When you are a researcher and clearly your husband is not. Friday night… HIM: My flight leaves at 6 a.m. tomorrow, so I’m gonna get up at 4:30. ME: It’s Saturday. Aren’t you cutting it close? HIM: I’ll be fine. I have TSA PreCheck. ME: What if 300 people show up? HIM: I’ll be fine. I have TSA PreCheck. ME: Okay. What if 200 of them have TSA PreCheck? HIM: Blank stare. ME: Quizzical researcher look. 6:05 a.m. text from HIM: I missed my flight. 😤 ME, to myself: And THAT is why we account for uncontrolled variables. 😝

What’s one health “rule” you used to believe—until you took a second look? Maybe it was something you heard from a doctor, social media, family, a fitness community—or just something “everybody knows.” What changed your mind? I’ll start. For years, I believed eating fat made you fat. Low-fat everything seemed like the obvious healthy choice—and for a long time, that was pretty much the message everywhere. Eventually I learned that nutrition is a lot more complicated than that. Dietary fat isn’t automatically converted into body fat simply because it’s fat. Total energy intake matters, but so do things like protein, fiber, food quality, satiety, hormones, activity, and individual metabolism. And some dietary fats are essential—we actually need them. The funny thing is, the more I learned, the less useful that simple little rule became. I’m curious—what health “rule” have you had to rethink along the way? And what was it that finally changed your minds?

One of our members recently asked if I would share my own journey with ME/CFS because they have a family member living with the condition. I have to say... I really admire that. Sometimes the person asking the questions isn't the one who's sick. It's... ❤️ a spouse ❤️ a parent ❤️ a sibling ❤️ a child ❤️ a friend Someone trying to understand something that can be incredibly difficult to explain from the outside. I remember doing exactly that for my sister, who has debilitating asthma. When someone you love is struggling, you read...research...ask questions...and hope that one more piece of information might make a difference. ❤️ My story isn't just about ME/CFS. It's about living a full life while carrying an illness most people couldn't see. Over nearly fifty years, I was... ✅ A daughter ✅ A sister ✅ A wife ✅ A mother ✅ A teacher ✅ A graduate student ✅ A two-time master's graduate ✅ Someone with multiple careers ✅ Someone who kept showing up, even when it was hard ✅ Someone determined not to let an illness define my entire identity From the outside... my life probably looked pretty ordinary. Behind the scenes... nearly every commitment came with an energy calculation. 🏡 Every family gathering. 💼 Every workday. 🎄 Every holiday. ✈️ Every vacation. 🤝 Every promise I made. 🌅 Every opportunity I considered. ❓ Every decision came with the same question: "Will I have enough energy...and what will this cost me afterward?" People saw me functioning. They rarely saw the recovery afterward. 📚 Along the way I accumulated far more than a diagnosis. I accumulated... ❓ Questions ⛰️ Setbacks 🏆 Victories 💔 Disappointments 🌅 Hope 📖 Lessons 🩺 Countless medical appointments 🧪 More tests than I can remember 💊 Treatments that helped ⚠️ Treatments that didn't 🚧 Treatments that made things worse 📋 New diagnoses 🧩 Diagnoses that didn't quite fit 💡 And an endless curiosity about why. ✅ BUT... 🔍 I never completely stopped searching. 💡 Then one day... I realized something. I'd essentially written a book. Not because I planned to.