On Pins and Needles | Newsweek My Turn: Health Triumphs

HEALTH
It Takes a Village
6/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
When it comes to your health, your friends and neighbors may play a bigger role than your family.
HEALTH FOR LIFE M.D.
Brains and Mysteries
11/8/2007 12:00:00 AM
Whitehouse, N.J.: My dad died of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. What is the chance that I would be diagnosed with one or both of these diseases? Is there anything I can do in middle age to cut my risk?Dr. Martin A. Samuels: Both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease may be rarely familial, but more often we believe that there is a genetic predisposition acted upon by as yet unknown factors, some of which a person may be able to control. At the moment, we have no scientific proof that you can do anything to reduce your risk of these illnesses, but it makes good sense to keep your blood pressure and cholesterol under good control. And minimize excessive drinking of alcohol, and smoking. Let me add that when I refer to "unknown factors," I mean an incalculable and unavoidable array of stimuli, such as innocent viral infections, which might give one person a common cold but another person, with the correct genetic predisposition of the immune system, an immune-mediated disease such as MS or lupus.
'I’m Not a Sick Person'
3/14/2006 12:00:00 AM
COVER STORY: CULTURE
The Curious Lives of Surrogates
Lorraine Ali
Jennifer Cantor, a 34-year-old surgical nurse from Huntsville, Ala., loves being pregnant. Not having children, necessarily—she has one, an 8-year-old daughter named Dahlia, and has no plans for another—but just the experience of growing a human being beneath her heart. She was fascinated with the idea of it when she was a child, spending an entire two-week vacation, at the age of 11, with a pillow stuffed under her shirt. She's built perfectly for it: six feet tall, fit and slender but broad-hipped. Which is why she found herself two weeks ago in a birthing room in a hospital in Huntsville, swollen with two six-pound boys she had been carrying for eight months. Also in the room was Kerry Smith and his wife, Lisa, running her hands over the little lumps beneath the taut skin of Cantor's belly. "That's an elbow," said Cantor, who knew how the babies were lying in her womb. "Here's a foot." Lisa smiled proudly at her husband. She is, after all, the twins' mother.
INVESTIGATIONS
Periscope
TECHNOLOGY
It's A Small, Small World

The latest revolution in consumer electronics is, well, tiny. But the potential impact may be enormous. Last week's Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas-one of the largest trade shows in the world-featured a plethora of handheld products that do everything from keeping your schedule to quoting the Gospel, chapter and verse. For now, in the world of electronics, small is beautiful. And it looks as if these compact cases filled with computer chips are here to stay.