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Four decades of writing on living long and living well, with 1,000+ posts on functional and longevity medicine.
451 written by Dr. Frank Lipman
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Feb 20, 2023 · NutritionDon’t Let Sugar Hurt You: Here’s How A Continuous Blood Glucose Monitor Can Help
Wearable health technology has come of age, giving us a window into the working of our bodies. It represents an important step in taking control of your health – and away from Big Pharma and putting it, whenever possible, where it belongs – in your hands. One such personalized device: continuous glucose monitors or CGMs. Though they’ve been available for diabetics for about twenty years, now, ever-more refined models are attracting the interest of healthy, health-savvy customers who are using them to help ensure they never cross the line into pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes – a wise idea if ever there was one.
Feb 13, 2023 · NutritionNot-so-Healthy “Health Foods”
Here’s my round up of unhealthy foods most commonly mistaken for the ones that actually can do your body good.
Feb 6, 2023 · Healthy Aging7 Thoughts on Why Everyone Should Explore Wearable Health Tracking Devices
OK, so let’s say you’ve resolved to improve your health this year but got disheartened when the mirror and the numbers on the scale didn’t appear to reflect the effort you’ve been putting in. How to stay motivated regardless? Wearable health tracking devices provide a great boost. Not only do they show you the stuff below the surface, that you literally cannot see, but they provide both doctor and patient with a clearer picture of what’s going on with your physiology before the real ills can get a toehold – that is, if you start monitoring early enough. Wearable health trackers can be literally life-changing, not to mention potentially life-saving – and it’s why I’m encouraging my patients to start using them – and you should too!
Jan 30, 2023 · Healthy Aging5 Foods To Get Rid Of For Better Brain Health
The classic bad-for-your-brain foods are the kinds I’ve talked a lot about a lot over the years – they’re the ones that inflame the body, and drive up risk for numerous chronic health conditions like obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes, etc. But what we often forget is that this stuff is bad for your head too – pro-inflammatory foods are simply awful for brain health in the near term – think brain fog, anxiety, depression – and long-term, increased risk of developing – Alzheimer’s, dementia, neurological disease., etc. Simply put: you need to kick them now to save your brain.
Jan 23, 2023 · Healthy AgingIs Melatonin The New Anti-Aging Hormone?
Melatonin is becoming a hot corner of the anti-aging research world. A lot of folks are taking a second or third look at melatonin, including me.
Jan 16, 2023 · Health & WellnessMake Healthy Habits Stick With ‘Habit Stacking’
As you wade into the waters of this brand new year, you can increase the odds of making positive changes stick by letting go of the old school all-or-nothing mentality that can torpedo good intentions (in a matter of days!). Instead, work on developing new healthy habits over time. What’s the best way to do that? One approach to consider, borrowed from behavioral science, is known as ‘habit stacking’ – it can help make 2023 a banner year for your body and your mind.
Jan 9, 2023 · Health & Wellness21 Immune System Boosters and ‘Triple-demic’ Fighters
This winter, it’s all about immunity and boosting yours needs to become a top priority, the sooner the better. The mission: to fortify your body against opportunistic invaders, make it harder for them to get a toehold into your system, and ideally, be able to repel them quickly if they do. To achieve the strongest immunity possible, I recommend a three-pronged approach that combines health-supporting foods immunity-boosting supplements, and pleasurable, health-boosting habits to pack your winter with wellness.
Jan 2, 2023 · Sleep9 Ways Your Sleep Position Can Help – or Harm – Your Health
With sleep taking up roughly a third of each day, it’s important to do it well. As you probably know first-hand, sleeping well can be easier said than done. Even in the best of times, sound sleep can be a challenge and the past few years have only added to it. While there are almost countless ways for a good night’s rest to be interrupted, perhaps one of the most overlooked is sleep position. If your body’s not in a comfortable, nicely aligned position, not only may you struggle to get your 40 winks, you may find other aspects of your health impacted as well.
Dec 26, 2022 · Health & Wellness23 Wellness Wishes to Make this New Year Shine
With external change greeting us at just about every turn, among the positives to come out of it is internal: we’ve learned how to be more flexible; to persevere; to be a bit more patient and a lot more resilient – all skills that will serve us well as we embark on our journey into 2023. To honor the fresh start of this new year, rather than going into full-throttle, resolutions-or-bust mode, I encourage you to take a kinder, gentler approach: think ‘evolution’ not revolution.
Dec 19, 2022 · Health & WellnessTop 10 Most Popular Blogs of 2022
Finding ways to incorporate new (or old) healthful habits into the day-to-day is essential. If you don’t know where to start, we have gathered our 11 top helpful (and health-full) blog posts of 2022 to optimize well-being in 2023!
Dec 12, 2022 · Healthy Aging7 Ways to Save Your Bones and Keep them Healthy
Bones are the scaffolding that holds us up and when they’re lashed together by connective tissue in joints, they allow us to move. When everything is working the way it should, they’re pretty easy to take for granted, that is until you take a tumble and fracture your wrist or your hip. That’s when many women discover that their bones are precariously thin, or worse, dangerously fragile. But, as I tell my patients, the time to wake up to the reality of thinning bone is now, before there’s a calamity and when there’s still time to slow down the loss of bone tissue.
