Author: Tina Rice

Hand Work

You may have noticed “hand work” on my weekly tracker.

As a person who has worked in an online/virtual format for many years, I long ago recognized the need to balance it out with real, tangible work – work that yields real product you can touch.

Years ago, I read about how grieving women tend to find relief in repetitive tasks such as knitting, crocheting, gardening, saying the rosary, etc. Little movements, over and over, with beautiful and useful results. This repetition helps us process grief and life’s upheavals.

The person doing it is awake, aware, engaged… but the mind can wander too.

It’s a form of meditation.

The mind enters a sort of “dream” state, and in it, ideas and thoughts can pop up. Some good, some bad. The right brainwave environment for a person to sort out their feelings and get comfortable with uncomfortable stuff.

We all need that, right?

I learned how to sew as a kid but didn’t do it too often. But in 2020, suddenly everyone needed a mask. I pulled out the old Kenmore and went to work.

Some of the early ones were sewn really poorly, but to my amazement, people kept asking for them and even paying for them! And I started to see them “out in the wild.” And then my awesome friend Megan sent me a ton of fabric from her studio in Washington. And I kept going.

I gave myself permission to practice and get better. And I also started learning how to crochet, using YouTube as my school.

So anyway, along the way, I made a little patchwork denim bag, and my daughter’s friends went crazy! They each wanted one…  and then I got the opportunity to put my bags at Melo Coffee Kitchen as artwork! Whaaaatttt???

And they’ve been selling!

I’m a little bit excited… Can you tell? 😊

Lettuce Be Friends

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

Lettuce.

Lettuce who?

Lettuce be friends.

I think I read that on a Valentine’s Day card… probably in grade school.

Anyway, friends, I wanted to share this awesome organic lettuce we’ve been buying from Aldi.

The box is crammed with organic lettuce varieties like red and green leaf lettuce, red and green oak, red and green chard, Lolla Rosa, tango, spinach, arugula, beet greens, frisee, radicchio, mizuna, kale, red mustard greens, tatsoi, and collards. I’ve never even heard of some of these.

It’s prewashed, and its a full pound.

It’s a good deal, though I can’t tell you the exact price I paid. #worthit

Poopy Love Story (and Another Biome Breakthrough)

This is the most charming love story ❤️. Imagine falling in love with someone who is suffering (and I mean that in the true sense of the word “suffering”) from bipolar disorder and bouts of psychosis, doing research on your own to find a possible solution, experimenting and then finding a durable cure. Imagine that!

And it all comes down to poo 💩.

It is truly fascinating, and I urge you to watch for yourself:

https://youtu.be/QIjsaprie-k?is=1KDenYakP3MC3wAa

Another Biome Breakthrough!

Check out this amazing research from the University of Florida and Trinity College Dublin:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/08/250821004244.htm

Queuosine is a rare micronutrient crucial for brain health, memory, stress response, and cancer defense. It is “a vitamin-like micronutrient that we can’t make ourselves but can only get from food and our gut bacteria.”

“For over 30 years, scientists have suspected that there had to be a transporter for this nutrient, but no one could find it,” said Valérie de Crécy-Lagard, a UF/IFAS microbiology and cell science distinguished professor and department associate chair, as well as one of the study’s principal investigators. “We’ve been hunting for it for a long time. This discovery opens up a whole new chapter in understanding how the microbiome and our diet can influence the translation of our genes.”

Very iteresting! We are starting to map the microbiota.

Sunscreen

Yesterday, my husband and daughter went to an outdoor event during the heat of the day. A conversation about sunscreen popped up, and so I pulled out my Yuka app to check our choices.

Here’s the first choice:

Here’s the second choice. After seeing the score, I threw it in the trash! And that’s a shame because it was pricey.

Here’s the third choice. Winner winner chicken dinner!

CLL brings with it a higher than average risk of skin cancer, so I did the research a while back (that is, I stood in Target and scanned all the choices with Yuka). Native had the best ratings that I could find.

For the record, hats and shirts are my preferred “sunscreen.”

