Recipe: Bok Choy Stir-Fry

This Bok Choy recipe takes only ten minutes to make, has the perfect amount of spice to keep you warm in the wintertime and has numerous health benefits. Bok Choy is an Asian member of the cabbage family and has a mild flavor. It consists of long, thick white stalks, topped by green leaves. Both the leaves and the stalks are edible. The leaves are loaded with vitamins A and C, calcium and have sulforaphane, which helps prevent against cancer. The water content of bok choy is high, especially in the stalks and that is why this lovely vegetable lends itself to quick cooking techniques.

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Success Story: Mary Joyce - Nurse and Holistic Health Counselor

I've been a nurse for 27 years and have worked in emergency rooms around the country. Four years ago when I heard about the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, I knew I would get there eventually. At the time I couldn't work it out with my full-time nursing job, but in 2002 I proposed to my boss that he pay for my tuition and he went for it.

At school I found a whole group of people who were like me. After feeling like a fish out of water for so long, this was amazing. The camaraderie and family atmosphere at the school was very warming, and the education was fascinating as well. I learned so much about healthy eating, cooking and how to take better care of myself. We covered everything from the raw food diet to ayurvedic medicine to visual diagnosis.

Prior to coming to school, my daughter was always getting colds. After the first weekend I started cooking, changing my diet and changing her diet. Neither of us has been sick since. People ask me what I've done, thinking I had a face-lift because I look so healthy and in my nursing job everyone wanted to know what cream I was using. I had to tell everyone that I was just changing my diet and taking better care of myself.

During school I resigned from my stressful nursing job. I now work part-time as a nurse in a radiologist's office, do home-care with the elderly, have individual holistic health clients and teach monthly workshops at schools, health care settings and corporations. Many of the patients I work with at the radiologist's office have cancer and I get to spend ten or fifteen minutes with them. No matter what, I always ask about their diet and what they're doing to keep themselves nourished and healthy. I refer many patients to books about food, cooking classes or nutrition professionals. The home-care clients I have are all 80 and 90 years old. I speak with them about what they're eating and learn so much from each of them, because they didn't get to be that age by eating junk.

I've always been into holistic living and I really love being able to do this work of being a health counselor and an informed nurse. All paths are leading to the holistic health approach with nutrition as the foundation. This is really the way to health.

Mary Joyce

Board Certified Holistic Health Counselor and Registered Nurse

Feature: Now is the Time

America's healthcare system is in crisis. Besides skyrocketing prices for insurance and prescriptions, there is a growing gap between doctors and patients.

Patients want to know more about nutrition, supplements and prevention, while doctors are increasingly afraid of being sued and discontent about being controlled by HMOs. It is predicted that by 2020 the U.S. will have a shortage of 100,000 physicians and America may have to start outsourcing and importing its doctors.

In India, it's so different. My doctor only works half a day, so she has time to be with her children. She is a healthy, happy person. She practices western medicine combined with ayurveda. She gives me her cell phone number in case I needed anything.

In China, medicine was so strongly based on prevention that if a patient got sick, the doctor would not get paid. That is real health insurance, not like what we have today. Our insurance system is more like pre-paid medical expenses for medications and operations.

What people eat makes a huge difference in their health, yet very few doctors are educated about food - even the holistic ones. As Integrative Nutrition continues to grow, our graduates are increasingly sought after to work in medical offices, schools, magazines, fitness centers and spas, to lecture and work with clients. People recognize that our graduates are well-educated, intelligent, compassionate practitioners, dedicated to helping the public live healthy, extraordinary lives.

This is a unique moment in time: the American public is questioning the cost and safety of prescription drugs while becoming progressively more interested in food, diet, holistic health and prevention.

Now is the time for graduates to step up and become valuable, visible members of the healthcare community. As holistic health counselors, we offer our families, friends and clients a rare and much needed service. Each one of us can be a key participant in leading America out of its healthcare crisis towards a healthier, happier, more balanced way of living.

Inspired by Who Will Take Care of You?: A growing gap separates doctors and patients; by Josh Fischman; US News & World Report, January 31 - February 7, 2005, Volume 138, Number 4, $4.50

Nourishing Quote

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.

- Thomas A. Edison