Does COVID-19 cause carb cravings (or is it just me?)

by Carolyn Thomas     @HeartSisters

I’ve heard it said that some people lose their appetite during stressful times. These people are not my relatives. Indeed, in our Ukrainian family tradition, we love food, and we eat when we’re happy, we eat when we’re upset, and we eat during all possible emotions in between.

So amid the stressful reality of the COVID-19 virus pandemic, stress eating in our family can mean only one thing: carbohydrate cravings.            .

Continue reading “Does COVID-19 cause carb cravings (or is it just me?)”

It’s okay not to feel “normal”

 by Carolyn Thomas      @HeartSisters

What is “normal” around here anyway? What the world is experiencing now during the COVID-19* crisis is unprecedented –  meaning nothing like this has happened before. A global viral pandemic is just not “normal”.  At least, to us.

We long to somehow translate each new development or warning or news report into what our brains can recognize as a return to normality. But there’s nothing about unprecedented events that should feel “normal” to any of us.    . Continue reading “It’s okay not to feel “normal””

Scary times: living with (but not IN) fear 

by Carolyn Thomas      @HeartSisters

This is my 863rd blog post here on Heart Sisters. That’s a lot of articles.  Almost all of them so far are about women’s heart disease, or translating emerging cardiac research into plain language, or what it’s like for women when we suddenly become heart patients, or when we’re mistakenly told that our heart disease is not heart disease.

Never in the 11 years that I’ve been writing this blog have I felt like I’d run out of All Things Cardiac to write about.  Until today.             . Continue reading “Scary times: living with (but not IN) fear “

COVID-19: Can facts help to minimize fears?

by Carolyn Thomas      @HeartSisters

Waiting for the other shoe to drop. The expression dates back to the early 1900s, from the description of hearing the loud ‘thump’ of an upstairs apartment neighbour loudly dropping one shoe onto a bedroom floor. It’s that state of suspended focus. Waiting. Waiting. Not knowing when that other shoe upstairs will finally drop so that you can roll over and go quietly back to sleep.

But you can’t know exactly when or even if you’ll hear that second ‘thump’. You can’t predict that outcome, any more than we can predict the emerging outcomes of our current COVID-19 virus scare. And waiting for outcomes can feel exhausting.     .    Continue reading “COVID-19: Can facts help to minimize fears?”