Lord Farquad

So Fauci testified under subpoena at the Senate covid hearing. Big surprise, he invoked the fifth over 100x. And now the Senate has voted to hold him in contempt of court. We’ll see if there’s any accountability. I am skeptical of this.

But before the covid hearing, Rand Paul released multiple documents related to Fauci. Lots of people are talking about how delighted Fauci was to be thrust into the spotlight; how he tallied the day’s “death toll” next to his own personal comments about how great it felt to be famous. Ick.

Connor Boyack wrote about it last week in his Substack. He shared this clip, which is a little gag-inducing to me:

From Boyack re: getting Fauci out of power:

Removing one man solves very little, because the incentives that produced him are still in place and recruit new successors. Any institution permitted to fund the research, define the consensus, and police the dissent will eventually generate whichever answer preserves its position. Incentives do not require villains. They only require time.

That’s kind of my point. Will Fauci be held accountable for completely fabricating the 6-ft distance rule? For helping create unconstitutional mask mandates? For shuttering small businesses and punishing people for gathering with loved ones? Maybe. Likely not.

But even if he is, have we learned anything? Isn’t it still possible for another covid-esque situation to happen again? Are we questioning the systems that gave power to the unelected Fauci and his impact on propaganda media that eliminated dissent or questions to “The Science”?

I was talking with friends recently about the disruption of covid and how it seemed to change people’s response to institutions for a while, but that change doesn’t seem to have lasted.

Institutions need to be questioned. The Fifth Agreement is to be skeptical, but learn to listen. Don’t take things at face value, but remain open.

We can start practicing this by bringing skepticism to our own thoughts, motives, and what we generally accept in our lives.

Eyeballs

One such thing I questioned years ago was the eyeglasses industry.

Granted, I didn’t question it from any sort of free thinking perspective. I questioned it because I was sick of putting contacts in my under-slept, tired, postpartum eyes and trying to negotiate my glasses out of my baby’s hands. And a thought occurred to me:

If I can rehabilitate any other part of the body, why can’t I rehabilitate my eyes?

Thus began a journey into the strange world of eye rehab and eliminating my dependence on corrective lenses. I found Jake Steiner’s endmyopia.org and still keep up with his blogs, wherein he shared this little nugget.

Last fall, the FDA approved “defocus” lenses for kids. As in: lenses that will help strengthen eyes rather than passively (and progressively) making it easier to see by having lenses that do the work for you.

This can also be accomplished by going outside and intentionally changing focus from the grass to the trees to the structures and creatures. By attempting to track a dragonfly in its seemingly erratic pattern while it hunts mosquitoes.

Even by reading a book (or using a screen) outside.

Do you know why kids have more myopia than in decades past?

Of course you do:

screens.

Parents have a million reasons to use screens with their kids. But none of those reasons actually benefit kids. I get it: I’m a jerk for saying that. And my kids do see screens. They just don’t have personal devices and they aren’t using them unsupervised.

If you haven’t read Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation yet, here’s your reminder to do that. Anxiety, suicide, disconnection, loneliness, isolation: all related to screens.

And perhaps (likely) even sleep deprivation.

I shared a video last week from an excerpt in Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep on Instagram:

Is your kid hyperactive? Irritable? Distracted? Unfocused? Perhaps the answer isn’t amphetamines, but prioritizing sleep. And perhaps the screen time they’re getting is disrupting their ability to sleep.

Perhaps it’s not, but isn’t it worth trying?

Be skeptical, but learn to listen. Noted.

Talk soon,

L

P.S. Check my teaching schedule for the fall. It’s fairly busy and I’d love to see you if you’re a chiro! I’ll be in Nashville, St. Louis, Greenville, and Kansas City twice (once for the very first Your Pelvic Floor Sucks: The Course that’s open in the United States! Woo!).

Since I last wrote one of these, I went sorta viral on Instagram, helped a kid at the pool who dislocated his shoulder, had a day of vertigo, moved with my family for the first time in 10+ years, navigated running a practice through an office flood, and had two of our family’s vehicles break down. I feel like I’ve lived a lot of life in…

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In my last newsletter, I gave a quick update on Ralph Baric. Since then, a patient shared with me an old op-ed in The Carolina Journal from a year ago regarding the “extreme virology” in North Carolina. To quote the authors:

Transparency is the first step toward accountability. As a state, we must confront the ethical and safety implications of …

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I had two trips to Pacific Daylight Time and two red-eye flights home in April. I’ll go ahead and say that while the trips themselves were amazing, I do not recommend the itinerary. My circadian rhythm is gratefully recovering.

