FOR YOUR HEALTH: How to Keep Your Mental Health in Check This Year

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For many people, the gifts, gatherings, eating and drinking at this time of year take a toll on their mental health. Mental health experts share some things you can do to help avoid holiday-related challenges.

(NAPSI)—While the joy and busyness of the holiday season can take a toll on some people’s mental health, that doesn’t have to be. There are ways to avoid holiday-related challenges.
People may feel stressed, sad or anxious during the holiday season for a variety of reasons. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, extra stress, unrealistic expectations, sentimental memories and other factors during the season may set some people up for temporary bouts of depression or anxiety.

Help Yourself to a More Jolly Season

However, mental health experts say there are things you can do to help avoid holiday-related challenges.

“Please remember, this is your holiday!” says Dr. Benjamin Yu, a psychiatrist in Roseville, California. “While there are many expectations and obligations from multiple sources (such as family, occupational, religious, social), this is still your time and you have the right to say yes or no. Chances are, what you would like to do is likely what others really want to do, and most of the time when you relay your desires and dislikes, this will lead to a more cohesive celebration.”

Many experts advise, among the holiday events and merry making, to try to keep up your normal daily routines as much as possible. That includes eating and drinking in moderation, avoiding alcohol if you’re feeling down and getting enough sleep. If you find yourself in a stressful situation at a family gathering, they say it’s OK to take a break.

“I often tell [patients] that when I used paper prescriptions, I would write a prescription to ‘have a migraine’ so they could say ‘my head hurts…I have to leave.’ It allows the person to exit without having their self-image damaged or their PTSD triggered,” says Dr. Nan Nelson, a psychiatrist in Beachwood, Ohio.

Taking part in other activities, such as breathing exercises, meditation and moving your body physically – even if it’s just off the couch – can also be helpful, according to the experts. Planning ahead may also be worthwhile.

“The winter holidays can bring on positive and negative emotions and memories. Keeping your emotional equilibrium during this time requires a delicate balance between body, mind and spirit. Before the holidays move into high gear, take a look at how you are feeling and make a plan that will keep you on an even keel this season,” says Dr. Paul B. Hill, a psychiatrist in Memphis, Tennessee.

Dr. Hill says it’s important to continue your current mental health therapies throughout the season.

Learn More

For more information on how to improve your mental health this year, ask your clinician or visit GeneSight.com/holidaymentalhealth.

THE BEST VIEW: White potato, blue potato…

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by Norma Best Boucher

I am writing a cookbook. No, really, I am. Everyone else has written a cookbook – a pioneer woman, a Barefoot Contessa, Frankie Avalon. Yes, even teen idol Frankie Avalon has written a cookbook. What to write about? That is the question.

Most chefs promote recipes that are their favorites but with a personal “twist.” I am tired of the favorites and need an alternative. I am talking about the potato.

I have loved the potato for decades, seven decades to be exact. My mother boiled them with little onions. I have mashed them, smashed them, and smothered them with butter, herbs, and sour cream. I have steamed them, baked them, roasted them, and even scalloped them, but I have run out of personal “twists” that make me say, “More potatoes, please.”

No one is more disappointed than I. Just when we have a cornucopia of “wonder food” potatoes filled with vitamins, minerals, and fiber, I, not the potato, have failed the potato test.

Oh, I may eat macaroni and cheese, but that is not my comfort food and will not sustain me through the cold winter. I cannot eat mac and cheese every day for six months, as I can the potato.

What to do? Oh, what to do?

Then, it hit me – rice. Rice sustains the other half of the world’s population. Rice is filled with all of the nutrients I need, and I have so many choices: white, brown, Arborio, jasmine, basmati, wild and even forbidden rice. My quest began.

First, I tried the white – short, medium and long grain. I progressed to the brown, a nutty experience. I made risotto with the Arborio and continued with the fragrant jasmine and the non-clumping basmati. I went to my wild side with the wild rice and then finally to the forbidden rice that only the emperor could eat.

