Thanks to Lemuel Craft

I graduated from high school almost ten years ago. It is hard to believe it has been that long. Soon I will be going to my ten year reunion and seeing several people I have not seen in a long time. It is strange how reunions have changed over the years. When my parents were younger, high school reunions were a time to brag about your life’s accomplishments. People would show pictures of their kids, drive fancy cars or even lie about occupations. Now with high speed internet and facebook, no one can lie. Everything is instantly available on facebook. If someone has a kid, pictures are normally posted on facebook within 24 hours. Someone gets a promotion and their status changes. It is amazing how facebook has changed everything. Now high school reunions are really just a party. Everyone already knows everything going on in one another’s life, so they just get together to hang out one last time. Do you think high school reunions will become obsolete or will they remain a tradition?

Before last October, 17-year-old Thera Sanchez was a healthy cheerleader at LeRoy Junior-Senior High School in New York. But when she woke up from a nap on Oct. 7, she was beset by uncontrollable Tourette-like tics, that she continues to have today.

MSNBC reported that Sanchez is not alone — 12 girls at the high school experienced an onset of these same symptoms, which include outbursts, shaking and tics.

"I used to cheer every day … I used to go to two art classes every day," Sanchez told NBC. "Now I’m not in school."

New York health officials said that they investigated the school, but did not find anything that could cause this strange illness in the students, Fox News reported.

"The investigation has not revealed environmental or infectious causes as the origin of the students’ illness," Jeffrey Hammond, spokesman for the New York State Department of Health, told Fox News.

Sanchez and her friend, Katie Krautwurst, went on the TODAY show to talk to Ann Curry about the strange onset of symptoms, and the frustration they feel about not finding a cause for the bizarre illness.

"I’m very angry, I’m very frustrated, no one’s giving answers," Sanchez told Curry on the TODAY Show. Sanchez said she was told that her condition is caused by extreme stress.

What exactly it is that Sanchez and the other girls at her school have remains a mystery, but the symptoms are similar to Tourette Syndrome. Tourette is characterized by tics, which include things like eye-blinking, head-jerking, eye-darting, shoulder-shrugging and yelling or throat-clearing — all of it uncontrolled, according to the Mayo Clinic.

According to the Mayo Clinic, Tourette symptoms typically show between the ages of 7 and 10, and the condition is more common in men than in women. The cause isn’t known, but genetics and brain abnormalities may influence risk.

Thera Sanchez Develops Mysterious Tourette-Like Illness — Along With 11 Other Girls From School

By Kristin Kirkpatrick, R.D. for YouBeauty.com

Americans are getting sicker. Seventy percent of the diseases we are acquiring as a nation are caused by behavior, and food choices top the list.

In the past two decades alone, we have observed the overwhelming impact that poor food choices has on our waistlines. It’s not just about our pant size either — these choices have additional repercussions such as increased disease and even dull skin, hair and nails.

Often overlooked are the additional mechanisms in the human body that are affected by the types of foods we are choosing to put into our mouths at each meal. Several studies have uncovered a strong correlation between diet and poor sleep quality.

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Getting too few z’s has detrimental effects on our bodies, and our appearance! Simply put, lack of sleep is not pretty! Too few hours in the sack has been shown to increase triglyceride levels, alter hunger hormones and compromise energy levels. Worse yet, it leads to graying, less vibrant skin.

As if that weren’t enough, our lack of sleep causes a vicious cycle of eating more, gaining weight and sleeping less. Could we be more beautiful if, before reaching into the refrigerator, we contemplated which foods would not only satisfy our appetites but improve our nighttime sleep quality as well?

Based on recent evidence, the answer is yes!

The results of many recent studies identify poor diet as an underlying factor of sleep apnea and excessive daytime sleepiness. Approximately 2 to 4 percent of the adult population is affected by obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, a medically diagnosed disorder that causes frequent breathing disturbances during sleep, consequentially upsetting normal sleep patterns. The incidence of sleep apnea is exponentially greater in obese people, demonstrating a direct association between weight and quality of sleep.

A recent study in the European Respiratory Journal found that adherence to a Mediterranean based diet* paired with regular physical activity for six months improved sleep parameters in forty obese adults with moderate to severe obstructive

How To Eat For Better Sleep