After several months of frustrating exhaustion following valve repair surgery in April, my sleep is getting better. I am waking up to body battery scores that are much closer to normal. Body battery is what Garmin uses to calculate energy levels. It is calculated by analyzing heart rate, heart rate variability and movement data. It is measured out of 100, with 75+ being well rested and prepared for significant exertion. 50-75 indicates plenty of energy for daily routine. 25-50 means you need to pace yourself or do light activity. 0-25 means your body is depleted.
For a couple of months, I lived in the depleted zone, rarely waking up to a score as high as 30, and dropping every day to 5 (the lowest it tracks). Suddenly this week I started getting scores above 50. On Monday, it was 85 out of 100! By far the best ever. I am even getting some periods identified as “rest” while just sitting and resting. And yet, I am feeling sleepy and wanting lots of naps, and the body battery drops quite quickly during the day.
The other weird thing is that my rate of intensive exercise is still showing ridiculously high. I am normally pretty active, so a goal of 400 intensity minutes a week is perfectly reasonable. It will probably be a bit on the low side once I’m back to weekly swimming, ballet and jazz classes in the fall.
However, last week I did nothing but a couple of short swims, a pilates class, walked to the grocery store twice, and rode my bicycle for 10 minutes. There is no way that should have logged as 900 intensity minutes. That is still an improvement over the previous few months, where I usually logged well over 1000 minutes, and sometimes over 1600. Heck, I hit 161 minutes the week I was in surgery and intensive care!
I was beginning to think my watch was seriously borked, but it turns out that I was the one not working properly. Here’s to a continued increase in rest, and reduced exercise intensity. How often do you hear that on a fitness blog?
Cheers! Various fruity drinks come together as people clink glasses together.
This month’s Action for Happiness theme is ‘Jump Back Up July’ and their calendar is full of small steps to help you build your resilience, to increase your ability to face challenges, to notice your strengths, and to be kinder to yourself.
Now, as I am sure you can guess, I don’t really think that we have to *jump* back up every single time but even staggering back up gets us back up and trying again.
Cultivating the inner fortitude to try again when things go awry, to be compassionate when we make mistakes, to ask for help when need it, to reframe challenges, and to nurture hope throughout the process can serve us well in so many areas of our lives (including fitness!) that the effort to build our resilience skills is worth the effort.
Even though many of these practices are already in my regular repertoire, I’m going to make a point of practicing them during Jump Back Up July (or Get Back Up At Your Own Pace Using Your Choice of Movements July which is more accurate for me but far less catchy. 😉 )
The ‘Jump Back Up July’ calendar from Action for Happiness. I will, of course, be using this for ‘Get Back Up At Your Own Pace Using Your Own Choice Of Movements July’ too. Image description: A calendar for July 2026 with each block coloured in a repeating pattern of dark green, light green, orange, and yellow. The text in each block is a daily tip for building the skills to ‘Jump Back Up’ and the edges of the calendar are decorated with black and white cartoon images of people doing resilience activities such as hugging someone or carefully repairing a loved object.
And here’s a tip video from Action for Happiness featuring Vanessa King:
A video from the Action for Happiness YouTube channel called ‘Coping with challenging times. Jump Back Up July with Vanessa King’ on the left side is a still image of Vanessa King, a middle-aged white-presenting woman with reddish blonde hair that is pulled back from her face on the sides and top but with her bangs curling down towards her eyebrows. She is wearing brown-framed glasses, a black shirt, and a green scarf decorated with white flowers and gold-coloured leaves. She is looking towards the camera and smiling and there are two books and a vase of flowers behind her. On the right side of the image is a light blue rectangle with text that reads ‘Resilience. Bouncing Back’ in red and ‘3 top tips with Vanessa King’ in yellow.
Here are a few links about resilience that you may want to check out:
If it has been a while, then please take this post as a sign to pat yourself on the back, congratulate yourself, and claim your gold star.
And if you congratulated yourself earlier today?
Well, pat yourself on the back, congratulate yourself again, and claim your gold star.
If you’re like me, there will be times when you are really challenging yourself and times when you are just kind of treading water.
Both are good.
In fact, the whole range of ways to show up are all good.
And I’d like you to celebrate every one of them.
I am proud of you for showing up when it’s fun and I’m proud of you for showing up when it’s annoying to be there.
And I hope that, overall, you get more fun than annoyance but here’s your gold star for your efforts either way.
Go Team Us!
