Conscientious vegetarians and vegans who are having problems with hemorrhoids have for years had nowhere to turn for hemorrhoid relief. Most if not all hemorrhoid ointments and hemorrhoid creams (in fact, generally all hemorrhoid products) contained, among other things, shark oil (technically shark liver oil). The best known hemorrhoid ointment, Preparation H, was infamous for its use of shark’s liver oil. Now, however, we are happy to report, there are several hemorrhoid treatments from Preparation H that not only do not contain shark oil, but are completely vegan, and all of them are vegetarian.

I know this because this week I spoke with Emily, a customer service representative with the Preparation H brand (their parent company is Pfizer). Please note that I do not know about Pfizer’s animal testing policies, and so that is a separate question. What I know is about the ingredients in their hemorrhoid products.

No Preparation H product sold within the United States contains shark liver oil

As of the writing of this article (August 13, 2013) all of their products are vegetarian (meaning that they contain no ingredients for which an animal had to die), and in fact only two of their products contain any animal products at all – and those products are bees wax and lanolin.

The following Preparation H products contain no animal ingredients:

Preparation H Cooling Gel
Preparation H Cream
Preparation H Suppositories

The following Preparation H products contain either lanolin or beeswax:

Preparation H Ointment (beeswax)
Preparation H Wipes (lanolin)

There is also a homeopathic hemorrhoid cream out there, that is vegan, called Nelsons H Plus Care Hemorrhoid Cream. It is available from Amazon here.

It’s like the unholy love child of Brooke Shields and Erica Jong: postpartum fear of flying. It turns out that while nobody talks about postpartum fear of flying, and while postpartum fear of flying does not even seem to be a recognized “diagnosis”, lots of people – mothers in particular, but also fathers, experience a new and sudden fear of flying once they become parents. It starts post partum, but it lasts for years.

If you suffer or have suffered from postpartum fear of flying, read on, and share your story!

For myself, I used to be a very frequent flyer. In fact, I was flying on my own from a very young age, and never had a problem with flying – at all.

That all changed when I had my first child, at age 20 (planned, thank you very much!) Suddenly I was gripped by an icy cold fear around my heart at the very thought of getting on an airplane. In fact, the thought of flying filled me not just with dread, but with outright terror.

Interestingly, at around the time that my daughter hit her mid teens, my fear of flying eased up, and I even willingly boarded planes again.

It was then that I started to connect the dots, and theorized that perhaps the sudden onset of my fear of flying was related to the overwhelming responsibility of being responsible for the safety and well-being of my child. And that, as she reached an age where, sure, she might miss me if I perished, she would be ok without me.

I really didn’t think a whole lot more about it until I had my son, several years later. Instantly that fear of flying returned. I would do – and have done – anything to avoid getting on an airplane. Fortunately I adore travelling by train, and so many trips between California and Colorado have been enjoyed on Amtrak’s California Zephyr.

But now, as my son hits his mid-teens, and I have some travelling to do this year, I find myself actually contemplating flying again, and without being seized with terror. In fact, I’m contemplating not just a flight for a conference from state-to-state, but a 15-hour flight to another country.

“Hmmm,” I thought to myself, “that’s interesting. This is the identical experience I had with my daughter.”

I mentioned this to a friend of mine – a very hands-on single father, and it turns out that he too has had the same experience. No problem flying at all, until he became a parent, and then – boom – fear of flying.

I’ve had other friends mention that they have experienced this as well.

So, to all of you people out there who have experienced postpartum fear of flying – you are not alone. And it does get better.

A few months ago I found the amazing Lapsang Souchong tea from Pekoe, in Boulder. Now, I love me some smokey tea, so I picked some up and brought it home, and it became my morning cuppa (well, 3 cuppas). Previously I had been drinking regular black tea. Well, since I started drinking the Lapsang Souchong regularly, I noticed I’d started losing weight. So much so, in fact, that I was starting to get concerned (not at the level – I’m now at my ideal weight, which I love!), but that there was no obvious explanation. Then a friend to whom I had given some of the Lapsang Souchong asked me, out of the blue, “Have you noticed losing weight since drinking the Lapsang Souchong?” She had the same experience – we had both lost weight even though not actively looking to lose weight!

Wikipedia says, of Lapsang Souchong, that it originally comes from the Wuyi region of the Chinese province of Fujian. “Lapsang is distinct from all other types of tea because lapsang leaves are traditionally smoke-dried over pinewood fires, taking on a distinctive smoky flavour. Lapsang souchong is the first black tea in history, even earlier than the famous Keemun tea. After the lapsang souchong tea was used for producing black tea called Min Hong (meaning “Black tea produced in Fujian”), people started to move the tea bush to different places like Keemun, India and Ceylon. The name means “sub-variety”. Lapsang souchong is a member of the Bohea family of teas… The story goes that the tea was created during the Qing era when the passage of armies delayed the annual drying of the tea leaves in the Wuyi Mountain. Eager to satisfy demand, the tea producers sped up the drying process by having their workers dry the tea leaves over fires made from local pines.”

Interestingly, in all the research I have done, I have been unable to find anything – even anecdotal – connecting Lapsang Souchong to spontaneous weight loss. So I asked on Facebook, and sure enough, another woman said she’d noticed the same thing when drinking Lapsang Souchong!

Of course, this is only 3 data points, so, I ask you, my readers: have any of you had this experience? Please let us know!

Is your medicine cabinet or bathroom cabinet a jumble of boxes of pills in blister packs that defy organizing? Over-stuffed with rows of boxes containing the blister-packed products? I know that mine was, between homeopathic products such as Sabadil (allergy), Sinusalia (self explanatory) and Coldcalm (ditto), and the more standard products that we use when necessary (Benadryl, Sudafed, etc.). Nowadays it seems that every OTC (over-the-counter) medication and health product that comes in tablet or capsule form comes in a blister pack (those little pockets that have a foil seal that you peel off or push the pill through) which is packed in a box (often a box that takes up much more room than the product inside). Wish that you could somehow organize them to take up less space, and be easy to find?

Well, do what I did! Do this:

The box is a cheap index card file from the local office supply store, which includes the tabbed deviders. I usually cut the directions from the box of each pill and file it with the product.

Now, this assumes that either a) you have no children in the house who would be at risk from non-child-proofed meds, or b) that you can put this up high enough to keep it out of their reach or, ideally, c) both.

But I have to tell you, this has dispensed with frustration on so many fronts! I can see everything that we have at a glance, and, more importantly, find everything that we have at a glance. And I can easily see when we are running low on something.

And my bathroom cabinet has lots of free space again.