New Topic Blogs and an Invitation for Contributors
You may have noticed we've added several new topic blogs. Each blog has several contributors, including myself, who will post interesting news stories as well as commentary and feature articles on topics such as bone health, children's health, celebrity health,...

Envita Natural Medical Centers of America
I was in Coffee Bean yesterday and got talking to someone about health-related issues. He told me about a doctor in Scottsdale, Arizona who runs the Envita Natural Medical Centers of America. The person in Coffee Bean said a friend...

Happy Mother's Day!
I hope you all have a wonderful Mother's Day! Love you, Mom!...

Congratulations to Cody!
Congratulations on your new baby boy, Cody!!!...

Got Bones?
May is Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month and in honor of that, we've launched a bone health blog called Got Bones? In this collaborative blog, we'll be talking about bone health for both men and women, with links to news...

Michael Moore - Sicko
Michael Moore is working on a new movie called Sicko. This time his target is the health care industry and he's looking for health care horror stories. I'm sure many of you have had some horrific experiences with insurance companies...

New Look and New Blogs
Health Diaries is undergoing a bit of a makeover in time for Spring. The site should be easier to navigate and more user-friendly. The change is still in progress so some pages may not be updated with the new features...

New Writers on Raw Food and Lymphoma
I'm pleased to welcome two new writers to the site. Mara will be writing about eating a raw food diet in Journey to a 95% Raw Diet and Marilyn will be writing about her battle against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma using an...

Dana Reeve and Lung Cancer
I was so sad to hear about the death of Dana Reeve. It's hard to believe that someone who gave so much of herself in caring for her husband, Christopher Reeve, would have her life cut so short. Add to...

Got News?
If you ever see an interesting health or diet-related news story that hasn't been posted on the site or if you see an interesting health-related post or article on another site that you think deserves a mention, send the link...

Happy Valentine's Day
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!...

Record Your Side Effects
In the coming week or so I'll be adding a place where you can record your side effects from different medications. While most other sites print the "most common" side effects, it is befitting a site like Health Diaries, where...

Happy New Year!
Happy New Year everyone! See you on the flipside!...

Merry Christmas!!
Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it! I'll be back at work next week to *finally* unveil the new writers' area and other features. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a healthy and fun holiday!...

Still Alive!
I survived my food poisoning and then caught a cold, but I'm still alive! The new Member Area will be up as soon as I fix a thing or two. There's lots of new stuff happening on the site that...

Food Poisoning
I'm still working on the new Members' Area, so I've opened the old area for posting until I finish. I came down with food poisoning this weekend and haven't been able to finish the upgrade. I plan to have it...

Still Upgrading the System
I'm still working on the upgrade. The Member Area is still down for maintenance. Somehow Pilgrim and Elizabeth managed to sneak in the back entrance and make posts. Speaking of Elizabeth, she is still being bombarded with posts from people...

System Maintenance
The Members' Area will be down for the next 24 hours while I upgrade the blogging software and make the Members' Area sparkly and new. It should be back up by 8am Friday at the latest....

Back to Work
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I took a much needed break. I imagine the days between now and the New Year will speed by, but I hope to have many new features up and running by then....

Happy Thanksgiving!
I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! We're working on a lot of exciting projects for Health Diaries that should be going "live" in the next week or two. Look out for several great new diaries as well....

Readers' Choice
I'm pleased to announce that the Reader's Choice winner for the months of September/October is Pilgrim's Journey. Pilgrim has been with us since the beginning and is one of our most frequent posters. She has readers and fans around the...

Happy Hallowe'en
Have a spooktastic Hallowe'en, everyone!...

A Shout Out to My Grandma
I just want to give a "shout out" to my grandma, who successfully made it through a difficult emergency surgery today! She reads Health Diaries and has really enjoyed reading the diaries here. She's very tough. She lived through the...

Health News Has Been Revamped
I'm late with this month's Reader's Choice award. So much has been happening so I'm going to keep voting open until the end of October. It's better to have it go from the 1st of the month, anyway. What's new...

