Pain, Pain, Go Away!

The PRIME Act Remember the panic buying and food shortages of 2020? When grocery store shelves were cleaned out and restaurants closed, I recommended a family farm that raised beef (previously bought by closed restaurants) to my coworkers. The PRIME Act has been re-introduced to help family farms like this. It was introduced in 2020 to remove the requirement for most livestock to be processed at a relatively small number of industrial-size slaughterhouses.  Smaller, local "custom" slaughterhouses could be used instead for meat staying within the state and would eliminate the need for those animals to travel for hours in trailers. Custom slaughterhouses "must follow federal, state, and local health and safety guidelines and are periodically inspected for cleanliness and safety— similar to how restaurants are inspected," says the Institute for Justice . Critics say the PRIME Act would make the meat supply less safe, but similar laws already apply to poultry.  The Fre...

Some weeks ago, I boosted my iodine dose to 1,000 micrograms a day (over Dr. Davis's program recommendation), and for the first time in several years, I've sustained a workout program. I'm back to lifting weights a few times a week and found a dance exercise channel on YouTube I like. I even overdid my workout one day--I had a pounding heart that night and felt jittery--but you don't know your limits unless you push yourself.  As most readers know, iodine is needed for thyroid function; without enough of it, you can suffer from fatigue, cold, depression, mental fog and weight gain. Meals will be looking a lot more like this. Photo from Unsplash . Despite the extra iodine, I gained some weight. Last week when my pants were uncomfortably tight, I had acid reflux, and my face looked like the moon, I stopped ignoring the fact that nuts and cheese put weight on me. I'd been eating biscuits and gravy and an apple-cranberry tart. These were made using compliant recipes...b...

It's been quite an adventure riding this sparking and sputtering thyroid. It started back in the highly stressful year of 2014 when I had mountains of work on my desk, an hour-long commute, and aging parents who themselves were sputtering along and constantly needed me to come over to help them. Then my coworker quit and I had all the work to do. I asked if I could go live with her in Mexico, only half joking. My father died. My mother nearly died of kidney failure. Then stayed with me for two weeks during and leading up to the estate sale. We surrendered her dog when she couldn't take care of him. In thanks for my hard work, I was accused of elder abuse. (The county found no grounds for the accusations.) I had a root canal and three courses of antibiotics. Then I moved across the country: I bought one house before selling the other (albeit in Denver's hot real estate market) and had no permanent job lined up in Indiana. Then finding my best friend had changed quite a ...