I tried. I really did, but they just didn’t make it. I cooked the rice in chicken broth, fruit juices and even wine. I added toppings – roasted vegetables, marscarpone cheese, dates, cherries, apples, pecans, cashews, and even pistachio nuts. I added everything but chocolate. I loved the toppings, but the rice was still just rice. I missed my beloved potato.

“I love the toppings,” I thought.

“I love potatoes,” I thought.

The white potato, the blue potato, the red potato, the gold potato, the sweet potato, the fingerlings, and the baby potatoes all took on a new meaning to my life. I started adding the cheese, the dates, the cherries, the apples, and all of the nuts.

Once again, I was at one with the potato.

A cookbook was born.

If a pioneer woman, a Barefoot Contessa, and a teen idol can publish a cookbook, so can I.

Watch out, Amazon.com, here I come: Potatoes – Everything but Chocolate, by a Twisted Potato Lover.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Christmas music

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Peter Knight

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Christmas music

Reader’s Digest released a number of record sets devoted to Christmas music, one being a 1985, two LP set Joy to the World. It contains two sides of 15 famous carols performed with decent professionalism by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Peter Knight (1917-1985); Knight’s name might be familiar to fans of the Moody Blues as he scored the strings for the group’s album Days of Future Passed.

Side 3 is devoted to a lushly overdone Christmas Suite for Orchestra consisting of the tried and true seasonal pop songs – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, Winter Wonderland, Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride, etc., with Waldtaufel’s classical Skater’s Waltz tacked on the end.

Side 4 has organ and bells instrumentals of The First Noel, Schubert’s Ave Maria, Good King Wenceslas and a couple of others. Nice arrangements in very small doses.

Caribbean Calypsos

A 1956 Capitol album (T 10071) Caribbean Calypsos features three vocalists – Tony Johnson and a singer simply known as the Torpedo, both men natives of Jamaica; and the older Lord Beginner (1904-1981) who came from Port of Spain, Trinidad.

The selections have such titles as I Will Die a Bachelor, Wheel and Turn Me, Don’t Fence Her In, Lazy Janie and Queen Elizabeth Calypso. And the lyrics evoked the peaceful contentment of life then in both islands while downplaying its difficulties.

The birth names of Lord Beginner and the Torpedo, respectively, were the good old-fashioned English names of Egbert Moore and Nevil Cameron and were zealously kept a secret from their fans in the island. Lord Beginner sold more records than any other Calypso singer, save for Harry Belafonte who surpassed him by a narrow margin.

Interestingly, as of the mid-50s, all three singers were residing in England.

Wienerwalzer Paprika

Wienerwalzer Paprika (Mercury MG50190) is an LP recorded during the summer of 1958 at the Vienna Konzerthaus Grosse Saal, one of the grand buildings erected during the reign of Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph to function as a concert hall and still in use, most famously as the location of the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Eve concerts broadcast worldwide.

The album doesn’t contain a single waltz by Vienna’s immortal Waltz King Johann Strauss Junior (1825-1899), instead focusing on six waltzes by as many composers:

1. Josef Lanner (1801-1835) – Die Schonbrunner Waltz; btw, Lanner, who was a self-taught violinist, formed a quartet to earn money performing at social gatherings and his second violinist was Johann Strauss Senior (1800-1849).

2. Josef Strauss (1827-1870) – Village Swallows Waltz; Josef was the younger brother of the Waltz King.

3. Emil Waldtaufel (1837-1915) – The Skater’s Waltz. This classic was conducted with more musicality than the above-mentioned rendition in the Reader’s Digest set.

4. Franz Lehar (1870-1948) – Merry Widow Waltz. I own numerous recordings of Lehar’s perpetually charming music for his Viennese operettas, the Merry Widow being quite rightfully his most famous.

5. Erno Dohnanyi (1877-1960) – Wedding Waltz. Dohnanyi was also a noted pianist, conductor and teacher in Budapest and, during his last ten years, at the University of Florida in Tallahassee.

During the Nazi occupation of Hungary, Dohnanyi’s personal intervention saved the lives of several dozen Jewish musicians. His son Hans was an admiral in the German navy but took an active role in the anti-Nazi resistance, as did his daughter’s husband, the renowned theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer; both men were arrested by the Gestapo and later executed.

