Help! Gotta have chocolate now!

Gentle reader, How are you doing with those plans to take a few inches off?  Are you starving yet?  Are cravings getting the better of your will power?  What’s this got to do with arthritis and joint pain, anyway? The research has been done and is conclusive beyond a doubt that losing even 15 pounds …

Facebook Twitter Email

Resolutions, hell-o-lutions. How to keep them.

Gentle Reader, Here we are again at the first of the New Year.  2013 is going to be IT.  That last doctor visit convinced me once and for all that I must do something about my weight/exercise program or I will die sooner than later. How many people do you know who begin again to …

Facebook Twitter Email

Can we eat pie this Thanksgiving?

Gentle Reader, Are you shopping for Thanksgiving yet?  Tell me about your resolve to eat so your joints don’t hurt, the achy knees don’t creak, the back doesn’t twinge when you go from sitting to standing?  Have you been eating a dinner plate big on greens with a small portion of meat or fish and …

Facebook Twitter Email

What helps when sitting around all day: Italian workshop

Gentle Reader, This is the view from the grand guest house bedroom window at the Villa Lina, a working 80 acre farm in Lazio, just minutes north of Rome in Italy.  I was there to write with Natalie Goldberg, the guru I’ve been following for several years.  She begins each day with sitting in a …

Facebook Twitter Email

The Nutritional Management of Chronic Pain

Gentle Reader Are you like me, suffering from chronic pain?  Do you wake up every morning and check to see which joints are hurting?  A friend of mine describes sitting on the edge of the bed wondering if she can actually stand and walk to the bathroom.  I’m better off than that, but the first …

Facebook Twitter Email

Knee Pain: an early warning sign of Osteoarthritis

Gentle Reader, This is just in from the Johns Hopkins: Knee Pain: An Early Warning Sign of Osteoarthritis Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, affecting an estimated 27 million people in the United States. By age 40, approximately 90 percent of us have at least some signs of osteoarthritis that can be seen …

Facebook Twitter Email

How about Stinging Nettles?

Gentle Reader, If I could tell you why some days I wake up with no pain whatsoever– like today– and catalog the food I ate yesterday, the stretches I made, the delicious sleep, the supplements, the aerobic activity—why surely I would have a recipe for a pain free life.  I cannot. I cross country skied …

Facebook Twitter Email

Ankle replacement? How bad is it?

  Gentle Reader,   Have you dried off from your most recent visit to the Y’s water aerobics for arthritics?  Not there yet?  Today I want to share information about replacing those joints that just keep hurting so much that you prefer to sit or lie down rather than try to move through the pain.  …

Facebook Twitter Email

The Fat Trap

Dear Reader, I have been thinking a lot about weight and arthritis, about weight loss and how challenging it is to begin and maintain a healthier relationship to food.  In my last post, I talked about the study that found our hypothalamus may be running the show.  If this regulating organ has been damaged by …

Facebook Twitter Email

The 2nd most popular New Year’s resolution and the power of excuses: guess writer Lisa Stubing

Dear Reader,  I have mentioned this energetic trainer, Lisa Stuebing in a former blog post. She and I walked the 3 miles around Greenlake at a quick pace.  I was impressed with Lisa’s own story of sitting at a desk most of her professional life and slowed putting on weight and losing mobility.  You should …

Facebook Twitter Email