Often junior high and high school teachers have teenagers with Asperger's Syndrome (AS)  included in their classes, and are not given much in the way of useful information. I wrote a few tips  in the hopes of being  helpful to educators  who may have little or no practical knowledge about students on the spectrum. Read More

Taking time to remember the events of 9 years ago can help heal destructive divisions. When you're feeling helpless, the best thing you can do is help someone. Read More

A new mantra is making the rounds in dietary cancer prevention circles: ‘Variety, variety, variety.'

No longer content with exhorting us to eat five portions of fruits and vegetables a day, scientists now say that consuming a broad and varied range of produce is where it's at. Read More

Recently, there has been movement towards substantial growth in the number of medical schools and in the number of medical students training in the US. About 15-18 new schools may be added to the 131 current schools. Also, medical schools have been encouraged to increase their enrollment. Read More

In response to my call for stories about ADHD-diagnosed kids who have been educated in non-traditional settings, I received 28 stories. My analysis of these stories suggests that (1) most ADHD-diagnosed kids do fine without drugs if they are not in a conventional school; (2) the ADHD characteristics don't vanish just because they aren't in school, but the characteristics are no longer as big a problem as they were before; and (3) ADHD-diagnosed kids seem to do especially well when they are allowed to take charge of their own education.

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They could argue about that one cookie. Must the downward spiral spin from there, or not? Read More

My sister Elizabeth Craft is a sage. Every time I talk to her, I keep a pen and paper handy so I can write down her words of wisdom. I quote her constantly. She's a TV-writer in Los Angeles (now writing for The Vampire Diaries), so that gives a certain flavor to her advice, but many of her observations are more universal than they appear at first glance. Here's an assortment of some of my recent favorite lines:

1. When I was fretting because I hadn't heard back about a proposal, she told me, “'Yes' comes right away; 'no' never comes." This observation turns out to be true in a very wide variety of situations. Read More

     I love to cook, but I didn’t always like it.  Like many other people, I suffered from a mild version of mageirocophobia—the fear of cooking.  In my case, I was reluctant to try new recipes and felt overwhelmed by cooking when crunched for time.  If this sounds like you, this article will give you tips for getting back into the kitchen.  Cooking is a great tool for helping you to be a more mindful eater. Read More

 The heuristic mind has an automatic and rigid sense of right and wrong Read More

Last week, Bill Pennington, a sports reporter for the New York Times wrote about Eric Alpenfels, the director of instruction at the Pinehurst Golf Academy in North Carolina, who has spent hundreds of hours studying how run-of-the-mill golfers putt. Read More

When we are having a "bad day" psychologically, we often forget about the impact of our "moods" on our bodies. Yet "mood" is processed in the brain which is in the same container we call body." It is no surprise then, that our bodies can be railed on by our moods, and here are seven situations when this occurs.

Avoiding negative emotions seems like a good idea. It isn't.

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But wait a minute! Brewer didn't forget her lines. She wasn't relying on memory. Her speech and/or notes were printed on the pages before her. She was staring right at them. But she couldn't see them, or make sense of the words on the page. She seemed literally uncomprehending of the words in front of her. They might as well have been written in Spanish or Farsi. Read More