Hans’s son Christoph Dohnanyi became Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1984 to 2002 and is still active at the age of 94.

6. Emmerich Kalman (1882-1953) – The Gypsy Princess Waltz. Kalman was completing the Gypsy Princess in Budapest in 1915, while World War I was raging around him and, since its premiere in Vienna, the Operetta has been produced over 8,000 times worldwide.

Antal Dorati (1906-1988) conducted performances of vivid distinction while Mercury’s then-revolutionary technique of using one microphone placed strategically in the hall captured a full range of sound with tremendous clarity.

SCORES & OUTDOORS: The Maine coon cat

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Maine Coon Cat

Roland D. Halleeby Roland D. Hallee

I don’t usually do a column on domestic house pets, but I think this one is worth the exception. I have this Maine coon cat that hangs around my house. It belongs to the next door neighbors, but it seems to have claimed my yard as part of its territory.

The Maine coon cat is one of the oldest natural breeds in North America, specifically native to the state of Maine, and is recognized as the official state cat.

Although the Maine coon’s origins and date of introduction to the United States are unknown, there are many theories. The breed was popular in cat shows in the late 19th century, but its existence became threatened when long-haired breeds from overseas were introduced in the early 20th century. The breed has made a recovery, and is second only to the Persians in popularity throughout the world.

There are only theories and folklore as to their origin. One involves Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, who was executed in 1793. The story goes that before her death, Antoinette attempted to escape France with the help of Capt. Sam­uel Clough. She loaded Clough’s ship with her most prized possessions, including six of her favorite Turkish Angora cats. Although she did not make it to the United States, her pets safely reached the shores of Wiscasset, where they bred with other short-haired breeds and evolved into the modern breed of Maine coon.

Another folk story involves Capt. Charles Coon, an English seafarer who kept long-haired cats aboard his ships. Whenever Coon’s ship would anchor in New England ports, the felines would exit the ship and mate with the local feral population. When long-haired kittens began appearing in the litters of the local cat population, they were referred to as one of “Coon’s cats.”

A myth which is trait-based, though genetically impossible, is the idea that the modern Maine coon descended from ancestors of semi-feral domestic cats and raccoons. This myth would account for the common color of the breed (brown tabby) and its bushy tail. Another idea is that the Maine coon originated between the matings of domestic cats and wild bobcats, which could explain the tufts of hairs that are so commonly seen on the tips of the ears.

The generally-accepted theory among breeders is the possibility that the short-haired domestic cats and long-haired breeds brought from overseas, were responsible, especially the 11th century Vikings. The Maine coon bears strong resemblance to the Norwegian Forest Cat.

The first mention of Maine coons in a literary work was in 1861, when a black and white Maine coon by the name of Captain Jenks of the Horse Marines, was written about by co-owner F. R. Pierce, who wrote a chapter in Frances Simpson’s The Book of Cats in 1903.

In 1895, a dozen Maine coons were entered in a show in Boston. On May 8, 1895, the first North American cat show was hosted at Madison Square Garden, in New York City. A female Maine coon brown tabby, named Cosey, won the silver collar and medal, and was named best in show.

In the early 20th century, the Maine coon’s popularity began to decline with the introduction of other long-haired breeds, such as Persians. The last recorded win by a Maine coon in a national cat show was in 1911 in Portland, Oregon. The breed was rarely seen after that. The decline was so severe that is was prematurely declared extinct in the 1950s.

Maine coons are known as “gentle giants” and possess above-average intelligence, making them easy to train. They are known for being loyal to their families and cautious, but not mean, around strangers, but are independent and not clingy. It is not generally known as a lap cat, but their gentle disposition makes the breed relaxed around dogs, other cats and children. They are playful throughout their lives, the male more so than the female.

Maine coons have a fascination with water, and some theorize that this trait comes from their ancestors, who were aboard ships for much of their lives.

Maine coons are generally a healthy and hardy breed, and have adapted to survive the New Eng­land climate. Their most severe threat is a heart disease most commonly found in cats, whether pure bred or not. Another potential health problem is spinal muscular atrophy, a disease which causes the loss of the neurons in the spinal cord that activate the skeletal muscles of the trunk and limbs.

