About Dr. Meg Jordan

Meg Jordan, PhD, RN, CWP, is a medical anthropologist known as the Global Medicine Hunter®. She is an integrative health specialist, international health journalist, and a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

Traditional Chinese Medicine: The art of staying well and preventing illness

Although there have been pockets of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practiced in Asian communities throughout North America since the 1840s, its widespread acceptance by Western physicians has only inched forward since 1970 when China opened to the West. James Reston, a reporter accompanying President Nixon on a ground breaking trip, received acupuncture to relieve post-operative discomfort. Reston was so amazed at its effect that he wrote an article in the New York Times, which inspired future medical doctors to go East and investigate this ancient healing system and its distinctive set of philosophies. Today various treatments of TCM undergo scientific research to test its effectiveness in enhancing immune system health, increasing energy, countering the effects of chronic stress, and supporting human health in numerous ways.

While scientists fail to understand the underlying mechanisms of action in a Western sense, they grow more impressed with the safety and efficacy of many therapeutic applications of Chinese herbal medicines, acupuncture, and moxibustion (burning of herbs over acupuncture sites) for keeping people well and curing their illnesses. After all, it has been the principle system of medicine for billions of people throughout Asia for over 5,000 years. To call it “alternative medicine,” strikes TCM practitioners silly and inaccurate.

The origins of Chinese medicine are linked to legendary emperors over several dynasties. One of the most prominent is Shen Nong (2838 BC), also known as the Fire Emperor. He was considered the father of herbal medicine in China, having tested hundreds of botanicals by tasting them and classifying their herbal properties. Shen Nong declared the red reishi mushroom to be the “monarch” of superior herbs, and soon afterwards, it was exclusively secured for royal families.

Great care is put into the harvesting and preparation of herbal compounds. Stringent quality control of an herb is necessary to enhance the strength and benefit of an extract. Potency is assured by standardized manufacturing techniques and careful selection of raw materials. Many herbs, like the Japanese red reishi, are prepared using hot water extraction, a method favored by ancient herbalists. This method was (and is still today) considered a superior technique for extracting herbal remedies. Herbs frequently used in TCM, such as red reishi, Panax ginseng, and cordyceps all have astonishing benefits when prepared properly.

Another adaptogen and strong yang tonic, Panax ginseng (Panex quinquefolius) also known as Korean ginseng, is a root that has an ancient history with a name that means “cure all”. It supports the adrenals and is valued for its triterpene glycoside content, an important stimulant and a glucose metabolizer. Cordyceps, another amazing Chinese medicinal herb, may have a cancer preventive effect due to its action on Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF), shown in animal models to increase levels of interleuken 1 (IL1) and TNF.

Scientists are just beginning to map out how many chronic diseases are not caused by a typical pathogen, but rather by the body’s response to a release of biochemical mediators, or messengers, to a wide variety of triggering agents. Reishi, Panax ginseng, and cordyceps have modulating effects on the entire inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cascade. They affect vascular permeability, vasodilation, macrophage action, micro-repair, free radical scavenging, protein release—thousands of different reactions—in beneficial ways.

It’s a confusing cascade requiring graduate level study in biochemistry, so suffice it to say, that these renowned botanicals are masters of modulation, reminding cells how to behave properly, even in the face of inordinate stress. Balance is everything.

Chinese medical theory is grounded in natural forces of yin and yang – the balance of opposing forces in the universe, and the five elements. One cannot separate Chinese medicine from this fundamental philosophy of contrasting paired opposites. It is the way of heaven and earth and correlates with the body’s experience of health and disease. Also fundamental to TCM practice, is the concept of qi (chi), often interpreted as energy, but can also be considered the pervasive subtle material that causes physiology to function and maintain vitality. The qi and five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water) correspond to times of day, seasons, organs, emotions, taste, mental states, and vocalizations. Qi is enhanced through herbs, acupuncture, and movement exercises such as Tai Chi and Qigong.

