Monthly Archives: October 2008

I’ll Have What She Had

Estelle Reiner, Wife of Carl and mother of Rob, died this week at the age of 94. You know Estelle – she’s the woman who, at the end of Meg Ryan’s fake orgasm at Katz’s Deli in When Harry Met Sally, turns to her waiter and says – “I’ll have what she’s having”.

Well, Estelle, I think I’ll have what you had. Teen radio singer, submarine draftsman in WW II, artist, wife, mother, anti-war activist and actor. She took up jazz singing at age 65 and recorded 7 albums! A life well-loved and well-lived.

We should all be so blessed. And so bold. Rest in peace, Estelle.

Still Doing It

I was interviewed this weekend for the online radio show And the Women Gather. We were gathered to discuss the book ‘Still Doing It – the Intimate Lives of Women over 60” by Dierdre Fishel and Diana Holzberg. I was quoted in the book about strategies for maintaining sexual health with age – kudos to the authors for paying attention to this important issue.

In the podcast, Dierdre and Diana discussed the stories of the women they interviewed for the book (and their documentary of the same name) – women who were living active sexual lives, some into their 80’s. A theme that came through again and again was that continued sexual activity did not occur in isolation. Women who continue to have active sex lives had active lives overall – they worked, they traveled, they exercised and took care of themselves, stayed involved with the world and maintained relationships, non-sexual as well as sexual, with others. Sex was just a part of their continued living of an engaged and active life. As one women put it “My life is orgasmic”.

Thanks to host Lorna Owens for a great interview and to Dierdre and Diana for including me in their book.

In Search of An Amazing Protein Muffin

I don’t know about you, but I love muffins. The problem is, despite healthy names like “Banana Nut” and Bran Raisin”, muffins are really just cupcakes without the icing. Definitely a no-no if you’re trying to lose weight like I am.

So imagine my delight to find that on my food delivery diet I get muffins! Not just healthy muffins but amazingly delicious muffins! Usually served with sausages or some non-fat ricotta, they are so satisfying that they hold me almost all the way to mid-afternoon.

I’ve been unable to find the recipe for these muffins anywhere. The closest I’ve come is this video of Chef Adriano, the guy who creates the meals I eat, making muffins for a TV show. Unfortunately, he doesn’t give the whole recipe. So I’ve scoured the web for protein muffin recipes, most of which can be found on weight lifting websites and discussion boards. I’ve tried a number of these muffins, and while I’m sure they are healthy and making big men even bigger, they taste like cardboard.

So I’ve made it my mission to create a protein muffin that is worth the trouble of baking. It has to be healthy and fit the protein, fat and carb targets of a Zone diet (that’s the diet I am on.) And it has to be tender and taste GREAT.

A Basic Muffin Recipe

Our quest for an amazing protein muffin starts with a basic muffin recipe. It has to be a really good basic recipe. For that, we turn to our bible, the Joy of Cooking (1975 edition).

Sift together into a large bowl:
1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp double acting baking powder

In a medium bowl, beat
2 eggs
Add to the eggs
2-4 tbsp melted butter
3/4 cup mik

Combine the liquid and dry ingredients with a few swift strokes. Fill well-greased muffin tins two-thirds full and bake 20-25 mins at 400 degrees fahrenheit.

A Little Muffin Chemistry

Before we make any changes to the ingredients of this recipe, we’d better know a bit about them.
Basically, muffin ingredients fall into one of several categories:

1. Leavening agent – That’s easy. Baking powder (and less so, eggs)
2. Gluten formers – flour, egg whites, liquid
3. Gluten preventers (tenderizers) – egg yolks, sugar, butter
4. Flavor additions – salt, blueberries or chocolate chips or whatever you’re using to flavor your muffins.

Adding liquid to flour leads to the formation of gluten. Gluten forms the latticework that holds the air, allowing baked goods to stay risen once they rise. But too much gluten formation leads to a very tough final product. In muffins, this looks like this (lots of big air pockets) –

To prevent over-glutenizing your muffins, it’s critical NOT to beat the batter much. Beating combines causes more and more of the flour to come into contact with the liquid,leading to more and more gluten formation. So 5-10 strokes at most, and don’t worry about the small lumps of flour.
Because fat and sugar in muffins prevent gluten formation, the price you can pay for lowering the fat and sugar content is a dry and tough muffin. We want to avoid that – because let’s face it – if you have to slabber your muffin with butter to make it edible, you’ve just lost the benefit of lowering the fat.

