In December 2011, folk singer Maura Rogers was on the verge of success. Her band was becoming well-known around her native Cleveland and was about to record a CD. On a personal level, she had found a best friend in the band's newest member, accordionist Meredith Pangrace. For the first time in a while, Maura felt that at least some of the important things in her life were going right.

Kali Hardig looked as carefree as any other 12-year-old as she played King of the Hill on the floating docks of a water park in Little Rock, AR. Her mother, Traci, watched happily from the shore — Traci's husband, Army Sergeant Joseph Hardig, had recently returned from a Middle East deployment. The family was reunited; all seemed well.

You've already heard that staying seated for long stretches can slow your circulation, raising your risk for heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic health issues. But even a short stroll can counteract these harmful effects. In study published in the journal Experimental Physiology, researchers found that people who sat at a desk for 6 hours experienced reduced blood flow in their legs—and a 10-minute stroll was enough to reverse the effect.

At 297 pounds, Pam Adams had diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and rheumatoid arthritis. She'd spent her life trying—and failing—to lose weight with all the usual methods: Weight Watchers, Atkins, Nutrisystem, you name it. None of them had worked for long. By the time she was 42, her body mass index was an astronomical 49, well into the "morbidly obese" category, and as a result she'd had eight ministrokes and a major stroke, making her go partially blind.

It's an ongoing battle to prevent skin cancer, and flawed sunscreens put you at even greater risk. Most of us are familiar with the research linking too much sun to skin cancer, and have made a begrudging habit of smearing on sunscreen in the belief that doing so guarantees protection. But it turns out we¹ve really just been lulled into a false sense of security.

From 1992 to 1999, Eva Schernhammer, MD, worked rotating night shifts in a cancer ward in Vienna, Austria. "I didn't think much of it," she says, "until two of my colleagues developed cancer.

Life changes are never easy. For Tabitha Antoniak, 34, it took two harsh blows — a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 2006 and, two years later, an end to her marriage — to make her gather her strength and confront the things that were really troubling her. Her weight then, 295 pounds, topped that list.

Mary Tywater was not a sick woman. Her back hurt—that was the Texas housewife's only complaint when she consulted Houston orthopedic surgeon Eric Scheffey. He advised surgery to remove a disc and shore up her spine. The day of surgery was overcast and muggy, not unusual for a Houston spring. Tywater went under anesthesia at 3:30. At 4:10, Eric Scheffey began cutting into Tywater's lower back. She started to bleed—a lot, the anestheisologist would later testify.

Two islands in the Mediterranean. One island in the East China Sea. A remote peninsula in Costa Rica. A town in... San Bernardino County, California? From the exotic to the ordinary, these far-reaching locales are all rich in one valuable natural resource: longevity.

The next 21 days are going to change your life: Sarah Kusch, a certified nationally-respected trainer, will be your personal coach and guide on a journey to effortless fitness and weight loss. You’ll learn walking techniques that burn calories quickly while building muscle, relieving stress, and boosting your mood.

In Visualization for Weight Loss, Jon Gabriel expands on the most talked about tool in his best-selling book, The Gabriel Method: visualization. This powerful technique helped Jon drop 220 pounds without dieting or deprivation because it didn’t depend on calorie counting or extreme exercise—rather it changed his biochemistry and neural pathways. In turn, this helped lower stress and its associated inflammatory chemicals in his body, allowing him to lose weight easily and naturally.

Could you improve your family's diet without anyone knowing it? A Penn State researcher may have found a way. We hear it all the time: Eat your vegetables. So much easier said than done. That pile of broccoli can be less than inspiring. Some soggy squash or cauliflower?

In a time when both obesity and diabetes rise to new levels, Healthy Heart Miracle Diet cuts through the barrage of conflicting dietary rules issued from on-high and nails down how you can lose weight, boost your energy, and strengthen your heart. Thirteen easy-to-read chapters help you easily adjust your diet by delivering the final word on fat, complex and simple carbs, protein, the best supplements for heart health, light exercise, and more. Throughout, more than 500 hints and tips clear up confusing nutritional claims, explode myths, and explain how eating right can be as easy as pie. Tying everything up with a big heart-healthy, weight-conscious ribbon are 100-plus tempting recipes proving that eating right doesn't mean starving yourself or giving up the foods you love like Lasagna with Spinach, Turkey Sausage, and Three Cheeses and treats like Chocolate-Walnut Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies.

[A review from EveryDiet.com] The Change One Diet is a weight loss program from prolific publisher Reader's Digest. The content is authored by some of their leading health and nutrition writers. The plan originally appeared in the book Change One: Lose Weight Simply, Safely, and Forever: The Breakthrough 12-Week Eating Plan from Reader's Digest, and received very favorable reviews (typically 5/5).

Even if my wife and I limit ourselves to immediate family-siblings, their spouses, and their children-we still come up with 34 people. Which, at Christmas, used to mean 34 excruciating (and expensive, when you add them up) decisions about what to give-and that's not including the action figures and weaponry on our sons' lists.

When I was a child, the dinner table was the site of many battles, though none so frequent as the skirmish over salt. "John, you're going to kill yourself," my father would say as I shook as much salt as I could over my food before the command came to stop.