To Western doctors, these medical principles sounded too metaphysical, and therefore, were dismissed quickly as mere metaphors. But as we gain in knowledge and understanding of how personal and planetary health are inextricably linked, adopting a system of healing that has always respected this “body ecology” appeals to many people. Traditional Chinese Medicine is dedicated to whole person health, mind-body-spirit unity, individualized approaches, and preventive health measures. Those characteristics in themselves are the groundwork of integrative medicine, a branch of modern medicine that blends time-honored healing systems with evidence-based therapies.

Enhance Your Health Naturally with Mikei® Red Reishi

Diet, exercise, and managed stress help the immune system function properly. But when it falters, (i.e. not detecting cancer cells or getting frequent colds) then immunity needs a boost.

Adaptogens to the rescue! These are botanicals that improve the body’s ability to cope with stress, disease and immune system breakdown. Red reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) is the monarch of adaptogens.

Over 30 years of study proves that red reishi has the highest concentration of phytonutrients such as beta-glucans and triterpenes or ganoderic acid. It boosts your body’s natural defense, combats infection. More importantly, because red reishi is an immune modulator, it has the ability to detect what is needed, and give the right nudge in the right direction – an extraordinary feat no drug has duplicated.

Red reishi also benefits T-cells, cytokines and macrophages – all important players. And red reishi can safely be taken ever day without risk of toxicity or build-up. It’s your immune system’s personal trainer… don’t go a day without it.

A Red Reishi A Day Keeps the Doctor Away

Every culture has its health slogans, and they all contain an element of truth. In India, you hear “Laughter is the best medicine.” In Africa, there’s Harambee – You’re only as well as your community. The most memorable one in North America is, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Dating back from 19th century Wales, that health adage primarily referred to an apple being a rich source of fiber, keeping one regular.

But in Asia, the “apple a day” is actually a medicinal mushroom known as red reishi, which has a long recorded history of numerous benefits – so many, that legendary emperors and doctors 4,000 years ago regarded it as the superior herb for overall health and longevity. Today, you’ll find red reishi supplements in most household cabinets throughout the Far East. People truly don’t go a day without it since reishi is extraordinary for naturally increasing energy, enhancing immunity, and beating stress.

Now that scientific studies confirm what traditional herbalists have long known, more Western doctors are becoming convinced that red reishi might just be the new “apple a day.” The therapeutic compounds contained in this remarkable mushroom include polysaccharides, which offer a wide range of benefits from improving blood pressure to modulating blood sugar. Reishi also has triterpenes, specifically ganoderic acid, which improves liver function and heart health. However, when harvested in the wild, reishi’s therapeutic compounds can vary dramatically. That’s why it is important to use a brand that has proven methods of cultivation and manufacturing to achieve the highest quality reishi product.

The Japanese are foremost experts on reishi growing, with one Japanese family having identified and patented the most superior strain of red reishi for generations. Mikei Red Reishi uses this superior strain, which has been proven to provide the highest quality of healthful compounds. The reishi is grown to maturity and organically cultivated on aged logs for a full year. It is then harvested, and prepared according to the traditional hot water extraction method. Only Mikei uses stringent growing and manufacturing practices for a superior, high quality product that actually works. Trust Mikei to provide you with the extraordinary “apple” of the East.

Restore your inner balance: Defeat stress with nature’s best adaptogen

When it comes to the occasional stressor, we humans do just fine. We’re hard wired to respond quickly and easily because our hind and midbrains are the envy of the mammalian world. Not only can we fight or flee, we can huddle, nest, nurture, lay in wait like a spring-loaded cougar, and recall stressful events in order to sidestep danger over and over.

