Field Notes: May 2025
What, wait — I could use a Continuous Glucose Monitor temporarily to learn more about my body? Plus, Yoga for Tired People, support for caregivers, and a delicious roasted vegetable recipe.
Hello, dear friends,
This month’s Field Notes is a collection of interesting articles, resources, and ideas I ran across recently— all related to how we live and thrive through wellness and illness.
How a Continuous Glucose Monitor can generate useful, actionable info about your particular body — whether you are diabetic, pre-diabetic, or neither
Resources for caregivers
Higher risks with a common grocery produce item
How one doctor wrestles with whether to treat a patient with medications that their family has read on the internet will help
Lovely (and free) yoga class from Yoga for Tired People
Thoughts on taking a glorious separate vacation from your spouse
My favorite roasted vegetable recipe
I hope you find something useful for you. I’d love to hear what you found most helpful, or what you’d like to see more of next time.
To our journeys,
Brianne
A Continuous Glucose Monitor Guide
calls a CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) a “gateway for my patients to personalized nutrition and metabolic health.” A CGM can be useful to any of us, Dr. Sethi says, whether or not we are pre-diabetic or diabetic. In this introductory post, she list ways to use information generated by this little sensor, which is implanted under your skin for about two weeks. A CGM measures your blood glucose level every few minutes and sends that data, via bluetooth, to an app on your phone, so you can see in real time the effect in your glucose levels of what you eat, of a poor night’s sleep or a great night’s sleep, of stress, of relaxation exercises.
“My favorite metric is showing patients how their post-meal glucose changes with a simple walk,” writes Dr. Sethi. “Seeing how powerful this intervention is really helps my patients see how important it is and that makes the habit easier to stick to!”
You’ll need a doctor’s prescription to get a CGM and likely have to pay out of pocket if you aren’t diabetic or pre-diabetic. The cost (Dr. Sethi estimates $65-$100, depending on your pharmacy and using a coupon) yields a potential treasure trove of data. “In my clinical opinion, even using one for two weeks will give you such great insights that it’s a wonderful investment for your metabolic health,” writes Dr. Sethi.
Have you used a Continuous Glucose Monitor? What was your experience like? I haven’t tried one yet, but I’m very curious!
Learn more about CGMs in the full post.
What It Feels Like to Be a Caregiver
’s Q&A about caregiving with Jennifer Levin, author of Generation Care, ends with a list of practical tips. 
The first step she recommended surprised me, but it makes complete sense, as everything flows from our identity: accept your role as a caregiver. Jennifer explains:
“It begins with this: self-identity as a caregiver. I know it sounds obvious, but often people (especially younger people!) don’t, and using the term ‘caregiver’ can open up a world of resources. This seems like a newbie first step, but I didn’t realize I was a caregiver until after my father passed away and I happened across a report that defined the role. Your care role doesn’t need to be full-time; it doesn’t mean only people who live with the person they care for or even in the same state. While reading this interview some people might be realizing: ‘hang on, I think all of these tasks I’ve been consumed with might actually be caregiving.’
“Next, identify what you need help with. Is it financial assistance, an affordable home health aide, mental health support (for you or them), or respite care? Information and resources can be disjointed, so knowing what you are looking for is super helpful.”
Read the full interview at
.Negative Space’s new Storyline resources for caregivers
The Negative Space, a wonderful nonprofit that supports caregivers, has a great new resource called Storyline. Each chapter in a caregiving journey has specific tools, such as reflection questions, an anchor phrase, meditations, and much more. The first two chapters are free:
Check out The Storyline or share it with a friend who is a caregiver.
Now Is Not the Time to Eat Bagged Lettuce
An Atlantic article about the oddly higher risks that come with pre-washed shredded lettuce:
In terms of foodborne illness, leafy greens stand alone. In 2022, they were identified as the cause of five separate multistate foodborne-illness outbreaks, more than any other food. Romaine lettuce has a particularly bad reputation, and for good reason. In 2018, tainted romaine killed five people and induced kidney failure in another 27. Last year, an E. coli outbreak tied to—you guessed it—romaine sent 36 people to the hospital across 15 states. Perhaps ironically, the bags of shredded lettuce that promise to be pre-washed and ready to eat are riskier than whole heads of romaine.
Read the full story (gift link).
Every Doctor Faces This Dilemma
Dr. Daniela J. Lamas shares how she thinks about requests from patients that fall outside of recommended treatments, such as a family asking her to give their loved one in the hospital an herbal mixture ordered off the internet. “I had to ask myself: Is it OK to depart from the standard practices of medicine for the sake of building trust with patients and their families?”
Read the full essay. (NYT gift link)
Stretches at Yoga for Tired People
I stumbled upon
’s lovely Substack newsletter where she shares meditations, stretches, and yoga classes in her lovely English lilt.Here’s one example: 10-Minute Yoga Shoulder Reset.
She also has a free 5-part Beginners Yoga Class …
… and an Instagram with more videos!
A Room of One's Own
, one of my very favorite food bloggers and cookbook authors, writes about her husband going on a ski trip without her and the kids: This is the “first year that we both took proper vacations without the other person.” Such breaks make “us happier and stronger.”She writes — in a post that resonated with a lot of her readers — “Here’s what I know: Almost all the married women I know secretly wish they had more time on their own. Either a bedroom of their own, or an apartment they could escape to a few nights a week. It’s not that people want divorce—they love their husbands. It’s not about infidelity either. It’s that the way most of us live our lives in our nuclear families now doesn’t leave a lot of room for us to feel completely ourselves.”
Read the full post.
The Best Roasted Vegetables Ever
Thinking of Luisa brought to mind this amazing recipe of hers, one I turn to again and again. “The Best Roasted Vegetables Ever” is perfect for now, when farmers markets are starting to expand from the winter stock of potatoes and onions to fresh green produce. Basically, cut up a whole array of veggies into small bits, add a lot of olive oil, and roast for a long time, an hour or so. Easy and incredibly good.
Read the full recipe.
From the Poetry Buds Archive
My April project with
was writing about a poet each day for 30 days straight (with help from several guest writers, too). Here are a few poets connected in some way to health and bodies you might love, too:Andrea Gibson: “When I realized the storm was inevitable, I made it my medicine.”
Dr. William Carlos Williams: “What is it that is dragging at my heart?”
Read more in the Poetry Buds Archive.
That veg recipe sounds amazing!
I saw a documentary that discussed the problem with romaine lettuce - many of the bigger farms are downstream from livestock farms, and diseases are getting transmitted through the water and runoff. After that documentary, I began buying greenhouse lettuce. I hate that it comes in plastic containers, but I’m not taking the chance on conventionally grown lettuces.
Also! I have a room of my own - a bedroom I converted into a woman cave - and it’s GLORIOUS and marriage-preserving. I keep my clothes in the closets, I work out in this room, read, meditate, watch TV. I do recognize the great privilege in this, of course. We also don’t have children, so it was easier to snag a bedroom for myself. My husband basically has domain over the living room. It works for us ☺️