Cedars Sinai

Within the borders of the United States, precisely where you live has a lot to do with your health, your health care and what it costs.

The goal of quality patient care is and always should be the same: Health care professionals should do the right thing for the right patient in the right setting with the right resources.

So what does the research tell us? We need to talk to both young women and men, not once but early and often about sexual health and responsibility.

The movement of what was once a relatively inconspicuous disease to an epidemic of significant public health concern remains both worrisome and mysterious.

Combining movement with meditative practices can help protect your good health -- but let common sense control expectations.

Now that the federal government has sought to get schools across the country to make healthier lunches, there's another tough question for us all: Will kids eat them?

To hear their advocates, liquefied fruits, veggies and herbs offer an amazing elixir to lose weight, boost the body's immunity, prevent cancer, and cleanse the liver and colon -- and more. Be careful if you buy all these claims.

There is a spectrum in the process of dying. It ranges from unbearable suffering for patients and their families to a reasonable quality of life in which symptoms are controlled until the end. Either way, survivors are left to grieve.

Even as it leads the planet in medical and scientific accomplishments, the United States also has some downright shameful disparities in its health care, and one of the worst is in the area of infant mortality.

In the human health equation, love in all its varieties rains down benefits for us. So let's take this day to celebrate the joy, pleasure and positive psychology that love from all sources brings to our mental and physical health.

It's easy to understand why millions of patients with cancer, infections, heart disease, central nervous system conditions and pain get riled up when they learn there are shortages of drugs for what ails them.

As snow sport enthusiasts invade ski resorts this winter, two to three in every 1,000 ski visits and nearly seven snowboard visits will result in an injury. Fortunately, most ski and snowboarding injuries are not serious or life threatening.

Preliminary figures from the Centers for Disease control include a promising bit of news for women's health: for the first time in a decade, the rate of cesarean section births dropped.

We spend far more than any other country on health care. Yet our citizens don't live as long as people in many other countries. The disparities in even basic care are too great between rich and poor.

Before you give up the pharmaceutical solution in favor of an herbal remedy, let me strongly urge you to keep your doctor and other caregivers (don't forget your pharmacist!) in the treatment loop.

At last, the time is right to have a baby. But the longer you've waited, the more uncooperative your body may be. One of the saddest complications of delaying a family is involuntary childlessness.

There's more to these plants than merely decking the halls on the holiday season. Some of them are among the more interesting and promising subjects of medical research.

The next time you're toasting your health for the holidays, should you raise a glass of water instead of a finely crafted vintage? The science on the merits and risks of wine have become increasingly murky the more we learn.

If losing weight and getting more exercise were easy, then chronic diseases, like diabetes, wouldn't be as much of a problem. Those lifestyle changes are notoriously difficult. But there's a glimmer of hope.

Being overweight in childhood has become epidemic, and now is the most common medical condition of children. As New York City's anti-soda campaign asks, are kids "Pouring on the Pounds?"

No one wants to get sick while traveling or immediately thereafter, especially because your desk gets buried in work while you're even briefly away. Many aspects of air travel, however, increase the prospects of picking up an illness.

No sooner do the blue lines show up on a pregnancy test than expectant parents find themselves bombarded with brochures from companies extolling the benefits of umbilical-cord blood banking.

Our technology moves as fast as the fighting to come up with new ways to save lives on the battlefield; amid the horror and heartbreak, there have been medical advances.

If I start talking about tattoos, I can tell that lots of you of a certain age will react simply by sighing deeply or clucking your tongues in disapproval. Sorry, Mom and Dad.

It's the season of Halloween, or maybe Dia de Los Muertos, and besides carving pumpkins, loading up on mini-bags of peanut M&Ms and thinking lots about the dead, we also pause at this time of year to, sort of, celebrate our fears.