If you’ve ever had a stubborn knot of tissue after an injury or surgery that just won’t loosen up — or noticed your skin isn’t as firm as it used to be — you’ve met the same cell doing two very different jobs. Understanding that connection is the key to understanding which treatments actually make […]
A new health toy I have been playing with recently is a portable USB Hypochlorous Acid Generator. I have a fondness for making my own medicines at home, which enables me to avoid relying on pharmaceutical agents. Though sometimes necessary, they are a last resort for me. I first came across this stuff as a dental mouthwash […]
The last three newsletters were about a kind of false alarm — the body bracing for a loss that isn’t actually coming, treating an ordinary disagreement as if it were the end of a relationship. Most of the time, that’s exactly what it is: a false alarm, worth talking your nervous system down from. […]
Your Body Is Talking Before You Say a Word In the last newsletter, I gave you a piece of advice for hard conversations: say the bond out loud before you say the disagreement. Tell the person plainly that this isn’t going to change how you feel about them, before you tell them the thing they might […]
Last week I wrote about a pattern I see constantly in patients: a lot of the emotional tension they carry in their shoulders, jaw, low back, and gut isn’t really about disagreement itself. It’s about the fear underneath it — that if you don’t come around to someone else’s way of seeing things, they’ll pull […]
If you’ve come into my treatment room and talked with me about what’s been stressing you out lately, there’s a good chance it wasn’t about money, or work deadlines, or traffic. It was about a person. A spouse who won’t see it your way. A sibling who voted differently than you. A friend whose beliefs […]
Pain control has been our major focus for the past few weeks as Ellen’s hip degeneration has progressed. Unlike simple osteoarthritis, she has avascular necrosis, a rapid breakdown of bone due to a loss of the blood supply to the bone. Her surgeon has told her not to use any opioid drugs before surgery as […]
Why Does Skin Change as We Age? If you’ve noticed your skin becoming thinner, looser, or developing a tissue-paper-like crepey texture, you’re not imagining things — and it’s not simply inevitable. These changes have specific biological causes, and understanding them is the first step toward doing something meaningful about them. Healthy young skin is supported […]
New research is reshaping how scientists think about dementia, and pointing toward practical steps you can take today. For decades, Alzheimer’s disease research focused almost entirely on one culprit: sticky clumps of protein called amyloid plaques that accumulate in the brain. Billions of dollars were spent developing drugs to clear these plaques — yet patients rarely […]
Most people have heard that protein is important, but fewer understand what protein actually does in the body. Even fewer realize that getting enough protein is not always the same as getting the right kinds of protein. This distinction becomes especially important as we get older. Whether your goal is maintaining muscle, recovering from illness, […]