SALISBURY — Mark Braunstein refers to himself as “the poster child for medical marijuana” in Connecticut.
A paraplegic, he suffered a spinal cord injury in 1990, which left him with frequent and painful spasms.
Marijuana, he told an audience at the Scoville Memorial Library on Thursday, March 7, is the only drug that addresses both the spasms and the pain simultaneously.

SALISBURY — There are better ways to manage pain than the use of opioid drugs.
That was the message from therapists Kaitlyn Duerr and Kim Tormay at Noble Horizons on Saturday morning, Feb. 23.
The two, who work at Noble, covered various strategies in physical and occupational therapy that can help patients manage pain without opioids and their negative side effects.

Hang on, we’re about to get a little woo-woo here. This column is about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the idea of eating special seasonal foods to counteract the effects of the weather (in this case: winter weather). 
Last month was the beginning of the Chinese Lunar Year, of course (happy year of the pig!). But I’ve just been thinking generally about the TCM recommendation that, when it’s very cold, you should eat foods that are warming and that heat up your body, especially your kidneys.

I guess by now we all know that nuts are good for our bodies. Here’s some extra information on the weird and wonderful ways that walnuts are healthy.
Most memorable: An article about walnuts online at www.medicalnewstoday.com (which seems like a mostly legitimate website) claims that men who eat walnuts see a significant  increase in the vitality of their sperm. Anyone interested in starting a family might want to keep that in mind.