Of course, we will need a leavening agent for out muffins. We’ll be using baking powder in our muffins. (You can use baking soda if you are adding acidic ingredients like buttermilk or lemon to you muffins.) Keep in mind that if any of the changes we make lead to a heavier muffin we might want to increase the leavening a bit to make sure we get a good rise. But too much leavening and you get an overly exuberant but unstable rise that is destined to fall once it leaves the oven. 1-2 tsp baking powder per cup of flour is about right.

Finally, there’s temperature. It seems to range from 350-425 degrees fahrenheit, with most recipes using 350 degrees. Higher temperaturs lead to a quicker rise, but risk overcooking the outside and undercooking the inside.

Now that we are experts in the chemistry of muffin making, it’s time to see if it’s really possible to make a healthier muffin that is actually edible. But first, a little muffin video break –

You’ll eat a healthy muffin and you’ll like it!!!
Making a Healthier Muffin

Okay, let’s see what we can do to the original recipe to make it better for us.

Protein

We clearly have to have a higher protein content for our healthy muffins. In this case, we will use protein powder, and add it to the milk. Be careful – some protein powders have significant fat content. I found one with no fat, and that’s what I’m using. We’ll also use egg whites instead of whole eggs, matching volume for volume, which will boost the protein content and lower the fat at the same time.

Fat

We’ve already lost fat by substituting egg whites for whole eggs. We’re also going to use skim milk and remove the butter from our original muffin recipe. This is risking a very tough final product. So we’ll try some other tricks for getting the fat back in a more healthy way. (See Flour, below.) If this does not work, in the future we can consider keeping the fat, but substituting a healthy fat like canola or olive oil for the melted butter.

Flour

Here’s where the going gets tough, and the muffins get tougher.

The first thing you think of when you think of healthy baked goods is whole wheat flour, right? That was my first thought, too, and so the first healthy muffins I tried to make used half whole wheat and half regular flour. Disaster. Why? High gluten combined with low fat = cardboard. If you’re going to use whole wheat flour, you’ll need to increase either the fat or the sugar content to limit the gluten formation. Sorry. I”m not sure. (Turns out whole wheat flour does not have higher gluten than regular flour. It is heavier, though…

Since low fat is more important to me right now, I’m going to have to sacrifice the high fiber. In the future, we could consider an alternate healthy muffin with high fiber and good fats like canola or olive oil. But for now, let’s stay on the low-fat track.

If we’re going to lower the fat, we’d better lower the gluten content of our flour. One simple way is to use cake flour (6-8% gluten forming protein) instead of regular flour (8-10% protein). We can also subtsitute rice flour for part of the flour. Rice flour is gluten-free. The problem with it is that it does not hold up as well, so you can’t use it exclusively unless you are willing to add a stabilizing agent such as guar gum to maintain the rise. Luckily, we won’t need to go that far. We’ll keep the rice flour to 50% of our flour mixture and get our gluten from cake flour.

I’m also going to add some soy flour. This will also add protein and a bit of the healthy fat I’m looking for. Joy of Cooking tells me to treat soy flour like fat and add it to the liquid ingredients, so we’ll be dissolving it in the milk along with the protein powder. We’ll also need to lower our baking temp by 25 degrees since soy flour can cause our crust to burn more easily.

Finally, in an attempt to get a little more fiber, I’m going to add some flaxmeal.

Leavening

I’m increasing the baking powder a bit to compensate for an additonal 1/4 cup flour and the slightly heavier flaxmeal.

Sugar

We can’t have none, can we? (And I refuse to use artificial sweeteners in my baking.) So we’ll just change it to brown sugar, okay? Maybe next time we can try some agave nectar instead.

Additions

I’ve added chopped apples to these muffins, but other combos I’d like to try in the near future are coconut-macadamia, banana walnut and carrot-raisin. If course, each of these additions will change the liquid content, and we’ll need to tweak the basic recipe even more. So for now, I’m staying simple additions like apples and blueberries till I get this version down pat.

So with all this in mind, let’s see what I came up with…

Drum Roll, please…

Ladies and gents, without further ado, I present my first fairly-successful attempt at a healthy muffin that ‘s worth eating. If you have one of these muffins for breakfast with 1/4 cup low fat ricotta cheese you’ll be getting about 60% carb, 11% fat and 20% protein. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. Still too heavy on the carbs, although I’ve gotten the fat content down fairly nicely.