Chiro Courses

The second trip three time zones westward was to teach Your Pelvic Floor Sucks: The Course in Vancouver. It wa…

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I had an incredible 10 days of silence in a desert canyon in Arizona. I knew about half-way through that this experience would change me forever, and one of the things I wrote in my Bullet Journal (I took 40 handwritten pages of notes while there) was that it was up to make to make sure that was for the better.

In addition to the silence, praye…

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Not an April Fools joke: I’m about to embark on a silent retreat, so I’ll be unreachable for almost two weeks. At some point, I’ll share the juicy details with you. I’m just not sure when that will be. For now, just a few quick notes before I leave.

It turns out that, according to a 2026 Journal of Clinical Medicine Randomized Controlled Trial…

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I turned 40 last month and with that, my husband has officially earned himself the title of “Husband of the Decade.”

I share this because I think he’s changing the world, and I don’t mean this in any small way.

I know a lot of women who love like I do; I do not know any men who love like he does.

My close friends have had the opport…

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Learn to De-Stress: Seriously

I signed up for these workshops from Jonny Miller and if you ever feel stress (I’m talking to you), I would recommend you do the same. One of my patients introduced me to his work; I did his Nervous System Mastery course in 2022 and it was brilliant.

He’s the guy who designed the Calm Cards. He teaches Polyvagal …

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If you’re snowed in right now, I hope you’re enjoying it and are safe and warm (when you’re not zipping down a hill on a makeshift sled, of course). I’m hoping to be back to seeing patients tomorrow, but today seemed like a good day to offer something via email since I can’t offer my hands-on healing modalities.

Reading my emails is not the same …

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Last year at some point, I watched Pete Holmes’ comedy special I’m Not for Everyone, and he was making fun of the New Year’s countdown: how it’s going to be a year from today in one year, just like it always is on 12/31, and it’s very absurd that we count down to the switch on one night.

He even went so far as to say that we deserved…

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If you’re near Raleigh, I hope to see you tomorrow at our annual Merry Makers’ Market!

Did you know that the biggest source of CO2 emissions is the oceans? (I would like to state that this interrogative sentence sounds terrible, but is, indeed, grammatically correct. The source is “the oceans”, which is a thing, even though “oceans” is the plural …

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This newsletter is mostly videos. First, we’ll go through the alarming future of AGI, as demonstrated by AI 2027 paper. Then, we’ll dive into some women’s health topics that are (finally) getting a bit of daylight. And that’s it for today because the contents of this require a significant chunk of time and I try not to ask too much of you as a…

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Whenever I’ve returned from international travel, I have felt a buzzing of energy of whatever culture I’ve come from. I was never big on travel by flight: I hadn’t been to Europe until 2023, when I went to Prague for my DNS Certification course.

Since then, I’ve been back to Europe three more times and have just returned from my first trip to Sout…

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The Background

I saw 15 patients one morning, and 14 of those 15 patients cried.

Everyone (except the two-week-old baby) apologized for crying.

I realized people needed a place to just get i…

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It’s been such a long while. I could blame travel. I could blame being present at home with my beautiful family. I could blame plenty of things, but the reality is: I haven’t sat down to tap out this newsletter in almost 6 weeks, and that’s just an unexcused absence from your inbox.

Apologies if you’ve been holding your breath: I’m impressed by y…

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I’m going to dive right in because in my last newsletter, I promised we’d talk a bit about AI, but I’ve had a lot of things running through my mind for the past month that aren’t AI-related. There’s not much of a word count left for preamble and this is certain to be a bit on the longer side.

Your Pelvic Floor Sucks

I named my book a little on the …

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Pattern Recognition

Most of what I do professionally is pattern recognition. I’ve heard (and can understand) that it often looks like witchcraft. (It’s not.) When I learned to speak the language of bodies, I learned to spot where things are tight and how to make them not-so; where things are unstable and make them so.

And because not everyone sp…

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And while I might not always be tapping out a newsletter, I still rely heavily on writing because I’ve been Bullet Journaling for over two years now. But I’ve hardly journaled in my BuJo, either. Task mana…

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I want to start off today by sharing this beautiful website:

https://thedepths.longlead.com/

This site shares the journey and story (through 2021) of Alenka Artnik, the world’s greatest female freediver.

It’s the most beautiful website I’ve ever seen: a combination of artful transitions, audio clips in Alenka’s voice, video, and written bio…

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I can’t get the fancy link for this to work, but Robb Wolf shared a great study on the impacts of regenerative farming as a truly sustainable practice for improving health of humans, animals, and soils.

From the 2024 study: “Among options for atmospheric CO2 removal, sequestering soil organic carbon …

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