When the weather’s nice, it seems almost criminal to travel via car or stuffy bus. Jumping on a bike and cruising down the street with the breeze blowing through your hair-now, that sounds like a better way to celebrate the sun. Unfortunately, my bike is a rusted mess, with shoddy brakes and practically flat wheels. I’m in need of a new one, which means I need to do some research. Buying a new bike is an investment; not only are your safety and comfort at stake, but should you buy …

Whenever I daydream on a particularly dreary day, I imagine walking along the streets of Paris, dressed, coiffed, and projecting je ne sais quoi, like the uniquely chic French girls. Like most Americans, I’m guilty of Euro-worship. Everything seems better across the pond: the food, the men, the beauty products. While we insist on injecting ourselves with Botox, European women seem to know how to age gracefully. But perhaps the secret to European healthy living lies in the fact that the European Union strictly regulates the extremely …

Change, whether good or bad, supported or maligned, always begins the same way: with one person, one idea, and one moment of courage. Many people find change suspect because the outcome is unknown; there are too many unforeseeable consequences. They naysay new ideas about old ways of thinking, not realizing how remiss we’d be without the positive progress in equality, health, and the environment that change makes possible. They forget that just years ago, secondhand smoke in offices, restaurants, and other crowded areas was just an accepted …

Who would have thought that digging in the dirt could be good for the soul? According to a study by Dianne Relf of Virginia Tech University, “A view of trees may reduce the recovery time in the hospital after surgery by almost a full day. Forty percent of Americans find that being around plants makes them feel calm and more relaxed, a particularly valuable attribute in cities today.

Therapeutic gardening has become a method of recovery, both physical and mental, for Alzheimer’s patients, the physically handicapped, injured or ill …

On a recent holiday weekend flight between two West Coast cities, I thought about the thoughtful and harmful things my travel companion and I had done in regards to the environment the day we traveled. We’d recycled, turned down our thermostats, and taken public transportation to San Francisco International Airport (whose low-flow toilets and green rental car program get industry kudos). But we also threw out Styrofoam cups, idled on a runway while our plane wasted fuel, and were picked up in an SUV. Could we have been more …

Standing in the produce section, you hold up two seemingly identical peaches. One has an organic label, and one was grown at a farm only ten miles away. Which piece of fruit is better- for you and for the environment?

Modern conscientious eaters have a lengthy list of “food rules” to which they’re expected to adhere. No commercial meat. No fast food. No unsustainably farmed fish, nothing grown more than one hundred miles away, and nothing grown with chemicals. In a perfect world, we’d all tend our own …

As a fertility advocate, I often think about all the parts of being a woman. For much of our lives as women, we are ruled by biological cycles. Our menstruation is based on an approximately twenty-eight day cycle and can often influence how we react to the world around us. I love Dr. Christine Northrop and what she has to say about the wisdom that women can get by tuning into their menstrual cycles.

Dr. Northrop believes that menstruation is a time for women to let go of all …

They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but what about apple cider vinegar (ACV)? It seems like every time I turn around, I’m reading something new about its miraculous healing benefits, and grocery stores now stock it in both the condiment and the vitamin aisles. Is ACV a modern-day snake oil, or is there something to all the hype?

A Long History of Healing

Though ACV has become big news only recently, its healing properties are nothing novel. In Apple Cider Vinegar: History and Folklore, …