We Can Pickle That!

After a couple rounds in the dishwasher, this jar still smells like pickles!

Just wanted to share. Bubbie’s is a brand of fermented foods, and we have tried a couple of their products. They taste great and are fermented so you get a little probiotic boost.

I was thinking the other day that, if every deli and hamburger joint in America started using Bubbie’s pickles, what an improvement we would have in our overall gut health.

https://www.bubbies.com/

Daughter Days

Our daughter is with us this summer and I couldn’t be happier. 🙂😍

Tonight, she’s the chef. She made an amazing kale salad that is really healthy and nutritious.

We added a little grilled chicken on top.

Here’s the recipe if you want to give it a try:

Warm Kale and Quinoa Salad

CLL Seal

Just finished watching the Netflix series American Manhunt: Osama bin Laden with my husband. It’s a very interesting and well-made recounting of our CIA operations in the years after the 9-11 attack.

In episode 3, you meet and get to know William McRaven, a Navy SEAL who has CLL. He looks like he is in the peak of health, both in the recent interviews and in the photos from 2011.

He talks about being diagnosed in 2010 and how he used CLL as a reason to fly back to DC from Afghanistan when he was brought into this secret plan.

https://patientworthy.com/2018/11/22/decorated-admiral-battling-rare-cancer/

The Biome & and Heart Disease

If I ever come into a large sum of money I’d like to put my friend Mike through medical school. He’s very smart, patient, and observant and he would do well in the research world.

He recently sent this article my way:

https://english.elpais.com/health/2025-07-17/revolution-in-medicine-a-molecule-produced-by-gut-bacteria-causes-atherosclerosis-responsible-for-millions-of-deaths.html

Here are the takeaways:

  • Researchers have discovered that gut bacteria produce a molecule (called imidazole propionate) that causes atherosclerosis, the accumulation of fat and cholesterol in the arteries, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes.
  • 63% of the study participants showed signs of the disease.
  • Imidazole propionate enters the blood, interacts with immature white blood cells, and triggers an inflammatory reaction in the arteries, which promotes the buildup of fatty plaques.
  • These results are unexpected, linking microbes and cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in humanity.
  • One of the study’s authors had already discovered in 2018 that imidazole propionate levels were higher in people with type 2 diabetes.
  • Blood levels of imidazole propionate are lower in people with diets rich in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, fish, tea, and low-fat dairy products.

What I want to know is how could a person know if they have this gut bacteria?

Are there foods you can eat to kill it off?

Not, sure I’ve ever mentioned it here, but did you know that most medical schools in the US don’t require nutrition training?

Maybe that will change soon.🤞 Here’s hoping.

The article ends with this tidbit:

Cases of colorectal cancer are skyrocketing in people under the age of 50, due to unknown causes, doubling in many countries in the last two decades. Another study, led by computational biologist Marcos Díaz Gay, suggested just three months ago that behind this colorectal cancer epidemic is the Escherichia coli toxin. “In young patients, up to 39 years of age, we see that colibactin pattern in one out of every three cases,” stressed Díaz Gay, of the National Cancer Research Center.

Walking the Dogs

I’ve been getting a lot of steps this month as we have our granddog for the month. He’s young and full of energy, and when I walk him, it’s kind of like waterskiing. I’m holding on, and he’s pulling, standing on 2 legs sometimes, darting after every squirrel or rabbit.

My old dog is more of a slow meanderer. He just wants to go slow and smell everything. He’s about 15 years old and getting to be a little hard of hearing.

So, I walk them separately.

Today I gave the old guy a treat. We went in the car (very exciting) to the park (really really exciting) which is across the street from a farm with lots of interesting cow and sheep smells. Dog heaven!

We started on the path and I noticed that the grass was a little dead along the edges. After a while I realized that it was probably just sprayed with herbicide… the line between dead and living grass was just too severe…

What do you think?

It’s a bummer 😕 because, of course, my dog would rather walk on the grass than the paved path. But I don’t want those chemicals on his paws!

Got home and saw this on Instagram.