Health, Fitness and Style

Earlier this season I had found that a shallot in my fridge had started growing. I took a chance and planted it. Then I forgot about it, never really expecting anything to come of it. Then the garden surprised me. A tall stalk reached out of the dirt. I thought it was a wild onion and left it alone. It continued to shoot up and then there was an intriguing flower at the end of it. When I dug it up to see what was growing, I saw the shallot had grown and multiplied! Not only was the flower beautiful to see but the shallots were delicious to eat. more »

The authors stress that rising temperature and climate change should not be viewed as direct motivations for suicide. Instead, they point out that temperature and climate may increase the risk of suicide by affecting the likelihood that an individual situation leads to an attempt at self-harm. “Hotter temperatures are clearly not the only, nor the most important, risk factor for suicide,” Burke emphasized. “But our findings suggest that warming can have a surprisingly large impact on suicide risk, and this matters for both our understanding of mental health as well as for what we should expect as temperatures continue to warm.” more »

“What we’re seeing is just like what happened with opioids in the 1990s. It really does begin with overprescribing. Liberal therapeutic use of drugs in a medical setting tends to normalize their use. People start to think they’re safe and, because they make them feel good, it doesn’t matter where they get them or how many they use ... We have this whole infrastructure set up now to prevent overprescribing of opioids and address the need for addiction treatment, said Dr. Anna Lembke, a researcher and addiction specialist at Stanford University. “We need to start making benzos part of that.” more »

Sonya Zalubowski writes: First, it was just a hitch in my step, then my legs began to feel sore and weirdly hollow during my daily walk with my dog, especially if I lollygagged along the way and spent time standing and chatting with friends we met. By the time I’d get home, down a steep hill, my right hip outright throbbed with the aching. I was young, my early 70s, and had had only one operation in my whole life. Some 30 years before. I had miles to go, no room for a hip replacement. more »