Lyme Disease is hard to detect and diagnose, harder still to treat effectively. So perhaps it's not surprising that the disease is becoming more and more common.

Ticks are known as common carriers of Lyme Disease, but Nurse Practitioner Mara Williams, author of the Lyme handbook, Nature's Dirty Needle: What You Need To Know About Chronic Lyme Disease And How To Get The Help To Feel Better, explains that Lyme is just one part of the medical hazard the little bugs pose.

Ticks may be the most widespread vector for Lyme Disease and its related ailments, they're not the only ones. And the ticks themselves are increasingly widespread.

It's addictive, unregulated, and linked to multiple adverse health effects. It has even been branded a toxic substance. Yet sugar remains an almost inescapable ingredient in the modern American diet.

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US policy for decades has emphasized making cheap food available, promoting dairy, corn and other grains. This has successfully supported those sectors of American agriculture, says Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California San Francisco. But while farmers, and especially food producers have profited, consumers are paying a double price.

Federal crop subsidies have effectively held down food prices for American consumers. But Dr. Lustig suggests there is a downside to that, too.

French farmers stuff geese with carbohydrates to produce fatty livers for pate. Humans are doing much the same to themselves by consuming too much sugar. The consequences, only now becoming apparent, will likely be devastating, in an emerging epidemic of what Lustig terms, fatty liver disease.

In Lustig's view, sugar, and fructose in particular, should be regulated as a toxic substance that can have adverse health affects, just as we do with alcohol, which has similar metabolic consequences. But he knows that's not likely to happen any time soon.

Social media, tracking software, online surveillance... it's a Brave New World of online data. Learn how to keep your information under your own control. Siobhan MacDermot speaks at Book Passage in Corte Madera Saturday, Jan. 12 at 4:00 p.m. Wide Open Privacy: Strategies For The Digital Life is for sale on Amazon.com. But first she caught up with KRCB's Danielle Venton, to share some of today's most important privacy secrets. (Images courtesy of AVG technologies, J.R. Smith and Siobhan MacDermott.) 

One of the most interesting things she learned while writing the book, MacDermott says, is that people display a variety of "paradoxes" in their online life. They might think their online commentary is private, for example, when it's not really.

Working in the wine industry is increasingly an option for women. But owning the winery is another matter. We hear from some two local women winery owners in this North Bay Report.

Merry EdwardsMerry Edwards, one of the early trailblazers among women winemakers, recounts being fortunate to have her early career path enabled by a series of other outsiders.

In addition to the gender-based genetic differences that give women in general a more discerning palate, Carol Shelton (pictured above) recalls how a game invented by her mother also helped train her olfactory acuity.