It’s the over and over part that’s the killer. Too much unrelieved stress accumulates in the body and has a devastating effect on our physiology and psychology. This wear and tear can result in headaches, poor concentration, fatigue, muscle tension, insomnia, heartburn, and malaise. Left unchecked, elevated chronic stress can aggravate seven chronic conditions (cancer, heart disease, hypertension, mental disorders, diabetes, pulmonary conditions, and stroke). Doctors now suspect that the majority of hospital admissions may be related to stressful mismanagement of poor lifestyle choices.

What’s the key to relieving chronic stress? Balance. Not just balancing your work life—after a decade of advice, nobody seems to be managing that. Instead, we need inner balance of our body’s physiology. All systems need to be quickly restored to balance whenever stress levels get out of hand. Balance is achieved through mediation of cortisol and epinephrine, the body’s stress hormones, triggered by the autonomic nervous system. And even though all of these hormones have important jobs to do, when there is an unrelenting stream of them, the body and mind can’t function optimally.

This is where nature’s adaptogenic herbs come in. You can slowly recover on your own, or you can use a little daily help in the form of an adaptogenic mushroom such as red reishi. As an adaptogen, red reishi modulates the body’s stress response, restoring homeodynamic balance and calm. Red reishi, like all adaptogens, restores balance to the stress hormones; but research reveals it can also smooth out the highs and lows of blood glucose, blood pressure, and blood lipids (triglyceride and LDL-cholesterol). Plus, red reishi can be safely taken every day. One less thing to worry about!

The Three Top Ways to get off the Stress Train

Stress is an all too common 21st century ailment, and the workplace is the number one stress-maker. According to the Canadian Occupational Safety, workers feel overwhelmed because “there aren’t enough hours in the day,” or else they say they’re “in over their heads” with too many responsibilities. The feeling of being squeezed in a job that has unrealistic demands and inadequate decision-making power leaves many employees with a long list of stress symptoms, ranging from chronic headaches to gastric distress.

A nagging complaint can soon turn into a more serious stress-related disorder. In fact, stress-induced illness now ranks as the chief disability filing for workers. A half-century ago, worksite problems centered on injuries to the back and limbs. But today, in a hurry-up world of impossible deadlines and workers tied to their computers, ergonomic injury has shifted from low back to head, neck and shoulder tightness and stress headaches. If you feel that your world of work is spinning too fast and you’re feeling a little out of control, you could use some help on three fronts:

First, lighten your workload. I know, easier said than done. But there is a limit to maximizing worker productivity, and if you are worried about the inherent problems with complaining to a boss about mounting demands, then consider the other avenues at your workplace for resolving the pressure: talk to your boss’s boss and to your human resources department. Judd Allen, President of the Human Resources Institute, believes that performance anxieties are best handled by companies in which leaders know that well-being is critical for organizational effectiveness.

Second, shore up your ability to cope with stress. Transfer some of that perfectionism about doing a good job to a healthy attitude about your personal health habits. Start your workday with a protein breakfast and targeted supplementation of an adaptogen such as Red Reishi. Adaptogens are nature’s miracles, the pre-eminent means for helping your body ward off the damaging effects of chronic stress. You can take adaptogens every day, unlike most herbs. Look for high quality, hot-water extracted Red Reishi from Japan for ultimate benefit of its phytonutrient power.

Third, move like your life depended on it. Daily exercise, at least 30 minutes a day, is one of the greatest de-stressors known. Your body needs this fail-safe means to let off steam, and your workaholic brain will finally relax.

Prescription for the Male Heart: Calm the Stress Response and Bolster the Cardiovascular System

Even though there is some common ground in how men and women can tackle health concerns, a wide range of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure, affect men in different ways. Men experience symptoms differently from women, and some conditions require different strategies and treatments. For example, research has found profound gender-related differences in the ways heart disease presents itself, especially when mental stress appears to outweigh other risk factors as the trigger.

