Responding to an email, text message or new Facebook post in response to vibration or sound is remarkably similar to the behavior of B.F. Skinner's fixated rodents that unnerved me so long ago.

Does insomnia cause depression? Does depression cause insomnia? Chronic insomnia is strongly associated with mood disorders, but which way does the causality run?

We'd be much healthier as a nation if we stopped worrying so much about fats, and instead made a concerted effort to avoid processed, quick-digesting carbohydrates -- especially added sugars.

Migraines can be excruciating for patients, incapacitating them for hours or days at a time. They are also frustrating for doctors, who often find that the condition resists their best efforts at treatment.

Sunday's House vote was not principally about health care reform. It was about health insurance reform. President Obama is among the few in the debate who consistently used the accurate term.

I cheered when I learned of First Lady Michelle Obama's new initiative, Let's Move, aimed at the mounting epidemic of childhood obesity. It's a breakthrough for government to address obesity's systemic causes.

Since cell phones show no signs of going away, it's vital to focus closely on the most recently published studies, the ones that show the effects of longer-term exposure.

In my view, the best gift is one that benefits both the receiver and the planet.

Occasional, situational sadness is not pathology -- it is part and parcel of the human condition. Beware of those who attempt to make money by convincing you otherwise.

Is the Baucus plan, the one that manages the improbable feat of making the developed world's most expensive, least effective health care system even worse, indeed the only one with a prayer of passage?

If the health care debate seems like a hopeless morass, it's largely because moneyed interests want it to look that way. Matt Taibbi reminds us that the most fundamental issue is simple: Who pays, and how?

We've become a "sick-care system" that puts all its efforts in developing newer drugs and offering more surgery once a person is ill. Doctors are not trained to keep people healthy.

If media outlets, pundits, and commentators were seriously concerned about the health of Americans, why after the President's speech, would media coverage land upon a single word shouted by an idiot--rather than the substantive realities of American health care reform?

Obama's health care speech was just the opening salvo in a much larger change in the way we live. What the president didn't say: The American health care/medical industry is currently based on a sickness model.

There was much to like in President Obama's health care reform speech to a joint session of Congress. But we need to remember that medical insurance reform of any kind is doomed without medical content reform.

While there has been tremendous debate over access and payment, there has been less focus on the content of health care. Without a change in that content, we will never have a sustainable system.

Dr. Andrew Weil's new book, "Why Our Health Matters" is a must read for anyone wondering why health care reform is in gridlock or what to do about it.

There is a growing trend to promote diseases to fit existing drugs. As a culture, we should be suspicious whenever we hear of a new "disease," and ask whether it may just be a marketing ploy.

Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist. And doctors are human beings.