.

Applying honey over the outer incisions after a caesarean section can be more effective and less painful than chemical dressings!

As an acupuncturist, I am a strong advocate of natural remedies, and honey is one of my favorites. Here are a bevy of reasons why I love to promote the natural goodness of honey:

• Quality local honey is a first line of defense against seasonal allergies.
• Honey is great as a topical remedy for soothing sore throats and can even act as a cough suppressant.
• It’s been used traditionally in many cultures to sooth rashes and burns. One journal, aptly named Burns, published a report in 1998 comparing honey treatment on burn victims to the standard treatment of silver sulfadiazine. Honey was shown to be more effective in controlling infection and healing time.
• It contains trace amounts of antioxidants (the exact amount depends on the bees and the flowers they were busy pollinating).
• Phytonutrients and enzymes that boost immunity and facilitate digestion can be found in honey in varying degrees—again depending on that bee’s particular flower penchant.

As an aside: when worker bees go on their initial foraging mission out of the hive, the first flower they encounter is the same one they’ll continue to return to.  This is called flower fidelity, and it’s why bees make distinct types of honey, such as clover honey.

• Honey has antiseptic, antibacterial properties due to its low water content and its high level of acidity (which is offset by its sweetness in taste). Part of honey’s antiseptic property comes from the existence of “good” bacteria such as lactobacilli and bifidobacteria (the same sorts of bacteria that are found in yogurt and which are quite wonderful for our digestion). Taken internally, honey has been found to kill Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that plays a role in ulcers.
• It’s a great emergency energy boost, due to its high sugar content.
• It can be used in homemade beauty treatments to moisturize and soften the skin. One lovely concoction is honey mixed with a pinch of nutmeg, which acts as an exfoliant. Apply as a mask for 10 minutes, rinse in warm water, and enjoy your shiny skin!
• And let’s not forget about the bees! Bee stings have been widely used in traditional medicine to relieve arthritis.

Also—and this quality should not be underrated—honey is delicious and easy to put down. It’s a natural substitute for sugar that replaces the refined variety in desserts and sweets.

An interesting, albeit morbid, fact about honey: in ancient Egypt, it was used to embalm the dead. I presume this worked because of honey’s low water content. Its viscous consistency is great at repelling bacteria and microorganisms.

I admire this natural nectar so much, in fact, that I tend my own bees in order to cultivate local, San Francisco honey. All Hail the Queen honey is available, compounded with custom Chinese herbs, at Acupuncture Kitchen or in its raw form at www.allhailthequeenhoney.com.