North Denver News

By Erika Taylor How many hours do you sit in a normal day? According to the CDC, if you’re like the average American, the answer is six-and-a-half to eight hours. That might sound shocking, but if you take into account driving, desk work, reading, Netflixing … it adds up. Even if you are among those at low risk for developing adverse consequences – people who sit less than four hours a day – the CDC says that after just two hours... Read more...

By Erika Taylor Happy Heart Month!  Does it seem ironic that many of the ways we celebrate Valentine’s Day involve things that are potentially damaging to our hearts? I’ve seen ads for wine yoga, cocktails and a movie, bike-and-brew. Alcohol occupies a throne at the head of nearly every social table. Intense and ubiquitous marketing, affordability, acceptability in most social settings and just the fact that it feels good have created... Read more...

By Erika Taylor Spoiler alert! Eighty percent of New Year’s resolutions are broken by February. We come off of the holiday season full of motivation. We firmly, passionately resolve to swap eggnog for lemon water, stem Black Friday-inspired overspending for strict budgeting, and recommit to the gym we sign up for every January. But these grandiose plans dissolve to the lure of snooze buttons and Super Bowl nachos.  Why does this... Read more...

By Erika Taylor My mom was having a bad day. She had waited months to get her car scheduled for repairs after being rear-ended at a stoplight. She had nervously wound her way across town, missed her turn, found her way back, stomped through the snow and gone inside. Only to discover that she had mistakenly been scheduled for an estimate (which had already been completed weeks earlier) and not the repair. She explained that between the... Read more...

By Erika Taylor The Surgeon General has nothing on fifth-graders at Brown International Academy, a northwest Denver public school, when it comes to educating our communities. Erika Taylor Brown students Elizabeth Dolegowski and Mara Persaud have been studying the impacts of social media on young people for months and presented their findings in May at the school’s annual Fifth Grade Exhibition, a capstone project designed to give... Read more...

Stock image The quest for personal improvement seems like a construct of more time in the day than work to be done. Social media scrolling, dating, meal planning, Netflixing… If we were working every moment just to survive, we would mate with the first suitable prospect we came across, eat whatever we could forage, and tumble to the earth under whatever shelter we managed to fashion at the end of each exhausting day. To keep our ancestors... Read more...