What is AMD? When given a checklist to rank their greatest health-related fears, most adults didn’t choose cancer or heart disease as number one. Of more than ten thousand people surveyed during an international study conducted by India’s Prasad Eye Institute, over ninety percent chose blindness (Giridhar, 2002).

We’ve all seen pitchmen, the medium-pressure peddlers who unashamedly try to lure us to their side of the street with great deals on auto insurance or oxygenated household cleaners. Forceful voices and rapid chatter are attention grabbers. But it needn’t be fast talk and loud volume that get our attention.

It seems to happen just when the prom is a week away, or on the day before your date with the most popular gal or guy in school. You get a pimple big enough to get its own name, like Everest or Matterhorn. What can you do about it? Could it have been prevented? If you’re a teenager reading this, and suffer from acne, read closely as there may be an answer to your dilemma.

In our earnest attempts to maintain physical fitness and overall wellness, we occasionally overdo it. Strengthening the muscles and the cardiovascular system, fine tuning athletic skills for a particular sport, trying to lose weight, or only having fun, humans have forgotten the concept of moderation.

Ureterolithiasis, renal calculi, nephrolithiasis and kidney stone all mean the same thing: agony. The nurse told us the pain is equivalent to passing a five-pound canned ham through the southern end of the digestive system, with the lid opened. If you’ve never experienced the long road to relief, thank the Creator for being excused.

Suppose you were asked to name the most important part of your car? Of course, without an engine you’re not going anywhere. Without a transmission you’re not going anywhere, either. So, which is it, the engine or the transmission? Then, once you get moving, it’s nice to be able to stop. Brakes, right? Or perhaps you choose to steer around an obstacle. Maybe there isn’t a most important part.

Blood pressure is the force of blood pushing against the walls of the arteries as the heart pumps blood, and, if it stays elevated for a long time, can cause myriad health problems, including heart disease, stroke and kidney failure. Because it has no symptoms, it’s readily ignored. According to the CDC, about one third of Americans have elevated BP.

Just as oxidation causes iron to rust and brass to tarnish, it causes our cells to rust and tarnish, only figuratively and not literally…unless the Tin Man is part of the gene pool. When you get stressed out—and there’s a litany of reasons for that—your body makes oxidative chemicals that hasten aging, increase cardiovascular risk, and set the stage for myriad chronic and acute illnesses, including relatively benign things like colds.

Listen to a lie long enough and you’ll start to accept it as the truth. Didn’t the tobacco industry use images of physicians and athletes to sell cigarettes back in the last century? Babe Ruth hawked White Owl cigars and Raleigh cigarettes. William Bendix sold Chesterfield. The highly-trusted and unquestionably credible FDA had a meeting last March to discuss the properties of artificial food colorings and evaluate their relationship to hyperactivity in children.