More problematic for women than men

What does alcohol do to my medication?

Common drugs you should not mix with alcohol:

Allergy, Cold, and Flu Medications

Angina Medications

Anti-Anxiety and Epilepsy Medications

Antidepressants

Anti-Seizure Medications

Muscle Relaxants

Sleep Aids

Opioids

Final Advice

New clothes and a new backpack may be on your child’s back-to-school list. But, what about a back-to-school eye exam?

Lighthouse Guild, the leading vision and health organization, points out that vision is one of the keys to success in school and encourages parents to make sure their children get regular vision screenings. Dr. Laura Sperazza, Director of Low Vision Services at Lighthouse Guild, says, “The most important thing you can do to protect your child’s vision is to make sure they get an eye exam. An eye health professional can determine if your child needs eyeglasses or contact lenses, or if there is a vision problem that requires further intervention.”

August Is Children’s Eye Health and Safety Month

We’ve spent the last year in vision therapy with one of our children for convergence insufficiency treatment. We attended weekly sessions and completed daily homework. I have seen a world of difference in my daughter’s reading, comprehension, abstract thinking, and confidence. As homeschoolers, we didn’t know she was experiencing any vision issues and we didn’t have the proper screenings through specialist doctors, even though she had eyeglasses for reading. It’s important as parents to do research and pay attention to problems and symptoms. Learn more at COVD.

My husband and I both wear contacts and glasses and three of our four kids wear glasses.

Lots of eye care shops offer great back to school deals on glasses for kids under age 18.

Check out these five healthy vision tips to help safeguard your child’s eye health:

Eat Your Carrots

The old saying still applies. Encourage your child to eat a well-balanced diet loaded with different types of fruits and veggies, as well as fish and/or flax.

Speak Up

Ask your child to let you know if they notice any vision changes – if their vision is blurry, they are squinting a lot, or their eyes start bothering them in other ways.

Wear Your Glasses

Help your child understand the importance of wearing their eyeglasses. If they are resistant because they believe glasses are unattractive, try pointing out sports figures and other well-known people who wear glasses. Talk with them about how to clean and store their glasses properly.

Rest Your Eyes

Looking continuously at a computer, smartphone, tablet, or TV screen can tire eyes. Encourage your child to take regular breaks from staring at a screen.

Wear Safety Gear

Make sure your child wears goggles or other types of protective eye wear while playing sports, using chemicals or tools for school projects, or engaging in other activities. Many eye injuries can be prevented with better safety habits.

Order the Warby Parker Home Try-On program and walk through the process from start to finish: from selecting and ordering five frames, to finding the right pair for your face, all in the comfort of your own home!

Twitter Party!

Lighthouse Guild and ColumbiaDoctors Children’s Health will also host a back to school Twitter chat on Thursday, August 30, at 7 PM. Parents can learn and ask questions about preventing and managing childhood vision loss and preparing their kids for school from experts in the field. Lighthouse Guild’s Twitter handle is @lighthousegld.

About Lighthouse Guild

Lighthouse Guild is the leading organization dedicated to addressing and preventing vision loss.

I grew up in a time when it was normal and even expected for meals to come from a box, can, bag, or package.

Margarine, Crisco, and canola oil were the go-to fats in our pantry. We didn’t read labels. We ate soft white Sunbeam bread and liberally sprinkled table salt on our food. We didn’t have a garden. We bought the cheapest meats we could and stretched everything as far as it could go.

Breakfasts were colorful, sugary cereals swimming in 2% milk or Pop-Tarts with a glass of frozen concentrated orange juice, thawed and mixed with water. Weekends were for quick-mix Bisquick biscuits or pancakes or muffins from the pouch with on-sale Oscar Meyer bacon or Tennessee Pride sausage patties.

Lunches eaten at public school: congealed soggy pizza rectangles, unidentifiable soy-based meat patties and gray gravy, corn, white rolls, hot dogs, hamburgers, overcooked peas or green beans, occasional iceberg lettuce and carrot strips, and little cartons of Mayfield chocolate milk.

Lunches eaten at home: fish sticks, frozen pizzas, Oscar Meyer Bologna and American cheese slices or Jif peanut butter on white Sunbeam bread with Doritos. I drank Coke and red tropical punch Kool-Aid all the time.

Dinners were often canned Green Giant Frenched green beans or LeSeur peas, scalloped potatoes from a box, and Spam or Oscar Meyer hot dogs or fried cube steak with a jar of gravy.

Special occasions called for Duncan Hines yellow cake mix and canned double chocolate frosting.

No one I knew lived much differently.

We didn’t know any better.

I learned how to cook some basic meals and treats from early PBS cooking shows, my grandmother, my aunt, and friends’ moms. I enjoyed learning new styles and recipes from cookbooks from the bargain bin at the bookstore or library.

I practiced cooking meals and baking at home from the time I was 12 or so, but my dad would seldom enjoy the meals I prepared. It was very discouraging. He doesn’t like new foods, textures, styles, or flavors. When I learned a way to improve upon meals we’d always eaten, it was too often met with disdain.

My parents take pills by the handful every day now. My dad has suffered from obesity all my life, now complicated with high blood pressure and pre-diabetes. My mother has very high cholesterol. They both have arthritis and live with pain every day. I feel many of these aging disorders can be prevented or slowed with a better diet and lifestyle.

In the early years of my marriage, it was frustrating, expensive, and exhausting for me to plan, prepare, and cook all the time after working all day teaching school, then later, homeschooling one, two, then three young children. I often got lazy, relying on easier, quicker, cheaper, and processed “foods.”

