I live in the city. Every day I walk out of my apartment past garbage piled up and abandoned on a corner, wait at stoplights while an endless stream of cars chugs by spewing exhaust, and when I cross, I step over oil and tar stains on blacktop.
When people go to pick out their pets, many are very particular about what they’re looking for. Instead of thinking about how healthy an animal is going to be and thus how long it’s going to live and be their companion, people seem more preoccupied with the way the animal looks and, unfortunately, the quality of its breeding paperwork. While having “good breeding” may seem like a beneficial thing simply by nature of what it implies, the truth of the matter is that purebreed animals are notorious for having many complicated health issues.
I am a smoker. There, I said it, and I’m damn glad I said it. In truth, however, I’m not so glad that I am a smoker. It’s been about 25 years or more since I started this habit and the older this body gets the more I begin to notice every stupid little thing that goes wrong with it.
As a person who has to rely on their mind for a weekly paycheck, I thought I’d give a look at the science of it all and see exactly how much my brain is suffering due to the one major bad habit that I've held onto throughout my life.
With my own cat getting on in age at nearly the 16-year-old mark, I’ve found that it’s important to understand how a cat’s health changes over the years. She’s certainly not the same scraper that she was at six, and even though she’s mostly healthy, there are still things that I need to think about in order to keep her that way. I thought I’d share a little bit of knowledge here, for those that are dealing with their own aging felines.
When people talk about politics, I feel like the default mode of conversation is to complain about what isn't going well. There seems to be 10 times as much conversation about why people are upset as there is about things people are happy with. And while that may be just the way human nature is, President Obama seems to take the criticism from all sides.
"Let food be they medicine and medicine be thy food." So says Hippocrates, the man who also lends his name to the Hippocratic oath that all doctors take before embarking on a life meant to help people be as healthy as possible. It's also the quote that author Kristin Doyle chose to put on the cover of her cookbook, called Thereapeutic Chef: Recipes to Prevent Cancer, Heart Disease and Diabetes.
There's been a growing consciousness around food for some time now in the U.S. People are choosing to explore vegetarian and vegan eating, learning about the benefits of organic food, and exploring the relationship of food to health in a much deeper way.
To hear President Obama tell it, we are relatively close to turning the national debt into a manageable pet rather than a six-headed beast breathing fire on our finances. In his speech earlier this week, Obama said that what we need is to find a way for Republicans and Democrats to agree on $1.5 trillion in spending cuts and new tax revenue. If we can do this, we can keep the national debt at seventy-something percent of the projected gross GDP for the next decade or so.
Nuts sometimes get a bad rap for being calorically dense and high in fat and salt. Not to state the obvious, but that's why they are delicious! And while it's true that you should keep your nut consumption down, nuts are a lot better for you than most of the alternatives we reach for. When you get a craving for something salty and crunchy, nuts are a far better choice than, say, a bag of Cheetos. Nuts are a great non-animal source of protein,
