If your area is anything like New York, you might be experiencing an intense heat wave. Yesterday, I stepped out of my house and was welcomed by a wall of thick, hot, humid air that made the prospect of running seem more like swimming. In this situation, no normal playlist...

"A person waiting is a person suffering," a doctor told me recently. "I never realized that -- until I became a patient myself. The difference between being a doctor and not being a doctor is the timing."

The word "patient" has two meanings - referring to a person with illness,...

The word "doctor" means "one who teaches," and we can tell how well we do this in our practices by simply looking in the waiting room. If doctors teach well, then people will understand their veterinary care and make wiser health choices, and that should translate into healthier patients. Caring,...

A couple of years ago, when my daughter Sammy was 9, some health issues she'd had pretty much since birth -- asthma and eczema -- suddenly became a whole lot worse. Her breathing tests showed reduced lung function and her entire body was itchy, red and dry. Sammy was also...

Let's say I go to the bank to withdraw $100. The teller asks me if I want five $20 bills, three $20 bills and four $10 bills, or a $50, a $20, two $10 and two $5 bills?

I always politely tell them it doesn't matter, because five $20 bills...

When she was an overweight teen, bullies relentlessly tormented Natt Smith, one of The Huffington Post's weight loss success stories.

"I was walking down the science hall and one of the notorious school bullies poured milk over my head and followed me around making mooing sounds, pausing...

I was standing in the cosmetic aisle of the co-op with another health care practitioner when a bright-eyed clerk approached us. "You will be happy to hear," he reported enthusiastically, "that our shampoos are gluten-free."

As he walked away, Hannah whispered, "Isn't it funny that suddenly things that never contained...

"Whittle your waist," as they used to say. Unfortunately, spot-reducing doesn't work. However, you can tone the muscles in your midsection with these powerhouse exercises. Do them every other day. These specific moves will increase the strength in your core as well as the upper body. The real necessities for...

Doesnʼt it seem like summer comes faster each year, without notice... and then it's too late? No time to get beach body ready but still wishing you had a few more weeks to try. Well, fret no longer. Iʼve put together a four-week workout guide to help you shed some...

Acupuncturists have a name for the time when their patients are resting with needles. They call it "cooking." Some people call it "torture."

An article on AcuTake on common excuses for not getting acupuncture listed fear of needles as the No. 1 excuse. In response to this article,...

On the first night of a recent cruise, we met a nice couple at dinner with a cruise mindset pretty typical of the sort of thing we heard all over the ship: "We already know we'll gain 10 pounds." With their cruise mindset, I'll bet they did!

On the...

The United States Preventive Services Task Force has moved on from ambivalence about prostate cancer screening with the PSA test, and inveighed decisively against it. As is ever the case with guidance about cancer screening, this recommendation is apt to stoke the flames of...

By Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D., Nutrition Editor, EatingWell Magazine

As I was editing a new story on inflammation for the May/June issue of EatingWell Magazine, I would talk to friends and family about it -- and, not surprisingly, they didn’t really know what inflammation was. (Do you?)

Here's...

I review food logs for my patients and magazines, and one very common thing I've seen is most people do not know the difference between a treat and a snack. A treat is something that is not filling and has no nutrition, whereas a snack is something that is filling...

The pairing of two lead articles in a recent "Health" section of The New York Times -- one reporting that those of us with higher levels of HDL (so-called 'good' cholesterol) have "no significant decrease in risk of cardiovascular disease," and the other reporting that a popular antibiotic,...

For months now, I have been writing about the studies that are being published -- seemingly by the month -- linking obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) to more and more medical conditions, including hypertension, heart disease, mood and memory problems.

The latest research didn't surprise me, but...

Let's be honest: Working out can be monotonous. We go in the gym and hit the same routine every time. After a while, we start to feel like a hamster on a wheel, doing the same thing over and over... and oh yeah, not getting the results we are working...

Click here to read Part I of the story.

Part II of my TEDMED 2012 conference...

One day I found Pastor Rick Warren from Saddleback Church in Southern California in my office wanting to get religion about health. After his appointment we went to dinner and...