For those of you curious about using hypnosis during birth, I used an awesome program from www.hypnobabies.com
Tom got a short video of me using both the belly lift technique (for a posterior baby) and my hypnosis techniques during a birthing surge (aka contraction).
Hypnosis is awesome for helping relax completely during birthing surges and to train the body to feel pressure, not pain. I recommend it to every pregnant mom. There are scripts to help with nausea, sleeping better, releasing fears about pregnancy and giving birth, creating a special place you can go to in your mind to feel calm and relaxed, and even a set of positive statements about pregnancy that really helped remind me of what a beautiful miracle pregnancy and birth are.
It’s easy to get run down during pregnancy and I didn’t realize how much I needed a positive boost until I listened to Hypnobaby’s positive affirmation soundtrack. Then I started noticing how many women unwittingly say things like, “I bet you can’t wait for this to be over,” “You look so tired,” etc. Or many seemed to want to share ‘horror’ stories about how bad things were during their pregnancies or births. I would use another Hypnobaby’s technique called a ‘Bubble of Peace’ and imagine all the negative comments just bouncing off and not effecting me.
So, here I am smiling and chatting during my beautiful birth. It really was an amazing experience – the majority, completely without pain.
He came on an eventful Friday, May 9th, 2008, at 6:48 pm, 8 lbs. 14.5 oz and 21.5 inches long after a few hours birthing at home and 2 1/2 hours at the hospital.
Here’s a timeline of the crazy day:
8:30 am – I drop Tom off for a TEE (trans-esophageal echocardiogram) to check that his heart valve is doing fine. They put a tube down his esophagus and look at his heart. Tom convinces the doctors to do the procedure with a small dose of Fentanyl instead of the full dose of Fentanyl and a dose of Versed. He doesn’t want to be ‘druggy’ for 24 hours just in case the baby comes. Thank you Tom!! I also coached him on some hypnosis techniques to try.
9 am – I have an OB visit. The Non-Stress Test is perfect, and I am dilated 2-3 cm, but Jacob is positioned very high. My midwife places a low dose of prostaglandin gel to help ‘encourage’ things over the next few days, since they will push for a full induction on my due date next Thursday because of the insulin-requiring gestational diabetes I’ve had since week 8 of pregnancy. I really don’t want a full induction!
11:30 pm – I pick up Tom from his TEE. He came up with his own coping technique by pushing against the tube in his throat with his tongue to always know where it was and anticipate when it would be moved. Overall, he’d rather do it that way than have drugs mess with his mind. He is a bit ‘happy’ but much less drugged than the TEE he had last year. He says it feels kind of like when you step on one of those moving walkways at the airport – things just seem to whiz by when he moves.
While checking him out, I feel a couple of contractions that are a bit more intense than my usual Braxton-Hicks ones. I ignore them, since I’ve had a few of these every day or so for the last week, and they never amount to anything.
12:30 pm – We’re home having lunch, and I have a few more of the stronger contractions. I still don’t have to stop and focus or anything, but they are definitely noticable.
1:00 pm – They are coming every 4 or 5 minutes, which is confusing, since that would usually put me towards the end of first stage birthing, but the intensity is no where near that. This is my 5th baby, so I kind of know how my body usually progresses. I decide to send the kids off to freinds – I can always pick them back up if this doesn’t continue. And I want to go sit in a warm tub, relax, and see if the birthing waves slow down or stop.
2 – 3 pm – The kids are finally off, but Tim (the 3-year-old) is sick with the runs and having a meltdown, so Tom’s mom, volunteers to stay home with him instead of coming to the hospital.
3-ish pm – Birthing waves are every 2 minutes or so and I start using my hypnosis to focus and relax with each one. They are definitely more intense and don’t go away with a warm bath. It’s a bit crazy though, since they are only 2 mins apart, which for me is usually the last hour or so of birthing. But these are not intense enough to be the end of birthing. I can’t judge where I am in the birthing process. I call my midwife and she says that frequent but short (30 seconds or so) contractions are a normal result of the prostaglandin gel, and that I probably have more time than I think. She says to call her when I decide to come in. I’m thinking to myself, “That’s why I’m calling you now.”
