Brain Awareness: Ways to Love your BrainYesterday, I found myself chanting my pool mantra (“1-2-3-4.1-2-3, wait that’s not my kid, oh never mind, she’s over there now, ok 3, 4.”) as my eyes frantically darted around the premises. It’s SUPER relaxing, and if you haven’t taken four children under the age of 8 to the […]
Family
Don’t Forget Daddy: June is Men’s Health MonthIn May, I talked about National Women’s Health Week and the common obstacles women face, mothers especially, in balancing the needs of their family while not neglecting their own self-care. It’s only fair this month to acknowledge the men in our lives and the challenges they have when […]
Family
What’s Loma Linda, CA, Got the Rest of Us Don’t?Brothers Nick and Dan Buettner wanted to know what it takes to live a long, healthy and happy life. Sure, they know that eating right, exercising, and taking your meds as prescribed are part of the answer. But not the whole answer. So they decided to […]
Family
Pro Tips for Preparing for Your Doctor Appointment You arrive 30 minutes early to complete or review paperwork (again) and then wait. A nurse brings you back and records your weight, BP, vitals then more waiting in a room. You try to awkwardly adjust yourself on a long, loud paper sheet while anxiously staring at the […]
Doctor Appointments
We need to consolidate and centralize our health dataGrowing up in post-WWII America seems, in retrospect, to have been a lot simpler. (I was a kid, of course.) This was life before computers, cable, wi-fi, and smartphones gave us ready access to vast stores of information and advice on almost any topic.I’m not saying things […]
Caregivers
Taking too many meds?I take six prescription medications a day (plus two vitamin supplements and a baby aspirin). So when an article in The Washington Post by a professor of family medicine at Georgetown University declared “too many patients are taking too many drugs for too long in too-high doses”, I read on.In it, Dr. […]
Caregivers
Autoimmune diseases occur when the body gets confused and the immune system attacks its own organs, tissues, and cells. According to the National Institute of Health (NIH), there are more than 80 identified autoimmune diseases that affect between 23.5 -50 million Americans and the prevalence continues to rise. In my immediate family alone we cover type 1 diabetes, celiac […]
Allergies
In a previous blog, Want your health records? Don’t let HIPAA stand in the way, McShea addressed how you can access your health data electronically using resources like http://getmyhealthdata.org/. Consumers who seek their personal healthcare data online may find some of it, but never in one place.How did this happen? After all, you can get all your […]
Digital Health
Taking Healthy MeasuresEarly in my career l was taught ”what gets measured gets managed” and its corollary: “If you can measure it, you can manage it.” It’s an old saying that some have traced back to the Middle Ages…and others to management guru Peter Drucker. In my case, as a reporter, writer, and editor, that […]
Digital Health
Norovirus is hard to killWaiting in the carpool line, I scroll through my FB feed then I see it…Oh no… Glancing up, I see my 2 older girls running from the courtyard through a sea of school kids to my van. It hits me, what are the chances they aren’t dragging the dreaded stomach flu germs into my […]
Family
Michelle Riffer 
Jerry Elprin 
Michael McShea