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Showing posts from October, 2011

Toenail Armageddon

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I have a very common affliction. The scientific name is onychomycosis but we know it better as that yellow toenail fungus.  My mom had it, and my brother has it, so it seems to be something in our genetic makeup that leaves us susceptible to it. Mine has been going on for a number of years, and I haven’t been too overly concerned about it.  Of course, I wish it weren’t there. It isn’t attractive and its embarrassing.  And since a lot of my work is done in bare feet, I don’t have the luxury of hiding my affliction from my colleagues inside socks and shoes. I’ve looked into treatments, but the main one, Lamisil, is very hard on the liver and has some scary side effects that range from diarrhea, to losing your sense of taste, to liver failure and death.  All in all, I would prefer the yellow toenails. I did attempt every ‘natural’ remedy I came across.  I tried tea tree oil, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, clove oil, garlic and sunshine.  Some of them did keep the situation under contro

Kicking the Sweets Habit

Refined sugar and chemical sugar substitutes are like narcotics; they are harmful and addictive.  Without getting into too much science, they cause a hormonal response that leaves the body feeling depleted in a way that can only be satisfied by having moresugar.  Splenda is 600 times sweeter than sugar and not only causes the same hormonal response as sugar, but both create a heavily distorted sense of what level of sweetness is appropriate for our healthy bodies. The taste of 'sweet' is very important to our palate. Without the taste of sweetness, it is hard to satisfy our appetite as humans. I recommend to my clients that they have a sweet taste in all of their meals and that they make a point to have that taste in the last bite they take of that meal.  The important thing to remember is that the degree of sweetness that we need is much lower than many people use on a daily basis.  Most people in our society are sweet abusers.  The sweetness from a meal could come from a ri