Next time I plan to try cutting back on the rice flour (which is very high in carbs) rather than the cake flour. There’s also a little room for some fat, so I’ll try adding some canola oil. I’m going to measure my flour my weight to be sure I’m not using too much. I’ll increase the temp a tad since I didn’t even come close to burning these babies. So stay tuned – this is a work in progress. I’m open to any and all suggestions.

Relatively Healthy Apple Protein Muffins

The recipe that follows is a pretty-good tasting healthy muffin with a not-bad texture. Like all muffins, these are best eaten warm, with a little all fruit jam or some low fat riccotta. I made both regular and mini muffins, and have to say that the mini-muffins almost stole my heart, at least while they were warm.

1/2 cup cake flour
1/4 cup flaxseed meal
1 cup white rice flour
1 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup brown sugar
6 egg whites
3/4 cup skim milk
1 scoop vanilla protein powder
1/4 cup soy flour
1/2 cup finely chopped apple

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Grease muffin tin lightly with canola oil.

Sift dry ingredients together in a marge bowl. Toss in the chopped apple.

Pour milk into a medium bowl and whish in the protein powder and soy flour, being sure to dissolve it well. Beat the egg whites lightly in another bowl and add to the milk mixture.

Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon just enough to combine. (No more than 5-10 strokes). Fill muffin tins 3/4 full. Bake for 20-25 mins. Let sit a few minutes before removing from the muffin tin. Eat warm.

Makes 12 large muffins or a whole lotta’ mini muffins.

Nutritional info per large muffin – Calories 115; 21% protein (7 grams); 11% fat ( about 1.5 grams); 75% carbs (22 grams).
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References

The ABCs of Baking
How Baking Works
The Joy of Baking
The Art of Low Fat Baking

Biking South on the NYC Westside Greenway

Mr TBTAM and I left the girls home studying this past Sunday afternoon and rode our biking season swan song south along the West Side Greenway. A perfect day for a perfect ride along the Hudson to Battery Park and back.

While the ride north on the Greenway is an idyllic park ride, the route south along the Hudson is a fascinating ride along a busy and increasingly beautiful waterfront, encompassing urban gardens, cruise ship and Ferry docks, tourist attractions, museums and skyline views that will satisfy visitors and natives alike.

Here is a list of the sites we passed along our route – The Intrepid, The Circle Line Boat tour, the cruise ship docks, the Heliport, Frank Gehry’s Office Building, Chelsea Pier, Battery Park City, the World Trade Center Site, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island boat rides and The American Indian Museum.


If sports are what you love, you can rent a kayak, take a sailing lesson, practice your skateboard moves, hit a bucket of balls, bike, walk or bowl. The only thing missing from the Greenway as far as I am concerned are great waterfront restaurants.

Much of the Greenway has separate biking and walking paths. This makes for easy riding, although the walking paths tend to go closer to the water and through some lovely gardens along the way. You’ll need to watch out for cars crossing the path near the docks and along Chelsea Pier, but on a weekend this is not a big problem.

My favorite part of the ride is Battery Park City. I remember when this gorgeous garden-living spot was a big old empty landfill, the site of the No Nukes Rally I attended in 1979.

Now it’s filled with beautiful apartment buildings and parks and is a neighborhood that has come back even stronger since it was almost devastated in 9/11.

If you’re visiting NYC and want to ride the Greenway, I’d recommend renting a bike at Pier 84 at 44th Street on the West Side and heading either north or south from there. Bike and Roll has rental locations at several spots along the NYC Greenway, and runs both guided and self-guided bike tours of NYC. You can also rent bikes at one of over a dozen other spots in the city and head into the Greenway anywhere along the route.

Happy Biking!
NYC Biking Links

My New York Beauty

When I decided to sent RL Bates an antique quilt square this summer, I was not expecting anything in return, just the joy of having an excuse to sort through and touch all the wonderful old pieces of fabric I found sitting on a folding table at the Eagles Mere Antique Fair one gorgeous summer day.

To my surprise and joy, RL responded by making me my very own quilt! ( Go and see it, then come back.)

The quilt is based on a pattern called “New York Beauty”, which is apparently one of the more difficult patterns for a quilter to execute. Thought to have been first made sometime in the 1840’s, the pattern is a radiating crescent that immediately brings to mind the crown on the Statue of Liberty. Of course, that statue was not created until 1876, which makes the similarities between the pattern and the statue even more fascinating to me, as if it’s creator somehow knew that this quilt design would hold meaning for centuries to come.

