Kitchen Pharmacy

Friday, December 22

Today, on the last day of class before the holiday season, we had an interesting lecture on how to create holistic food remedies for common minor ailments such as headaches and the different types, fevers, colds, sore throats, coughs, nasal congestion, motion sickness, indigestion, insomnia, earaches, etc. and what can be treated by home remedies and when you should go to the hospital or see a doctor.

For example, for an expansive headache with pain at the front of the head in the temple area, it normally occurs because of expansion of blood vessels and is related to blood sugar issues and usually alcohol, sugar and coffee. Treatments include eating something salty such as umeboshi (Japanese plum paste) in tea, miso soup, olives, anchovies, etc.

Or for headache pain at the side of temples, related to the liver and gall bladder and caused usually by too much fatty food and alcohol, PMS, hormonal issues, etc. drink hot water with lemons, radish, milk thistle and no heat producing foods.

Then we went into the kitchen to prepare the remedies.