3:30 pm – Just to make sure, I have Tom time a series of surges, and they are every 2 minutes and lasting 1 min plus. I call the my midwife back and say that we’re coming.
4 – ish pm – Arrive at the hospital. I’m swaying back and forth on my birthing ball in the waiting room. I don’t look like I’m in ‘labor’ at all. Hah. Little do they know.
4:40 pm – I am checked in triage, and measuring a 3 – 4 cm with the baby ‘pretty low’. Jacob still feels posterior to me, and I can feel each birthing surge in my back. I start doing the ‘belly lift’ to help change his angle during surges. I wrap my hands below my belly button, and then pull up during a surge, and it makes a TON of difference in the intensity of pressure in my back. I am listening to my early birth stage hypnosis script and I’m in a perfect zone, feeling pressure instead of pain, and excited about my baby coming.
During the next two hours, my surges are coming every minute or two without a break. Pretty soon the only position I can tolerate is standing, holding my belly up during a wave. This not only relieves the back pressure, but angles the baby better, so his head is pushing down on the cervix instead of back into my pelvic bone. It is reputed to help a back labor progress faster, and seems to be doing exactly that.
6:20 pm – I am 7 – 8 cm dilated, but it’s hard to tell, since all my midwife can feel is a big bulging bag of waters.
6:33 pm – Tom is out of the room warming up my rice pack for my back. I feel Jacob kick me really hard, and my waters break in a big gush.
I’m standing, holding onto the bed and everyone is ready to let me give birth that way (since I really didn’t want to be on my back like last time), but at the last minute the midwife asks if I would be ok going hands and knees on the bed, just in case. I get on the bed on all fours and after the most crazy, intense minutes that seem like an hour to me, his head is out. I don’t realize this, and can’t figure out why everyone is getting urgent about my pushing more.
It turns out his cord is wrapped around his neck tight enough to keep the rest of his body from being able to come out, and he is very blue – no blood flow. My midwife has me flip to my back to help shift him, she cuts and clamps the cord so he can get out. and he is quickly born and up on my chest for just a second or two.
6:48 pm – Jacob is officially born, posterior or ’sunny side up’ (he never did turn) – he is blue and floppy, not breathing. Meanwhile the nurse has hit the code button, and there is lots of help in the room to get him breathing again. The pediatric team grabs him, gives him oxygen and gets him breathing again. His one minute Apgar score is 2, but he quickly recovers and starts wailing. His 5 minute score is a healthy 9. It all happened so fast, that by the time I realized something could be seriously wrong, it’s all over, and he’s wonderful.
We say a grateful prayer for our healthy baby boy. I also have to thank the Hypnobaby and Belly Lift techniques for helping him birth so quickly. From my water breaking to being born took exactly 15 minutes. If it had been any slower, he may have been without blood flow for longer. I’m glad he’s doing so well!
He weighs in at 8 lbs 14.5 oz and measures 21.5 inches. He nurses easily, passes all his glucose tests, and we both spend the minimum required 24 hours at the hospital before coming home to be with our family. The rest of the kids are all amazed at the tiny little addition to our family.
What would you say to a new drug, taken twice a day before two of your meals, that gave you a consistent average weightloss of half a pound a week, and had no side effects?
Even better, a study was designed where diabetic, pre-diabetic, and non-diabetic volunteers are split into groups and half are given the drug and half a placebo. All volunteers were then given a high-carbohydrate breakfast of orange juice, a bagel, and butter, after which their blood glucose levels were measured. This was repeated a week later with the placebo and drug group switched. The results showed over a 25% lower blood glucose in the diabetic group, and an amazing 50% drop in the pre-diabetic group, which was better even than the drop in the non-diabetic group.