They have several physical adaptations for survival in harsh winter climates. Their dense fur is water resistant and the shaggier hair on their underside and rear protect them when walking or sitting on top of wet surfaces of snow and ice. Their long and bush raccoon-like tail is resistant to sinking in snow, and can be curled around their face and shoulders for warmth and protection from wind and blowing snow.

My wife and I have had our share of cats over the years, and choose not to have any more. But if I were to have another cat, it would be a Maine coon. There seems to be a mystique about them.

IMPROVEMENT?

Well, Patriots fans, what do you take away from Sunday’s loss to the New York Giants, 10-7?

I think it’s an improvement. After losing, 10-6, to Indianapolis two weeks ago, they only lost by three points instead of four. It is a sad affair when your defense gives up only 10 points in each of those games, and they still lose. It can only get better, right? Can you say, 2-15?

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

The New England Patriots were the first NFL team to achieve what record during the regular season?

Answer
Three.

FOR YOUR HEALTH – Be A Holiday Hero: Get Vaccinated This Season

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CVS Pharmacy can help you and your family fight the flu this season.

(NAPSI)—With respiratory virus season in full swing, you may think it’s too late for you and your family to get vaccinated against the flu. The good news: it’s not.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there’s still time to get your flu shot because flu typically peaks in February and can continue into May. Since it takes up to two weeks to build protection against the flu, getting vaccinated now will help protect yourself, your friends and your family from the flu as you gather during the holidays.

Like Thanksgiving, getting your flu shot is an annual event

It’s important to get a flu shot every year because the body’s protection from the vaccine declines over time. Also, flu viruses vary from year to year, so receiving the latest vaccine formulation provides optimal protection. It’s especially important to protect at-risk populations—such as adults 65 and older – from severe illness.

One-stop shop for immunization and illness prevention needs

There are more than 9,000 CVS Pharmacy locations that also offer COVID-19, RSV and more than 15 other preventive vaccines, providing the protection needed as multiple viruses circulate at the same time. CVS Pharmacy is convenient­—85% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of one. This makes it easy for people to get vaccinated and find items such as over-the-counter cold and flu symptom relief products, immune support supplements and disinfectant cleaning products, and take all the steps necessary to help protect against illness this winter. CVS Pharmacy also carries antiviral medications, which require prescriptions and provide treatment if you do get sick with the flu.

Advanced scheduling for vaccine appointments

At CVS Pharmacy and MinuteClinic, you can conveniently schedule vaccines for yourself and your family in the same appointment via digital scheduling (through CVS.com, MinuteClinic.com or the CVS Pharmacy app), and the pharmacy offers walk-in appointments for people of all ages, seven days per week. As an added bonus, anyone who receives a CDC-recommended vaccine through the end of the year at CVS Pharmacy will get a $5 off $20 in-store coupon.

Learn More

Visit www.cvs.com or www.minuteclinic.com for more information on the vaccines offered. Certain immunizations have age and location restrictions.

I’M JUST CURIOUS: Morals and manners

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by Debbie Walker

I have been watching a chain of events taking place. Have you noticed? It seems to me that we have been losing touch with those niceties. When I was working in the school system with first and second graders, that first day of school we had to teach academics but also had to begin teaching basic table manners. They caught on quickly. Kids learn good and not so good behavior at about the same time.

Okay, enough about kids. I have a book (of course) titled Manners and Morals of Victorian America, by Wayne Erbsen. I get a wicked chuckle from reading this stuff. The olden ways were pretty stiff but if we could have saved a bit of the manners and morals it might have been better.

We are entering the holiday activities time of the year. I am working for the theater group, and we are doing a play, Mistletoe Ridge, a Christmas comedy. It’s cute. I have recently read the manners book and there was information about how to behave in concerts, and table manners in group meals. Naturally I was interested. So…..

Beating the time with canes or feet is not a fashionable way to applaud at the play (It appears to be appropriate now) can indicate natural emotion and everything like feeling is now out of fashion. And of course, it is rude to whisper or talk during the performance and annoying to those of the audience around you.