Now, I have my New York Beauty to hang on the wall as a continual reminder of our Lady of Liberty and of the promise we have made, and I think sometimes forgotten, to the world. I am also reminded of the wonderful friend I have never even met who has been so generous with her time and talents and made me this wonderful quilt.

Give me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Need a Diaphragm? Good Luck with That.

UPDATE – JANSSEN PHARMA HAS DISCONTINUED PRODUCTION OF THE DIAPHRAGM. SEE LATEST INFO HERE.

Ortho stopped manufacturing the latex diaphragm in Dec 2007, in anticipation of releasing a new non-latex silicone diaphragm this year. Unfortunately, the new diaphragms will not be available till at least November, according to an Ortho service rep I spoke to today. At this point, I can’t find a diaphragm anywhere for my patients. No other manufacturer’s diaphragms are available from any wholesalers to the pharmacies I contacted.

For now, I’m sending my patients to Planned Parenthood, since they have a bit of a stockpile for now at least. If anyone has any other reliable source, let me know and I will post it here at Diaphragm Central.

Hopefully Elaine’s diaphragm is still in good shape, although she may want to cut back a bit on unnecessary usage so it doesn’t wear out before the new ones are available.

Just Another American Healthcare Story

He had the flu and visited an urgent care center. They told him over the phone that it would cost around $100. His bill? $450 for a 5 minute visit with the doc, who told him he had the flu and sent him home. David is more than willing to pay the quoted fee of $100, but they want the whole $450.

I happen to agree with David. He was quoted a fee over the phone that seemed reasonable for a service that was not above what he told them he was coming on for, and he is willing to pay it. The hospital should take his money and be happy. I know my office would have.

But David’s story is about so much more than the fee. It’s emblematic of everything that is wrong with our healthcare system.

Let’s see just how many of America’s healthcare’s problems we can find in his story. I found five – how many others can you find?

1. He does not have a primary MD

So he went to a hospital urgent care center for something his family doc could have handled. As a result, he got socked with a facilities fee that was more than twice the doctor’s fee.

Lesson learned (and it’s an expensive lesson) – Establish a relationship with a primary doctor. That first visit you make to get that relationship going is worth every penny in long term return, both financially and physically.

We won’t get into the fact that there is a primary care doc shortage, because David’s reasons for not having a primary doc seem to be more financially motivated. But it’s not unlikely that if he were motivated to find a primary MD, he might have trouble finding one and would have ended up at Urgent Care anyway.

2. He waited 2-3 hours for a 5 minute visit.

The doctor spent maybe 5 minutes with him, listened to his heart and his lungs, took his temp, then told him “You have the flu, there’s nothing I can do for you, go home”. His response “Nice. I guess I knew that already.'”

Now, once could argue that the diagnosis was clearly correct, since he indeed recovered on his own at home, and that 5 minutes was all it took to make that correct diagnosis and get him on his way home. And if he had been able to walk right in for that 5 minute visit without a wait, I suspect he would have been relieved and happy. But to wait that long and walk out feeling as crummy as you were when you went in is a recipe for dissatisfaction, no matter how right the doctor’s diagnosis was.

Of course, there are others who waited in emergency rooms who were not lucky enough to walk out…

3. This is a very healthy guy who he can’t get a preferred insurance rate from United because he is “too thin”.

He is 5’10” and 145 pounds. Sounds just Mr TBTAM to me. Healthiest man I know. He rode his bike to the Urgent Care Center! But because David is on his own purchasing insurance, he gets stuck being the actuarial table poster child. Something is terribly wrong when the healthiest among us can’t get affordable insurance.

4. He pays $100 a month for catastrophic insurance but has a very high deductible, and does not go to the doctor for “minor things” because he can’t afford to.

But minor thing become big things. This is the problem with high deductible plans as a cheap alternative for folks who can’t afford better plans. They wait till minor things get very serious. Then they head to the ER. And get stuck paying even more towards their high deductible.

5. If David had been insured by United, the Urgent Care Center would have accepted much less than what they were asking him to pay for his visit.

The highest fee charged an uninsured patient should be the highest negotiated insured fee. But if it were, the insurers would start lowering their fees even further. So providers play the game of raising their charges to justify the contracted rates with managed care. It’s a game whose rules have to be re-written.

This is just one man’s healthcare story.

It’s not even a big story. Nothing terrible exciting happened. There were no catastrophes, no near-deaths, and everyone made it out alive. It’s just another day in the life of an American trying to get decent healthcare in a system that doesn’t work.

