Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash With schools and many workplaces closed and millions of people sheltering in place over the past three months, our intensely social species has found its social habits undergoing a sometimes disturbing transformation. Many changes…

Photo by Külli Kittus on Unsplash We have a bit of a tendency to throw around the word “addiction.” On one hand, we have the “fun” kind of addiction, as in, “this new show is so addictive”, or “I’m addicted…

Photo by Ello on Unsplash Diet is right up there with religion and politics as a topic that will often create acrimony or even outright hostility among folks who don’t see eye to eye, so if you find anything hard…

Photo by CDC on Unsplash Vaccination is a process in which our immune systems are introduced to a harmless version of an infectious agent, such as a virus or bacterium. This introduction induces the body’s natural immune response and marks…

Photo by Testalize.me on Unsplash Just a few short weeks ago, much of the Covid-19 news was focused on the shortage of mechanical ventilators, machines that breathe for a patient who can no longer breathe on their own. More ventilators…

Photo by Emma Simpson on Unsplash Sociality (not socialism) is the degree to which an animal cooperates or associates with its own kind, and it is a product of survival, evolution, and biology. Some organisms, like many big cats, are…

Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels How is that adjustment going? Two weeks ago we talked about the stages of grief and a psychological condition called “adjustment disorder” in reference to the reaction to sheltering in place that we may be experiencing. Back…

Photo by Ashkan Forouzani on Unsplash Have you adjusted yet? It would not be surprising if your answer were a resounding “No!”  You might even be feeling a kind of grief for your former life, the one in which you…

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on March 31, 2020 We are living through one of the scariest times in recent history, and humans are not very good at being scared. Experiencing an overwhelming global…

Photo by Adam Nieścioruk on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on March 24, 2020 While Humboldt County’s lone official positive case of Covid-19 has recovered, the highly infectious and deadly disease caused by a novel coronavirus that emerged in…

Photo by Tonik on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on February 18, 2020 First, a quick update. The Wuhan Coronavirus has a new name and is now called COVID-19. I think the rebranding is a little sterile and sounds…

Photo by Gani Nurhakim on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on February 4, 2020 From the same planet that brought you SARS and MERS, it’s the 2019-nCoV novel coronavirus. I’m sure a more pronounceable acronym is forthcoming, but for…

Photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels Suppose your beloved but clumsy dance partner steps on your foot and you immediately feel pain, identified by your brain as clearly being in the crushed appendage, but what exactly is that sensation and where does it…

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash Around this time of year, the end of one and beginning of another, many people are inclined to make some changes. Spurred by the sense of renewal that turning over the December page can…

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash I had a great opening sentence to this article that came to me last night as I was going to sleep. Where it went since then, I have no idea. Memory is far from…

Twenty four representatives of four local organizations met January 16th at the Hospital’s new Sprowel Creek Campus to explore the possibilities for improving healthcare outreach to Northern Mendocino and Southern Humboldt’s smaller, remote communities. Board members and senior staff from…

Photo by CDC on Unsplash The old scientific debate of nature vs. nurture has taken on some promising new directions since the field of epigenetics has been developing over the past few decades. Every living thing carries a genetically coded…

Photo by Ekaterina Shakharova on Unsplash This is the first in a two-part series looking at the effects of aging on our health, and the lives and well-being of seniors in our community. Death and taxes aren’t the only certainties…

Photo by Kelvin Valerio from Pexels There is a nerve in the human body that regulates heart function, influences digestion, informs you when it’s safe to relax, and promotes efficient swallowing and speaking. This longest cranial nerve (originating in the brain) also receives…

Photo by Martin Grube from the FEMA Photo Library  Molds are not exactly the most charismatic of fungi. They are not often as tasty or charming as mushrooms, and not useful for fermentation or baking like their cousins the yeasts.…

Photo by Imani Bahati on Unsplash What happens when the nerves within your muscle tissue become abnormally excitable or confused? That muscle will involuntarily contract, tense and shorten, resulting in what is called either a spasm or a cramp, or any number…

Photo by Lux Graves on Unsplash In case you don’t remember, you’ve probably spent a third of your life laying dormant, experiencing deep periods of unconsciousness alternating with patterns of symbolic, poorly understood, yet altogether vivid and emotional hallucinations. For…

Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash Breast Cancer. We’ve all heard about it. We’ve seen the pink-washed products on the shelves and the Run for the Cure events. But just how common is breast cancer? Well as it turns out…

Photo by Anupam Mahapatra Can you touch your toes without bending your knees? Can you scratch that itch in the center of your back? How about doing the splits the way you could when you were on the Cheer team…