Being a Change Agent For most of us, change happens slowly, if at all. But as the recent holiday season fades into the distance, many of us wish to be increasingly proactive this year and take real action on the numerous New Year's resolutions that we made in regard to our health and well-being. Back

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In early winter, whether we're celebrating Hanukkah or Christmas, both or nothing at all, families and friends gather to share food and drink and give thanks for a year successfully completed. We send up a rousing holiday cheer and share delicious holiday cheer in celebration of our accomplishments and

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Healthy knees require continuous motion. However, our generally sedentary lifestyles are at odds with the maintenance of robust knee joint architecture. Left motionless throughout large portions of the day, over time knee cartilage will break down and knee ligaments will become lax. These chronic changes

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When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes applied himself to a difficult case, he famously utilized his powers of deduction. Holmes assembled and examined the facts before him and employed a scientific method of analysis to arrive at a solution that took into account of all the elements of the

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Whether we're driving a car, riding a bike, or trying to record a spare at our local bowling alley, our musculoskeletal system bases its decision-making on past history, that is, what it has learned before. Drawing on years of experience, recorded deep within our muscle memory, we're able to avoid an

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Mindfulness programs and practices frequently describe a process of locating your "center." One's center may be conceived as a focus of energy, both spiritual and physical, by which all activities may be grounded and from which all activities flow. Similarly, ballet teachers and gymnastics instructors

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Comparisons between the inner world and the outer world have been frequently drawn by philosophers, nature writers, and visual artists. For example, "seeing the universe in a grain of sand" is a well-known aphorism. The number of neurons in your brain has been compared to the number of stars in the Milky

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In baseball, hitting for the cycle means that a batter hits a single, a double, a triple, and a home run during the same game. Hitting for the cycle is a rare baseball event, occurring about as often as a no-hitter by a pitcher. Certainly, a great deal of skill is involved in accomplishing such a feat.

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In this 200th anniversary year of the birth of Henry David Thoreau, each of us can increase our health and well-being by applying his guidance to our regular exercise activities. Thoreau, one of the United States' greatest writers, naturalists, and philosophers, not only walked the length and breadth

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In the film classic "The Empire Strikes Back," the iconic Jedi master Yoda inscrutably refers to "the Force" during training sessions with his disciple, Luke Skywalker. Yoda informs Luke that he "must feel the Force around you." Yoda himself is frequently seen assuming what may only be described as intergalactic

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Everyone knows someone who has undergone hip or knee replacement. These surgeries are no longer exclusively performed on older persons and are now not uncommon procedures for many patients with persistent, significant hip or knee pain. Problems that lead people to be willing to undergo joint replacement

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The recent school year has long been over, but the echoes of learning, striving, and achieving persist. We may, if we choose, apply these remembrances of ourselves when we were in school to the circumstances of our health and well-being. We all want good health for ourselves and the members of our families,

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The variegated songs of the mockingbird. The crack of the bat on the baseball diamond. The screaming of little children at play in the community pool. Wherever we turn, the sounds of summer surround us in a joyful uplifting cacophony. Summertime may mean barbecue and it may mean the beach, but it also

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In the classic 1944 film noir, "Double Indemnity", insurance salesman Walter Neff (played by Fred MacMurray), gets into some pretty hot water involving his client (Barbara Stanwyck) and his co-worker (Edward G. Robinson). Neff tries to misuse the concept of double indemnity and he pays a heavy price.

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We are awash in numbers, thanks in large part to the proliferation of personal mobile devices and the wrong-headed use of so-called big data.1 But applying statistical tools to the same set of data can support competing theories and lead to contradictory results. Such conflicting outcomes, known as antinomies

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Your chiropractor has many powerful tools at his or her disposal to help you get well. These powerful tools include chiropractic care itself and specialized knowledge in nutrition, exercise, and rehabilitation. There are some things that you, too, can bring to the chiropractor-patient relationship in

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For many of us, the practice of meditation seems like a totally foreign notion. In an era of full-time, morning-to-night distractions and distractibility, the concept of quietly sitting with nothing else to do seems impossibly ridiculous. Why would anyone do that, we ask, as we text message with one

