Don’t Start Too Sweet

In a nutrition class I took this spring, Dr. Erlandsen taught us that, for optimal long-term health, adults should consume no more than about 25g of added sugar daily. There are about 12g of sugar in a tablespoon! By added sugar, he excluded naturally occurring sugars such as fructose in your fruit and lactose in … Read more

High Butt Pressure

My poor sons were raised in an adult foster home so they have some rather peculiar perspectives on life. Yesterday I was taking residents’ blood pressures when one of my boys said, “Did you just say blood pressure? All these years I thought you’ve been saying ‘butt pressure’.” ____________________________________ One of my residents, Judy, was … Read more

Meant to Belong to a Herd

Part I: OXYTOCIN I took a magnificent Dementia class by fellow occupational therapist Teepa Snow. She taught a contact technique to use on people with dementia. She elaborated that it led to the release of Oxytocin, a hormone produced in mammalian brains. I call it our herd hormone. I later learned it controls social recognition … Read more

If You Believe

If you know anything me, it’s my feelings about cows. You can find contributing factors here: https://thukumainen.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/wild-about-cows/. And to think I am married to a man who calls himself a rancher. Very sad. I posted that blog a year ago and my feelings haven’t changed much. Shortly after that, Emma who’d grown up on a … Read more