Belly Acres
What Are You Growing Around Your Middle? A patient of mine named his ranch Belly Acres, which may be one of the finest pieces of Western real-estate branding I’ve ever encountered. The name conjures up cattle leaning contentedly against fence posts, a tractor that starts on the third try, and a rancher whose belt buckle […]
Menopause or Midlife?
Not Everything Is Your Hormones, But They Aren’t Innocent Either There comes a time in many women’s lives when the list begins. “I’m gaining weight. I don’t sleep like I used to. My joints hurt. My hair is thinning. I’m tired. I can’t remember anybody’s name. And my sex drive has apparently left town without […]
Hormesis
Why a Little Stress May Be Exactly What We Need We have spent much of the modern era succeeding in making ourselves comfortable. We heat the house when we’re cold, cool it when we’re hot, eat when we’re hungry, sit when we’re tired, and take the elevator when confronted with the indignity of stairs. We […]
Unlocking the Nutrients in Your Food
We tend to think of nutrition as inventory. A carrot contains this much beta-carotene. A tomato contains this much lycopene. Spinach has iron. Garlic has allicin. End of story. Except food isn’t a warehouse, and the human digestive tract isn’t a forklift. A nutrient can be sitting right there on your dinner plate and still […]
Diagnose and Adios
Modern medicine is very good at naming things. We have codes for everything. Codes for high blood pressure. Codes for low thyroid. Codes for high cholesterol, low testosterone, bad sleep, sad moods, angry bowels, rebellious immune systems, and knees that have finally filed for divorce. Give us a symptom and, by God, we will give […]
Mitochondrial Aging and the Art of Growing Older Well
The Slow Burn Every cell in your body contains tiny structures called mitochondria. They are often described as the cell’s power plants, but that analogy doesn’t quite capture their importance. Mitochondria are less like power plants and more like master conductors. They decide how energy is produced, how cells respond to stress, when damaged cells […]
Exercise After Cancer
What the research tells us about exercise, recurrence and survival after cancer Cancer treatment has traditionally been built around things done to the patient: surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, immunotherapy. Exercise is different. It is something the patient can do for themselves. And increasingly, the research suggests that movement after a cancer diagnosis may be […]
Osteoporosis and the Case for Lifting Something Heavy
For decades, the exercise advice given to people with osteoporosis has sounded something like this. Be careful. Don’t lift anything too heavy. Avoid impact. And whatever you do, don’t fall. The advice was understandable. Osteoporosis makes bones more fragile, and fragile things should presumably be handled gently. That’s how we treat antique china. The trouble […]
One, Two, Three: The Evolution of the New Weight Loss Drugs
Few medications have changed the treatment of obesity as dramatically as the new generation of GLP-1 drugs. Semaglutide transformed what we thought medication-assisted weight loss could accomplish. Tirzepatide subsequently produced even greater weight loss. And now retatrutide, an investigational drug in late-stage clinical development, is pushing those numbers still further. For most of medical history, […]
A Longevity Recipe of Grains, Greens, Roots and Beans
The Foods That Keep Showing Up Where People Live Well Nutrition has become unnecessarily complicated. We have continuous glucose monitors, ketone meters, genetic testing, microbiome sequencing, supplement cabinets large enough to require zoning permits, and enough dietary tribes to populate a small country. Meanwhile, some remarkably ordinary foods keep showing up in populations where they […]