In high school, English was my worst subject. By far ..read more

Intermittent Fasting ..read more

In the early 20thcentury, cancer didn’t attract much attention. The biggest health problems were infectious diseases — pneumonia, gastrointestinal and tuberculosis. The American Society for the Control of Cancer (ASCC) was created in 1913 and stressed the importance of early detection and aggressive treatment. In the 1940s, they championed the routine use of the Pap smear for cervical cancer. It was hugely and stunningly successful as death rates from cervical cancer dropped quickly. This was an auspicious start. In 1944, the ASCC changed its name to the American Cancer Society. But death ..read more

Controlling hunger — part 2 Controlling hunger is crucial to weight loss. How do you reign in hunger? We all think that eating more or eating more often will prevent hunger, but is this really true? Standard dietary advice is to eat 6 or 7 small meals per day with the hope that this will stave off hunger and prevent overeating. If you can prevent hunger, then you may also be able to make better food choices. On the surface, it seems pretty reasonable. However, on the surface, the disastrous Eat Less, Move More or Calories in Calories out paradigms also seemed pretty reasonable, too. Like ..read more

The legendary Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León (1460–1521), like many of his contemporaries, sought fame and fortune through exploration of the New World. He settled in Hispaniola (now modern day Dominican Republic) before becoming the governor of Puerto Rico for 2 years before being replaced by Christopher Columbus’ son, Diego. Forced to sail once again, he allegedly heard native tales of a mythical ‘fountain of youth’. He explored many parts of the Bahamas and is believed to have landed in 1513 near the present-day town of St. Augustine in northeast Florida. He named this newly ..read more

Eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, are extremely serious and occasionally fatal diseases. Anorexia nervosa is a ..read more

Type 2 diabetes is a massive but still growing epidemic. More than 10% of the U.S. population — 34.2 million Americans — has diabetes, a ..read more

We often think that we are in control of the decisions that we make, but behavioral psychology suggests otherwise. The Nobel Prize winning ..read more

What causes cancer? In 2015, researchers updated the landmark 1981 study from the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment noting ..read more

Cancer, the second leading cause of death in America, is perhaps medicine’s greatest remaining mystery. Medical research has revealed the underlying causes of most of the world’s diseases from micro-organisms causing infections to atherosclerosis causing heart disease and strokes to genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis. But for such a common disease, we simply don’t know the answer to the all-important question — what is cancer? Why does it develop? Our understanding has undertaken many radical shifts, most recently in the past decade. The ancient Greek physician H ..read more