Eager to start our first full day in Grand Teton National Park, we headed to Jenny Lake and took a short 5 minute boat trip across the lake to get to the Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point trailheads. Although these areas are two of the most beautiful parts of this park, you’ll have to battle the crowds to get there. It is quite a steep climb to Inspiration Point, but the view is totally worth it. We headed a little deeper into the Cascade Region hoping to spot some wildlife, but none were to be found today. However, with...

Although we were sad to leave Park City after having such a short time there, I was excited to get to Jackson Hole and see the magnificent Grant Teton mountain range. Wyoming and Montana are two places that have been on my list for years to visit. The drive into Jackson takes you along the pristine Snake River and we saw many rafters and kayakers enjoying the rapids. The community, the valley and the lake were all named after mountain man, trapper and trader, David Jackson. After hearing people refer to this area as both Jackson and Jackson Hole,...

After three amazing days in Moab, it was time to head to Park City. Another stunning drive through mountain ranges – I think I’m going to spend most of this trip just gaping at everything. While I’m the kind of person that yearns to travel internationally, in such a short time I have already come to appreciate how much our own country has to offer. I feel pretty confident about making this statement even though I’ve been on the road less than a week… and that’s that everyone should take a USA road trip once in their life –...

Moab is a cool, little southwestern town populated with locals and tourists looking for their next outdoor adventure. Moab doesn’t offer quite the amount of dining options and shopping that Sedona does, but I actually found it a refreshing change from the commercialized cities of the west. With a landscape that takes your breath away on a daily basis, miles of trails to explore and activities like Colorado river white water rafting, 4-wheeling, hot air ballooning and zip lining – who needs shopping anyway. After a long day of hiking and climbing over rocks, we were so happy to...

“I may have found the next best thing to Sedona,” is what I thought the moment I drove into Moab, Utah. For those of you who know me well and my love affair with Sedona, you know that’s not something I would say lightly. However, they probably call it the Adventure capital of the U.S. for a reason! While Sedona has these stunning individual standing rock formations, imagine all of them clustered together forming an immense canyon around you…that’s Moab. Arches National Park contains the world’s largest concentration of natural stone arches. Like Sedona, Arches is a red, arid...

I awoke to a beautiful, sunny 80 degree day in Denver, picked up our Nissan X-terra which will be our traveling vehicle for the next two months and headed into LoDo – for those of you not familiar with Denver, that’s lower downtown. We stopped at a Denver staple – the Rock Bottom Brewery. Now I’m not sure they’d exactly qualify for “farm-to-table”, but my other mission on this quest is to find cool, local places that are producing local products such as craft beer, cocktails, etc. Rock Bottom has some clean, classic recipes, brewed in-house. However, I tried...

And we’re off! 60 days on a whirlwind tour of the western US’ best luxury, ecofriendly properties and farm-to-table restaurants. As many of you know, my other passion aside from educating people on natural health alternatives, is Travel! More specifically, travel to find hotels and restaurants that are striving to help protect and save our beautiful planet by implementing ecofriendly and sustainable initiatives. There is nothing more exciting for me than to be able to inform my readers about a great hotel that really cares about its effect on the environment – or a wonderful restaurant that sources locally...

It is estimated that 1 in 5 of all outpatient visits to doctors in the United States are dermatological in nature. That’s 20% of all doctor’s visits—that’s a lot of skin complaints! Many people are seeking treatment for skin disorders, and dermatologists are swamped. I regularly hear reports of patients waiting upwards of three months for an appointment, and yet, unfortunately, Western medicine is often unable to offer satisfactory treatments that are both safe and effective over the long term. Some treatments work for a period of time, only to then plateau or decline in efficacy. Other treatments are...

Aromatherapy is one of the newest old remedies for stress relief and wellness applications, like chiropractic and massage and other forms of bodywork. Every month there are articles in trade magazines mentioning essential oils, stress reduction and spa therapies. Using essential oils as a stress reduction technique has become the new buzzword. Who doesn’t like the smell of fresh flowers in the home, or the scent of flowers, and trees wafting though the open window. Aromatherapy and massage therapy seem to go hand in hand, to facilitate relaxation and stress reduction. You can see this right on the shelves...

If you’ve ever been a parent or a caregiver for a young child, you probably experienced a good amount of hand wringing and sleep deprivation when that child got sick. Thankfully, children tend to recover from acute illnesses relatively quickly; in fact, sometimes it seems that only 24 hours after they spiked a high fever, they’re running around the house causing chaos again. Regardless of their quick recovery time, a sick child is anxiety-inducing, especially when they get sick often. During one particularly abysmal winter, when my daughter first started daycare, I began referring to her as “the cutest...

Chronic Lyme: An Attitude and Lifestyle Adjustment Being diagnosed with Lyme was a life changing experience for me. Prior to the diagnosis I had major work-ups done in order to try and understand what was creating some of the very hard to understand symptoms I was experiencing such as fatigue, muscle pain and difficulty sleeping. I self-medicated/supplemented in order to help reduce symptoms and I went through a very brief time of depressive thinking, believing that it all was in my head. It was a very difficult time trying to understand the cause of my “weird” symptoms. This is...

While children are awake, parents are vigilant about keeping them safe, from holding hands while crossing the street to applying (and reapplying!) sunscreen. But it’s just as important to keep kids safe while they slumber—after all, children can sleep 12 hours or more a night, which means they spend about half their time in the bedroom. As children grow and mature, their lungs, skin and digestive systems are especially prone to the airborne allergens that lurk in most modern bedrooms, like dust mites, pollen, mold, mildew, bacteria, viruses and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Establishing a healthy sleep environment that’s...

I typically hear this same question weekly, if not daily, “Is my pain coming from the muscle or joint?” I usually answer, “Probably a little of both.” This always seems to put a perplexing look on most patients’ faces. The bones and the muscles depend on each other to function properly and an injury to one, more than likely causes pain and dysfunction to the other. Musculoskeletal System The musculoskeletal system is composed of your bones, joints, muscles, ligaments and tendons. Each of which has its own specific function but together create stability and function. The ligaments attach the...

When thinking of which states in our country would be the most environmentally friendly, there are certainly a few which immediately come to mind, Maine being one of them. But did you know just how important ecofriendly practices are to the great state of Maine?  The Maine Department of Environmental Protection instituted the Environmental Leader program which is a self-guided process offered by the Department that encourages lodging facilities to implement selected initiatives to achieve points towards certification. Since the creation of the program in 2006, lodging leaders have saved more than $1 million from electricity reduction initiatives; more...