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The time is always right to begin returning to good health. Regardless of whether your issues involve weight, exercise, diet, blood pressure, diabetes, or chronic pain, now is the time to begin taking action on your own behalf. You are not alone. Literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide have

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Most of us have undergone some type of screening exam in the last several years. Depending on your age, personal history, and family history, you may have needed to go for a periodic mammography, colonoscopy, or cardiac stress test. If everything was fine, you have probably been instructed to follow-up

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Many people - adults and children - are familiar with the marvelous animated feature "The Lion King". Most have found themselves humming the film's theme "The Circle of Life" long after they've stopped actively thinking about the film itself. "The Circle of Life" is not only a terrifically catchy tune,

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What animates us? In other words, what is it that causes us to be living matter? For example, what distinguishes a living orchid from a tissue-paper-and-paint model of an orchid? Or what distinguishes a hawk from an airplane? What is it that causes the material that is us to hold together and function

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The natural world functions very well on its own. Left to their own devices, members of the tens of millions of species on our planet thrive and prosper without relying on outside agencies. In order to grow abundantly, plants consume carbon dioxide, water, and nutrients from the soil. Likewise, herbivorous

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In April 2010 the BP Deep Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in a catastrophic offshore oil spill. Millions of barrels of oil have spilled into the Gulf since the explosion, representing an unprecedented environmental disaster. Many complex ecosystems are affected by the oil

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Everyone is aware of the extremely high cost of most health care services. These costs can be measured not only in cash outlays, but also in time spent at a doctor's office. Waiting times can often be an hour or more for a comprehensive physical examination at a family physician's or internist's office.

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Overweight and obesity are common health problems worldwide. Food plans that work - those that help people lose weight and help them keep the weight off - embody only a few simple principles. These weight loss secrets include eating five or six small meals each day, combining protein and carbohydrates

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It's well-known that one-third of American adults are overweight and an additional one-third are obese.1 In addition, 17% of U.S. children and adolescents are obese.2 Worldwide statistics are similar. These facts are strongly associated with ongoing epidemics in diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Diabetes

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Humans appear to be hard-wired for modest levels of anxiety as a fear-arousal warning mechanism. Anxiety may be characterized as uneasiness, fear, worry, and apprehension. Anxiety is a common psychological state in which the basic message is "get away from this situation". The state is usually accompanied

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As with the rest of our physical selves, we don't think about our bones until something goes wrong. Bones are just there, under the surface and unseen, normally never taking up space in our conscious thought processes. Trauma, of course, can injure a bone. But in most circumstances a bone bruise or a

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Most of us like to think of ourselves as young: young in heart at least, if not actually young in years. But is it possible to stay "forever young" in terms of health and wellness? Of course, probably no one would want to remain forever young in terms of life experience. Our experiences give us character

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Did you know that your spinal column's spongy intervertebral discs (IVDs) comprise 25% of this segmented structure's entire length? Did you know that an adult's spinal column is approximately 24-28 inches in length? A little quick math shows that the total height of your spinal discs is approximately

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How do you determine whether your life is going well? Whether you're happy and fulfilled vs. merely going through the paces? Whether you're growing and developing as a person vs. merely expressing more of the same old, same old? In short, when the alarm goes off in the morning does the prospect of a

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Whether you live in the United States, Canada, or Western Europe, your health care decision-making is impacted by the type of health insurance available. In the United States, a fee-for-service system implies that you will be paying for some or all of the costs of every service used on your behalf. In

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Everyone knows he or she “should” be doing regular exercise, but most people have not exercised in so many years that they don’t know where to begin. As a result, people start and stop various training programs and routines. They join gyms, buy workout clothes, spend hard-earned income, and ultimately

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Many people experience lapses in memory as they get older. Every so often, it may become frustratingly difficult or even temporarily impossible to recall a particular word or a specific person's name. A person might commit a phone number to memory and then immediately forget it. Of course, everyone is

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Just like the well-known, best-selling American truck, your body is built to last. But if it's built to last, why do so many people have serious problems with their bodies? If a human body is built to last, why does it seem to break down so easily? The pharmaceutical industry earns billions of dollars

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