Now the sour news. No, really sour! This isn’t really a drug, it’s a condiment, namely apple cider vinegar. Yep, two tablespoons mixed in some water with a sweetener was taken a few minutes before a meal and resulted in significant drops in blood glucose on par with a diabetics drug like Metformin ($800 – $1800 per year), except the vinegar is much cheaper and much safer.
For the weightloss group, the drink was taken twice a day before two meals to see if it decreased blood cholesterol levels. It didn’t, but the study participants lost weight, an average 4 pounds over 2 weeks - an excellent side effect! Other studies found that vinegar increased satiety (how full you feel), and that maybe the decreased cravings were responsible for the weight loss. (I could sure use fewer cravings around 9 p.m. when the kids are in bed and I’m browsing through the snack cupboard)
So, add two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to a glass of water, a glass of juice, a homemade vinegrette, or just eat a couple of pickles with two meals a day. To sweeten it up, add some honey or blackstrap molasses for thier health benefits. You’ll pay pennies instead of dollars per dose, you’ll help nip glucose levels in the bud, and enjoy a steady weight loss along the way.
Like a sunburn that appears hours after forgetting your sunscreen, a poison ivy or oak rash is insanely itchy and shows up way after your error in judgement of trudging through three-leaved greenery. Or worse, you figure out later that the dog you were playing or the ball you were throwing were coated in the nasty stuff.
Here are a few tips to avoid the painful condition:
1. Learn to identify it. It’s really hard to avoid it if you don’t recognize it. Remember the saying: “Leaves of three, let it be; berries white, danger in sight.” Here are a few characteristic to help:  pointed leafs in groups of three, woody-looking stem (not spiky and green like raspberry’s), can have rootlets in the air - little stings hanging down from the stems, leaves are reddish in spring, green in summer, and yellow, orange, or red in the fall, the stem that the holds the leaves alternates instead of being directly opposite it’s neighbor, the leaf surface is smooth with few or no teeth along its edge.
A great resource is this collection of pictures sent in by readers asking if their plant is poison ivy. See if you can figure it out, and then read what the expert has to say.
2. When exposed, wash and wash fast! In about 10 minutes, the oils in the poison ivy plant will make a permanent bond with your skin, and your rash will show up in the next 12 to 48 hours. It is a oil, and can be washed away with lots of soapy water. But, the FDA recommends using rubbing alcohol first since it is a solvent that will remove the oil.  Soap runs the risk of simply moving the oils to other parts of the body. There is nothing worse than hopping in the shower, soaping up, only to have the oil spread to your nether regions or body creases unitentionally. So, the recommendation is rubbing alcohol first, rinse that off with water, and finally lots of soap and water. There is also a commercial product called Technu designed specifically to remove the oil.
Finally, remember, oil will hang out indefinitely, even years. Think of the work boots, hunting jackets, gardening gloves, pet collars, outside balls, and all the other items you may not clean on a regular basis. The oil will still be there waiting for you when you get back. Wipe them down with alcohol and water, too.Â
And remember, the weepy rash does NOT spread. Only the oil spreads the rash. Once you’ve cleaned the oil well, it is NOT contagious. There are two reasons the rash is commonly believed to spread. Â
People are re-exposed by touching items they haven’t cleaned
The areas with the largest dose of oil develop a rash first, while those with a smaller exposure may show up days later, giving an appearance of ’spreading’.
3. Once you have the rash, you’re looking at 14 to 20 days before it runs it’s course. Not fun at all. And all modern medicine can do for you is offer a Benedryl pill or cortisone cream. Here are some additional options:
Kitchen remedies:
Oatmeal – try Aveeno products, or make your own by running some oatmeal through the blender. Add a little water to make a soothing paste, add it to a cool to warm bath and soak for a while, or simply cook up some oatmeal, plaster it on the rash and let it dry and flake off on it’s own. Warning – you will look funny, and others may laugh.
