With a quick search on Google, Bing, or whatever search engine makes you happy, you can find advice on health habits that is completely overwhelming. I just did this and came up with 453,000,000 results. In other words, I could be busy for a very long time researching how to be healthy. In fact, if…
It is time for a hike, but what does one do in December?? The mountain byways are snowed in. Weather is totally unpredictable over a few thousand feet above sea level. My favorite area for this time of year is the northeast corner of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. It lies perfectly in the rain…

So the obvious question is: why are you talking about Travel when this webpage is dedicated to questions of health? Travel is what people do who have unlimited free time and money. I disagree. Let’s define Travel first: first, let’s say that Travel is anytime you leave the 30 mile radius of your home. How…

Feeding the monsters of heart disease, vascular disease, diabetes and chronic kidney disease, high blood pressure affects half the adult population in the United States. This means there are 129,000,000 people who have this diagnosis whether they know it or not walking around America. Often blood pressure is the first domino to fall in many…

This is a difficult question and it depends on my mood when you ask me. Overall, though, I can’t get past Kaua’i, Hawaii. I have been there three times, more than any other vacation spot and there are plenty of reasons for that. The main reason to me, though, is that I think it is…

What book are you reading right now? For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. I just finished the classic John Steinbeck novel, The Grapes of Wrath, that so effectively transports you back to the…

Last June, during a nice break in between jobs, I traveled to Colorado to check out the national park scene. After some deliberation, I decided a few weeks ahead of time to travel south from Denver and visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Honestly, I didn’t know much about it. This was going to…
Contrary to popular belief and even my own clinical assumptions for many years, weight training and regular exercise actually reduce your odds of having pain in the joints in a dose dependant way. For years, I thought that runners would obviously have more osteoarthritis and knee pain then non-runners. NOT TRUE!! When I was 40-44…
Late fall brings early sunsets. Adding the loss of daylight savings time, and suddenly, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, darkness begins to descend. So this Friday, as soon as my workday ended, I headed out the door with the dog and leash, and went straight to the park. I used an extendable leash that…

One of my favorite go-to hikes is a roughly 5 mile jaunt round trip up a small mountain on the Olympic Peninsula. It’s a moderately challenging climb, rising 2000 feet in just two miles. On top there are two vistas with very different views: the north side gives a nice view up into the East…