When I got sick in 2008, we knew we needed a big lifestyle change. I was tired all the time. I just couldn’t do all the things I was used to doing. I was drained. The doctor put me on a Paleo diet and prescribed a lot of vitamin and mineral supplements. In a few months, I was feeling more like myself. We decided to continue that regimen with our whole family.

Thankfully, we have no food allergies. We noticed some sensitivities that don’t show up in lab tests, but we’ve done elimination diets that reveal sensitivity to modern wheat products and low-quality dairy in a couple of our family members.

We started to research eating better, more natural whole foods for our whole family.

For the past few years, we seldom eat out, almost never get fast food, and prepare almost all our foods from scratch at home.

My goals for cooking real food are simplicity, ease, and quality.

Simple means that I want foods as close to their natural state as possible.

Fruits and vegetables have no “ingredients” or labels. They’re simple.

Preparation can be as simple as consuming them raw in a salad or blended into a smoothie.

We often steam or roast or grill veggies. We eat a lot of fun colorful salads with interesting flavor combos.

I like simple, fewer-ingredient recipes with lots of flavor, but nothing too complicated or time-consuming.

We occasionally try new recipes that require some advanced preparation or complicated steps, but they are special and rare. Even our holiday meals have simplified.

Ease requires a bit of preparation ahead of time.

When I do my big grocery shopping trips (twice a month), we prep the food to make it easier to consume during the week.

We clean and chop fruits and veggies into manageable portions so snacktime and meal prep aren’t so stressful.

We marinate and grill a bag of chicken strips for salads and snacks.

We thaw a bag of mini shrimp and place in a glass storage container to be ready.

We freeze bone broth for soups and sauces. I miss my deep freezer (it’s in storage) – we don’t have the quantity of ready-made homemade items we used to have around.

Quality doesn’t have to be super expensive.

I buy the best we can afford.

We buy fresh food in season and we shop at local stores, farmers markets, and the military commissary as needed.

While it is ideal to consume organic food and grass-fed meats and dairy, it’s just not readily available in our area.

The local military commissary has a small frozen section of organic, free-range, grass-fed meats, but they’re 3-4 times as expensive as the regular local meats – and they’re often freezer-burned from sitting in the freezer for so long.

That’s not quality to me.

We’re realistic.

I have four kids and a very carnivorous husband. We don’t often eat a plant-based diet, although I totally could most days. We like meat and we like animal protein at every meal. We’re trying to eat more fish, but it’s so expensive here.

We consume dairy and wheat. My girls and I like yogurt and kefir and kombucha, but my son and husband just do not. We’re learning to make sourdough and we often make our own yeast breads. I’m experimenting with spelt, buckwheat, and sprouted grains. I buy German honey O’s cereal for my son (they’re more natural than the American Honey Nut Cheerios).

I don’t sneak in fruits or vegetables without my family knowing.

I don’t make my kids or husband eat foie gras or pâté, but I sometimes sprinkle liver powder into ground beef dishes to boost nutrition.

We love to try new foods when we travel and come home to recreate it.

I respect that everyone has dislikes. I try to make meals with variety so everyone has choices they love.

I prepare many different foods with fun flavor combos and textures. I encourage everyone to try new foods frequently. Often, my family is pleasantly surprised. My girls and I love Brussels sprouts. Everyone loves broccoli and asparagus. My son loves steamed cauliflower. The middle girls and I love cabbage.

We buy German Oreos and frozen potatoes and 100% juice Capri Suns. We’re not terrified of sugar, but we do limit the chemicals we ingest when we can.

We have a Soda Stream and buy the natural syrups for ginger ale, lemon-lime, and root beer. We also make homemade fizzy juices. These products have fewer harmful ingredients than the American ones.

I never tell my kids what they can or cannot eat. I encourage them to make better food choices and eat meals before treats – like most parents, I assume.

The kids love to be in the kitchen, learning and helping and creating. They’re getting more and more independent with baking and preparing meals and I couldn’t be more proud.

I know we’re on the right track when my kids make good choices on their own at events, parties, or church pot lucks without my supervision – when peer pressure is at its finest from even the other adults.

I want our family to be healthy and live long prosperous lives and we feel that a healthy balanced real food diet can help us achieve that.

Food can heal or hurt. We are what we eat.

Linking up: Darling Downs Diaries, Missional Women, Modest Mom, Moms the Word, Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth, Curly Crafty Mom, Marilyns Treats, Sarah Celebrates, VMG206, Southern Beauty Guide, Crystal Storms, Sweet Little Ones, Practical Mom, Simple Life of a Fire Wife, Purposeful Faith, Holly Barrett, Lori Schumaker, Mary Andering Creatively, Mrs AOK, A Fresh Start, Written Reality, Life of Faith, Inspiration for Moms, Denise Designed, Juggling Real Food and Real Life,  Jaime Wiebel,Christian Blogger Community, A Wise Woman Builds Her Home, Cornerstone Confessions, Women with Intention, Oh My Heartsie Girl, Hip Homeschool Moms, Al Things Beautiful, A Bountiful Love, Giving Up on Perfect, Wondermom Wannabe, Milk and Cuddles, Saving 4 Six, Yearround Homeschooling, Katherine’s Corner, Live Laugh Rowe, I Choose Joy, Pat and Candy, A Kreative Whim, The Natural Homeschool, Happy and Blessed Home, Susan B Mead, xoxo Rebecca, Sincerely Paula, Create with Joy, What About, RCH Reviews, Missional Women, Life with Lorelai, Juggling Real Food and Real Life, Being a Wordsmith