I’ve been trying out gold star cards with encouraging text and I like how this one turned out. Image description: a black card with a small painting of a gold star on the left side. On the right side is a piece of white card with rounded corners that says, in black text, “ this gold star celebrates your hard work, the effort you put into showing up every time. Congratulations! I’m so proud of you.” The white card is framed in black with a gold frame outside of the black one. There is a thick gold line a little ways under the star that also extends downward underneath the white card.
These are the days when I’m glad to know some really good epidemiologists. The planet is warming, global travel is surging, and bad buggies are on the move. No, not these kinds of buggies:
Dune, beach and horse and buggy. None of them infectious, as far as I know.
Nope. I’m taking about these buggies:
Lyme bacteria, the current Ebola virus, and the Andes hanta virus– colorful but dangerous.
I thought I might post some updates from the aforementioned really-good-epi folks, as it’s sometimes overwhelming to try to keep up with global health news and hard to know which sources to trust. I’m not a doctor (not the medical kind, anyway), but my posted updates are from sources *I* trust– international news outlets, the WHO (World Health Organization), and YLE (Your Local Epidemiologist) substack (which pulls its info from the most reliable technical sources).
According to the European CDC, as of 26 May there are a total of 13 cases (11 confirmed) of hantavirus. One new case has been confirmed since the last update. There are no new deaths. All quarantined persons in North America are still negative. There’s a long (45 day) incubation period, but we’re at the median period now. This means if you weren’t on that ship, you are almost certainly in the clear. Color me not worried.
My apologies if I’ve used the pineapple with sun glasses and party hat recently, but it personifies non-worry to me right now.
Second: There’s an Ebola outbreak in The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda. According to YLE, there are more than 1000 cases so far in DRC, which experts believe is an undercount. Why? For wonky epidemiological reasons:
positive test rate is 50%
At most 20% of contacts are being traced right now
They’ve only been really testing for a week, and it’s a lot-a-lot of cases for one week
Cases are spread out over 16 different health zones, so containment is harder
You might be wondering, what are the Centers for Disease Control and the US government doing to help contain this outbreak and support and treat those who are affected by Ebola (which has an average case fatality rate of 50%)?
During the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the US and Canadian governments played major roles in sending public health teams, supplies, health workers, setting up treatment centers, and providing support, along with the WHO and dozens of other countries. More than 11,000 people died of Ebola, with another 17,000 surviving it.
In 2026, the situation is quite different. Canada is providing more than $8M in international assistance funding though a bunch of governmental and non-governmental organizations. This is in addition to its annual $150–200M in foreign aid. See here for latest details.
The US government, after cutting foreign aid to the DRC by 75% (affecting its public health and other necessary infrastructures), is releasing $80M to various organizations overseen by the UN and various NGOs (non-governmental organizations).
However, the big emphasis by the Trump administration is that no American contracting Ebola (including those health workers its sending to Africa) will be returned to the US for treatment (in one of the several world-class health centers with top-level bio-containment.) Instead, according to the New York Times,
The Trump administration plans to send to Kenya U.S. citizens exposed to the Ebola virus rather than bring them home for observation and treatment, according to three people with knowledge of the plans.
The approach is a stark contrast to the way previous administrations responded to outbreaks, during which health care workers and other U.S. citizens exposed to the virus were brought home to be treated at specialized medical units. The administration this month flew an American doctor who developed symptoms to a hospital in Germany, and transported six other Americans for monitoring in Germany and the Czech Republic.
According to the substack by Dr. Craig Spencer (the physician who got Ebola in 2014 while working for MSF/Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders and WAS transported to the US for treatment, and recovered):
The government is training a few dozen Public Health Service officers — uniformed members of the U.S. commissioned corps — to deploy to Kenya to staff it. These are people we send under orders, often to crises, disasters, and outbreaks. And under this plan, if one of them is exposed, or falls ill, the government apparently does not intend to bring them home either.
So, to sum up: for this Ebola outbreak, the risk to the North American public is very very low. But, the risk to global health overall is substantial. Also, the risk to American and other health workers, deployed military doing humanitarian work, and UN personnel os higher than it needs to be because the US is refusing to take care of them in our own world-class medical facilities.
So, am I worried about me or others in North American getting Ebola? No. Am I worried about the damage my country’s leaders are doing to global healthcare capacity, the mission of international health workers, and citizens of all countries affected by this outbreak? YES. You bet I am.