Applause is by clapping hands, and not by stomping or kicking with the feet. (Still the proper thing).

There are quite a few of these DON’Ts, many more than I am printing here. These are geared for dining:

Shoveling food in is considered an atrocity, that in Europe you would be escorted out.

Solemn dullness and unsociability at meals is not acceptable.

Don’t tuck your napkin under your chin, nor spread it upon your breast. Bibs and tuckers are for the nursery.

Don’t fail to notice elderly people. (Even in a Native American family following old customs will seat their elders and serve them first.)

Don’t scold and snarl, as it is exceedingly ill bred to do so.

Don’t chew or fumble your toothpick in public. (Even restaurants give them to you until you are exiting.)

(THERE WERE MANY MORE!!)

Hold your tongue. Nothing is ruder than to converse whilst people are singing. If you don’t like what you are hearing, you should remove yourself lest you ruin it for others.

More Nevers. Told you there are many more than I am going to be able to print at this time.

Never fail to be punctual at the time appointed.

Never fail to give a polite answer to a civil question.

Never appear to notice a scar, deformity, or defect of anyone present.

Never fail to offer the easiest and best seat in the room to an invalid, an elderly person or a lady.

It is fun reading about the manners and morals of years ago. Comparing them to today gives us something to think about.

I’m just curious if you find these things as interesting as I do. If you have time to comment, you can find me at DebbieWalker@townline.org. Have a wonderful holiday season.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Jimmy Carter

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Jimmy Carter

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Jimmy Carter

The 39th President Jimmy Carter has achieved a few longevity records .

First, he is the oldest living one at 99.

Secondly, he has lived the longest of any President.

Thirdly, since his defeat for re-election in 1980 by Reagan, he has been out of office the longest.

Finally, he and his wife Rosalynn were married the longest of any presidential couple, lasting from 1946 to her death just a few hours ago (I am writing this Sunday evening, November 19, 2023), and surpassing by a few years that of George and Barbara Bush.

Novelist/journalist Norman Mailer wrote a fascinating New York Times magazine profile of Carter during his 1976 campaign and expressed awe at the candidate’s phenomenally encyclopedic memory, his grasp of the complexities of domestic and foreign problems and his above average, very focused interest in them (Mailer cited German novelist Thomas Mann’s statement- “Only the exhaustive is truly interesting.”).

Mailer also mentioned Carter’s younger brother Billy (1937-1988), a “good old boy” with a pleasant personality but not somebody to cross.

A photo of the newly-elected president in November 1976, that sticks in the memory is one of the two brothers and a few friends having beers at Billy’s gas station in their hometown of Plains, Georgia, and dressed in work shirts and blue jeans – one didn’t see the armies of secret service personnel surrounding the village.

For me, the most distinguished achievement of Jimmy Carter’s presidency was as a host and mediator at Camp David when former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin negotiated a peace between the two countries, that pretty well ended in 1981 when Sadat was assassinated.

A setback in his administration was the Middle Eastern oil crisis in which gas prices went up, supplies became limited and long lines of cars resulted at gas pumps across the country.

With respect to our Pine Tree State, Carter appointed former Governor Kenneth Curtis as Ambassador to Canada and former Senator Edmund Muskie as Secretary of State, both men unfortunately serving terms of brief duration. He also came to Bangor for one of his town meetings and invited one of the questioners, an elementary school teacher, to bring her class to the White House for a visit with him and ten-year-old daughter Amy.

Information on Carter’s years in the White House abounds in libraries and on the Internet.

Prior to 1976, Jimmy Carter was a successful peanut farmer in Plains and was elected Governor of Georgia in 1971 for one term.

His post-presidential years have been distinguished by him with a nail apron and level building houses for Habitat for Humanity .

All three of his siblings died from pancreatic cancer in their 50s.

