Blog Posts

Health, Effort, and the Pursuit of Happiness

wall-e

I was once told that the best way to get followers on social media was to write “short and stupid” articles to cater to the equally short attention spans that social media tends to create. I would argue I should…
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Seeing Patterns and Escaping the Herd – Those Things We All Know

escape the herd

As I sit here writing this, staring into a deep abyss, I am in the Pittsburgh International Airport awaiting my flight. Across from me on the other side of the gate sits a middle-aged women on her phone. Her distance…
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The Right to Remain Silent

Matera

The cacophony of chattering voices echoed throughout the airport terminal as I sat there awaiting my turn to board the flight. No amount of music on my headphones could drown out the multiple cellphone conversations at full volume, the several…
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Caring, Thinking, and Taking Action

caring

Remaining healthy in the 21st century is a Sisyphean task—the second we stop pushing that giant stone ball up the hill, it roles right back down leaving us at square one. While remaining healthy is always a challenge, we live…
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Bringing the Passeggiata Stateside

beauty

In Italian, the word passeggiata means to take a walk. While this may seem simple on the surface, the word has deeper meaning. In fact, in Italy simply taking a walk has much deeper meaning. This word, unlike in the…
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Be Your Own Health Savior

When it Comes to Health, They Aren’t Our Saviors I was recently in attendance for a lecture on obesity by an obesity and nutrition “expert.” This expert advised the audience that we should no longer use the offensive term weight…
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We Are Not Alchemists: Poor Results and Sickness Follow Poor Behaviors

Garden

I fell off the wagon for a month. The kids were home from school. It was the holidays. My spouse keeps buying junk food. Its summer and I like to have drinks at the pool. I keep getting sick. “I…
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Avoiding a Tensionless Life

In Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, he describes his horrifying experience in several concentration camps during World War II. His heart-wrenching description is a must-read, though at times it is tough to get through some of the pages and…
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If Society Was a Patient

While seeing a new breast cancer patient, I always ask myself what would I do in this situation. If this was my wife, what would I suggest? Similarly, I often ask myself on a larger scale how I would treat…
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Shut Your Brain off Periodically, Before it Shuts off Permanently

As the 1970’s approached, creativity researcher George Land set out to investigate how creativity changes as we age. The study, funded by NASA, tested children aged 3-5 on creativity via a test utilized on NASA recruits. An astonishing 98% of…
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