Third and finally, there are the ticks. It turns out that tick numbers are declining in the Northeast and Midwest at this point in 2026. YLE annoted this very nice CDC graph to show where we are:
The blue-green line is tick-related ED visits this year, and we are about at peak for the year, and it’s lower this year. I mean, that’s something.
However, tick-borne diseases are in general on the upswing, so we all need to be careful. Here are more YLE tips:
Keepenjoying the outdoors! But if you’re in a tick-prone area, take that extra minute to do a tick check. The most important thing is removing the tick properly (use fine-tipped tweezers, grab close to the skin, pull upward, no twisting, no Vaseline, no matches). Then watch for symptoms: fever, rash, fatigue, joint aches. If you find an attached tick and are in a high-risk area for Lyme disease, it’s worth calling your doctor if it was attached for more than 36 hours.
So, am I worried about ticks? Always. I live in tick heaven here in New England. But this means I am careful to wear proper repellents (DEET for skin and Permethrin for clothing for me; you do you here), and I also check carefully after being outside. Will this keep me from going outside? Certainly not. And I hope it won’t slow down your outdoorsy summer, either.
I’ve been following the hantavirus outbreak with great interest and a little trepidation. Great interest because my day job– public health ethicist– means I want to see how this is being handled to think, write and teach about it; a little trepidation because, well, it’s an an outbreak of a scary virus on a large moving vessel (the MV Honius) driving around the ocean with 175 people aboard. Yeah.
There is overall good news coming out of reliable sources (e.g. the World Health Organization websites, public health substacks like Your Local Epidemiologist, which I read and trust). That news is that the case count as of May 13 was 11 cases and 3 deaths. The passengers have all disembarked, and their countries have made arrangements for their sequestration and/or surveillance during the roughly 6-week incubation period.
But I think we need to know what’s working well and what’s not in public health these days. After COVID, we learned a lot. But some lessons we still keep having to go back to, again and again.
Bad news/good news one: The bad news is that a hantavirus outbreak on a ship was not on anyone’s radar. Yale epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina said on this podcast on her substack that this scenario was not on her top-100 list of Bad Things to Happen on a Cruise Ship.
The good news is that as soon as hantavirus was confirmed in one of the sick passengers, the WHO swung into action, coordinating reporting to health authorities, sharing knowledge, helping arrange safe dockage for the ship, and contact tracing for the 34 passengers who had disembarked after the virus came aboard.
Bad news/good news two: Where was the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) in all this? Well, pretty much in the dark because
Trump fired or forced out many/most of the senior scientists who have leadership experience in infectious disease;
Trump pulled out of the WHO, so the CDC isn’t officially in the loop on their activities (the Your Local Epidemiologist folks said that US public health people were getting info from WHO friends as a favor to them);
current leadership of the CDC isn’t even requiring the American passengers from the cruise ship to quarantine at home during the 42-day incubation period. According to this article, “the CDC is currently taking a “conservative approach” that involves “encouraging” people to stay home during the monitoring period.”
But but… what about the good news? Here it is: state and local public health authorities are on the scene, and they are monitoring the passengers, communicating regularly with the communities where the affected passengers are staying, and being completely transparent about the processes they are using the manage the crisis. This happens every day, all day, for all manner of infectious diseases, including flu, pertussis, measles hepatitis, all over the world. Local public health folks deserve a yearly parade. And yes, my sister of one of those folks– she’s a public health epidemiology nurse, working hard in an understaffed agency (also thanks to Trump and RFK). If it weren’t a major privacy violation, I’d ask you all to send her a thank-you card…
Bad news/good news three: Cruise ships and viruses– man, this just keeps happening! Yes, it’s true that cruise ships seem to be floating petri dishes for nasty bugs like norovirus. E coli outbreaks happen, too. But, in this case, the MV Honius folks did everything they could to minimize health and environmental impact of their travel (other than being an energy-intensive mode of transportation): they had sanitation protocols designed to keep contaminating biomatter from leaving or entering the ship, especially as their destinations are often fragile ecosystems. It was just a very unfortunate happenstance that the only form of hantavirus with human-to-human contact showed up from two passengers who likely contracted it in Argentina. The ship authorities responded promptly and fully, cooperating with the WHO and affected countries.
Bad news/good news four: there is no treatment for hantavirus (other than supportive care), and it has a case fatality rate of 25–40%. Oh, and this variant– the Andes version– is the only known one with human-to-human contact. Okay, let’s make sure to breathe here. The good news is Andes virus outbreaks have happened before and been stopped through old-fashioned public health means of isolation and contact tracing. Also, this virus isn’t highly contagious– it’s much less contagious than COVID.
