On a recent trip to visit my family, I brought home an unwelcome souvenir–chigger bites.  Chiggers are mites, but they have many nicknames like harvest mites, harvest bugs, harvest lice, mower’s mites, or red bugs. Technically chiggers are arachnids, in the same family as spiders and ticks. Since I haven’t experienced chigger bites since I […]

Some studies examining the effect of wheat, barley and rye products on our health, demonstrate that cutting out these products can help us lose weight from “Wheat Belly”. Cutting out these products has been linked to weight loss from the deep visceral fat that resides within the abdomen, what can be represented on the surface […]

Do you ever experience ringing, buzzing, hissing, whistling, swooshing, or clicking in your ears?  You might have tinnitus. Tinnitus is the perception of sound when no actual external noise is present. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that nearly 15% of the general public — over 50 million Americans — experience some form of […]

A new survey finds that the U.S. is just the 18th happiest country in the world, because of poor health, poor economic mobility, and a lack of social cohesion.  In each of more than 150 countries surveyed, Gallup asked 3,000 respondents to assess their life on a scale of 1 to 10. The top rung […]

Life is full of hardships – grief, break ups, addiction – all times we might think about therapy.  You may be surprised to know the best time to get therapy is when your life is going well. There’s a stigma that therapy is only for people suffering a mental illness or going through a massive […]

Sugar is everywhere, almost impossible to avoid.  It’s in foods like bread, pasta sauce, salad dressing, and ketchup. It can be challenging to find sugar in your food because nutrition labels are not required to list all sugar.  In 2018, nutrition labels will be required to call out all added sugar but, in the meantime, […]

We Boulderites often explore. We explore topics academically and practically. We explore various activities as hobbies and professionally. We use power tools, hand tools, kitchen knives, and a myriad of items with sharp edges, fast moving parts, and other traps for our various body parts. Sometimes we end up with blood, either ours or from […]

Hospitals around the country are using music therapy as a way to ease a patient’s pain, lower blood pressure, and reduce anxiety and depression, allowing patients to heal faster. Thirty-five percent of healthcare facilities in the US offer music, of some form, to their patients. An article in the journal, Pain Physician, indicates ​that music functions […]

Low- and no- carb eating is all the rage these days.  Ditching carbs is tough to do-over the long haul. For starters, adults in the U.S. get about 50 percent of their daily calories from carbohydrates. If you cut out all carbs, you’ll have to give up fruits, vegetables, whole grains and beans — which […]

More Americans are drinking alcohol, and a growing number of them are drinking to a point that’s dangerous or harmful, according to a new study published in JAMA Psychiatry this week.  The study, sponsored by a federal agency for alcohol research, examined how drinking patterns changed between 2002 and 2013, based on in-person surveys of tens of thousands of […]