Mental stress can induce vasoconstriction (narrowing) of the peripheral arteries, which causes a rise in heart rate and blood pressure. In a three-year study comparing men’s and women’s responses, researchers were surprised to find that men had a significantly higher susceptibility to mental stress that led to peripheral arterial vasoconstriction, lower oxygen supply to the heart muscle (myocardial ischemia) and eventual cardiovascular disease.

A two-pronged approach to countering this kind of troubling response would be 1) to increase the body’s ability to ward off the damaging effects of chronic stress, and 2) to bolster the heart’s protection. Meditation and adaptogens are two of the easiest, self-care strategies that men at risk should start right away.

Meditation will help you alter your response to stress. The brain and nervous system is hard-wired to support your conscious effort to unwind. A daily 20-minute practice of either Mindfulness Meditation or Transcendental Meditation has been clinically proven to reduce anxiety, worry, and the emotional stress that exacts a high physical toll.

As for protecting the heart, men should consider high quality fish oils, daily aerobics, and a heart-healthy Mediterranean diet. But there is an added supplement that most men don’t know about that has the double benefit of calming the impact of stress, and bolstering the cardiovascular system. Taking an adaptogenic herb such as Japanese Red Reishi, can supply beneficial cardio protection.

Red Reishi offers a vast array of phytochemicals that may guard against heart disease and stroke due to its effect in lowering many different risk factors. The high content of ganoderic acids (where Red Reishi is the only known source of this unique phytonutrient) assists in lowering triglyceride levels, lowering cholesterol, decreasing blood pressure, and reducing platelet stickiness. Reishi can also improve blood flow and lower oxygen consumption in heart muscle. In a six-month clinical trial in Tokyo, nearly half of 53 hypertensive patients lowered their blood pressure by almost 20 points, and 10% of the subjects dropped their pressures 30 points after taking Japanese Red Reishi extract for four weeks.

Japanese Red Reishi will serve to reduce the inflammatory effects of chronic stress. Adaptogens are nature’s botanicals that specialize in stress reduction by modulating the body’s various biochemical responses, from the neurohormonal, to the glucocorticoids and the cardiovascular pathways. In short, the two factors that build a healthy foundation for a man’s heart—a gentler response to stress and a healthier cardiac profile—may be found in a remarkable medicinal mushroom that has been valued in Traditional Chinese Medicine for centuries as the “superior plant.”

The Three Top Ways to Get Off the Stress Train

Stress is an all too common 21st century ailment, and the workplace is the number one stress-maker. According to the Canadian Occupational Safety, workers feel overwhelmed because “there aren’t enough hours in the day,” or else they say they’re “in over their heads” with too many responsibilities. The feeling of being squeezed in a job that has unrealistic demands and inadequate decision-making power leaves many employees with a long list of stress symptoms, ranging from chronic headaches to gastric distress.

A nagging complaint can soon turn into a more serious stress-related disorder. In fact, stress-induced illness now ranks as the chief disability filing for workers. A half-century ago, worksite problems centered on injuries to the back and limbs. But today, in a hurry-up world of impossible deadlines and workers tied to their computers, ergonomic injury has shifted from low back to head, neck and shoulder tightness and stress headaches. If you feel that your world of work is spinning too fast and you’re feeling a little out of control, you could use some help on three fronts:

First, lighten your workload. I know, easier said than done. But there is a limit to maximizing worker productivity, and if you are worried about the inherent problems with complaining to a boss about mounting demands, then consider the other avenues at your workplace for resolving the pressure: talk to your boss’s boss and to your human resources department. Judd Allen, President of the Human Resources Institute, believes that performance anxieties are best handled by companies in which leaders know that well-being is critical for organizational effectiveness.

Second, shore up your ability to cope with stress. Transfer some of that perfectionism about doing a good job to a healthy attitude about your personal health habits. Start your workday with a protein breakfast and targeted supplementation of an adaptogen such as Red Reishi. Adaptogens are nature’s miracles, the pre-eminent means for helping your body ward off the damaging effects of chronic stress. You can take adaptogens every day, unlike most herbs. Look for high quality, hot-water extracted Red Reishi from Japan for ultimate benefit of its phytonutrient power.

