As I prepared my presentation for seventh and eighth graders at Long Branch Middle School as part of a WEForum health education event, I went through some serious reflection and creative thinking. On one hand, if you had told me as a student in the late 1980s and early 1990s that we would have created […]

It’s not uncommon for people to chalk up poor health to genetics. Occurrences of heart disease, stroke, obesity, cancer, Alzheimer’s and other conditions are often viewed as inevitable by people with a family history of those conditions. It runs in the family. The fact is, chronic illness is far more likely to be caused by […]

Behavioral economics kind of flies in the face of the traditional economics approach. This rational choice model is based on the notion that rational people make sound judgments by weighing costs, pros and cons. They have the self-control to stay on the right path to achieving their goals. I wish this was true, but it’s […]

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), opioids were involved in 33,091 deaths in 2015. From 1999 to 2015, the number of opioid overdoses quadrupled. In New Jersey, the number of opioid overdose deaths increased by 16.4 percent from 2014 to 2015. The vast majority of these cases resulted from the abuse […]

In an earlier post, I discussed why the conversation about health care reform needs to change. We need to talk less about health insurance and more about making people healthier. We need to prioritize proactive disease prevention rather than reactive disease treatment if we’re ever going to reverse the chronic illness epidemic in our country […]

It happened again in Washington. After spending seven years pointing fingers and the past few weeks trying to craft legislation that would appease various political factions, our elected officials failed in their attempt at “health care reform.” That’s in quotes because the American Health Care Act, much like the Affordable Care Act, had little to […]

PBS recently debuted a documentary titled “Alzheimer’s: Every Minute Counts.” The documentary includes some sobering statistics and realities about Alzheimer’s disease, which has become one of the most serious public health issues affecting our country. For people with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers and families, it’s not just an illness. It’s a crisis. Consider the numbers […]

I’ve written and spoken extensively about functional medicine, which I believe is critical to fixing our broken healthcare system. Functional medicine is personalized care that focuses on preventing disease and attacking the root cause of health issues rather than reactively treating symptoms. The goal is to maintain or restore balance among the body’s various systems. […]

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one out of every three adults – 86 million total – have prediabetes, also known as insulin resistance or Metabolic Syndrome. Of those 86 million, nine out of 10 don’t know they have prediabetes. 15-30 percent will develop type 2 diabetes within five years. Type […]

Regular readers of my blog know I have enormous respect for Dr. Mark Hyman, one of the world’s foremost advocates of functional medicine and chairman of the Institute of Functional Medicine. I’d like to summarize an article written by Dr. Hyman and share important information about what he calls “the most important molecule you need […]