From the editor
Welcome to the Journal
Most of what gets written for people our age is either frightening or condescending. This little paper tries to be neither. It is written the way a sensible neighbor would explain something over a fence: slowly, in ordinary words, and without pretending to know more than it does.
I started the Journal after spending a winter helping my mother sort out what was worth worrying about and what was not. She is eighty-four. She had a folder of clippings, a drawer of half-read pamphlets, and no clear idea which of them applied to her. What she wanted was not more information. She wanted someone to tell her, plainly, what a thing meant and whether it was worth a phone call to her doctor.
So that is what we publish here. Three or four pieces a month about how the body changes as it gets older, how a house can be made easier to live in, and what is genuinely worth asking a physician about at the next visit.
Nothing in this Journal is medical advice, and nothing here is a substitute for your own doctor. We write so that you can have a better conversation with them — not instead of one.
If a piece here is useful to you, the best thing you can do with it is print it and take it to your next appointment. Several readers have told me they do exactly that, which is the nicest thing anyone has said about the Journal so far.
— Margaret Hayes
In this issue
-
Health
Under the nail
Nail fungus lives under the nail, not on it, which is why so much of what gets rubbed on top does nothing. What the trials actually measured, why a nail takes twelve to eighteen months to grow out whatever you do, and when it stops being a cosmetic matter. With a short video from the American Academy of Dermatology.
Read the full article → -
Health
What actually moves the number
Blood pressure is not a fixed trait. Several ordinary daily things shift it, and because they have been measured in trials we can say roughly by how much. What the evidence supports, what it does not, and the one change nobody should make alone. With a short video from the Mayo Clinic.
Read the full article → -
Health
Blood pressure, quietly explained
Almost everyone has had a cuff put on their arm and been told two numbers. Almost nobody has had those numbers explained. What they are measuring, how to take a reading at home without frightening yourself, and what is worth raising at your next appointment.
Read the full article → -
At home
The salt you didn't add
Most of the salt in an American kitchen was already in the food when it came through the door. Where it actually hides, how to read a label without a magnifying glass, and the one substitute on the shelf that is worth asking a doctor about before you buy it.
Read the full article → -
Health
Twelve minutes with the doctor
The appointment is short and that is not going to change. What to write down the evening before, why the list of everything you take is worth more than the rest of it put together, and how to say the important thing first instead of at the door.
Read the full article → -
Daily life
A short walk, most days
Not exercise. Not a program. Just the ordinary business of moving about a little every day, why it seems to matter more after seventy than before it, and how to begin again after a long spell of sitting.
Read the full article →
A note on what this paper is
The Good Neighbor Journal is an independent publication. We do not diagnose, treat, or prescribe, and we do not publish claims about curing or preventing any disease. If something you read here worries you, or if something about your own health has changed, speak to a licensed physician. In an emergency in the United States, call 911.