Baking Soda – Add 1/2 c. to a bath, or mix it into a paste and apply.
Vinegar – Dabbing vinegar onto the rash has been known to help the itch, and dry out the rash.
Calamine or Caladryl lotion – a staple of itchy skin condition, these lotions are great remedies to try and relieve the itching.
Herbal remedies:
 Jewelweed – also known as ‘touch-me-not’ is one of the most well known herbal remedy to poison ivy. The two plants usually grow together which makes jewelweed easy to find. There are a few ways to use it. Crush the juicy stem and rub on the skin.  Chop the herb, boil in water, and strain. The pretty orange liquid can be used immediately or frozen for later. Finally, chopped herb can be soaked in alchohol or witch hazel to make an extract. It is also available in a natural soap combined with other soothing ingredients. Years of anectdotal evidence supports using jewelweed, but sadly, a small scientific study of 10 people showed no improvement. As with many herbal choices, at least it is a safe option to try, without the typical side effects of prescription medications.
Tea tree oil – known for its antiseptic and healing ability, a small amount mixed in a carrier oil, or a cream containing tea tree oil can help speed the healing process and minimize the chance of secondary infections that are common when the rash is scratched repeatedly.
Comfrey – well known for its ability to help heal injuries and reduce the inflammation. Steep the chopped leaves in boiling water and apply the leaves as a hot poultice or soak a rag in the ‘tea’ and apply as an extract. Another option is an ointment containing comfrey and other healing herbs.
Aloe Vera – commonly used for inflammatory skin conditions like sunburns. Aloe, especially fresh, can help soothe and heal the itchy, painful rash.
Plantain - a common yard weed with an effective drawing and healing action that works well on bites, stings, infections, and inflammed rashes.  Harvest the fresh leaves, crush or chew them, and apply them with a bandage to hold them in place. Caution: repeated use can cause some browning of the skin, harmless but it may bother some people.
I hope this information helps some poison ivy/oak sufferers, or at least directs you to what you need.Â
You couldn’t figure out long division in school, so to this day, you say with a joking smile, “I’m bad at math,!” “I’m don’t make friends easily,” you think after being ignored when you tried to introduce yourself at a company party. “I’m a bad mother,” thinks a women when her child throws a tantrum on the grocery store floor. “I can’t keep a job,” says the teenager after being fired from his first job.
How about, “This child was easy to potty train, so all my children will be easy to potty train.” Hah! There is an obvious flaw in taking an isolated case and applying it to everything else.
These are overgeneralizations, and they are a very self-destructive thought pattern. Every failure or frustration multiplies and contaminates not only today, but your entire future.
Even worse, many people have these thoughts constantly running in the background like a nagging commentator mentioning their every flaw. Which leads into another great way to combat distorted thinking.
If the list making was not your thing, you can try the clicker method. Get a cheap golf clicker at a sports store which can also be called a counter or tally machine. Basically, you push a button, and the display number increases by one. They are used to count golf strokes, or people coming into an event, etc.
Carry it in your pocket, and each time you have a distorted thought, click away. At the end of the day, write the number down. The cool thing is, the numbers should go up for a little while, because you are learning to recognize them, and letting fewer and fewer slip by unnoticed. Then, the simple act of counting the thoughts will cause them to level off and finally decrease.Â
Seriously, say you had a nervous twitch that caused your arm to jerk up and hit the back of your head. You’d been doing it for so long, you really didn’t notice the arm jerking, just that you had constant headaches. After taking multiple medications and explaining to a counselor the tragedies of your youth, you still don’t feel better. Finally, someone explains what to watch for, and you start counting how many times your arm is twitching. Some slip by, because this is a long engrained habit. But eventually, you notice each one. And who, once they notice their own arm hitting them in the head, is going to let that continue? The act of recognizing and counting will decrease the number of distorted thoughts. What a great concept.
