Letters to the editor for Saturday, May 17, 2014

Be pro-active when it comes to Bell’s Palsy

In Sunday’s Nevada Appeal, Dr. K’s column discussed Bell’s Palsy. Please allow me to add some personal observations to your BP knowledge.

Your general practitioner will probably refer you to a neurologist for consultation. These doctors may have a two- to three-week waiting period for an appointment. What you can do in the interim is to be proactive. The internet has some excellent information from sources such as Mayo’s and Kaiser which include nurses’ educational material and a facial exercise program which can be initiated without delay. I began those exercises on day two and two weeks later when I got in to the neurologist the symptoms had all but disappeared.

I am convinced rapid action was most helpful in clearing this quickly.

Paul Conrad

Carson City

Good nutrition should taste better

Why don’t school children eat the vegetables? This question is in the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper and the Reno Gazette-Journal, and yet the answer is simple. They simply do not taste good.

Italy, China, Germany, Russia, Korea, Laos, Vietnam, the Amish, the Amana colonies, the Cajuns, the French, etc, you get the idea, know how to make the vegetables taste good. Our cooks boil them without any herbs, spices, or sauces, and expect our school children and senior citizens to eat those tasteless things. The cooks don’t even eat them. The people that do eat them do it because they are supposed to be “good for you.” Most of them go to the garbage can and the bears won’t even eat them.

As a congressman might say, “The people have asked for decent tasting vegetables” by leaving them on the plate. So why not search for good flavor and not stick to such guidelines of nutrition that makes food without flavor? The cooks are wasting the taxpayer’s money by trying to feed people tasteless food. Simply telling people that the vegetables are good for you without making them taste good is foolhardy.

Bud Irving

Carson City