Your Health | PulseonParenting

Can Vitamin D Prevent Influenza?

Nov 07 2018

After posting The Influenza Vaccine: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up a friend and fellow mom reached out to me. She told me how happy she was to see some real info cross her virtual desk because her news feed is usually filled with the myths and dangers of the influenza vaccine. She had even read that Vitamin D could save the population from influenza infection and jokingly blamed “Dr. Google” for her discovery of this one. And with her, I rolled my eyes as you just can’t make this stuff up. I do my best to keep up-to-the-moment on the influenza front,…

Oct 03 2018

I’d like to interrupt our regularly scheduled blog post for an important public service announcement. I’ve written over time about the importance of the influenza vaccine and the myths surrounding it. Today, I’d like to share more of the latter. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard new rationale against getting the “flu shot” and it’s been a good reminder that one will never hear it all: I’m not getting the flu shot because I heard a woman got pregnant after she got it. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. And it gets even better: a boy in my son’s…

Sep 11 2018

I wasn’t sure about sharing the story I’m about to share. I don’t like tooting my own horn or sounding that way. If I wrote it, I wanted the post to be vulnerable and relatable. My goal would be a story with a life lesson to share with the kids. So here it goes. I was driving home late one afternoon when I came up on an SUV traveling half on the road, half on the shoulder. It was creeping along, well under the speed limit, and the left turn signal was flashing even though there was no…

Jul 24 2018

You know you’ve found your tribe when everyone in it shares the status of their armpits. Odor (loads or a little to none), sweat (when and how much) and products that work or fail. Now that’s friendship. After this completely transparent (like a deodorant that doesn’t leave white stuff on my tops) text chat, I feel empowered. So much so I will share, unashamed, that I am a sweaty betty. It takes very little heat and stress for me, ironically and otherwise always cold, to glisten in a terribly unattractive way. (Sweaty yoga doesn’t count. Everyone is drenched there.) …

Jun 27 2018

Joanna Gaines of Fixer Upper and I should be best friends. After reading The Magnolia Story I learned we have a ton in common. We love to cook. Neither of us wants to upgrade our engagement diamonds from modest to monstrous. We both lean toward introversion. And visual clutter drives us crazy. I can feel my blood pressure rise when the kitchen counter goes MIA under newspapers, books and whatever random items my kids drop upon it. I avoid my office space for all the piles. To help calm myself, I placed a kitch-y towel on our mantle to keep myself from…

Jun 07 2018

Something was not right. I looked at the packaging on my favorite protein powder to see how it described the Stevia content and saw “stevia leaf extract.” That worried me, being that in my post How to Approach the Sugar Epidemic I stated that only stevia leaf glycosides were approved by the FDA for food use. And that anything other than that, like stevia leaf extract, was not and could cause unwanted side effects. Ok, I had a bit of a panic, as my whole family used the protein powder and loves it. As it turns out, I worried…

Jun 06 2018

I originally published this post on June 22, 2017. Here is a reprint to kick off Summer 2018. Happy riding, everyone! My family lives in a free-spirited town. A place where you can’t say I’ve seen it all, but you regularly get a little closer. Like the other day. As my favorite barista was handing me a much-needed java, I spotted, making a bee-line across the local highway, a bicyclist pulling a child trailer. Even in my coffee-deprived state I was present enough to think OMG, that’s dangerous, then realized with relief that the trailer did not chauffeur…

May 31 2018

“Mom.” “Mom…Mom.” MOM, MOOOOOMMMM!!!” I know, right? We’ve all been there. (Not to exclude the guys, so please feel free to substitute “Dad!!!”.) Maybe we’re on the phone, or the toilet, or on a mission to get the bills paid while making supper. Inevitably (even at age 13), kids need us at the times we are most indisposed. They are checking in, making sure we can disengage from other aspects of daily living in case they want us. Younger kids “check in” by testing boundaries, shocking us parents to attention. My twins used to climb up on the dining table…

May 24 2018

It was ironic. And a little bit sick. Not nearly as sick as an airport television tuned in to a feature on plane crashes or that particular vendor in Pompeii selling snow globes of the doomed city. But still. As I was researching this article, a pop-up video advertised a delicious recipe using Reese’s peanut butter cups. SO not fair. But I’ll admit, at first the video didn’t seem out of the ordinary…so common and everyday is our exposure, in media or on the dinner table, to sugary nirvana. It may be the 21st century but humans still have cave person…

May 17 2018

It seemed like there was so much more of it than at other parties, in other years. Maybe it was because I was paying better attention. But I couldn’t believe all the junk food. It was as if the evil witch’s house from Hansel and Gretel had crash-landed in my son’s third grade classroom. I had the urge to start picking through the rubble looking for ruby slippers. (Wait, I’m confusing my fairy tales, aren’t I?) I know I was complicit in this edible crime, having brought something sweet and tasty for the kids to gobble up. Of…

Category - Your Health

Can Vitamin D Prevent Influenza?

The Influenza Vaccine: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

That Lousy Driver

Are Antiperspirants a Health Risk?

Step 6 for an Extraordinary Life: Make Space

A Clarification About Stevia

Rules of the Road: Hand Signals for Safe Bicycling

Step 5 to Live an Extraordinary Life: Slow Down

How to Approach the Sugar Epidemic

Why We Need to Reduce Our Kids Sugar Intake Now