THE STAY WELL BLOG

Where and how we get our health information has changed throughout my lifetime. A bit of history here. In the mid-1970s, doctors were beginning to answer medical questions on radio and TV. The public criticized doctors for giving advice people thought was misleading or lacking scientific backing. But who was the arbiter of what was “misleading or lacking scientific backing”? I bring this up now because of the current pushback against science. There’s a lot of bluster out ther

Exercise. The more I read about it, the more I realize how important it is. I recently finished a book, “Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives,” by Michael Joseph Gross. He postulates, rightly so, that we often separate the mind from the body — as if your brain is just an independent organ on top of a robot. When you consider this, it’s a funny way to think about what we do, but it’s widespread in so many articles, books and viewpoints. By the way, the brain is an

Vaccines save lives. Smallpox was eliminated from the world because of vaccines. It killed roughly 200 million to 500 million people worldwide in the 1800s and continued until immunization against it became widespread. When English physician Edward Jenner introduced the first smallpox immunization in the late 1780s, it took decades before people believed in it. Don’t get me wrong, the first vaccination had lots of problems, but so did smallpox. Now, let’s go on to childhood i

Just a quick update from my trip to India and Tibet. These photos are from the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala, India. This is the arrival of 30 new computers for the school (and there are many more on the way). It took about a year to make it happen, and it was so awesome to see their faces. The kids live there for assorted reasons - their parents may be too poor to care for them, they may have been orphaned, etc. The effort continues to increase computer skills, an

Too many women die from breast cancer. We know that. We all know someone or know of someone who had breast cancer and did not survive. It’s tough, no matter what your age is, but it’s tougher when young women die from it. I still remember, from early in my practice, a woman in her late 30s who died of cancer, leaving her husband with two young children, a family shattered by the woman’s death. (By the way, he eventually remarried after meeting a lovely woman whose husband had

Age can be limiting in many ways, but you might discover that life has more to offer than you thought.

Raising confident kids means spending time with them every day, at least 15 to 30 minutes, when you are truly with them.

I don’t have to tell you obesity is a big problem in America. When I grew up in the 1960s, the childhood obesity rate was 10% or less; it’s now at 30% across the board, mirroring adult obesity.

My classic Paella recipe always brings a crowd.