Words: Dr Richard FIRSHEIN Allergies can be as wide-ranging as the world itself. Perhaps, the most common form is allergic rhinitis, the technical name for sneezing, coughing, runny nose, watery eyes, and itchiness that many of us experience every year. The seasonal pollination of trees, grass, and weeds distributing airborne allergens varies little from year

Words: Dr Richard FIRSHEIN Milk thistle is my centrepiece in restoring the healthy functioning of the liver. It not only protects the liver from damage, it actually stimulates the growth of healthy new cells. Amazingly, studies have shown that this humble herb can reverse liver damage, protect against hepatitis and cirrhosis, speed recovery from jaundice,

Words: Dr Richard FIRSHEIN  I am privileged to be practicing integrative medicine during a time of revolution –– the Nutraceutical Revolution. Nutraceuticals are nutrients that have the capacity to act like medicines.  They are ‘natural’ pharmaceuticals. The real miracle –– nature’s power to heal — has always been available to us.  But, now science has

Words: Dr Richard FIRSHEIN The existence of vitamin E was first uncovered in 1920, but Agnes Fay Morgan and her colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley are credited with the 1937 discovery of vitamin E’s special role in the body. While myriad studies have shown the promise of other natural herbs and supplements,

Words: Dr Richard FIRSHEIN Your daily mood isn’t all in your head; it also affects your physical health. Research shows that depression and resistance to disease are strongly linked. That’s particularly significant when battling an illness like, cancer, since having a strong immune system can help save your life. I think of cancer as a

Words: Dr Richard FIRSHEIN A strange thing happened in the late 1970s. An extract from hamburger was found to inhibit tumours in mice. In 1987, this extract was identified as conjugated linoleic acid [CLA]. CLA belongs to the omega-6 fatty acid family. After nearly thirty-five years of research on this ‘designer fat,’ we’ve found out

Words: Dr Richard FIRSHEIN The right nutritional supplements can turn asthmatic kids around and place them on the road to recovery. We all know how fickle kids are at the dinner table. As hard as you try to get your children to eat right, it’s difficult to make sure they get the nutrients they need

Words: Dr Rajgopal NIDAMBOOR Millions are overweight and unhealthy today. It is, therefore, not uncommon for most of them to embark on new dietetic experiments and diet plans at any given point of time, and at the drop of a new ‘formula.’ The problem, in reality, is not so much with dieting, but falling for

Words: Dr Richard FIRSHEIN Asthma is the epidemic in our time. Over fifteen million Americans, for example, now suffer from this devastating condition, and it is the primary cause of hospitalisation in children. We spend more than US$6 billion a year on asthma treatment and our solution so far has been the use of potent