Don't Take the Internet for Granted
Posted June 9, 2008 | 11:12 AM (EST)
Hearing and seeing Bill Moyers, Arianna Huffington, Naomi Klein, and Dan Rather--and a host of independent journalists and techies--all gathered under one roof at last weekend's National Conference for Media Reform (in Minneapolis) was soul refreshment for this 20+ year journalist. So why was I crying?
Because at last for...
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Why You Don't Need to Know Whether Cell Phones Cause Cancer
Posted May 29, 2008 | 05:07 PM (EST)
"Do cell phones cause brain cancer?"
This was the question that Larry King posed this week to Dena Cochran, the widow of Johnnie Cochran (who died of the disease), as well as to a group of five doctors. These docs commented on the "Interphone study" in which thirty-five researchers...
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Do You Believe in Objective (Ha! Ha! Wink, Wink!) Science?
Posted May 17, 2008 | 02:17 PM (EST)
As confidence in authorities plummets, one cherished bastion remains: the hallowed halls of medical scientific research. There we picture white-coated scientists making objective research determinations. Upon that bedrock, we make health decisions.
But does our image correspond to reality?
"The pharmaceutical companies say they're about the science, but they're...
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Making Peace with Mom
Posted May 9, 2008 | 08:16 AM (EST)
A bouquet of roses, a box of candy, or a long distance phone call? What will you give your Mom this Mother's Day? And more importantly, what will you feel as you offer your gift? Will your heart overflow with love and gratitude? Or will you be gritting your teeth,...
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Ms. Integrative Gets Sutures
Posted May 5, 2008 | 08:20 PM (EST)
I've been reporting on, learning about, and practicing integrative healing modalities for nearly two decades--and I'm constantly amazed at how powerful the most gentle therapies can be.
I really had the opportunity to put that to the test when I tumbled on the street, wound up in the emergency...
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Is Silver the Solution?
Posted April 29, 2008 | 12:40 PM (EST)
This week Detroit doctors reported an outbreak of seven cases of VRSA (Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), a close cousin of MRSA, or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an antibiotic-resistant infection that has proven deadly. The cases were discovered in nursing homes, wound clinics, outpatient kidney dialysis centers and hospitals, yet another reminder of...
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Same Old, Same Old ABC
Posted April 22, 2008 | 01:00 AM (EST)
Let's not forget that this is the same ABC that welcomes Cindy McCain to The View, the same ABC which refused to permit more than thirty seconds of the debate coverage to be re-broadcast by others, thereby hoarding coverage that should be considered -- and in the past was considered...
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Jenny McCarthy and the Autism Dilemma
Posted April 7, 2008
When I watch Jenny McCarthy on CNN or when I read the blogs (and comments) on autism, I keep wondering: What is this debate about? Yes, the parents of autistic kids are more "emotional" than the aloof doctors before them. But why are they met with anger, rather than compassion?...
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Don’t Drink the Water: Overcoming Complacency in Health Reporting
Posted March 15, 2008
The media’s selling the Iraq war prompts outrage, yet the typical reporter’s eager acceptance of health reports and spins by the government and vested medical interests passes for “objective science.”
Health investigative journalism is an endangered species. So here’s kudos to the trio of Associated Press reporters, who recently undertook an...
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Don't Get Depressed Because Your Antidepressant is a Placebo
Posted February 27, 2008 | 04:16 PM (EST)
Stand back and watch the P.R. spin as a new study in a peer-reviewed journal finds that antidepressants make "virtually no difference at moderate levels of initial depression to a relatively small difference for patients with very severe depression."
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Jesus and Deepak in Midtown
Posted February 20, 2008
Last night, on the eve of the publication of his book, The Third Jesus, (Harmony, 2008) --currently a high-ranking Amazon bestseller, Deepak Chopra spoke of Jesus. Dressed in an elegant black Sherwani, (an Indian long coat with a Nehru collar), Chopra stepped forward from the nave of Manhattan’s St. Mary the Virgin Church, and casually...
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The Family Field: A Valentine to Enduring Connection
Posted February 14, 2008
When I first read The Field, I practically gulped it down like it was a mystery novel that I couldn’t wait to finish. As Lynne McTaggart writes in her beautiful sharing on this blog, the new science the book covers "suggests that at our essence, we exist as a unity, a relationship — utterly interdependent, the parts affecting the whole at every ...
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Just How Smart is Your Body?
Posted February 10, 2008 | 11:35 PM (EST)
We all know that ah-ha! moment when a new insight or experience changes everything. But ah-ha's are the province of the mind, aren't they? Like a backward beast, the body merely drags around our higher mental functions and our opposable thumbs. Despite its amazing capacity to self-heal, it's regarded as...