MY POINT OF VIEW: What brought Pilgrims to our shores and the first Thanksgiving

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by Gary Kennedy

The Mayflower traversed the Atlantic to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, led by William Bradford. The reason for the journey was the pursuit of religious freedom. Protestantism was in its infancy. William Bradford was an English Puritan Separatist originally from the West Riding of Yorkshire in northern England. Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation. Theology is the ordinary study of the nature of the divine, or more broadly, of religious belief. Back during these times there were so many hands on religion that I am surprised there is any sanity to it all; while just leaving the Crusades with Masonic influence, the Knights Templars and the then cruel Catholic Church. This was a time of land grabs and Godly exploration. The monks and friars had many very cruel priests in their flocks and dealt out extremely cruel punishments for any sort of disobedience.

The British and the Spanish ruled the seas during these times and they gobbled up all the known world in search of wealth and labor. All their acquisitions were placed in total subservience to their mother countries. People were totally inferior and had to give undivided religious obedience to their captors. This as we know will only last so long, and then the people will revolt; as they did in many areas of the world.

The cruelty of England brought the Pilgrims to our shores; and this began the story of the initial settlement here and the first Thanksgiving. We arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, and would have perished if not for the Wampanoag Native people. They aided with our survival through the first winter, which took many of the settlers’ lives. After being taught how to plant using dried fish for fertilizer we had our first successful crop. There were 90 Wampanoag present for a feast of vegetables, turkey and fish and pudding for dessert. This is where the history of turkey began, as they were in abundance and easy to obtain during this time. Here in Maine they eventually became extirpated and were reintroduced in the 1980s. You never would have guessed that now. They are everywhere.

The complete history is a long and dark one and would take the entire newspaper to cover it all. Anyway, in 1620, 50 pilgrims and 90 Wampanoags celebrated. The feast lasted three days. I should mention only five women survived that first winter. Thanksgiving is celebrated both as a secular as well as a religious holiday. Many argue the story of this holiday and its insemination. One example would be the arrival of a Spanish fleet in 1565 to plant a cross to christen the new settlement of St. Augustine; 800 settlers shared a meal with the Native Timucuan people.

Probably the most notable of happenings would be that of Abraham Lincoln in 1863, at the height of the Civil War, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender mercy all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or suffers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation”. Veterans and the official creation of Thanksgiving began on the last Thursday of November.

So this is just bits and pieces of how Thanksgiving first began. Turkey evolved in many variations to the feast that it is today on November 23, 2023. It’s now a time to give thanks to God for all that he gives and a time for family and friends to get together and enjoy their blessings together, in peace and harmony. We are going through some hard times currently, so it would be a good time to reflect on our blessings. Also, again we should never forget those who gave it all so that we could be and remain free.

God bless you and yours and have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

FOR YOUR HEALTH: Take Charge of Tomorrow: Preventing Diabetes Health Problems

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(NAPSI)—November is National Diabetes Month, when communities across the country spread awareness about diabetes. 

Did you know that at least 1 in 10 Americans has diabetes? That’s 37 million adults and children.

Diabetes is a disease that occurs when your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is too high. Diabetes can raise your risk of health problems such as heart attack, stroke, cancer and diseases that affect your kidneys, eyes, teeth or feet. The good news is that managing diabetes as early as possible after diagnosis may help you prevent these health problems.

“Managing diabetes is a daily responsibility that can make a huge impact on staying healthy and preventing complications down the road,” said Dr. Griffin P. Rodgers, director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). “I encourage everyone with diabetes to work with their health care team to learn how they can best manage their condition to maintain an active life and delay or avoid diabetes-related problems.”

Here are tips to help you manage your diabetes today to prevent health problems. You can start by managing your diabetes ABCs, building healthy habits and working closely with your health care team.

Manage Your Diabetes ABCs

Managing your diabetes ABCs is an essential first step in preventing diabetes health problems. The diabetes ABCs are your:

• A1C blood glucose level.

• Blood pressure.

• Cholesterol.

Health care professionals give the A1C test to measure your average blood glucose level over the last three months. Some people with diabetes also use devices to track their blood glucose throughout the day and night.

Research shows that keeping your diabetes ABCs in a healthy range can help prevent blood vessel damage and health problems from diabetes. Ask your health care team what blood glucose, cholesterol and blood pressure levels are healthy for you.