So, now you are up to two coginitive distortions:Â Â All-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralization.Â
And two techniques:Â Writing down the thoughts, identifying and responding, and the clicker count.
“I never do anything right.” “Everyone is always talking about me behind my back.” “Every time my kids scream, I lose my temper.”
Using words like ‘never’, ‘always’, and ‘every’ are examples of all-or-nothing thinking, one of ten so-called ’cognitive distortions’ used in a well-studied treatment for depression – Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT).
It’s a mouthful, but CBT is essentially a technique based on first changing your thought patterns and habits, which will then change your mood and your behavior.
Depression is a touchy subject, particularly among women.  It is many times more common than thought, and very under treated. Really, who wants to admit being either crazy with a ‘mental’ illness, or even worse, they can’t keep up with the super achieving schedule they’ve set for their life?
In medical school, that whole side of it is ignored, and depression is treated as simply another illness with damaging effects on a patient’s life, the most severe being death, in the form of suicide. Of course, like much of modern health, the typical answer comes in the form of pills, and therapy is given a perfunctory nod.  Doctors all know the modern patient is just too busy to lay on a couch and talk about repressed memories of childhood, so just give them a pill, they’re good at taking those.
Cognitive behavior therapy is an effective alternative and can be used alone or in conjunction with medications.
I ran into an apathetic-type of depression during pregnancy, and occasionally, as my husband kindly notes, during ‘that time of the month.’ It’s always fun to hear others ask, “Why can’t you just think positive?” or “How can you be depressed? Look at how great your life is?” It isn’t like the same questions aren’t running through my own mind.
Then I found a great book (which is how I learn most of my odd hobbies) called Feeling Good by David Burns. It’s packed with great info, techniques, and exercises, that teach you exactly how you can combat depression. In fact, a series of studies was done following a group of 80 patients, randomly assigned to either read or not read the book Feeling Good within four weeks. They weren’t even asked to do any exercises in the book, just to read it and do what they felt like doing.Â
At the end of four weeks, 70 percent of the reading group had dropped their depression scores from a 20 average to a 10, which no longer qualifies as ‘depressed.’ Three months later, 75% no longer qualified as depressed, and a three-year follow-up showed 72% as no longer depressed. These results are as effective as the most often prescribed anti-depressants and even the standard 12-week session with a trained cognitive behavior therapist. Plus, there is a much lower drop-out rate and a very small relapse rate. Ok, for you thrifty moms out there – this is all from reading an $8 book in a month’s time! That’s cheaper than your co-pay!
(Your library should have the book, or click through to Amazon from here , to support this site)
So, if you’re too busy to read the book, you can get it in little snippets from me. The first step is to learn to recognize the ten cognitive distortions, or ways your thoughts are ‘messed up’.
So, pick a time you felt a bit ‘down’ recently, and write down what was running through your mind. Since you only know one cognitive distortion so far, it’ll have to be a phrase with the words ‘never’, ‘always’, or ‘every’ in them. Really, get a piece of paper right now (or a Word document for the techies) and write a thought down. Next to it, write ‘all-or-nothing’. And finally, in a few words write why that is not true, or is distorted thinking.
Thinking:Â “I never do anything right.”
Cognitive Distortion:Â All-or-nothing
Response: I wrote a pretty good post on docmisty.com.  I helped a friend make name tags for vacation bible school on the computer. I fed my kids french toast for dinner AND used whole wheat bread! etc. etc.
It’s that time of year, bugs, bugs, and more bugs. There are few things more annoying than bites and stings that keep coming to bother you for days. Anti-itch creams only work so well, and for those who have a more severe reaction there isn’t much you can do besides take a Benadryl, which may or may not help.
I have two alternative tips: a household remedy and an herbal remedy.