If we can fix things for David, we will have gone a long way towards fixing healthcare in America.

Diet Update – Week 13

Thirteen weeks and 25 pounds down.

Things have slowed up a bit, and that sawtooth pattern is largely due to weekend eating off the program. I’m trying to decide if I will continue this pattern of being off on weekends, or just plow through and get this over with sooner. I’m really good at breakfast and lunch on the weekends, but tend to overeat still at dinner, and have been allowing myself desserts and occasional wine. At this rate, I’m probably looking at hitting goal in June 09, a bit later than initially planned. But doing the math, I’m losing about 2 pounds a week, which is a healthy way to do it.

Although the losses came more slowly this past month, I feel as if I “consolidated” myself at this lower weight during that time of slower loss. I’m getting used to this new body, and liking it. My clothes fit better, and some in fact are getting too big to wear anymore. I don’t want to shop just yet, so my wardrobe is a bit limited. But I don’t mind.

I definitely have more energy. I sort of bound up the 15 steps to our bedroom and occasionally find myself taking the steps into our apartment building two at a time. I’m more likely to head out myself at night for milk or shampoo instead of asking Mr TBTAM. And at work, I’m practically floating between exam rooms during busy office hours.

I’ve stopped tracking my exercise and obsessing over how often and how long, but it’s about 3-4 times a week at this point. I find myself wanting to work out if I have a free hour, because I know how good I will feel afterwards. We are lucky to have a full gym in our apartment building, so I can really squeeze in a quick workout almost anytime. The elliptical machine is really fun, and I can work up a real honest-to-goodness sweat if I play the right tunes on my IPOD. Earlier darkness is limiting my bike rides to the weekends, and soon the cold weather will stop that as well. Bummer.

One negative is that my migraines are worse than ever. I don’t know if it is because I am in negative calorie balance, spending too much time at the computer, not hydrating enough, or just going through the awful season-change cycle that so many of my fellow migraine sufferers are reporting right now.

As far as food goes, I’m working on protein muffin recipe for weekend breakfasts. I made the third permutation today, and it’s almost there. Look for the recipe next weekend if all goes as planned.

Every Blog Needs a Bouncer

Dr Wes has been dealing with some legal troubles related to comments on posts in his blog. While he declines to give details, we know that he was subpoenaed to appear in court regarding comments on a post in his blog. He fought the subpoena, and won. But the fight cost him financially, and it appears, emotionally. He’s now re-thinking his commitment to blogging.

But blogging, as I’ve found, also exposes one to malicious verbal attacks and subpoenas. As such, it is risky. There is no question that placing one’s online self in the world for all to see adds vulnerability and potential liability. When I told a colleague Friday about my recent predicament he responded, “Why the hell would anyone want to blog?”

I hear you, Dr Wes. I too have withstood malicious comments and personal attacks both in my comments section and on other blogs. It doesn’t feel good, and never fails to shock me to realize just how un-civilized other human beings can be.

But I say keep on blogging, Dr Wes. We need you voice. Your blog is one of the best medical blogs out there. Your clinical opinions, commentary and insight are unique and important, and no other blogger or mainstream media outlet can replace the contributions you’ve made to the conversation about cardiac electrophysiology.

I have to be honest, however, and say that I was surprised at some of the comments you’ve let stand on your blog. I would have hit the delete button almost while I was reading such comments, bounced them right the h_ off my blog, and never looked back. Heck, I’ve even closed comments on blog posts when the side conversations there got out of hand. After all, it’s my blog, my voice and my reputation. I’m going to control it as best as I can, and if that means some folks don’t get invited back, well, that’s my prerogative. They can always start their own blogs.

Because a medblog is not a chat room. I see it as more of a seminar that the med blogger hosts. The role of the commenter is to provide external context if the blogger fails to do this, to support and expand the argument or to provoke and to show opposing viewpoints if they exist. Not to trash, malign, libel, slander or defame.

That kind of behavior has no place on my blog.
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I got my bouncer from Wikipedia Commons, a free image source on the web

My EMR and I

It’s only taken Grunt Doc four days to fall in love with his new electronic medical record (EMR).

It took me a bit longer that that.

But then again, I was never the head over heels type of gal. My feelings for my EMR were more of a slow burn than a raging passion, and we’ve had out ups and downs. We’re more like Hepburn and Tracy than Romeo and Juliet, sparring and fussing with one another, but always ending with a grudging mutual respect and admiration.