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New Year's Health Tip: Inoculate Yourself From Panic and Shock
Posted December 31, 2007 | 12:45 PM (EST)
You're in the airport, when the loudspeaker booms that the so-and-so authority has declared "an orange alert." Do you cringe? Or recognize the attempt to program you into fear? Whether it was yellow, orange, turquoise, or fuchsia, what exactly should you do? Squint suspiciously at your neighbor? Give up your...
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Family Karma Time
Posted December 24, 2007 | 01:50 PM (EST)
How to stay centered in a family gone awry when all the forces around (and in) you join to keep you caught in the same old roles and repeating patterns?
After twenty-five years of the self-help movement, we all know a heckuva lot about ourselves as individuals, but not enough...
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The Imperfection of the Aspirin Quick Fix10 Comments
Posted December 15, 2007 | 02:13 PM (EST)
In a recent post, Dr. Rick Positano calls aspirin "perfect" - a "wonder drug" in preventing heart attacks, strokes, even colon cancer. As an integrative health journalist, I wanted to offer a different view.
As Dr. Positano writes, people can "use aspirin if the benefit ... outweighs gastrointestinal...
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Medicine for the Body (Politic)
Posted November 21, 2007 | 10:20 AM (EST)
Assembled in New York City to be honored as Pioneers of Integrative Medicine by the Bravewell Collaborative, (a foundation directed by Christy Mack and devoted to promoting integrative health care), Andrew Weil, MD, and Larry Dossey, MD. and four more of this country's leading integrative doctors dialogued candidly...
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Pioneers of Integrative Health
Posted November 20, 2007 | 07:07 AM (EST)
For the wealthy, there are luxuries that millions can buy. But when raging fires strike enclaves in Southern California, no matter how valuable your property or portfolio, you learn that money can't buy you a stable environment. Nor can it buy you quality health care, some leading integrative doctors say--...
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Michael Moore Trumps the Loyalty Card
Posted July 12, 2007 | 05:03 PM (EST)
Along with apple pie and patriotism, loyalty to a cause, loved one, family, party, group, or country seems like it should always be a good thing.
But doesn't it depend on what someone is loyal to?
In the recent exchanges between Michael Moore and Sanjay Gupta, it's Moore...
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SiCKO: Why Health for Profit is Dangerous to Your Health
Posted June 29, 2007 | 10:29 AM (EST)
SiCKO is a must-see. At the press screening, an editor and reporter from an insurance industry trade publication sat in the same row.
Together we watched the film progress from the cancer patients bankrupted by medical payments, to the moms and widows left bereft when insurers denied their toddlers...
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Estrogen Therapy: Hot News or More of the Same?
Posted June 24, 2007 | 02:39 PM (EST)
In response to news headlines announcing "doctors change in course on estrogen replacement therapy," Dr. Christiane Northrup, MD, the OB-GYN and bestselling author comments, "This is nothing new."
The media claims that it's time to return to synthetic estrogen come in response to a WHI (Women's Health Initiative) study...
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Death, the Great Egalitarian
Posted June 18, 2007 | 12:06 PM (EST)
"We all get invited no matter how cute we are, how much money we have, or who our parents are. As far as I can tell no one gets out of here alive." So says Cynthia Burke (of the New York based non-profit group, Friends Indeed, which supports people in...
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An Urgency for Well-Being
Posted June 4, 2007 | 01:50 PM (EST)
Each day of Donna Karan's 10-day Well-Being Forum, certain questions and concerns circulated and echoed -- both publicly during the panel discussions featuring dedicated practitioners and thought leaders and privately in smaller gatherings over the delicious raw food lunch participants were served.
There was an urgency, as if...
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Who is a Healer?
Posted May 28, 2007 | 09:10 PM (EST)
Over the last two weeks, Donna Karan welcomed a diverse group of integrative physicians and practitioners into the Well-Being Forum at her late husband's studio. Her goal was to promote dialogue. And dialogue she got when the conventional and integrative faced off, and looked for commonalities in today's lively...
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Striking the Caring Chord
Posted May 22, 2007 | 05:53 PM (EST)
Today at Donna Karan's two week Well-Being Forum, the topic was Nurses: The Healing Touch. Donna welcomes everyone into Urban Zen, her late husband's former sculpture studio in downtown New York. Gathered together are a divergent group of leading integrative physicians, visionary thinkers, holistic nurse practitioners, media personalities, Buddhists,...
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PATH (Patient Advocacy Toward Health) -- an Urban Zen Initiative
Posted May 19, 2007 | 05:38 PM (EST)
Donna Karan welcomes everyone into the vast, raw space of her late husband's former sculpture studio in downtown New York. Gathered round tables, seated on pillowed platforms, and lunching on healthy gourmet cuisine, a divergent group of leading integrative physicians, visionary thinkers
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