by ken winston caine

Reliable, detailed monographs on medicinal herbs are available free, online, from the North Carolina Consortium on Natural Medicines.

They come in three flavors:

1. For health professionals.

2. For everyone else.

3. For growers.

You can access any of them.

They are limited to herbs that can be grown in North Carolina — so you won’t find an extensive list of medicinal herbs here. But the information you will find is very thorough and well vetted.

Find them here: (more…)

by ken winston caine

Want to lose 20 pounds in the next 30 days?

Make your diet boring. Boring and simple, says Tim Ferris, best-selling author of The Four-Hour Workweek.

That doesn’t mean no variety or tasteless meals, Ferris explains.

He provides four simple rules for losing weight quickly, while building muscle, and — exercise is NOT one of them. (Click the link below to see all four rules — and the exact diet he is using.)

The rules look nutritionally sound. And they are based on results from scientific studies.

Why make your diet boring? Because it’s easier to follow that way, he says.

“The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few meals over and over again,” he writes in a blog post at (more…)

I’m doing a study of charisma.

Would you help me because I need a wide variety of input and
opinion?

Just two questions:

1. Who are the 4, 5 or 12 most charismatic people you can think
of? (Anyone living or dead; famous or not.)

2. For each person you name, what 1, 2 or 3 key traits contribute
most to your perception of that person as charismatic?

Please respond by clicking on the word ‘Comments’ or the phrase ‘leave a response’ highlighted just below.

Humankind is extraordinarily engrossing, enlightening and … uplifting. A perfect combination.

It may be the best newsmagazine-style show on NPR. Or maybe on the planet.

No offense, Terry Gross.

Find out when it plays on a public radio station near you. Or listen to it on the web. Or download whole programs as MP3s.

It will make your day. It may change your life.

You’ll find the complete archive at (more…)

by Ken Winston Caine

Soy milk, applied daily to patches of unwanted body hair, stunts its growth, strips its pigment and reduces the diameter of the follicle and hair shaft, according to this fascinating patent application.

The effect is substantial and noticeable within five weeks, according to the mouse and human studies (with photos) presented in the application.

Interestingly, soy milk fortified with (more…)