Why I Love the NHS

Over the past several weeks there has been endless, and rather heated, debate about health care. As an American-born single woman living in England, where I enjoy dual-citizenship and, yes, government-provided health care, I thought I’d share my two cents on the subject.
Prior to going freelance and moving to London, I had a corporate editing [...]

Free Month of Classes! Enter SMW’s BurnSF Contest!

Enter to win a free month of UNLIMITED classes at San Francisco’s Hottest New Fitness Method – Burn – and receive a FREE session! Burn is a unique method that merges pilates, weight training and cardio to create a body sculpting, heart-pumping 55-minute workout.
Why Burn Works: In order to truly train the body effectively, [...]

Flusteria Part II: Symptoms (Yes, It’s Still Around!)

Now that the 24-hour news machine has drowned us all in Swine Flu coverage, known at SMW as “flusteria,” we thought it might be wise to share with our health channel readers the background and the symptoms of real, as opposed to media flu.
As to Swine Flu coverage, it was a very real strain of [...]

Red State Single Women: Support Single Payer Healthcare, or Stay Virgins

Last week I got a notice from our insurance carrier that our family policy rate was going up — almost 35% (!!!) — oh, and yeah, it’s time for my college age daughter to get a plan of her own: another $159 above and beyond the increase.
Few kids in college can afford to cover their [...]

Headaches: Causes and Cures

There is an incredible variety of headaches; enough that it forces us to make the obvious joke that you can get a headache just thinking about it.
But now is the time to think about this all too common affliction, given the fact that National Headache Awareness Week is June 7th to June 13th and so [...]

Flusteria! Really, Are We In a Swine Flu Epidemic?

It’s a new condition, first spotted earlier in the decade with the advent of the SARS Virus and of course Hong Kong Bird Flu.
But with the media’s hysterical reaction to a new outbreak – this time Swine Flu – it’s safe to say that “flusteria” is officially a new condition. This particular outbreak has been [...]

Cold-Laser Therapy: How and Why It Works

Hear the word “laser,” and scenes from your favorite science-fiction or action movie may come to mind.   This mysterious energy is shown cutting chains from a captured prisoner, knocking a missile out of the sky, or even blowing up an entire planet.
In reality however, lasers have a much wider (and usually more benign) range of [...]

Survival: Protecting Yourself in Extreme Cold Weather

The extreme cold weather that struck the Midwest in recent weeks, and the snowstorm that just this week barreled up the eastern seaboard dropping from 4 to 12 inches of snow between Atlanta and Portland, Maine, is a reminder that winter, in most parts of our world, is still with us.
Last summer we did a piece [...]

Last Call? Major Study Finds Just One Drink of Alcohol Per Day Raises A Woman’s Risk of Breast Cancer

In what has to be considered a classic case of bad timing, given the depth of our nation’s economic blues, a new study in which 1.3 million women ages 50 to 64 participated, has revealed that even modest amounts of alcohol could increase a woman’s risk of cancer.
“That’s the take-home message,” said Naomi E. Allen [...]

Sheila Kuehl Makes Another Strong Argument for Universal Healthcare

One of the strongest champions the state of California has had in its arduous journey  (not yet over, unfortunately) toward Universal Healthcare is  former California State Senator Sheila Kuehl. She was Chair of the Senate Health Committee and author of the only single payer health insurance bill to pass both houses of a state legislature [...]

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