It’s been called “cabin fever” or the “winter blahs” – a seasonal depression many people experience during the winter months. Most get over it, but about ten percent of all depression is SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), a serious depressive condition that requires intervention.

When we become elderly or ill, it often can become a taxing effort to leave our home independently and safely to obtain medical services. At one point in time, many health care services could only be offered to a patient in a hospital, inpatient facility, or in a doctor’s office. Many of these medical services can now be provided in the comfort of your own home and are typically less expensive than the inpatient setting. In fact, with many insurance providers, such as Medicare, private home care is covered at 100 percent, if certain criteria are met.

Imagine the many choices you can make in life are taken away from you. Do you give up, or do you fight? You fight, of course. When faced with one of the most difficult situations a human being could ever endure – cancer – we should all react the same way: fight it! At least, Mallory Turchi likes to think so.

Rocco Wentworth, son of John and Jennifer Wentworth, is your typical six-year-old boy. He attends kindergarten at St. John’s in Fenton. He plays hockey, basketball and soccer. “He’s wild and full of energy,” says his father with a smile. “But he’s also very compassionate and loving to his little sister.” Rocco loves to swim and just recently started playing tennis, which he seems to have a knack for. And of course, much like any other six-year-old, he loves to play video games.

There are many causes of headaches – entire medical books have been written on the subject. In my practice, I see many people who are seeking help to figure out what is making their head throb so badly. Naturally, their biggest concerns are things like brain tumors and strokes. Once they have those things checked out, get negative results and find out they are not dying, the question still remains: why does their head ache so much?

Stress is something that everyone experiences to varying degrees throughout their lives. Stress was originally defined in 1936 by one of the first researchers in the field, Dr. Hans Selye as, “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change.” This really encompasses many aspects of our lives, positive and negative.

In the past few years, many advances have taken place in the treatment of heart disease. Unfortunately, the most important steps in preventing the disease or its progression are still not optimal.

Pop not only destroys your teeth, but it increases your blood pressure and can make you gain weight. You’ll be happy you stopped drinking pop when you start seeing your stomach shrink. Diet pop is actually worse for you than regular pop, because diet pop confuses your body with artificial sweeteners. These chemical sweeteners trigger the pancreas to produce insulin, which sends your body into fat-storage mode … leading to weight gain.

We can ask the great thinkers: “What is the most important thing?” Pema Chodron, beloved Buddhist nun and teacher, would answer simply: “Just leave a little gap, and you’ll discover the magic of life; when you are in touch with the larger environment, it can cut through your cocoon mentality.”

If you have fewer than three bowel movements a week, or when the stools are hard, dry and painful or difficult to pass, that is a condition called constipation. According to a systemic review reported in The American Journal of Gastroenterology, it is one of the most common gastrointestinal problems, affecting 42 million people in the U.S.