Health

Connecting the dots

21 May 2011 Diet
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I wish that House MD from the long-running TV show were my real doctor: he’d start with my stated problem, notice symptoms didn’t even know I had, investigate my lifestyle, diet, home environment and personal history, write out all the possible causes on a large blackboard, systematically evaluate each one and come up with the [...]

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Food or foe?

10 March 2011 Diet
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I’ve become afraid of food. My lifelong eczema has become much worse, and I’ve finally admitted that the persistent red rash is my body screaming that it does not like something I am putting into it. I used to be able to soothe away the redness, with prescription creams or any number of natural remedies [...]

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New year

5 February 2011 Getting older
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It’s February, and I’m still trying to shake my new year’s angst. I made a single resolution this year – to get more sleep – and I think I liked life better when I was too exhausted to focus on the big picture. This is the first time in 10 years that I haven’t been [...]

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Shingles

1 January 2011 Eczema
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I hate taking medicine and will put up with a lot of pain to avoid it. I’ve made it through natural childbirth four times. Wisdom teeth removal was no challenge. But I’ve finally met my match: it’s called shingles, and it’s like a thousand tiny ninjas are jabbing their thousand tiny, poison-laced knives into my [...]

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November in my mom’s garden

17 November 2010 Family
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If my mom isn’t in her kitchen, she’s in her garden. In a fantasy world she could retire from cooking, but gardening is indispensable – it’s refuge, meditation, exercise, creative outlet and the key to her good health. Her dream garden is the green version of a dream house. Instead of a carbon footprint, it [...]

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Bringing back fun

14 October 2010 Getting older
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Somewhere along the way, I lost fun. It’s now on my to-do list. If you’d told me at age 20 that someday I’d have to schedule fun, I’d have thought you were nuts. It took me days even to come up with three things that sounded fun. I had to return to childhood to remember. [...]

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Cast iron skillets – nonstick old school

6 September 2010 Favorite gadgets
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Cast iron is the chinese grandma of cookware: the ultimate in practicality, durability and value – and it only gets better with age. It is also nonstick the old school way. If anyone out there is still using Teflon-coated pans, I urge you to wake up and smell the plastic. A high quality cast iron [...]

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On loss: Maria Shriver and Susan Saint James

29 August 2010 Brain food
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It is a sign of a good life to have much to lose. I’ve been lucky – I have my parents, my husband, my children, a large extended family and many longtime friends. But as I approach midlife, I feel acutely the inevitability of losing people that I love. An abundance of love is a [...]

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A sinking feeling

18 July 2010 Health
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Q: What does a drowning person look like? A: Not much different from a person treading water. No wonder that so many children drown with adults close by. Coast Guard Marine Safety Specialist Mario Vittone wrote a post, entitled Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning, on his blog earlier this year. Due to the body’s instinctive [...]

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