Make Lifestyle Changes To Build Healthy Habits

You can manage your diabetes ABCs by building healthy habits and taking steps to:

• Plan healthy meals and snacks that are lower in calories, sugar, saturated fat and salt.

• Be physically active most days of the week.

• Reach or maintain a healthy weight.

• Stop smoking, vaping or using other tobacco products.

• Get enough sleep and take care of your mental health.

When planning meals, try to choose more fruits, nonstarchy vegetables, whole grains, lean protein foods, and low-fat or nonfat dairy products or dairy alternatives. Drink water instead of sugary drinks.

Walking is a simple way to be active. Invite a loved one or a friend to make walking a social activity. If you’re not active now or a health condition prevents you from being active, ask your health care professional about physical activities that are best for you.

Making lifestyle changes can be hard. You don’t have to do it all at once. Start slow and build healthier habits from there. Ask for help from your family, friends and health care team.

Work With Your Health Care Team

Managing diabetes takes a team. Your diabetes care team may include a:

• Primary care provider or diabetes specialist.

• Nurse.

• Diabetes educator or nutritionist.

• Dentist.

• Pharmacist.

• Mental health counselor.

• Specialist in health problems affecting your heart, kidneys, eyes or feet.

Your health care team may recommend medicines or devices to help manage your diabetes ABCs. Taking your medicines, even if you feel healthy, can help you prevent diabetes health problems. Talk with your health care team if you have trouble affording medicines or taking your medicines on time.

To learn more about preventing or delaying diabetes health problems this National Diabetes Month, visit the NIDDK website at www.niddk.nih.gov and follow on social media @NIDDKgov.

I’M JUST CURIOUS: More interesting ideas

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by Debbie Walker

At least I hope you find them interesting….

It’s not fun digging around in the dark when you realize you forgot to plug your cell phone into a charger. You might try putting a strip of Velcro on your charger to hold it in place where you can easily find it. Mine is on the head of my bed. It has saved me some time, don’t have to hunt anymore.

Did I tell you I am an assistant stage manager for a local play? One of my jobs is to help actors and actresses whenever I can. The other night one of the performers marked up their handbook with a highlighter for their parts. That was a no-no. They were concerned because they couldn’t erase it. Actually, it is pretty easy, got a lemon? Cut a lemon in half. Rub a Q-tip in the lemon juice. Wipe the highlighted sections and watch it disappear.

Ladies (and gentlemen) have you experienced a razor burn? Itchy, and painful red bumps. Do yourself a favor, use a cotton ball and apply witch hazel to your skin once dried from a shower. It will minimize inflammation, redness and fends off infections.

Would you like some help taking a sticky price tag or label off? Saturate a cotton ball with witch hazel, hold it on the sticker for 30 seconds. It will dissolve the bonding. (Now I know why my great-grandmother kept some in her house.)

I haven’t tried this yet, but I certainly intend to. Allergies leave my under eyes puffy. I read I should put my witch hazel in the freezer until chilled. Once chilled moisten cotton pads with the solution, placed over eyes for five minutes, ta-da! less puffy. If it tightens skin under the eyes, why wouldn’t it do away with face wrinkles?

Do you have a need to light a fire? To speed up the process place a few corks in a jar, add enough rubbing alcohol to cover, seal the jar and let soak. Next time you need to start a fire, drop soaked corks under the kindling. That will speed things up.

I am hoping you don’t mind if I, once again, print my little Christmas thought for little kiddos. I know you understand that I am an avid reader, and as such, I hope to see my little great-granddaughter enjoy reading, also. You can be absent Christmas morning but still be part of it. I have picked out two of the same story book. One I keep and one I give her. I pick a time with her mother that would be good to read to her on Facebook, face to face but miles and miles away, it’s a gift to us both.

I hope when it comes to gifts for your older, senior citizens, how about gift certificates. If they have a favorite store that they would never allow themselves to “Spend that kind of money on themselves.” There are also certificates to get her or him such as oil changes, car detailed, just put on your thinking cap.

I am just curious what things you might think of for gifts. If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear them. Contact me at DebbieWalker@townline.org . Have a great week.