Several weeks ago, a friend told me about her upcoming surgery. For several months, she's lived with constant pain down her right arm and numbness and tingling in her right hand. An MRI showed a growth on her cervical spine (in her neck), which the doctor said was causing the pain. The doctor sent her to a surgeon, who told her that surgery was the only solution.

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When asked what the #1 health problem is in America, most people say cancer, obesity or heart disease. But, in speaking with Henri Roca, MD, medical director of the Center for Integrative Medicine in Greenwich, Connecticut, last night, I learned that the number one health problem in America is... stress. In fact, eighty percent of diagnoses are either caused by stress or exacerbated by stress -- from heart disease, to headaches, to muscle pain to memory problems and even cancer.

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As we've long-advised in our publications, my mother diligently carries a list of the medications that she and my father take in her wallet. That came in handy when my father recently checked in to the hospital for a brief bout of pneumonia.

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I, like most Americans, have had lengthy discourse recently about the health care debate. Most provocative has been what I've heard from physical therapist Mitchell Yass (www.PT2therapy.com) and anesthesiologist David Sherer, author of Dr. David Sherer's Hospital Survival Guide. As David said to me the other day, "It's not a health care crisis, but a health crisis.

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On the last day of our summer vacation and hours from home, my youngest daughter developed pink eye. Hoping to stave off a major infection and limit the chances of everyone in the family catching it, I ran into a shop to see if they had chamomile tea -- a home remedy for pink eye (you just wet the teabag and hold it on the eye). They didn't have it, but the woman behind the counter directed me across the street to a health food store.

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