submit your question here
emotional
Dear Muffin,
My daughter is partying in excess at her college. I think it is serious enough that she should be in AA. She is 22, and a junior this year.
I am paying for her tuition, but I am seeing her behavior as reckless and immature.
What should I do?
S.E. Ma.
Dear S.E.,
In your gut, if you are seeing or feeling addiction, trust yourself. GET HELP
Nothing is more important than to identify a substance addiction as early as possible and do whatever necessary to get the help and intervention needed. There is always time to go back to college. There is a lifetime of misery and failure to be addicted to alcohol and drugs.
If AA is a program that philosophically works for her, support her in going, and you personally should augment that with Al-A Non in your area.
Require her to go into personal counseling with a substance abuse therapist. Make yourself and your family available to do the counseling with her, she didn’t get to this place by herself, and she will need your help getting out of it.
It becomes the priority immediately.
This is also the time when there can be a collision of the cultures.
Your college age student is also of age to legally drink which is often experimentally awkward, and occasionally explosive. Meanwhile, the parent(s) are prepared to make the biggest financial investment of the child’s lifetime, and have the least physical and daily control of the students life.
The good news is, that while your child is still dependent on you for living expenses and tuition, you DO have power in helping this child gain control of the current situation, and help them through this difficult time with real life lessons to ensure a healthy balanced future. The biggest tools you have are your purse strings. The agreements made where finances are a direct response to the young adult’s choices will most accurately mimic the harsh realities out there in the big cruel world. While you have the ability to change their circumstances dramatically, you also have the security to know there is a safety net for your child, and that it is much better they learn these lessons under your loving direction than the job market or law enforcement at a later time.
Time to drink, is time to work. If there is enough time in her schedule to be under the influence, and to recover adequately enough to be passing her classes, then I suggest you give her more personal responsibility for herself, and again, the most effective asset is your financial power. If you are paying for her living expenses, give her a cutoff date, and have her find a job near campus. College websites always have jobs available and many times they are within the department a student may be associated with. I would make sure your child checks in with a school counselor once a week to monitor her progress, or a good Life Coach to help her set and realize goals. Make tour tuition payments contingent on her doing so.
Tough love! Help her experience a life lesson she will benefit from forever.
If you are not able to get the results necessary for her health and safety, then I suggest that you not fund her education until she is willing to meet healthy and mature criteria.
As a Junior, she is invested in three years in her education. She is close to finishing, I would gamble that it wouldn’t take her very long to straighten out.
Sometimes a year working at minimum wage paying maximum bills puts things into perspective. If she lives at home, have her responsible for her proportionate percent of the costs.
Would you make an investment in a business or real estate that showed obvious signs of vulnerability or distress?
You will need to assess these choices by your child’s personality and, your relationship.
I wish you the best of luck. I have been in this place. The more businesslike and unemotional I approached this with, the more results I got.
Warmest Regards,
Muffin
nutritional
Dear Muffin,
Ever heard of “Bullerproof” coffee? What are your thoughts?
NI, Maine
Dear NI,
The concept of adding high energy and healthy oils to a hot beverage is not new. The monks in Tibet have blended yak butter and ghee in their teas for centuries for health and mental clarity at high altitudes. References to butter teas throughout India and the Himalayan Region are common. Mixing butter, spices, and coffee is traditional in parts of Africa and the Middle East.
Dave Asprey, a clever American entrepreneur has successfully marketed and trademarked “Bulletproof Upgraded Coffee” after he lost over 100 lbs. after reaping the benefits of a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. I think that he has done a great service to re-introduce this concept to our health conscience population. However, I’m not supporting coffee as the delivery beverage for the healthy fats.
I received this question a month ago, and have been experimenting with it before I answered this question.