Bad news/good news five: with the CDC in a leadership and knowledge vacuum and political leadship refusing to back up or fund public health infrastructure, it’s harder than ever to get accurate and relevant and trustworthy information. Yes, that’s true. But the good news is that there are both official sites (like the WHO, international news outlets) and substacks are out there and on the job (like Your Local Epidemiologist and dozens of others by conscientious experts who care about the public’s physical health and emotional well-being when crises happen). I posted this clear and reassuring flow chart on FB that the YLE folks made. It reassured me, and I hope it will reassure you.
Flow chart assessing anyone’s risk from the hantavirus. Upshot: if you weren’t on the boat or spending a lot of time with someone who was, you’re likely totally fine.
As always, your trusty FIFI bloggers will keep you apprised of whatever comes our way. Now, go out and enjoy the lovely May day…
I’m a few days late for the new Action for Happiness monthly calendar but I really love the idea of Meaningful May.
I’m not one of those people who insists that every single moment must be saturated with meaning but I am one of those people who thinks that any given ordinary moment could be meaningful – and I firmly believe that meaning is worth seeking/creating.
So, obviously, I’m a fan of the tiny daily ideas that this month’s Action for Happiness calendar provides for seeking meaning in the ordinary.
I like all of the suggestions but I find the idea of making ‘a list of the things that matter to me and why’ especially appealing.
Which Meaningful May tip appeals to you the most?
A daily calendar for May 2026 from Action for Happiness. The individual blocks are pink, red, light blue, or darker blue and there is a tip for seeking meaning typed into each one. The edge of the calendar is decorated with simple cartoon images of things like a cup of tea, a paper airplane, a person on a bike, or a few planets. At the bottom of the calendar the words ‘Happier. Kinder. Together’ appear in green.
PS – If you want to hear a bit more about Meaningful May, check out the Action for Happiness video below “How to find meaning in the past, present and future. Meaningful May with Vanessa King.
A video from Action for Happiness featuring Vanessa King, a white woman with shoulder length hair and a bright expression on her face looking directly at the camera with a few plants and an old black and white photo of a couple on their wedding day. on the right ide of the image is text reading “Finding Meaning: 3 top tips with Vanessa King.”
By the time you read this, I will be in recovery following my heart valve replacement.
I’m grateful I was able to go into surgery relatively fit. It will help my recovery.
I’m even more grateful that we finally had some good weather and I was able to go for a bike ride on Friday.
And I’m especially grateful to this amazing group of women, my swim club lane-mates. I couldn’t ask for better pals and can’t wait to be back in the water with them.
Five women grouped together in a swimming pool, hamming it up for the camera.
It was sunny here last Friday so my husband spend a bit of time shoveling snow off of our patio – mostly to have something to do outside.
When it was sunny and spring-ish on Saturday, we wanted to have the patio door open so I dug the screen door out of the shed and had the brilliant idea (if I do say so myself) to drag a few patio chairs out at the same time.
Now it was sunny and relatively warm and we had chairs on the patio so it suddenly felt like our outdoor space was available to us again.
Obviously, my next step was to drag out a mat and do some yoga outdoors.
Did it feel strange to be doing yoga outside with snowshovels in the background? I’ll let you interpret that for yourself.
Image description: a selfie of me (a middle-aged white woman with a round face and light brown hair that is pulled back by a cloth band that happens to contain earphones) in a dark pink hoodie with the sun shining on my face, smirking at the fact that I am doing yoga outdoors while there are still necessary snow shovels propped against my house.
Was it weird to be lying on my mat in the sunshine while the grass in my backyard was still mostly covered in snow?
Well, it felt weird enough to take a photo of it at least…
Image description: a photo of my legs with the backyard full of snow visible in the background while propping myself up a little as I was lying on my mat on the patio. In the photo, I am lying on the ground with my right leg bent so the knee is toward the sky and the foot is on the ground. My left leg is bent so the outside of my foot is resting on the top of my right knee and my left knee is pointing to the left. You can see my blue yoga mat and part of the patio through the triangle formed by my legs. On my right is our patio mats, and more patio slats and beyond them you can see the railings, a whole bunch of snow, some leafless trees, the blue sky and our faded wooden fence.
But even though it felt kinda weird, it also felt great to be doing that slow, steady, focused movement in the bright sunlight and the fresh air.
Despite the snow, it felt like warm weather and more outdoor fun might be just around the (very long!) corner.