Third, move like your life depended on it. Daily exercise, at least 30 minutes a day, is one of the greatest de-stressors known. Your body needs this fail-safe means to let off steam, and your workaholic brain will finally relax.

Balance: An Exercise in Hitting the Reset Button

Let’s have some straight talk about balance. Have you noticed how self-help advice always says, “keep your life in balance”? Living life in balance might be a sweet notion for greater health and happiness, but it’s not really how people live.

Consistent balance is just an illusion. There are days we overdo it, and days we recover or shrink back from a hectic pace. No one has the power to maintain perfect balance every day. You can’t avoid delays in traffic, or frustration on a work project, or getting to bed way too late some times… but you can fortify your capacity to restore balance. The best reset button for doing just that is a daily intake of Japanese Red Reishi – a powerful, natural, mushroom supplement. Here is why I consider it a master of restoring balance.

Mental Balance
Red Reishi is an anti-inflammatory, helping put out the small chronic “fires” throughout the body that could lead to memory loss, cognitive decline, even the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Taking an adaptogen like Japanese Red Reishi on a daily basis restores calmness and clarifies youthful vitality.

Hormonal Balance
Japanese Red Reishi is excellent for providing balance within the endocrine system. Overstressed neuro-endocrine connections lead to distress and chronic ailments. Red Reishi’s support for the adrenal glands is superior to other nutritional compounds.

Circadian Balance
The grand orchestra leader in your body (your circadian rhythms) require completely dark nights for sleep and well lighted days for exertion for proper sleep, blood pressure control, and optimal function. Red Reishi assists circadian rhythms by its adaptogenic action, making the task of maintaining balance much easier.

Energy Intake / Output Balance
Nutritional deficiencies or excesses can really throw off balance. You need adequate daily hydration, a balanced intake of macro and micro nutrients, and at least 60 minutes of physical exertion per day to maintain a healthy weight and metabolism. Red Reishi helps with weight control by balancing glucose metabolism through adrenal support, and by giving you a smooth energy boost throughout the day.

Planetary Balance
As you strive for balance in your personal life, you become more aware of balance with the entire ecosystem. Sustainability may start with your own personal space and body, but it does extend to an environmental audit of how you’re living on the planet. The Mikei Japanese Red Reishi is sustainably grown and harvested, instead of wild crafted which could endanger natural balance. Since the product is made responsibly, even your integrity remains in balance.

Making Red Reishi Your Immune System’s “Personal Trainer”

We’ve learned a great deal recently about the immune system. Just imagine a vast interconnected system of component cells that communicate with each other. Some cells are warriors; some engulfers; others nudge another cell to do its job.

In fact, scientists discovered that you actually have two immune systems–the innate one you’re born with that remains unchanged and a secondary one known as the adaptive immune system, which benefits from having “personal trainers”, or natural compounds that activate the adaptive immune cells.

Diet, exercise, and managed stress help the immune system function properly. But when it falters, (i.e., not detecting cancer cells or getting frequent colds) then

Immunity needs a boost. That is when adaptogens can come into play, botanicals that improve the body’s ability to cope with stress, disease, and immune system breakdown. Red reishi, or Ling Zhi mushroom (Ganoderma lucidum), is the monarch of adaptogens.

Over 30 years of study proves that red reishi has the highest concentration of phytonutrients such as betaglucans and triterpenes or ganoderic acids. It boosts your body’s natural defense and combats infection. More importantly, because red reishi is an immune modulator, it has the ability to detect what is needed, and give it the right nudge in the right direction—an extraordinary feat no drug has duplicated.

Red reishi also benefits T-cells, cytokines, and macrophages—all important players. And red reishi can safely be taken every day without risk of toxicity or build-up. It’s your immune system’s personal trainer…don’t go a day without it.