Where I live in Sydney, Australia there is a sense of franticness in the air. Traffic has come to a standstill as people add various silly season shenanigans to their already overloaded schedules in the extreme heat of the Australian summer. Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy this time of year and I’m especially looking forward to our Harvey family Christmas Eve where we celebrate Danish style and come together for important Christmas rituals like almond rice pudding and rum balls. But I know I won’t be alone in allowing the holiday season to get the better of me... Read full article »

When I was first diagnosed with an autoimmune disease for which doctors could offer no cure, naturally the first thing I looked at was my diet. Rightly so.  Diet has well and truly been established as being among the most important influences on our health. Having a bad diet is among the leading causes of premature death and chronic disease. Having a good diet on the other hand is associated with increased life expectancy, dramatic reduction in lifetime risk of all chronic disease, and even improving gene expression.  And while it’s all very well for experts to tell us to... Read full article »

Whenever someone who doesn’t know me quizzes me about what I do, I often find myself talking to a person’s raised eyebrows. As I explain that I’m a journalist who researches the connection between our mind, body and health, I usually find that I’m met with skepticism at best and cynicism at worst. Since releasing my film about the subject, I’ve met countless others working in this space who experience the same frustration. In a world full of quackery, it can be hard to cut through with real science. Over the years I’ve developed a few ‘go-to’ examples of the... Read full article »

This morning I was nothing short of dumbfounded when I jumped on a set of scales and discovered I have gained weight. Inspired by the research I’ve been doing lately into the brain-health-exercise connection, I’ve been stepping up my usual workout routine a notch. I had assumed that a nice bi-product of my brain-boosting exertions would be a touch of weight loss. To my horror my efforts had the opposite effect. I was almost half a kilogram (roughly one pound) heavier than the previous week. Ouch. It prompted me to do a little digging into the latest research on exercise... Read full article »

In a military field hospital during World War II a young doctor named Henry Beecher found himself in a desperate situation. He had run out of morphine and needed to perform surgery on a badly wounded soldier. Without hesitation one of the nurses filled a syringe with saline solution and gave the soldier a shot, just as if she were injecting him with morphine. The soldier calmed down and Beecher went ahead with the operation without anesthesia. The experience convinced him of the power of placebo and when he returned to the US after the war, he began to study... Read full article »

My soon to be 86-year-old grandmother was in particularly high spirits when I saw her last weekend. She was in no pain after experiencing weeks of enduring nerve agony in her left leg. Being pain free meant that she didn’t need to take her prescription morphine, which she explained tastes awful. In passing, Mardie (the nickname her 14 grandchildren and four great grandchildren have given her) mentioned that she’d needed to eat jellybeans just to wash the hideous taste out of her mouth. Then, with a twinkle in her eye and a conspiratorial tone, she revealed that one-day she had... Read full article »