As a physician, I always encourage patients to make lifestyle changes to improve their health. We aren't able to change our genetic makeup, but we should choose what we eat more carefully because the right foods may be able to prevent kidney disease.

Like an addiction to drugs or alcohol, food addicts will struggle to simply stop their addictive behavior, even when the behavior leads to weight gain, or damages relationships.

I can't say, on the basis of evidence, that NIH is misdirecting vast fortunes from where they could do the most good within our lifetimes. But I certainly do believe it. What I can say is that biomedical research dollars are subject to the same myopia that tends to dominate our personal lives.

The following is an interview with Elissa Epel, a UCSF psychologist who has studied the health impacts of stress, from its effects on our DNA to its relationship to overeating, for two decades.

Move away from your La-Z-Boy. Don't trust that bar stool. Get a restraining order against your wingback. The geniuses at Coca-Cola have figured out why we're so overweight and -- drum roll, please -- it's the chairs that are the culprit.

Your mom was right, breakfast is the most important meal of the day -- and a new study reveals a very important element you should include in your a.m...

America's appetite is out of control. Yes, we have an obesity epidemic. But far more disconcerting is the rampant lack of understanding and compassion for the daily, minute-to-minute struggle that the vast majority contend with being overweight or obese.

Anyone living and eating in the modern world, and paying even a little attention, knows that we are a very long way from eating food, not too much, mostly plants. Not only does our food come mostly in bags, boxes, bottles, jars and cans -- but mostly, it isn't really food.

Doctors are capable of making irrational and incorrect choices just like the rest of us. This provides us with a valuable lesson. Education, information and intelligence aren't always guarantors of responsible decision-making.

The heroes of our flavor-of-the-day news cycles are not those who prove to be right or actually know what they are talking about. The heroes on any given day are the iconoclasts, conspiracy theorists, and -- just plain wing nuts. Affliction is the plat du jour, and these -- its master chefs.

We often presume to know why certain things are good for us. But when it comes to lifestyles, proving what is good and why proves quite difficult.

With the help of a cameo appearance by a friend you are likely to know, a preventionist reflects on vulnerability -- and the opportunity to take arms against a sea of troubles imperiling our children, and by opposing -- end them!