While fresh ginger controls and balances all three doshas (although in excess it may increase pitta), dry ginger can increase pitta and is forbidden in conditions when pitta is high (such as heavy bleeding, inflamed skin diseases, and fevers). Ginger inflames the appetite, intensifies the digestive fire, relieves bloating and abdominal distention due to gas, prevents motion sickness, and (with rock salt and cumin in water after meals) relieves chronic diarrhea.

With lime juice and sugar or salt it is a popular Indian first-aid remedy for sunstroke. Ginger is Ayurvedas supreme toxin-digester; a weak tea of powdered ginger is a good way to help digest ama that has accumulated in your gut, and its strong tea with castor oil is used for rheumatism and rheumatoid arthritis.

From an Ayurvedic Medicine perspective, cabbage is a calming and grounding food. It reduces excess pitta and kapha. It clears the blood, fortifies the stomach and treats constipation. It has a slightly bitter taste that helps to stimulate gastric juices contributing to a better digested meal. Cabbage also is a mild diuretic.

Like other brassica family vegetables of which cabbage is a member it has the ability to lower the risk of certain cancers. When eaten raw it has been shown to help protect against the effects of radiation.

Cabbage is a highly nutritious vegetable. Raw cabbage is a great source of vitamins and nutrients including vitamin C, potassium and folic acid. If you want to really turn your head of cabbage into medicine, learn how to ferment it and make real sauerkraut. Talk about a medicine chest. Raw sauerkraut is an amazing healer for the digestive tract and helps the body to fight off just about any disease. Whether you eat it raw, cooked or fermented, enjoy this vegetable medicine chest.

by Alix Spiegel
December 21, 2009
NPR

Katie Benghauser had no concept of all the forces that combined to bring the box of pills to the bottom shelf of her medicine cabinet. All she knew was that three years ago she went in for a routine checkup and her doctor told her it was time for her to take a test.

Not that there was anything in particular about Benghauser that suggested sickness. At 54 she exercised every day and could outrun most 20-year- olds. She was a model of health.

Still, because Benghauser was thin, white, female, in her 50s and had a sister who had some bone problems, she says the doctor told her that she was concerned. "She felt like because my frame is slight and I'm female, that I was at risk for developing osteoporosis."

Osteoporosis is a disease that causes bones to become thinner, more porous and break more easily. It mostly affects elderly women, who can be devastated by a fall that breaks their hip. One in five elderly women who break a hip will die within a year. Still, just to make sure, Benghauser went in for a test that measured the density of her bones. Two weeks later a letter came in the mail with an unsettling message: Benghauser had a condition called osteopenia, and her doctor recommended medication.