Guest Author : Dr. Karen Wyatt is a hospice and family physician who writes extensively on spirituality and medicine, especially at the end-of-life. She is the author of the award-winning book “What Really Matters: 7 Lessons for Living from the Stories of the Dying.” Connect with her at karenwyattmd.com, on Facebook at fb.com/WhatReallyMattersWithKarenWyatt and on Twitter @spiritualmd.     In my work as a hospice physician I found that most of my patients desperately needed to talk about life and whatever meaning it holds, as they looked back from the vantage point of their last days on this planet. For many of them it was very important to know whether or not they had fulfilled a purpose through their existence here or if they were leaving behind anything by which to be remembered. For some the search for meaning was…

Guest Author :John La Puma MD is a practicing physician, board-certified in internal medicine and nutritionist. His latest publication is REFUEL: A 24 Day Eating Plan to Boost T and Stamina Naturally. For more from Dr. John La Puma, please visit drjohnlapuma.com.   Everyone is short on sleep these days, but women suffer more mentally and physically than men if they get fewer Zs. That’s even more true in perimenopause and menopause, because as estrogen and progesterone drop, their sleep-inducing abilities go away too. Having trouble staying asleep is an early warning sign for menopause, and postmenopausal women are at risk for hypothyroidism, weight gain and sleep apnea…but you already knew that. The good news? Both men and women can turn down the blue wavelength light from LED screens earlier before bed, and help the pineal gland in your brain…

Guest Author : Dr. Karen Wyatt is a hospice and family physician who writes extensively on spirituality and medicine, especially at the end-of-life. She is the author of the award-winning book “What Really Matters: 7 Lessons for Living from the Stories of the Dying.” Connect with her at karenwyattmd.com, on Facebook at fb.com/WhatReallyMattersWithKarenWyatt and on Twitter @spiritualmd. The word resilience technically describes the ability of an object to return to its original form after being bent, compressed or stretched. For us human beings resilience is a quality that determines how well we cope with adversity in life, whether it comes to us as physical, emotional or spiritual difficulty. This is an important subject for all of us right now because life on planet earth is becoming more and more precarious, exposing each of us to new difficulties all the time.…

Menopause is the absence of menstrual periods for 12 months. It is the time life when the ovaries cease to function. It doesn’t happen overnight; the onset is a gradual process. It usually begins at 51 years on average, but menopause can occur in the 30s or as late as the 60s. For most women menopause lasts approximately 2 to 10 years, usually from their mid-forties to mid-fifties. There is no way to reliably test to know when a woman will experience menopause. Vaginal bleeding, hot flashes, vaginal and urinary symptoms, and mood changes are just some of the symptoms, along with nervousness, irritability, insomnia and headaches. Estrogen, the primary “female” hormone, prompts the health and growth of the female reproductive organs, and keeps the vagina moisturized, well supplied with blood and elastic. During menopause, estrogen levels generally decline but…

Have you heard the term “off label use” in passing, or in the news or from a friend? It refers to medications your doctor may be prescribing to you that have not necessarily been studied for that particular condition or disease. The manufacturers of the medicines, and their agents argue that the ability to make off label claims is a benefit to the end consumer as costs are reduced. But the flipside is that it can be dangerous for the consumer who becomes the guinea pig, and some argue, simply because it’s profitable for the producers. As well, the dollars you think you’re saving can vanish as health insurers often wriggle out of covering off label prescriptions. Many times this off label feud has ended up in federal court, with hundreds of millions of dollars in fines being levied against…