My thoughts are these;
I think that the benefit of this concept is the delivery of the pure healthy fat, especially early in the morning. My practice has always been to put coconut oil in my specially blended tea, and putting it in coffee did not seem to give me an advantage. Therefore, I think that having the delivery system of healthy fats in a healthier beverage choice such as green or Tulsi tea would be my recommendation. I have never endorsed coffee in any anti inflammatory eating protocol, (although coffee and coconut oil is absolutely delicious!) I advise to use it as a special occasion drink, and to find a tea blend and coconut oil that is a healthier daily beverage.
I do agree fully that adding healthy fats to your diet through an early morning hot beverage is beneficial. I do not think that it should be the first thing in your mouth in the morning. The fats collect bacteria and microbes in your mouth and are then swallowed. It is important that you consider oil pulling or at least cleaning your mouth before drinking any hot beverage with fats in the morning. There is a documented correlation between oral bacteria and heart disease.
After decades of misguided and untrue information about saturated fats being a precursor to high cholesterol and clogged arteries, there are test results that support that healthy saturated fats can increase mental clarity by 15 to 25 percent, regulates longstanding energy, and keeps hunger at bay, therefore making it easier to lose weight, stimulating the body to engage fully in its fat burning properties.
Warmest Regards,
Muffin
beauty
Dear Muffin,
How is Melatonin used as an anti-aging therapy? I thought it was only used to promote sleep.
Sincerely, KI Newport RI
Dear KI,
To start with, I will say that sleep is one of the most reliable beauty and anti-aging treatments you can do! A solid 7-8 hours of quality sleep allows the body to renew itself on a daily basis, a time for the system to fully absorb nutrients and to be at complete peace.
Melatonin is a hormone produced in the pineal gland located deep in the skull behind the brain. The pineal gland is your body’s biological clock, or time keeper, regulated by the flow of the hormone, melatonin. Youthful levels of melatonin strengthen the immune system, strengthen resistance to disease, and keep sexual vitality thriving. Therefore it makes logical sense that as our bodies’ age, we need to support the levels of melatonin by augmenting the foods that manufacture melatonin in the body.
Other hormones, such as estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and pregnenolone are all made from your body processing cholesterol. Melatonin is made from the amino acid tryptophan, an essential amino acid, meaning our bodies do not produce it. Therefore, we must get tryptophan from the foods we eat. The best sources are found in fish, yogurt, organic liver, lamb, peanuts, pumpkin, sesame seeds, and lentils. The body converts these healthy foods into serotonin, which supports mood function. During sleep, serotonin is converted into melatonin.
Melatonin ranks as one of the most important hormones because it stimulates a wide variety of other hormones from the pituitary gland that perform as HGH, the human growth hormones. Melatonin stimulates the release of these HGHs.
However, as we age, our levels of melatonin need to be supported to benefit from the levels of these hormones found to be therapeutic in an anti-ageing protocol. There are other benefits from melatonin as well, such as being a sex-enhancing hormone, sleep aid, and heightens endorphins. There are studies being conducted presently to support the link between melatonin and lower risks of breast cancer.
Do not take melatonin under the age of 40. With proper nutrition and healthy living habits, you do not want to interfere with your pineal timekeeping biological clock!
Here are the recommended dosages for supplement purposes:
Age 40-45 0.5-1 mg at bedtime
Age 45-54 1-2 mg at bedtime
Age 55-64 2.25 mg at bedtime
Age 65 and beyond 3.5-5 mg at bedtime
As always, be sure you purchase a high-end organic source of Melatonin. I personally choose to eat the foods that support the natural production of serotonin/melatonin, and supplement with my dearmuffin.com anti aging tincture
If you feel groggy in the morning, reduce the level to the age bracket before your own. Adjust until it feels right
You should always be looking for balance!
If you are committed to a graceful age defying protocol, check back with this site and check out my anti-aging organic herbal tincture VA VA BOOM. I have addressed all the biological aging protocols into one formula! It will be available for sale in a few weeks.
Warmest Regards,
Muffin
submit your question here
Schedule an appointment here.
dearmuffin.com 246 east first street, suite 3, salida, colorado 81201 call 802-535-5921