And if you saw this when you opened your eyes after Savasana, you might have believed it, too.
A photo of my view upwards from my yoga mat. Image description: a photo of bare tree branches with just a hint of growth on them with the bright blue sky in the background.
PS – Thanks to Steve for shoveling off the patio and setting this whole thing in motion.
One never knows what one’s media feed will present to one on any given day.
Last Monday morning, the following ad appeared:
Ad for Fatty 15 (TM), a bottle of pills claiming to improve your health in myriad and miraculous ways.
My first thoughts were:
Fatty15?
FATTY15?
Really?!
THAT’S the name the marketing team came up with in order to SELL this to me?
I am so very confused. Thanks Uday Mittai from Unsplash, for the perfect rendition of it.
Okay, what in the wild and unregulated supplement world is this FATTY15 thing? Here’s the TLDR version.
There are a lot of fatty acids.
They are found in lots of foods we eat.
Omega-3 fatty acids are a good fatty acid. They’re found in e.g. salmon, walnuts and edamame.
Trans-fats are a bad fatty acid. They’re found in e.g. many ultra-processed and fried foods, and many baked goods.
C15:0 is a recently found fatty acid. We don’t know much about it.
A new company called FATTY15 (again, wtaf) wants to sell it to you, promising you whole health in a bottle.
BUT BUT… HOW DID THE DOLPHINS GET INVOLVED?
Patience– I’m getting to this now.
It turns out that some dolphins work for the US Navy. They detect underwater mines and enemy swimmers (don’t ask me how). Part of their employee health plan includes research on and treatment of diseases related to dolphin-aging (they get some of the same diseases we do).
This person below– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, the translational medicine and research program director for the Navy’s National Marine Mammal Foundation– led a crack team of dolphin health experts to manage their care.
Honestly, if my job were to make sure that dolphins lived their best lives ever while in the employ of the United States government, I’d look that happy, too.
The team analyzed the dolphins’ blood samples taken throughout their lives to identify molecules present in the healthiest dolphins. One of the top nutrients was the molecule C15:0, a saturated fatty acid (pentadecanoic acid). In the human diet, C15:0 is present in dairy fat—whole milk, butter, and cheeses.
Obviously, dolphins don’t have that option after infancy, unlike humans. But don’t worry– your research dollars found a solution:
…when they fed [older] dolphins with chronic diseases diets higher in C15:0 (fatty fish), they became healthier. Further research supported their findings that C15:0 lowers risk and can actually reverse many chronic diseases [in older dolphins, maybe], making it an essential fatty acid, a nutrient that the body does not produce but is essential to health.
Venn-Watson co-wrote this paper to argue for proof of concept for C15:0, but with no human studies. Then she started a company to try to sell C15:0 to humans, since dolphins a) don’t carry credit cards; and b) C15:0 supplements are covered by their navy employee health plan. She also wrote a book to help shill this stuff. And gave a TEDx talk to shill some more. But we have any actual evidence that it works?
Healthier skin/hair? NO Balanced metabolism? Uh-uh. Deeper Sleep? No chance. 3X more cellular benefits than omega-3? What does this even mean?
And is it FDA-approved? Hell to the no. Just like all those other untested supplements. Please, oh, please just save your money.
BUT BUT THE FATTY15 WEBSITE!
It says all kinds of things that maybe are true. What about their claims?
To sum up:
The dolphins are going to be okay.
We are going to be okay.
Eating food and moving our bodies are good things to do, be we human or dolphin.
The one supplement that I personally can recommend is to supplement your viewing by adding Heated Rivalry to your watchlist. You’ll be glad you did.
Forget those images of lifeguards and swimmers with teeth sparkling white in their tanned faces. Apparently, swimmer’s teeth is a thing.
What is it and how does it happen? Apparently the chlorine and other pool chemicals can change the ph in your mouth, leading the discolouration, tartar, and even softened, cracked teeth. A swimmer friend brought it to my attention, and the consensus in our little group is that it can be a real issue.
All three of us have more than normal tartar at every dental check-up, and one has issues with discolouration and cracking. I’m curious about how many members of our respective swim clubs also suffer from it.
The advice to manage it all seems to boil down to: brush your teeth, especially before exercising; drink plenty of water; avoid sugary drinks and snacks; get to the dentist regularly.
This is good advice for everyone, so I’ll tuck this information away, keep up with my dental hygiene, and swim as often as possible in lakes or rivers.
A woman in a grey bathing cap and goggles shows off her smile from a pool with dark blue water.
