HEALTH

I found out I'd been “managing” inflammation for about a decade before anyone actually used that word with me. Turns out the achy body, the 3pm crash, the skin that turns red, that's not just “getting older.” That's your body waving a little flag. 

Here's the thing nobody tells you in your 40s and 50s: chronic inflammation isn't dramatic. It's not a flare-up you notice. It's quiet, cumulative, and it's connected to nearly everything we complain about,  joint pain, brain fog, stubborn weight gain, mood swings, even skin issues of redness or irritation. Well, the good news is you won’t need a $500 supplement stack, or that you will have to give up bread and potatoes forever to make progress. You only need about three do-able habits, done consistently, that will make a difference. 

Eat like it's a Mediterranean vacation, not a diet. You don’t have to deprive yourself one tiny bit. It's really all about the ratio. Concentrate on building meals around vegetables, fruit, fatty fish, olive oil, nuts, and whole grains, and let processed food, refined sugar, and fried stuff play a smaller supporting role instead of the lead. You don't have to throw out anything in your fridge or overhaul your whole entire pantry this weekend. Just swap out white bread for whole grain the next time you go to the store. Then, make sure and add a fistful of greens at lunch and dinner. Put fish on the menu twice a week, yes, sardines count, we've talked about this. I have a whole article on why sardines are not only delicious but really gives you all the good things when it comes to Omega 3’s. 

Get up and move your body, moderately, consistently, not heroically. You do not need to become a person who does burpees or cross trains. Research keeps landing in the same place: 150 minutes a week of moderate movement, brisk walking, swimming, cycling, a dance class that is fun and makes you feel good, also it measurably lowers inflammatory markers. Also on the flip side ~ Did You know? Overtraining can actually spike inflammation, so this is a rare case where “more” isn't “better.” A 20-minute walk after dinner counts. It counts a lot, actually. If all else fails, my husband and I go for a walk on our deck for 15 minutes after meals, if we can’t go for a traditional walk in the neighborhood. 

And then there is stress. We all have it in our lives. Chronic stress keeps your body in fight-or-flight, which keeps cortisol elevated, which then keeps the inflammation running in the background like a browser tab you forgot to close. Ten minutes of quiet, a short walk outside, deep breathing before bed, none of it sounds like medicine, but your inflammatory markers don't need dramatic proactive care. Just little tiny acknowledgments that you care about yourself and your body. 

On the supplements side, the honest version. Omega-3s, CoQ10, turmeric/curcumin, and vitamin D with Vitamin K are the ones that come up most often in the research, and they're reasonable to discuss with your doctor if your diet's not covering the bases. But supplements are the amplifier, not the song, they support the habits above, they don't replace them, and “natural” doesn't mean “no interactions with your other medications.” This is exactly the conversation to have at your next physical, not a decision to make alone on an impulse in the Target vitamin aisle.

“Supplements are the amplifier, not the song.”

None of this is a 30-day reset with a finish line. It does not require you to fast to detox. It does not require a radical shift to this or that kind of diet. No extreme exercise plan. It's closer to what my grandmother used to call the “just how you live” plan,  except now we have the research to back up what she was doing by instinct all along. 

This article is for general educational purposes and isn't a substitute for medical advice. Talk to your doctor before starting new supplements or exercise routines, especially if you have existing health conditions.Which habit are you actually going to try first — be honest, hit reply and tell

WELLNESS / PERSONAL

I've started a journal at least eleven-teen times since 1987. Every single one has the same fate: three expressive and enthusiastic entries, then a really pretty bookmark that never moves again. A few years later it resurfaces in the printer paper drawer. Then I open the journal and read my own handwriting, and wonder if I can still write in cursive. It’s like it belongs to a stranger with better penmanship than I can eek out nowadays.

So why am I telling you I'm trying again?

Because I picked up a book, Journaling 101 for Absolute Beginners by Angelina Kaul, and something about it made me want to revisit journaling again. This book made it feel simple and less like homework and more like an invitation. Kaul's whole approach is built for people who've tried and stalled out before, which, hello, that's entirely me. No pressure to write three pages a day like it's an assignment. Just permission to start small, and structure enough that “I don't know what to write” stops being a reason to quit within the week.

Here's what's different this time: I'm not doing it to become A Person Who Journals. I'm doing it because I'm curious what happens when I actually track the stuff running through my head instead of just carrying it around all day like a purse full of receipts. The stressful stuff. The random stuff at 2am. The days that feel good and I can't say why. I want a record, not a performance. A recollection of experiences that would be forgotten otherwise.

“I want a record, not a performance. A recollection of experiences that would be forgotten otherwise.”

I'm giving myself permission to write for leisure, for fun, however it comes out on paper. And this time it will be okay to skip days without judging myself. To use it for lists one day, and my feelings other days, and it doesn’t have to extraordinary in any way. If eleven-teen false starts taught me anything, it's that the version of journaling that survives is the real-life version that fits me, not the pretty one with the color-coded tabs I saw on social media. That’s just not realistic, for me, anyways. I like lived in, original, full of life and character, entirely GenX.

I'll let you know how this actually goes, good, bad, or “I forgot for six days and that's fine too.” If you've got a journaling method that actually works for you, I want to hear it. I have a feeling I'm not the only one in this newsletter with a drawer full of half-finished notebooks.

Here’s the link to the book I was talking about : https://a.co/d/0edmbF2B

GENX THROWBACK

There was one phone in the house, and if you were like most GenX’ers it lived on the kitchen wall. If you were lucky it had a humongous cord that had been stretched, twisted, and yanked around corners so many times it looked less like a phone cord and more like a Slinky having a nervous breakdown. And really that cord was the entire architecture of your social life.

Getting real privacy during a phone call usually became full covert operation. You'd stretch that cord to its absolute limit, down the hall, around the doorframe, into your room if you were lucky enough to have a door that shut all the way, while your voice dropped to the specific almost whisper register reserved for saying something to your girlfriend about a boy that you really liked in school.  And just when you thought you looked out for your parents and kept clear of them, there she'd be. Little sister. She was always lurking in the hallway shadows like she'd been hired for government surveillance program, always stealth, saying nothing, just magically standing there, absorbing every word for later blackmail material that she would report to your parents. 

But, there was no escaping the shared line. If someone else in the house needed the phone, you heard about it, your parents did not care if you still needed to talk. If a parent picked up the extension to make a call, you both froze in that horrible three-way silence where everyone knew everyone was listening and nobody said so. And if the line was busy when you called someone? That was it. No voicemail, no “seen at 4:47pm,” no follow-up text. Just the busy signal, and the redial button getting a workout.

I know that I had everyone’s phone number memorized. We all memorized phone numbers because, really,  there were no other options. Your best friend's number. Your grandmother's number. The number for the boy whose name you wrote in your notebook margins. All of it just lived in your head, permanently, the way you still remember it today even though you haven't dialed a full phone number from memory in twenty years.

“There she'd be. Little sister. Lurking in the hallway shadows like she'd been hired for a government surveillance program.”

Our phone conversations weren’t private. It wasn't easy to be a teen. And somehow it still felt like the most important conversations of our lives happened with that stretched out telephone cord, the one that could go half way around the house, and away from anyone we were trying to avoid, parents and sister included.

No little sisters were actually harmed in the writing of this piece, though a few doors may have been slammed and several were absolutely side-eyed for invading older sister privacy back in the day.

Who was YOUR household phone spy? Hit reply and tell me who used to lurk ir hallway.HEALTH  ·  MONEY  ·  NOSTALGIA  —  ALL IN ONE PLACE