If you've hit the age where “I slept wrong” has evolved into “I can't sit through a movie without my leg going numb,” welcome to the club nobody wants to join: sciatica. That sharp, electric, sometimes nagging-in-your-leg pain that makes driving, or just sitting in a chair feel miserable.

Here's the thing about sciatic pain though it's so common. Researchers estimate that up to 40% of people will deal with true sciatic-type pain at some point in their life, and low back pain in general affects the majority of adults. So if you're dealing with this, you're not broken, and you're definitely not alone.

I asked Dr. Curtis who writes the newsletter Long Life Healthy Life and has spent decades working hands-on with patients on exactly this kind of pain, to walk me through a technique he's found genuinely useful for a lot of people. And in most cases, it actually helps people with their sciatic pain. It takes 30 seconds, costs nothing, and doesn't require you to see anyone or buy anything. You can do it yourself.

The technique, in his words:

There's a sensitive spot in the fascia, the connective tissue under your skin, on the side of your rib cage, roughly one hand-width below the center of your armpit, angled slightly toward the front of your body. When your lower back nerves are irritated, this spot often gets noticeably tender on the same side as your leg or low-back pain. Dr. Curtis describes it as a kind of fascial “switch” tied to that nerve irritation.

How to find it:

He recommends doing both sides, with extra focus on whichever side matches your symptoms. You can do this yourself, have someone else do it, and repeat it a few times a day. Many people report feeling a difference right away,  though as always, individual results vary, and this isn't a substitute for getting checked out if your pain is severe or persistent.

Click this link to his TikTok where he demonstrates how to do the Curtis Technique. 

TikTok - Dr. C.M. Curtis - Curtis Technique

Want Dr. Curtis's full article, including his take on why stretching alone often isn't enough? 

Head to his newsletter, Long Life Healthy Life: https://longlifehealthylife.substack.com/

**I'm not a doctor, and this isn't medical advice, just information I’ve tried and worked for me. If you have severe, worsening, or unusual symptoms, see a doctor promptly.

You know that friend who's been mysteriously “not feeling great” for like two weeks now? There's a real chance she's caught something spreading through the country right now, and it's not exactly making headlines outside the health world.

What's happening:

A parasite called Cyclospora — the one behind what officials are literally calling “explosive diarrhea” is spreading through fresh produce at levels far above normal. As of mid-July, cases have hit at least 34 states, well above last year's numbers, with Michigan describing the surge as “highly unusual.”

Why you haven't heard about it:

This parasite hides well. Symptoms can take up to two weeks to show up, so most people have zero idea what actually made them sick, which is exactly why it's spread this far before anyone connected the dots.

What's likely causing it:

Michigan investigators suspect lettuce or salad greens, though a national source hasn't been confirmed. Historically, cyclospora shows up on raspberries, basil, cilantro, green onions, snow peas, and salad mixes — basically the produce aisle staples of anyone trying to eat healthy. Extra insult if you've spent years dutifully eating your greens.

What it feels like:

Not your average 24-hour bug. Watery diarrhea, cramping, nausea, fatigue, and low-grade fever, and it can drag on for weeks.

What actually helps:

The good news: it's rarely serious, and it doesn't spread person-to-person, so you can't catch it from your sick friend, only from what you're both eating. The bad news: until the source is confirmed, “wash everything twice” is your best defense.

I'm not a doctor, and this isn't medical advice. This newsletter just provides information. If you're experiencing persistent or severe symptoms, please contact your healthcare provider for treatment.

A typical suburban backyard, sometime around 1984. A girl, let's call her Every One of Us, lies on a beach towel that’s on a fold up lawn chair in the driveway. She’s wearing a neon high cut string bikini, with a strapless bandeau top (no tan lines - duh). All visible skin was thoroughly coated in baby oil. She’s going to try something…A girl at school told everyone that holding up a foil reflector card would make you tan faster. But no one had a fancy reflector, so in GenX style, you just improvised and used foil from the kitchen drawer. Then you just held the foil under the chin to get your face extra tan. 

Then there was the magical bottle of Sun-In that you applied to the hair at the beginning of the tanning session. You could lighten your hair and get a tan at the same time. The sun would help to lift your hair color for that perfect shade of blonde. It truly was self care at its finest multi-purpose and cost effective. 

I can report that you will not be tan by dinner. 

The results were always the same…lobster-red by dinner.

But I guess, that was never really the point though, the point was the ritual. You felt like a girl, getting yourself ready for summer. 

Sun-In was less a hair product than a reimagining of yourself. You sprayed the Sun-In on dry hair, sat in direct sunlight (obviously), and waited for peroxide and citrus to do whatever chemistry they were supposed to be doing up there in your hair. The picture on the bottle promised sun-kissed blonde. What it delivered, more often than not, was a shade of orange that didn't exist in nature. But at that point we called it blonde anyway, because we'd collectively agreed blonde came in a variety of shades, this one just skewed a little “honey”. Delusional? A little. But we still felt grown-up and glamorous. 

And the baby oil, good grief. We coated ourselves in it like we couldn’t get enough sun. We were under the impression that we might as well help it along. SPF, wasn’t really a thing at that point, if it existed on the shelf at all, was for people who weren't serious about their tan, or just really old and couldn’t get sunburned. 

Here's the part that actually deserves a laugh: we knew we'd be at the peeling stage by that Wednesday. We kinda planned around it. Peeling was just part of the process. If your friend was peeling, you would help them get rid of the areas that they could not reach. This was a true sign of friendship and about as unfiltered as you could get.

Would we do it again? Probably not, our skin (and our dermatologists) have very strong opinions about that now. But there's something sweet about how uncomplicated it all was: a bottle of orange-hair-making spray, a driveway with lawn chair, some foil, and the total, unshakeable confidence of a 80s girl who thought she'd cracked the code to looking like one of those tanned women in an ad.

So here's to the “honey blond” orange-haired, sun-baked, peel-y skin, thoroughly unprotected summers of our youth, we survived them, sunburns and all, and somehow we lived to tell about them and…really we’re doing just fine.