Household remedy: I read a hilarious article about a man who received so much conflicting advice after being stung, that he conducted his own experiment. He went to a beekeeper to be stung on a regular basis so that he could try each remedy and tracked its effects every half hour that he was awake. We can be the beneficiaries of his bravery. The winners? Toothpaste and ice! Both are simple, cheap, and effective. As a novice beekeeper myself, I agree. Rub in the regular minty toothpaste, ice it for 20 minutes anytime it starts hurting or itching, and you’re good to go.
Herbal remedy:
Common Plantain
Look no further than the annoying weeds you’ve been trying to get out of your grass. Plantain is a great herb for bites, stings, and wounds, and grows everywhere weeds do. Once you learn to identify it, you can grab a few leaves, chew or crush them to release the juices, and apply. Tape a bandage over the green pulp and you’ll be surprised how well it heals a sting, usually relieving the pain within 15 minutes. It works just as well on cuts and absesses, so keep the green pulp in mind next time you get an injury in the yard. You’ll never look at weeds quite the same again.
Tips to recognize plantain: The Common Plantain has more rounded leaves while the Ribwort has long straight ones. They both work equally well. They have skinny flower stalks that shoot high from the center with distinctive cone or spike-shaped flower clusters. (They make great substitute swords or targets for swords, according to my boys.)
English/Ribwort Plantain
So, next time you’ve got an annoying insect injury, chew a weed while you ice it, spit the green mush onto it, and mix in a little toothpaste while you brush that grassy taste out of your mouth. Now aren’t you glad you know all this?
Have you ever tried to hold an ice cube to the lip of a screaming toddler after he has fallen for the umpteenth time and smashed his lip? Yes, the “It’ll hurt now, but make it get better faster,” argument falls on deaf ears. Yours and his.
Next time, get a popsicle! Yes, in the long tradition of “Why, did I not think of that?”, it’s a simple solution and you’re both happy. Teach him to paint his lips with the lovely neon blue color of the popsicle to make sure the whole injury gets iced down, and if he wants another? Why, today is a special day, and he can have as many as he wants.
Instead of a traumatic DocMom moment, you might find him banging his lip again just for the popsicles.
DocMisty
P.S. It doesn’t work so well with bruises elsewhere, but you’re welcome to try.
Ok, so it’s not a cure, but as I chase down another kid with the dreaded Kleenex in hand, you have to wonder if there is a better way.
While it may be difficult to use with young children who don’t know what’s good for them, I found a great aid a few years back for those nasty head colds, especially if they turn into the even nastier sinus infection.
Sorry, it’s not an easy to swallow pill paid for by your insurance, though the science behind it is just as conclusive.It’s a bottle of saline solution you squirt up your nose.No, don’t stop reading yet.It’s not as bad as it sounds.And you shouldn’t be thinking ‘snot washer’, instead think (and google) ‘nasal rinse’.
Warning: graphic description following Basically, your body produces snot to ‘wash’ out the infecting viruses or foreign objects (for those of you whose children shove peanuts and small items up their noses).The faster and better it does this, the sooner you get better.Since you can’t increase your mucous output, you have to use something else – the nasal rinse.Fill a bottle with warm water, add a little salt and baking soda (1/2 t. of a 2 to 1 salt/baking soda mix to 8 oz. water), lean over the sink and rinse away.Ta dah!You’re doing five days of snot work in one.
You can use your own bottle, but squirting up while leaning over is easier said than done. And leaning over makes sure the water goes in one nostril and out the other (nostril, not ear) without getting to the back of the throat , which is less than pleasant. Save yourself some pain and buy one ready made from NeilMed for $3.99 or at many of the local stores that now carry them.
And the science says it helps decrease healing time with a cold, sinusitis, and even divers who have ear pressure troubles can benefit.
Study after study show how effective it is, but a $5 bottle doesn’t get pushed with the doctors as well as a $500 drug and all it’s reps.