Dec 5, 2022 · Health & Wellness8 Ways To Enjoy Winter – And Use It To Improve Your Health
While there’s no stopping winter’s arrival, with a bit of forethought, you can fend off much of the moodiness, lethargy, carb-cravings and depressive tendencies that can make the season anything but bright. What’s the secret to beating back the metaphorical darkness? Accept the inevitable, tend to your physical and mental health, and stack the deck with feel-good activities. Call it seasonal self-care or simply your winter battle plan, with a little forethought, you can make this the best winter ever. Here’s how…
Nov 28, 2022 · Sleep9 Ways to Use Melatonin Safely for Sleep
Increasingly, people are becoming more aware of the dangerous downsides of prescription sleep meds and switching to non-pharmaceutical alternatives. Enter melatonin supplement, which can have a place in your good-sleep program, that is, if you understand the pros and cons, what it can and can’t do. For many melatonin new-comers there’s a temptation to think of it as a sleep panacea or a cure-all, that’s it’s OK to pop a pill every night without giving it a second thought. Not so. Here’s how to use it wisely.
Nov 21, 2022 · Healthy Aging7 Life Saving Reasons to Walk More, and 10 Ways To Do It
Walking. For most of us, it’s easy to do and hey, we do it every day but doing enough of it may be an entirely different question. Chances are, if you’re a traditional, car-driving, office-working person, you’re probably not walking nearly as much as your body would like you to.
Nov 14, 2022 · Healthy AgingWhy I am Such a Big Fan of CoQ10
We’ve all heard the expression, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Well, guess what, that’s not always true. Here’s one of my favorite counter-examples from the health world: CoQ10 supplementation. CoQ10 is a vitamin-like compound found in every cell in your body, essential for powering it up. Fortunately, our bodies make it. Not so fortunately, our bodies don’t not make quite enough of it to power us through our whole lives as vigorously as we’d wish. And that’s where CoQ10 supplements come in.
Nov 4, 2022 · Healthy Aging10 Essentials of Aging Well
Functional-medicine pioneer Frank Lipman, MD, offers simple strategies to improve how we age.
Oct 31, 2022 · Nutrition7 Thoughts on Why You Really Must Kick the Cocktail Habit
If, like millions of other adults, your alcohol consumption’s crept up during the pandemic and stayed there, it’s time to take a very hard look at the uncomfortable truth: the stuff’s gotta go.While drinking more than usual was an understandable if dysfunctional default during those stressful months of concern and uncertainty, for many, much of that extra-to-excessive drinking has continued unabated even as the pandemic has waned – so I’m here to remind you that the metaphorical party needs to end.
Oct 24, 2022 · Healthy Aging10 Reasons Why You’ve Got Brain Fog and 10 Ways to Clear It
Got brain fog? You’re not alone. Though it’s not a medical term per se, it is an extremely common affliction. Trouble is, there are a number of less-than-stellar habits that contribute to it and can make you feel like you’re ‘losing your edge,’ or, in more extreme cases, your mind. No matter how significant the fog is or isn’t, it’s still unnerving when it’s your brain that’s not functioning as seamlessly as you’ve come to expect. So, the question is, what’s triggering your brain fog? And, what can you do to lift it and think clearly again?
Oct 17, 2022 · SleepTo Sleep Better Tonight, Avoid These 10 Sleep Mistakes
Contrary to what you may think, poor sleep is not a fact of life, but is, to a large extent, a by-product of how you live it. So, to reclaim those good sleep nights you’ve been dreaming of, you’ll likely need to make some adjustments, review the rhythms and habits your days and approach sleep more like a project that needs some attention, and less like something that just happens (or doesn’t). To take back your nights, here are 10 sleep stealers to ditch, so you can rise refreshed.
Oct 10, 2022 · Health & Wellness9 Thoughts on Healthy Ways to Ease the Menopause Transition
A positive attitude, as well as some lifestyle healthy basics, can make a massive difference in how menopause is experienced – and the degree to which menopause symptoms interfere with everyday life, if they do at all. That’s not just my clinical experience talking either. Studies have shown that the more negative attitudes women bring to menopause, the more symptoms they’re likely to have. So, even if your mom had a rough time of it, it’s by no means a foregone conclusion that you will too. In fact, with the right tools, your transition is likely to be a good bit easier.
Oct 3, 2022 · Nutrition5 Thoughts on How Alcohol Bangs Up Your Gut Microbiome
The truth is, any kind of alcohol consumption brings with it the specter of organ damage, as well as issues of physiological and psychological dependency. Not surprisingly, alcohol’s also rotten for your gut microbiome too, that health-sustaining bacterial garden you should be protecting at all costs. So, what happens to your gut when you drink alcohol? Plenty – and here’s why you need to keep your alcohol intake to an absolute minimum.
Sep 26, 2022 · Healthy Aging8 Ways to Get Low Testosterone Back up to Speed
If you’ve ever been bombarded by those TV ads nattering on about “Low T” or websites that offer supplemental testosterone prescriptions like they were candy, you might be tempted to think the whole business built around the world of low testosterone is a scam. But it’s not. The problem of not having enough is very real – even if the solution they’re pushing, for most men, is rarely the right one. What guys don’t hear on the TV ads is that when you take control of your lifestyle, you can bring back your testosterone levels to a more youthful and healthy place.
Sep 19, 2022 · Sleep4 Ways EMF’s Could Be Disrupting Your Sleep – and 15 Tips To Fix It
While big stressors in our lives like work, family, finances, responsibilities, etc., are serious ones, another one that’s often overlooked is 24/7 exposure to electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs) – and their disruptive impact on your sleep. The good news is you can purge plenty of them from your days, and set yourself up for good sleep at night.
Sep 12, 2022 · Healthy AgingThe Best Biohacks Aren’t Really Hacks at All. Here Are 15 to Try
Over the last few years you may have heard a lot of talk about ‘bio-hacking.’ And while it may sound a bit Brave New World, in practice, bio-hacking is really about applying smart, health-enhancing strategies to help us create the best, healthiest versions of ourselves possible. So, how to bio-hack your way to better health? I have a few ideas for you.