COVER STORY  Turns out that Mom really did know what’s good for you and what’s not. All those dictums of childhood — go outside to play, get enough sleep, clean your room and indulge in the occasional treat — are now coming full circle. Sleep, laughter, sunshine, clean spaces and tasty treats can deliver health benefits. Common sense and moderation are good guides, but there is plenty of room for joy in a healthy lifestyle.

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PARENTING  Q: A friend of mine has a child who has a metabolic disorder that wasn’t diagnosed with routine newborn screening even though screening for the disorder does exist. How could that happen? Read More>>

NEWS  Spokane resident Rachel Rooks vividly remembers the worst of her adult asthma attacks.
“It was the holiday season of 2005 and I had bronchitis,” Rooks recalls. “I’d had a cough that had gone on for three weeks. One night I was sitting in bed and I literally coughed nonstop for 30 minutes.” Read More>>

LIFESTYLES  “My first recipe I copied by crayon from an early morning Saturday show when I was 6 … Stuffed Tomato Ladybugs,” says Alexa Wilson, smiling warmly at the thought. Read More>>

GUEST COLUMN  Drowning can happen quietly and quickly. The splashing, screaming and struggling we may expect often does not happen. Because a child can drown in an instant, every child who is playing around or in the water should be watched constantly — drowning is the second-leading cause of unintentional injury or death for children in Washington. Every year, drowning accounts for an average of 24 deaths, 26 hospitalizations and about 110 visits to emergency rooms for kids 17 and younger, according to the state Department of Health. Read More>>

ALT MEDICINE  Pragmatists, it seems, are content with a little mystery in their method. So long as it works. “The first time I practiced on somebody, they told me their pain was better. I thought: That’s crazy. This is a placebo,” says Kari Joys, a Spokane-based psychotherapist with 25 years of experience, recounting her foray into the perplexing world of Chinese energetics. “It seemed too outrageous, to me, to believe it,” she says. But that was five years ago, and her skepticism has been… well, cured. Read More>>

COVER STORY  Turns out that Mom really did know what’s good for you and what’s not. All those dictums of childhood — go outside to play, get enough sleep, clean your room and indulge in the occasional treat — are now coming full circle. Sleep, laughter, sunshine, clean spaces and tasty treats can deliver health benefits. Common sense and moderation are good guides, but there is plenty of room for joy in a healthy lifestyle. Read More>>

COVER STORY  Think of it as a great big orange vitamin pill in the sky. One that everyone can share, free of charge. It’s the sun, and if you’re like most Americans, you could use more of the vitamin D that your skin makes when you’re exposed to it. Apart from the long-known benefit of aiding the development of healthy bones, a proper level of vitamin D in the body is also correlated with reduced risk of cancer, according to more recent research. Read More>>

COVER STORY  In the 1973 film Sleeper, Woody Allen’s character awakens after 200 years to find that everything he thought he knew about healthy food had changed: Wheat germ and organic honey are out, steak and hot fudge are in.
Today, 35 years after the film’s debut, we’ve heard enough contradictory dietary advice to have developed a collective case of what is sometimes called the Sleeper Syndrome — uncertainty in the light of rapidly changing food knowledge. Read More>>

COVER STORY  I had to rummage through piles of books stacked in front of my bookshelves to locate my books about organizing and clearing clutter. (Writers love irony.) Read More>>

COVER STORY  You may forgive yourself for not getting enough sleep, but your body doesn’t forget. The missing Zs that you’ve cheated yourself out of actually accumulate over time to form what researchers call “sleep debt” — a deficit that continues to affect alertness and performance even when you do get a good night’s sleep. The good news is that sleep debt can be paid off with some extra down time and the development of good sleep habits. Read More>>

FROM THE EDITOR  The other day I forgot my wallet on the kitchen counter. I had raced out the door with my 5-year-old in tow, planning to grab a quick lunch before he went to Soccertots. Not until we were at the counter ordering at Wendy’s did I discover I had no money, no debit card, no credit card and no time to get home and eat before his class. I was starving and so was he. Read More>>

HEALTH LINK  I don’t know if it gets any better than summer in the Inland Northwest. The nights are cool, while the days are long and hot. There’s an explosion of activities — swimming to softball — fueled by fresh seasonal produce and barbecues with friends. Read More>>

HEALTH LINK  The doctor told me to hold still while she took a snapshot of my face. It wasn’t your usual camera and I wasn’t wearing camera-ready make-up. The flash came from a camera that identifies and captures your skin’s anomalies — even those not visible to the eye.
It wasn’t a pretty picture. Read More>>

INNOVATION  Inside Holy Family’s Speech and Hearing Center, Delores Morrill models the latest in hearing aid technology. She swishes her head back and forth and pulls her hair back to show off her ears. There’s just one issue: You can’t actually see her hearing aid. Read More>>

INNOVATION  From head size to birthday home videos, researchers at the University of Washington’s renowned Autism Center have found early signs of autism in some unusual places. Now they are bringing their innovative methods to a bold new study on autism prevention. Read More>>

LIFESTYLES  Finally, it’s here: the warmth of summer. The sun is shining, birds are chirping and the gym promises only a stuffy and stale replay of all the workouts you’ve done when the weather was not so great. So you lace up your shoes for a run, which still doesn’t seem that inspiring. As you jog by a local park, you notice the playground. Time for a detour. Read More>>

PARENTING  Kelli Hazel was enjoying the sleepy buzz of being a first-time mom, staring into her newborn’s perfect face as she nursed. Then on the sixth day of her daughter’s life, Kelli and her husband got a phone call from a pediatrician’s office.
“I could tell right away from her tone something was wrong,” remembers Kelli. “She said, ‘We need you to come in,’” because the test for phenylketonuria, or PKU, had come back positive. Read More>>

PEOPLE  Mark Few has faced some epic teams over the years — UCLA, Memphis, North Carolina — but this one is the most imposing yet. With a relentless attack, this opponent spreads out and tries to choke the life out of you. But this is no game; it’s the deadly serious fight against cancer, and basketball coaches across the country have joined the battle. Gonzaga’s Mark Few and his wife Marcy have overseen one of the most successful Coaches vs. Cancer events anywhere, raising more than $3 million since their first event — and the West Coast’s — in Spokane in 2002. Read More>>

SENIORS  Healthy aging requires a healthy diet. But getting good nutrition on a fixed income becomes more difficult as food prices rise. Some of the traditional recommendations — like eating lots of fresh fruits and veggies — just won’t work anymore. Read More>>