For example, in 150 adults with chronic sinusitis, over 70% had an improvement in symptoms while a third decreased their medication usage. (Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. 2001 Jul;125(1):44-8) Fewer symptoms and less medication are hallmarks of great alternatives to typical care. Why take an antibiotic with all its risks when simple salt water will work as well or better?
Personally, I had a sinus infection while pregnant with my fourth. I had the full-blown infection: fever, tender face, aching teeth, head feeling like it would explode whenever I leaned over to pick up one more Lego on the floor. Being in my first trimester, I didn’t really want to take medication I didn’t need to. While searching for an alternative, I stumbled across the sinus rinse. It was an answer to a prayer. I rinsed four times a day, and by day two had gotten over the hump and started improving. By day five or six, I was back to my normal nauseated self – not ‘nauseating’, I was pregnant, remember.
Cool! I’ve got a blog going. I’ve been DocMisty to friends and family for a while, so I thought I’d post for the world to see. What else is an M.D. good for when you stay at home and homeschool 4 kids?
Yes, I spent four years in the lovely world of medical school, had 2 kids along the way, an adventure in itself, and decided that I’d had enough of that. I love my family, and I couldn’t see leaving them for another 4 years of 80+ hours a week for a residency. And to be honest, the part about helping people ended up being such a tiny percent of my day, that I was pretty burnt out on the whole thing.
Now, I get to do all the ‘helping’ I want without forms, files, reports, Medicare, etc. Obviously I can’t prescribe medicines or really treat disease, but I get to do the part I like the best – teach and help people understand what’s going on. You know, illness always seems to be a lot less scary when you understand what’s going on, what your options are, what the alternative choices are, etc.
I also love using alternative medicine for all the chronic, nagging, day-to-day discomforts that modern medicine either can’t fix or considers beneath its notice.
As a kid, I was in charge of the herb garden, and we grew up on peppermint tea for stomach ills, comfrey poultices for injuries, and a wad of lovely smushed green yarrow shoved gently up our noses for the occasional nosebleed.
I continued the tradition, grew my own herbs and learned how to make ointments. They started in old Tupperware containers or scooped into a baggy to share with friends who had eczema, sprained ankles, or babies with rashes. Eventually I was giving away more than I kept, and friends offered to pay me. Now, I’ve got TurtleBalm my little website with herbal ointments, handmade soaps, LipSilk lip balms, and the KozyWrap, a baby wearing wrap that saved my life when I took my firstborn to four hours of medical school lectures a day.
So, let’s see, I homeschool 4 kids (under age 8), am an underpaid doctor, a black belt, a novice website owner, and dabble in beekeeping, science fiction writing, and a variety of other odd hobbies. Don’t ask about the winter I built a hydroponic system to grow tomatoes next to the shower in our upstairs bathroom. Yes, I have a very patient husband.
 Knowledge is for sharing. That’s why I’m blogging. Oh, and if you happen to like my extremely well-priced and effective products, you can support my habit of sharing.
So, add two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to a glass of water, a glass of juice, a homemade vinegrette, or just eat a couple of pickles with two meals a day. To sweeten it up, add some honey or blackstrap molasses for thier health benefits. You’ll pay pennies instead of dollars per dose, you’ll help nip glucose levels in the bud, and enjoy a steady weight loss along the way.
1. Learn to identify it. It’s really hard to avoid it if you don’t recognize it. Remember the saying: “Leaves of three, let it be; berries white, danger in sight.” Here are a few characteristic to help:  pointed leafs in groups of three, woody-looking stem (not spiky and green like raspberry’s), can have rootlets in the air - little stings hanging down from the stems, leaves are reddish in spring, green in summer, and yellow, orange, or red in the fall, the stem that the holds the leaves alternates instead of being directly opposite it’s neighbor, the leaf surface is 
 by David Burns. It’s packed with great info, techniques, and exercises, that teach you exactly how you can combat depression. In fact, a 
