What if instead of eating three meals each day (plus snacks, if you’re me) we just popped pills and moved along with our lives. Food pills were once a staple of science fiction, from Dr. Who to Star Trek to the Jetsons, and I recently did an episode of my podcast Flash Forward about the dream […]
Health/Medicine
This week, you may have seen the following headline in your feeds: “Not exercising enough is worse for you than smoking and diabetes, study suggests.” For 122,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic, better fitness—as demonstrated by better performance on a treadmill test–strongly predicted longer lives. Because there have been some questions about possible health risks […]
Half the people I know are sniffling, hacking, sneezing; and the other half are getting over it. Is it colds? the flu? sinusitis? For the last two weeks, I’ve had something wicked that’s had unfortunate and not entirely related sequelae (I use that word, “sequelae” every chance I get), and when I told the nurse […]
It’s embarrassing enough that it took me 12 years to go to Channel Islands National Park, especially since I see the islands almost every day. Last month, I got on board the dive boat that would take us to the place they call the Galapagos of North America. At last! The captain said something about […]
* It’s October, which means pink ribbons everywhere you turn. These breast cancer awareness campaigns can be hopeful and empowering, but they can also be deceptive and unscientific and can mask the realities of what it means to live with cancer. Catherine Guthrie’s new memoir, FLAT: Reclaiming My Body From Breast Cancer offers […]
A while back I took my toddler for a walk in his stroller to the local café in my old neighborhood. I loved it there because I always felt like a rock star. Everyone would be happy to see me and say nice things to me and want to pinch my cheeks. Okay, so, I […]
When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico last fall, it killed power to most of the island. The toll was catastrophic. Damages have been estimated at $90 billion. For months, entire cities had no electricity, sanitation, and access to health care. Which is why the government’s official death toll from the storm—64 people—always seemed suspect. On […]
Six months ago, I did something foolish. I ran a five-mile race with little training. I figured five miles wasn’t going to kill me, and it didn’t. But after the race, I had a nagging ache in my ankle. So I took a break from running, and the ankle pain went away. I thought I […]