Spring is here and it is time to get back to shopping at our wonderful local farmers markets! Knowing where your food comes from and how it is grown is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. By shopping at your local farmers markets, you can buy nutrient dense whole foods grown with care that are freshly harvested, higher in antioxidants, are non-irradiated and that often costs less than what you might find in a supermarket. It also enables you to develop relationships directly with the people who are growing and raising your food, and helps to grow your local economy — something every city needs!

When shopping at local farmers markets, make sure to ask the farmers lots of questions to confirm they are growing sustainably without harmful chemicals and pesticides, and that they are pasture raising animals humanely without GMO feed. Just because products are grown or raised locally, does not always mean that it was grown with organic practices or humanely.

Don't be afraid to ask questions and to even walk away from nice sweet farmers who are not growing sustainably or who cannot confirm the way they are growing what they are selling. With practice, you will be able to identify who is growing with organic practices and those who are not. If you ask a farmer if they feeding their chickens GMO seeds and they can't answer the question,

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was developed to help provide affordable healthcare to millions of Americans who currently don't have it and to also address various unethical business practices by the healthcare and insurance companies. But will providing the existing level of medical care to more people address the skyrocketing rates of disease and lead to better medical care and a healthier society? Leading Integrative Medicine doctor, Andrew Weil, MD says, NO! "The present system doesn't work, and it is going to take us down. We need a whole new kind of medicine," says Dr. Weil, who is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.

On Sunday, March 10, 2013 at 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. ET on CNN the new movie documentary "Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare," will air. The focus of the documentary is on America's low rankings in health among peer countries, the causes of poor health, the problems with the US medical system and some solutions.

According to new research released by the National Academy of Sciences in January 2013, Americans live shorter lives and are in poorer health than other high-income countries. Out of 17 high-income economic peer countries, American men rank