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Fear Factor

Posted 01/09/2008 Readers of this newsletter regularly hear about the dangers of stress to their health. We experience the emotional and physical reaction known as stress whenever we’re in a situation where we can’t control the course of our lives. The minor stresses (late for an appointment, a botched recipe) are unavoidable, part of life […]

R&R for 2008

This new year’s eve, consider a resolution that will make your cheeks glow and your heart happy.

Consider scheduling a long weekend, or even a week, at a health spa.

Many of my patients who have followed through on this (my favorite) prescription consider their health-spa visits life-altering. The healthy food, massage, long walks, and yoga sessions, lack of TVs, and turned-off cellphones helped them see how eliminating stress could lead to a whole new approach to good health.

Cure PMS The Natural Way…Without Seeing a Doctor

I can’t imagine what PMS actually feels like, but having heard the litany of miserable symptoms from thousands of my patients, it sounds pretty dismal. But just because I happen to be a male physician doesn’t mean I can’t offer help.

The Fine Art of Asking for Help

Your dinner guests are arriving in an hour and things are nowhere near ready. The table hasn’t been set, the guacamole not started, the wine unopened. And the dog hair on the couch?

But instead of signaling for back-up help from your family, you do it all yourself. Within moments, you feel your face muscles tense into that mean little frown you’ve seen in the mirror. And you’re completely frazzled by the time the doorbell rings.

Wintertime Blues: 10 Steps to Turn Them Around

The wintertime blues, also known as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), usually begin when the days get shorter and the sky clouds over into perpetual gray. Many people with SAD dread late autumn because the clocks move back an hour and, in a single day, autumn twilight becomes dark night.

Prescribing Happiness

Many good studies have proved that an optimistic outlook has significant long-term health benefits. According to an article in Family Medicine, a journal for primary care doctors, some holistically oriented family physicians are recommending daily exercises in optimism to reduce the risk of developing all sorts of illnesses, both physical and emotional.

Q&A: Low Blood Sugar

Q: You mentioned in one of your tips that low blood sugar was a controversial diagnosis. Would you explain why?

A: To my thinking, the controversy over low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) got started when the book Sugar Blues came out 30 years ago and doctors couldn’t cope with patients asking questions about a condition they knew little about.

Benefits of a Whole Food Diet

In my last health tip we discussed the damaging effects of all the sugar we’re eating. I urged you to boost your intake of whole foods–real fruits and vegetables that are so readily available now in the farmers markets of our northern hemisphere.

Keeping Your Smarts as You Age

Click here for the original post. Nobody likes to spend too much time thinking about what doctors call age-related decline in brain function. You can get really worried about the future of your brain until you meet someone like Chicago icon Studs Terkel. Studs is now 95, and although he readily acknowledges he’s as deaf […]