Click on the image to read an article I wrote about quitting smoking

If you smoke or know someone who does, check out Page 5 of this article I wrote for Believe in a Cure, which includes 10 tips for quitting by smoking cessation specialist Gillian Eagle. I like, “Put a no-smoking sign by your door to remind yourself and others that you are quitting.”

Also, feel free to share your tips in the comment box. What works for you?

Click the image above to read my article about a nurse-run healthcare center

When you go for a check-up, you usually say you’re going to the doctor’s office, and you usually expect to be seen by a doctor.

But not at Archer Family Health Care, a nurse-run medical office. In fact, there are 250 nurse-run facilities in the United States, and they’re part of a growing movement to offer accessible, affordable, high-quality health care to the insured as well as the uninsured.

Read this article I wrote for The Gator Nurse while interning at the UF Health Science Center, and find out how one such center made an impact on its community in 10 years.

Click the image to read my article on oral health disparities

Did you know that African-American are much more likely to die from oral cancer than white men? Is it fair? No. But one University of Florida research center is trying to do something about it. Read this September cover story I wrote for the POST magazine while interning at the UF Health Science Center this summer, and become part of the movement to educate others about preventing head and neck cancer.

If health had a Facebook page, I think its relationship status would be “It’s complicated with everyone.”

Each of us has a unique relationship with health.  It plays a role in all of our lives, whether we are conscious of it or not.

Some of us are married to health, making continuous efforts to put all of its components into practice, such as eating right, exercising often, sleeping our ideal amounts.  Others are engaged to it, ready to make the commitment to a healthy lifestyle after some trials and errors.  And still others of us are in a casual relationship with it, incorporating some healthy practices into our lives only when it’s convenient.

What’s your status with health?

What $25 bought me at Mother Earth Market

My normal grocery routine is Publix on Sundays.  But this weekend, I only needed a few items and was feeling adventurous.  I decided to check out a local organic store, Mother Earth Market, for a healthy treat!

My writing was published on a major national health magazine’s Web site – Women’s Health Magazine online.

The article was an assignment  that I landed through my Health and Fitness Writing class. 

I wrote an article about eight heart-healthy recipes.

I was priveleged to have interviewed two awesome experts for the article: Jennifer Kay Nelson, R.D., the Mayo Clinic’s director of clinical dietetics and nutrition, and Judith Wylie-Rosett, Ed.D., R.D., a spokesperson for the American Heart Association.

Half the class worked on articles on heart health for Women’s Health Magazine’s Web site, and the other half worked on articles for Men’s Health Magazine’s Web site.

I led the team and helped divide up the workload.  I chose to cover the recipes portion of heart health since my sister, Jamie (a dietetics graduate student at UF) and I love to cook and keep up a cooking blog together.

The assignment was such a blast and such a blessing!

• Sweat Secrets, Episode One: Maintaining Good Form:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95yVOMJxZeE

• Sweat Secrets, Episode Two: Challenging Yourself

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z9nvNcQB5c

In February, the videos were published by INsite Magazine on its Web site at:

http://www.insitegainesville.com/style/health-fitness/317-sweat-secrets-fitness-tips.html

If you’re ever feeling alone or like you don’t fit in, just crack open an anatomy book.  There are nearly seven billion of us out there right now who look just like you inside.

We’re all made of the same stuff…33 spinal chords…an abdomen separated from the thorax (chest) by a diaphragm…a flap called the epiglottis that keeps food out of our wind pipe when we swallow so food can travel through our esophagus, stomach, intestines, and out the other end…

It’s downright fascinating how we look so different (come in varying shapes, sizes and colors) but we’re made of the same parts and pieces when you peel back the skin; the packaging is different, but the motor is the same!  We’re kind of like cars, or different variations of cookies made from the same dough.  Do you follow me?

Me!

I don’t know why symmetry is favored in the beauty department.  Haven’t you heard of those studies in which symmetrical faces are rated as most attractive?  Or read a how-to article about making your face look more symmetrical?

I have this beauty mark below my lip on the left side of my face, and I think it gives me character – an added element of interest, a one-of-a-kind stamp.  And I rock the side part and side pony tail.  I think one-shoulder shirts are hott.  And I love flaunting a flower on one side of my head.

Maybe it’s just me, but I see a lot of beauty in asymmetry.

And I love the lack of symmetry within the human body too…

Check out a picture of what’s underneath our skin, and another world of asymmetry will surface.

How the stomach and spleen are toward the left side of our abdomen, yet our liver and gallbladder are toward the right…how our heart is toward the left part of our chest…how our left lung has two lobes, but our right lung as three…how the sciatic nerve runs down the back of the right thigh….Yet we can stand on both feet in balance.  God is the most incredible creator.

This is what stands out to me as I study the Regional Atlas of the Body (the first 23 pages of the Human Body book) at 3 a.m. the first night home for winter break.

I don’t normally read science books for fun, or in the wee hours of the morning for that matter, but I couldn’t sleep.  And I haven’t taken a science course in two years, and I kind of miss it.  So here I am, studying anatomy on vacation, and adoring the discovery that my asymmetrical outside matches my asymmetrical insides.

Author Mary Roach video chats with UF's health and fitness writing class

For a woman who spent two years writing a book about dead bodies, I wouldn’t have guessed that author Mary Roach would have been be so full of life!  and hilarity!

Roach bounced around at her computer in California, giggling as she video chatted with my health and fitness writing class last week.  We fired questions at her about her writing process and her book, “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,” a New York Times bestseller and the required reading for our class.

Although I was disgusted by the graphic detail with which she describes cadaver dissection, human decay and composting the body, I was equally charmed by her humor and incredibly captivating writing.

The first few months Roach spends working on a novel are what she calls “randomly flailing” and a “very organic process.”

She begins her research by Google searching, e-mailing, and scheduling to visit interesting people involved with the subject she is writing about. 

She said access is usually a problem because people who work with cadavers, for instance, are very uncomfortable exposing their work to the public in fear of what the public might think.

She often bribes people them to interview with her by offering to send them a copy of one of her books.  She also offers them the contact information of the one of the sources of her books who was pleased with her.  And she tells them they can fact check her writing before it’s published.

Roach has tapped into seemingly personal and controversial topics in her novels – cadavers and the soul and sex.  She’s even given speeches  like “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Orgasm.”

“My curiosity is more powerful than my anxiety,” she told our class.

But there are two topics Roach won’t touch - religion and race.  There’s too much room to offend people there, she said.

And although I thought nothing could gross this woman out after reading “Stiff,” there are a few things that do make her squirm – watching surgeries like nose jobs and injections on TV.

The author who has inspired her most is Bill Bryson, she said.

Next up, she’s working on a book about astronauts and she plans to start one on the digestive system.  Prepare for more laughs as Roach twists humor with science.