A Healthy Path

A Healthy Path

This month’s health and wellness issue includes interviews with pediatricians, geneticists, and patients as well as nutritionists, a yoga guru, and a bio-media technologist in articles that plumb their expertise for finding paths that lead toward health and improved well-being.

Today’s health care recipients are less likely than ever to blindly follow a doctor’s orders. Consumers do their research and expect meaningful interaction from health-care providers. Here in the East Bay, where there are a wealth of complementary options that can lead to improved health and wellness, consumers long for a more collaborative or total health approach, one that deviates from the rigid symptom-solving approach.

This month’s foray into health and wellness includes interviews with pediatricians, geneticists, and patients as well as nutritionists, a yoga guru, and a bio-media technologist with articles that plumb their expertise for finding paths that lead toward health and improved well-being.

On the pediatric front, meet Dr. Donna White Carey, who served as Highland Hospital’s first chair of its pediatrics department. Her curiosity over racially disparate statistics on Alameda County infant deaths led her to institute a safe baby sleeping program that other hospitals are interested in copying.

Also learn how genetics, family history, and environmental factors are enabling patients to receive more targeted and personalized health care. Physicians are starting to look at health on a molecular level, studying their patient’s DNA and other risk factors. The data they are uncovering potentially leads to more directed patient care.

Meanwhile, those perplexed by the sudden plethora of milks and alternative milks may enjoy a little tour of the milky universe. Our alt-milk primer ponders milk sources and considers the pros, cons, and — perhaps most important — the taste. Most health-conscious adults have an inkling about what foods are good for their hearts, but do they think about what foods are good for their brains? Take a peek at the vascular-brain connection to determine what’s best for the nightly dinner plate.

Finally, catch up with Ann Dyer of Montclair’s Mountain Yoga, a successful recording artist who brings the power of sound into her yoga practice. And then see how Kristin Neidlinger is using technology and fashion to improve health for those with Sensory Processing Disorder.

Faces of the East Bay