Health Questions, Clear Answers

Every morning at exactly 7:00 a.m., I willingly make myself look unhinged. The park follows a predictable rhythm at that hour. Joggers move in disciplined circles. Dog owners drift at half speed, phones in hand. Retirees claim the same benches they claimed yesterday. And then there is me. Moving against the flow, eyes forward, feet going backward. I feel it immediately. The pause in conversations. The brief double-take. The not-so-subtle glances that say, Is this guy okay? For the first week, I wanted to explain myself to strangers. I fantasized about wearing a shirt that said, "This is intentional." But three months in, I don’t bother anymore. Because something unexpected happened. My knees stopped hurting. And something stranger followed. My mind started waking up faster than coffee ever managed. I am not walking backward to be edgy or different. I am doing it because, quietly and almost accidentally, it fixed problems I had accepted as permanent. And it only costs me five ...

Let me be upfront. Apple cider vinegar smells awful. Not quirky or fermented awful. Not strong but healthy awful. It smells like something you step on barefoot in a gym locker room and immediately regret. For years, I ignored the hype. Every few months, another article would pop up explaining how apple cider vinegar could help with blood sugar, digestion, energy, and even appetite control. Influencers looked suspiciously joyful sipping it from mason jars, usually before sunrise, usually smiling way too much. Eventually, curiosity won. I bought a bottle. Took a deep breath. Poured a shot. And immediately wondered why I trusted the internet. My throat burned. My eyes watered. My stomach felt like it was being aggressively pickled. In that moment, I made a silent promise to myself. No health benefit was worth voluntarily drinking battery acid. I quit after one attempt. What changed wasn’t another influencer or a new trend. It was the science. The research around apple cider vinegar and gl...

If you ever spotted me walking across campus or cutting through a subway corridor, two things would probably stand out. First, I walk fast. Uncomfortably fast, according to friends who have tried to keep up. Second, my jaw is always moving. People assume it is about freshness. Or nerves. Or some mild obsession with mint. They are almost always wrong. I am not chewing gum because I care about breath. I am chewing it because it changes how my body moves through space. I didn’t plan to discover this. It wasn’t a "health hack." It started as an accident, the kind that only happens when you are late and not thinking clearly. One morning, already behind schedule, I threw a piece of gum into my mouth while rushing out the door. No warm-up, no coffee, just stressed momentum. I remember power-walking harder than usual, almost annoyed at the ground for not moving faster. When I reached the lecture hall, something felt off. In a good way. I wasn’t just on time. I was early. My legs felt...

I didn’t realize how fast I ate until one night scared me. I was sitting on my couch with a normal-sized dinner plate. Not a binge. Not junk food. Just dinner. Netflix was playing in the background, something familiar enough that I didn’t need to pay attention. One episode hadn’t even finished when I looked down. The plate was clean. No memory of texture. No memory of flavor. No memory of the process of eating. It genuinely felt like someone else had come into the room, eaten my food, and left me with the consequences. That was the moment I understood something uncomfortable. I wasn’t overeating because I loved food too much. I was overeating because I wasn’t present at all. The Real Problem Wasn’t Hunger. It Was Automation. Most advice about eating assumes hunger is the villain. Count calories. Track macros. Drink water first. Use smaller bowls. But none of those addressed what I was experiencing. I wasn’t hungry when I finished eating. I was just... done. Without ever noticing gettin...

For a long time, I believed productivity followed a clean, mechanical logic. When you are tired, you sleep. When you need to work, you drink coffee. Simple. Binary. Clear. Sleep was the "off" switch. Caffeine was the "on" switch. So the idea of mixing them felt absurd. Drinking espresso and then immediately lying down sounded like pressing the accelerator and the brake at the same time. Not just inefficient - almost irresponsible. And yet, that logic eventually collapsed for one reason: it stopped working. The Slump That Broke the Rules Every afternoon around 2:00 PM, something predictable and frustrating happened. My body was technically awake, but my mind wasn’t cooperating. Words blurred together on my screen. Tasks that should have taken fifteen minutes dragged into an hour. I wasn’t exactly sleepy enough for a real nap, but I was far too foggy to do meaningful work. I tried the usual solutions. More coffee made me restless but not focused. Short naps left me me...

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - that compares to the smell of freshly cooked white rice. The moment you open the lid and that warm steam escapes, it feels like home. For most of my life, rice was automatic. Cook it, eat it hot, feel full, move on. For a long time, I didn’t question it. But slowly, a pattern emerged that I couldn’t ignore. About an hour after lunch, my head would feel heavy. My thinking slowed down. The world felt slightly out of focus, as if someone had dimmed the lights inside my brain. I told myself it was normal. Everyone gets sleepy after eating carbs, right? That explanation worked - until it didn’t anymore. What bothered me wasn’t just the sleepiness. It was how predictable it was. Eat hot rice, crash. Every time. No exception. And once I noticed it, I couldn’t unnotice it. I wasn’t looking to give up rice. I wasn’t interested in extreme diets, carb elimination, or pretending I don’t love food. What I wanted was simple: to stop feeling like my own meals w...

Navigating menopause has always felt, to me, like being handed a map to a country everyone knows exists but no one’s ever truly described. It’s a deeply personal yet universally misunderstood transition. Over the years, I’ve listened to women talk about this stage with a mix of confusion, relief, even quiet grief. And at the center of that emotional storm lies one of the most polarizing topics in modern medicine: Menopause Hormone Therapy (MHT). I’ve spent years observing how the story of MHT has evolved—how a single study in 2002 triggered global panic, reshaped medical practice, and left millions of women suffering in silence. The conversation about hormones didn’t just pause; it froze. Yet science, unlike fear, moves forward. Today, with decades of new data and the U.S. FDA continuously approving safer, more tailored therapies, I believe it’s time we rewrite that story with nuance and truth. This is not a sales pitch for hormones—it’s an attempt to restore balance between evidence a...