In my webinars, I talk a lot about the importance of sleep. A participant recently asked if melatonin might help alleviate her chronic insomnia. This was such a good question that I decided to create a blog about it. To understand the answer, it’s important to understand what makes us sleepy in the first place.

If you are one of the 50 million US adults suffering from chronic pain, you know the litany of treatments, including medications, injections, implanted stimulation devices, and surgeries — most of which provide little relief. Instead of the traditional treatments, what if there was a way to train your brain to take an active role in chronic pain management?

Since the start of the pandemic, I have given several presentations on the immune system, separating fact from fiction when it comes to things like Vitamin C, Echinacea, ginger, and so forth. I received several follow up emails asking me about other foods, including a recent one on chicken soup: does it provide real benefit to the immune system?

Cicero declared gratitude to be “the Mother of All Virtues.” Dr. Glenn Fox, a USC researcher at the forefront of gratitude and human performance, describes gratitude as “the most sophisticated of all virtues.” Current research shows positive links between gratitude and health, including more pro-social behaviors that promote resilience and coping.

I delivered a webinar on chronic low-level inflammation and said that too little sleep and too much could increase this “inflammation gone awry.” Since then, I received a number of related questions and decided to share them here.

Our immune system is a wonder. It has evolved over millions of years to fight viruses and heal injuries. This is called acute inflammation, and it is necessary for a healthy life. Yet when this type of inflammation goes awry, it can become chronic low level inflammation. This systemic inflammation is the leading cause of death in the world.

SWAP-MEAT was a 16-week crossover study in which 36 generally healthy adults were divided into two groups. Each group consumed one type of meat (plant or animal) for 8 weeks and then switched to the other type of meat for 8 weeks. The goal was to understand what, if any, health benefits there were from the plant-based vs. animal-based protein.

We depend on our eyes for nearly every aspect of daily life, yet increasing age can result in changes to our eye health and vision. In fact, visual impairment is the most common sensory problem of older adults. Changes in the eye physiology can cause visual problems like near focusing (presbyopia) to more serious conditions such as floaters, cataracts, dry eye, and macular degeneration.

Last week I was dashing out of the house to go on a hike at a nearby park. I got in my car, realized I had forgotten my water bottle, and went inside to retrieve it. Then I decided I wanted a different hiking hat and ran upstairs. When I finally made it back to my car — voila! — no car keys. I searched for 20 minutes until I found them in the refrigerator next to the butter. When I was finally ready to leave, I saw our new neighbors standing in their driveway. They introduced themselves, but I promptly forgot their names before they said their socially distanced goodbyes.

When asked how we are doing, a standard response is “I’m fine,” often accompanied by a smile. The brain wants what we feel and believe to line up, so it will go along with the smile to avoid something called cognitive dissonance. Behavioral scientist Matt Wallaert says that this “grin and bear it” strategy is fine in some situations but insufficient for what we are facing now.

“No amount of cognitive dissonance can overwhelm the entirely rational fear we all feel in the face of a global pandemic.

— Matt Wallaert

Simply putting on a happy face isn’t the right answer – but how do we maintain positivity in the midst of so much uncertainty? How can we manage our anxiety and change our outlook?

While each of us aspires to change the world, sometimes the greatest thing we can do is improve the life of one person and that can be enough.

— Dr. James Doty

It turns out that improving the life of someone else is also good for our own health.

For years I talked about the four pillars of health — nutrition, movement, sleep, and stress — and left out something important: posture. I hadn’t thought much about posture since the days when Mama cajoled me to “stand up straight.” Then I met Esther Gokhale

Given all the focus on staying healthy, it is natural to wonder: how can I boost my immune system?

There is plenty of information on the web. A 2019 study published in Frontiers in Medicine found 185 web pages associated with the phrase “boost immunity.”

On any given day we might experience sadness, loneliness, anxiety, and uncertainty, along with happiness, empathy and gratitude. Psychologists have a name for this roller coaster of emotions. They call it “normal.”

The emotion that intrigues me most is gratitude. It is the ability to…

While most organs decline with age, this isn’t true of the brain. Thanks to the brain’s neuroplasticity, it has a remarkable capacity to learn and grow—but only if we keep it engaged. Kathryn Papp, a neuropsychologist at Harvard Medical School, says that to maximize our brain’s health we need…

My husband and I had both gone to separate grocery stores searching for produce. I came home with a limp head of romaine and two apples. He came home with a crusty loaf of slightly warm, fresh-baked bread. I tore off huge chunks and put them in my mouth, stopping only to butter, until my husband pulled the remaining loaf from my outstretched hands.

Knute Rockne, Norte Dame’s historic football coach, said, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” To paraphrase that for these shelter-at-home-days:

When the going gets tough, the tough get moving

While at-home confinement could make us more sedentary, it doesn’t have to.

I recently had the pleasure of puppy sitting a five-month-old Havanese named Bindy. Despite being in the midst of a global pandemic with its associated media frenzy, I found myself less stressed and more joyful. It’s no secret that dogs contribute positively to our well-being. Harvard Medical School published a report, Get Healthy, Get a Dog, that emphasizes both the physical and mental health aspect of dogs. These include…

It turns out that diversity isn’t just important for society. It is important to your health – especially your gut microbiome. This is the collection of bacteria that reside in our guts. There are trillions of these bacteria, mostly “good guys” as opposed to pathogens.

In my research on healthy aging, I came across an article in The Harvard Gazette called “Good genes are nice but joy is better.” It described an 80 year longitudinal study, started in 1939 with 268 male Harvard graduates and similarly aged men from inner city Boston. The goal was to determine the top predictors for healthy and happy lives.