This delicious potato salad was the star of many 4th of July parties over the past twenty years. The recipe balances the vinegar with a small amount of coconut cream and the added celery and carrots add some crunch. And your microbiome will love the resistant starch and fiber.

Mental health symptoms like feeling depressed, anxious, hopeless, worried, overwhelmed, stuck and/or tired have a multitude of probable causes. These causes can be worked through with help from a variety of professionals over a period of time and can negate the need for long-term psychiatric medication.

We now understand the importance of a whole-body approach to mental health in order to achieve sustainable mental and emotional wellness. In this article we cover how to heal and strengthen the mind gut connection.

It is estimated that 15 million Americans suffer from depression. If you’re one of them, you may be surprised to know that diet plays an important role in mental health. So much so, that is has inspired an entire field of medicine called nutritional psychiatry. And the gut plays a key role.

Once the body has encoded an experience as a threat to survival it is remembered and stored within the limbic system, which allows it to be recalled easily and quickly as opposed to long-term memory.

If the experience stays in the limbic system, for a variety of reasons, then this past experience can be triggered, or ‘lit up’, months or years later with something as small as a sound or a smell, and the victim can feel like the trauma is happening all over again, even though it is not.

If you have been experiencing constant worrying, chaotic thoughts, loss of appetite, inability to focus, disconnection from others or your own body, and/or insomnia, know that you are not alone! The extensive power and water outages, as well as food shortages, last year were a real threat to our survival; hundreds of people did not survive and our bodies know this on a deep, unconscious level. The worrying, disconnection, and sleeplessness are a result of the trauma you experienced last year.