And, like any good Tracy-Hepburn movie, our story has had a few scary moments. But each time, my EMR rescued me from the edge of the precipice.

Take, for example, the patient who forgot to tell me about the DVT she had since I had last seen her 6 months ago. I was about to prescribe birth control pills for her, and saw a few visits with a hematologist in her encounter list. A quick perusal of those visit notes tipped me, and I immediately changed the script to a progesterone-only pill. Of course, if the hematologist had updated the problem list and history portions of the chart, I would have caught it upon opening her record. Or better still, if my EMR had found that history itself and popped up a warning flag when I wrote the prescription. But there I go complaining…

There was the time I somehow missed that my patient’s pap was abnormal. But I get a monthly summary print out of abnormal paps from our lab, and caught it on that review. Of course, the EMR does not actually distinguish normal from abnormal paps – the results are still just a text field. It takes the path lab to do the compiling of the list for me. But I’m not complaining, am I?

How about the fact that I can check patient labs and do my charting work at our cottage, allowing me to get out of the office a bit earlier on weekends, or even work from home on the occasion? Now that’s a real benefit of my EMR! Of course, I can’t place radiology orders from home, though I still can’t understand why…

And speaking of radiology orders, why doesn’t my EMR remember the appointment date and not send me an overdue test notice until after that date? And why can’t it print out a med list for my patients when they arrive, since most of them forget to tell me about at least one med that they are taking? Or present me a better summary sheet upon opening a chart, or god forbid, let me design that first view myself?

There I go again, throwing plates at the EMR I love.

Because I really do love it, you know.

Most of the time.

Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie

It’s the self-help book to end all self-help books.

It’s called Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie and it’s written by my friend Linda Pruce, a self-described holistic speech therapist whose blog Enter the Circle is one of my favorite web destinations for biting wit, personal insight, feminist opinion and all around woo-woo.

Confessions chronicles Linda’s downward spiral into self-help hell and the resurrection that resulted from her realization that she was looking in all the wrong places for the truth she needed. Which, as Dorothy would say, was right in her own backside… I mean backyard…(Read on, you’ll get the reference…)

Readers of Linda’s blog willl recognize her unique writing style that blends self-deprecating wit with no-holes-barred frank personal insight –

I officially became a self-help junkie in September of 1998. I was sitting on my bed, minding my own business, breastfeeding my newborn and wondering whether it would be wrong to smoke a cigarette while nursing. As I was figuring out the logistics of this dilemma – Could I reach my cigarettes without breaking the baby’s seal on my breast? Could I blow the smoke towards the window instead of up the nostrils of my daughter? And, how do you explain a burn mark on the check of a 6-week-old?– I caught the start of Oprah’s fall season.

But don’t let Linda’s humor fool you – underneath that wit is a wise woman with lot of great advice. Take, for example, this passage on finding the seat of one’s self, or as Linda puts it, your “Authentic Soul Self” or A.S.S –

Finding your A.S.S. is just the first step and the easiest part of your journey. Once you find your A.S.S., you will need to pull your head out from inside it. This, otherwise known as enlightenment, is what most people are attempting to do – and is probably the hardest thing to achieve.

Confessions meanders through the world of enlightenment, taking choice bits from here and there, creating a salad of thoughts, advice and wisdom for the woman seeking peace and fulfillment. Along the way, it sometimes ventures dangerously close to the self-help world it derides, and I can’t say I completed any of the tasks or lists offered to me. But, after all, a Junkie loves nothing better that a fellow addict to shoot up with, and I know Linda couldn’t help herself but to lay out a few lines of self-help smack for her visitors. But hey, it’s her party…

The best parts of the book for me were when Linda tells us her story – how she learned, for example, to ask the universe for what she needed. (Once I figure out what I want, I’m definitely gonna’ try that for myself.) Or how she figured out why Sundays were always so stressful for her and her family, and then made it better. Or the simple rules for living she learned from her Grandma (who sounds suspiciously like mine).

Beautifully illustrated by Kristen Smedley with graphic design by Tomara Arrington, Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie is not only a great read, it’s a work of art. Too bad it’s not available in other than electronic form, or Oprah could put it on her coffee table. It’s that beautiful.

You can download the first chapter for free from Linda’s blog, or buy the e-book online. Then tell your friends, who’ll tell their friends, who’ll tell their friends, and if that whole Six Degrees of Separation thing really works, Oprah is sure to hear about it from Kevin Bacon.

Congrat’s Linda!