We all need to eat, and whenever we do, we make choices. We make these choices all day long. Cook at home or eat out? Fresh or fro­zen? Raw or cooked? Sweet or savory? Cheap or expensive? Healthy or maybe not-so-healthy? Real or decaf? Cream or sugar? Tall or grande?

When it comes to physical exercise, we don’t tend to take into account how important our brain is for keeping our whole body going. But our ability to control our muscles – to keep them contracting and relaxing – and move our bodies precisely how we want them to, is ultimately determined by our brain.

The Farmer needs more frequent meals and snacks compared with the Hunter. The varying dietary needs of Farmers and Hunters also means they are different when it comes to their most common health problems and diseases.

Chronic pain, defined as disabling pain that persists despite attempts at treatment and often without obvious cause, has become a serious challenge for health professionals. It is not surprising that someone suffering from this level of pain might become depressed, but most studies consider depression a “comorbidity”...

There is a process going on inside me all the time that I don’t like to talk about, but which must be mentioned for the sake of completion. This is my identity of pain: the pattern of suffering that marks me out from everyone else as defini­tively as my fingerprints....

Can you imagine being so desperate for food that you would eat yourself to survive? Our cells do exactly this. When cells are deprived of energy and nutrients from their external environment, they look internally, packaging up and consuming their own components to survive until an energy source becomes available...

Today is the day you can ease your alarm about sudden memory gaps and quiet your fear that you’re on the cusp of dementia. Changes in memory and concentration at midlife are very common, but you don’t have to live with them. You can improve your...

Before I got sober, just shy of my twenty-fourth birthday, the last thing I felt was the freedom and happiness that the promises speak of. I was sick: not just physically sick from the amount of chemicals in my system, but soul-sick, completely bereft of a sense of...

The prevailing industrial age view of the human body as a machine whose parts occasionally break down, requiring repair only to that part without regard to the whole human being and the sources of the problem, is a health model that will increasingly be replaced by a more unified theory of what a human being truly is.

Our understanding of fats – including which ones are actually good for us – is evolving. We know for example that red meat and meat products, cakes and biscuits, which are rich sources of saturated fatty acids, are associated with an increased number of cardiovascular deaths.

At the end of the day, less pain, anxiety, and nausea, better sleep and more energy add to quality of life. That is what people with cancer seek. Researchers measure this variable usually with a written questionnaire and sometimes an oral interview...

There is nothing mysterious or even particularly clever or skillful about making healing formulations from plants. Intimidated by the pharmaceutical elite, we think that to be of any use a medicine must be made by a Ph.D. wearing a white lab coat. Not so! If you can make a cup of tea or cook a simple meal...

Some obese people may be able to remain metabolically healthy despite their size because their bodies produce low levels of a certain molecule. High levels of the molecule, called heme oxygenase-1 or HO-1, are linked to metabolic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, as well as high blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol...

“It was believed that since fat is the most ‘calorie-dense’ of the macro-nutrients, a reduction in its consumption would lead to a reduction in calories and a subsequent decrease in the incidence of obesity,” he said. But turning to carbohydrates such as sugar and corn syrup has led to a parallel increase in diabetes and obesity in the US.

Most American adults say that they believe in God and that their religious beliefs affect how they live their lives. However, people have different ideas about life after death, belief in miracles, and other religious beliefs...

“Sunshine can be addictive like heroin.” The claim comes via a study published in Cell based on an experiment carried out on mice at Harvard Medical School. Researchers found that ultraviolet light exposure leads to elevated endorphin levels – the body’s own “feel good” internal morphine...

The question of whether to eat fish while pregnant has long been a slippery one. On the one hand, expecting mothers are told that eating fish regularly is good for fetal brain development. And on the other, they’re warned that fish contain mercury, which can cause birth defects.

Teen smokers are better at getting friends to start than nonsmokers are at getting friends to quit.“What we found is that social influence matters, it leads nonsmoking friends into smoking and nonsmoking friends can turn smoking friends into nonsmokers,

An awareness of our own death is potentially extremely distressing. Go ahead and contemplate your own mortality. How does it feel? Would you be surprised to learn that it can potentially improve your mental health to think about your death more often?

by Peter Bongiorno, ND, LAc. One group of researchers in Virginia suggests that hydro­therapy may be useful to treat cancer and chronic fatigue as well as depression. Cold exposure therapies may actually be the best choice for depressed patients. According to Hippocrates, water therapy "allays lassitude."

We can work with plant spirits for our own personal guidance and healing, but when we call upon plant spirits to engage in the healing of another, a particular type of dynamism is added to the healing process. Plants are community beings that are here to serve the community as a whole so that when we step beyond our own personal needs...

Oxytocin is released with a warm hug, a grasped hand, or a loving gaze, and it increases libido. The hormone kicks into high gear during and after childbirth, helping new mothers bond with and breastfeed their new babies. While oxytocin is found in both young boys and girls, it is not yet known when levels of the hormone start to decline in humans, and what levels are necessary for maintaining healthy tissues.

It’s often said that no-one really knows what sleep is for. Sometimes it’s as if this lack of surety means its functions are relatively unimportant or even vestigial, like an appendix to the story of our life. How we evaluate life has long since focused on the daytime – what we think and feel when we’re awake.