Fingernails serve several important functions that were crucial for our ancestors and remain useful today. Given that our sense of touch mostly happens through our fingers, its only logical that they are very sensitive and have lots of nerve endings. Nails shield the sensitive fingertips and the underlying bone from injury and trauma. The nail bed underneath is rich in nerve endings and blood vessels, and nails act as a protective plate. Nails provide crucial…
I think its fair to say that we are all eating more chicken than ever these days. Protein consumption has been rising significantly in recent years. Chicken provides 7.2% of total protein intake in the United States. To put this in broader context: chicken accounts for 13.9% of animal protein consumed in the US , making it the dominant meat choice. Americans consume about 102.6 pounds of chicken per capita annually, and poultry accounted for…
Today I am going for my semi-annual doctor’s visit for a check-up. The general state of my health is good (I know its not “excellent” and I find myself debating if its just “good” or “very good” in the five level rating system the questionnaire asks). In fact, it’s much better than it was six months ago, which is before I lost twenty pounds, solved my edema problem and started wearing compression socks every day.…
I am aware that I live too much in my mind. I can’t seem to help it. Someone broke off my internal volume control knob and I’m fairly certain many people who know me only wish I had an accessible external volume control. I recall during my college fraternity days that there was a caricature artist who came to the fraternity once a year (with 54 fraternities and probably 15 sororities at Cornell in those…
There are reasons why I read what I read and just this morning I am reminded about why I read the New York Times. Mostly I think I read it because it is, in my opinion, the single best voice of the America I believe in and enjoy. I chose my words carefully in stating that because there is a case to be made that perhaps something like Fox News is more representative of the…
This week I cannot recall how many articles I have seen with the headline about what the government shutdown means to me (or anyone reading the article). I know there are Republicans out there who do wish the government didn’t go into shutdown, but there are way too many that are busy finding it a good thing for apparently two reasons. The first is that it allows them, by virtue of the Senate voting process,…
It has quite suddenly become that time of year again when season has passed from summer to fall and the autumnal equinox is upon us. The equinox occurs twice a year when day and night are approximately equal in length across the globe. As we all learned in grade school Earth Science, the Vernal (Spring) Equinox occurs around March 20-21 in the Northern Hemisphere and the Autumnal (Fall) Equinox occurs around September 22-23 in the…
We all learned that Jane Goodall died today. Jane Goodall was a renowned British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist, best known for her groundbreaking research on wild chimpanzees in Tanzania. In 1960, at age 26, she began studying chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Her work revolutionized our understanding of chimpanzees and human evolution. She’s the person who discovered that chimps make and use tools, eat meat, and have complex social behaviors, findings that…
Yesterday I was on a ride out to the eastern part of the county to an area called Sunrise Highway. It is in the Laguna Mountains near the Mexican border and defines the line between the western and eastern parts of San Diego with the Carizzo Valley to the east that runs down towards the Salton Sea. The high plains basin of Lake Cuyamaca and the ridge line to the east of that are some…
Everything you read that seeks to give advice to our demographic bulge known as the Baby Boomers, tells you to avoid the sedentary life at all costs. A sedentary lifestyle is thought to be remarkably harmful to human health and is considered one of the most significant preventable health risks in modern society. There is an evolutionary mismatch between being sedentary and good health. We’re built for movement. Humans evolved as hunter-gatherers, walking 5-10+ miles…