2020 was … challenging
This has been a tough year for us all. The global pandemic triggered a cascade of events that we have all dealt with on physical and psychological levels. Physically: The World Health Organization points out that just over 35 million people have contracted Covid-19. Psychologically: This pandemic has affected...
End of the Year of Sugar Blues
The end of the year commonly comes with parties for the office and families celebrating the upcoming new year. These are wonderful times that often come with a wide variety of candies, cupcakes, and other confections. Of course nothing is wrong with sugar, just like there is nothing wrong...
Relationship Matters
One thing that the global pandemic and confinement conditions have driven home is the importance of our relationships. Psychologists point out that when people have their health and even financial success, they aren’t happy without supportive relationships. These can come from family, friends, and even pets. Such social connections...
It’s Almost Over
This is not to say that next year will pose no challenges, nor that our current issues will magically go away, but only that the new year brings the promise of better days. And in fact, choosing a positive way to view events is a powerful weapon for physical...
The Lung Cancer You Don’t Feel
Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women (not counting skin cancer), and is by far the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women. Each year more people die of lung cancer than colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined. One reason...
Maybe We’ve Had Enough Awareness
What is there to say about “Diabetes Awareness:? Everyone is aware. You know it is there, and you also know that it is a health hazard. But that’s the problem actually. If you know all about something and it never seems to change, year after year, being “aware” of...
The Prevention Myth
Headlines are often just click-bait, asking leading questions to get you to click the link. Here are some examples that you can find literally every day. Can the Mediterranean Diet Prevent Cancer? Can regular exercise defy diabetes? Can the latest miracle drug, or cure, or cocoa, or fill-in-the-blank prevent...
Why Vaccines Take So Long
As you might imagine, working with a virus that you plan to inject into humans requires a high degree care and an overabundance of caution. Because of this, quite appropriately, creating the final vaccine product can take many many months. Testing starts on experimental animals to validate that it...
What About Covid Vaccines?
We hear a lot about the vaccine for COVID-19, and researchers race to create it. But how do they work and what kinds of viruses do they use? How Do They Work? If you contract a virus, your body will produce antibodies to that molecule so that if you...
Implications of Isolation
In an exhaustive review in the medical journal The Lancet, researchers confirmed what we all likely knew. Looking at 24 studies with quarantine conditions across 10 countries, they showed that this can major negative psychological impact on people. To help avoid these negative effects, including anxiety, depression, anger, etc.,...
The Power of Hope
We are coming to the end of this very difficult year, it’s important to look forward to the new year coming up, with hope for improved conditions. Hope turns out to be a powerful force for building psychological resilience. In fact, hope has been shown to counteract the negative...
Healthy and Fit at Home
During the pandemic, many of us spent more time at home sitting down. For our fitness, this situation causes us to think about activity much differently than ever before. This new way of thinking requires us to be more independent about HOW and about WHEN we structure our routines...