Sleep and I have NOT been good friends over the past few weeks – I don’t know what’s going on, but for someone who could get a gold medal in the sleep Olympics if there were such a thing, this not sleeping thing is NOT good. Not good at all.

And as I lay awake unable to sleep, I consider things like the layout for a home page redesign on my web site, do teens REALLY spontaneously break out into song in high school these days, and why the heck were we taught to count sheep when we couldn’t sleep.

Yes, there is a new home page coming, I’m pretty sure Glee is pure fiction, and I think I cracked the code on counting sheep. [Read more...]

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I frequently hear, “well, it just runs in my family” or “my parents and grandparents all have [horrible disease x] so I’ll get it too.”

And while it’s true that you likely have the genetic marker for [horrible disease x] – you can stop the story there. Just because you have the genes for something in no way guarantees that you will develop [horrible disease x].

And we now know this because of a relatively new field of study called epigenetics.

What is Epigenetics?

The easiest way to define it is to break down the word itself. The Greek prefix epi- in epigenetics implies features that are “on top of” or “in addition to” genetics, so in the case of epigenetics, we are referring to features (in this case, lifestyle and environmental factors) that influence our gene sequence (or DNA). [Read more...]

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Every time I hear the word exercise, I think sweaty, smelly gyms, old gym socks, treadmills, and slogging through long runs. Seriously, who wants to do that?

Not me.

Give me a mountain to climb, a lake to walk / run around, a jungle gym to climb on, or volleyball match over “exercise” any time.

When it’s fun, it’s no longer exercise

Instead, volleyball league becomes just what you do on Tuesday nights, a 13-mile hike in the Cascades a great way to connect with nature (and disconnect from the Internet), a run is how you clear your head after a stressful workday, and your walk around Green Lake is how you catch up with girlfriends.  [Read more...]

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