Reader's Choice Award for August
I'm pleased to announce that the winner of the Reader's Choice Award for the month of August is Myomectomy or Hysterectomy, by Elizabeth M. It's no surprise that Elizabeth's diary has been chosen by readers - her informative posts cover...

Cancer Patients Affected by Hurricane Katrina
I received an e-mail from the American Cancer Society letting me know they are offering information for cancer patients affected by Hurricane Katrina: The American Cancer Society is offering information to help cancer patients affected by Hurricane Katrina, as well...

Anne Rice on Hurricane Katrina
Anne Rice, a New Orleans native, has a piece in today's New York Times called "Do You Know What it Means to Lose New Orleans?" Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the...

Hurricane Katrina Donations
I would like to donate to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, but am hesitant to donate to the Red Cross because they have a poor track record in recent years of actually getting all the money and donations to the...

Hurricane Katrina
I've been rendered speechless for the past couple days by the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. I've been watching the news coverage with my mouth open in disbelief. I think it's safe to say none of us has ever seen...

One-Time Articles
In addition to blogs, we are going to start publishing one-time first-person health stories. There are so many stories that are important to share but that don't really fit into the blog or diary format. The one-time article option is...

Six Feet Under Finale
Tonight is the series finale of Six Feet Under and I'm bracing myself for the end. I know it's silly to become attached to a tv show, but this wasn't just any show. SFU gave us something we had rarely...

Neurotic Iraqi Wife
I just stumbled across an amazing blog called Neurotic Iraqi Wife. It's one of the most fascinating reads I've ever had. The about section says, "This blog is about me being an Iraqi wife whose husband chose to rebuild his...

News with Personality
I was stunned, as so many were, to hear of the passing of Peter Jennings. Only four months ago he announced he had lung cancer but no mention was made of how advanced it was. Though his voice was hoarse...

Readers' Choice
If you'd like to nominate a diary on the site for the Readers' Choice Award, send us an e-mail. The person with the most votes by the end of August will be featured on the home page in September and...

Food Blog
I've set up a new collaborative food blog called Eat This! that will focus on food in relation to health and wellness. It will include articles, recipes, news stories, and more. If you'd like to write food articles to be...

Living an Exceptional Life
When I first adopted my cat the person working in the adoption center said, "I just want to tell you that because he was born in a toxic waste dump I don't think he'll live as long as other cats."...

Living off Air - Breatharians
Working on a health site, I read a lot about different health movements and diets. Carnivores, vegetarians, low carbers, raw foodists, pescetarians, fruitarians. There a so many differences in the way people eat, but they all have at least one...

Sylvia Brown
It seems there is a bit of confusion going on one of the blogs. Elizabeth wrote something about the psychic Sylvia Brown a few months back. Now when people Google "sylvia brown" they get her post and they seem to...

Store Wars
Hi all, I've been really busy working on some new features and goodies for the site. I wanted to take a break to share this link with you - it's called "Store Wars" and is one of the cleverest things...

Celebrity Blogs
Everyone's blogging these days, even celebrities. Tom Green's blog is updated on a regular basis and he comes across as a cool, down-to-earth guy. This week you can read all about his feud with Martin Short and listen to a...

Relax, It's Just Anthrax
The "Relax, It's Fedex" slogan can be interpreted in a whole new way after the news that deadly germs are regularly shipped via FedEx "right alongside the books, gourmet foods and birthday presents." I saw this story tonight and couldn't...

Dr. House Is in the House
You've gotta love Fox's "House." I do. One of the characters in Tuesday night's episode suffered from sexsomnia. She was having sex with her ex in her sleep. We linked to a news story on sexsomnia a couple weeks ago....

Sylvie's Hang Glide
One of our writers, Sylvie Brown, is still raising money for the tandem hang glide she's doing to raise funds for the MSRC (Multiple Sclerosis Resource Center). The hang glide has been postponed due to weather so there's still time...

All the News That's Fit to Link
Unlike the fake April Fool's news story I wrote on Friday about mice being given vodka at the University of Helsinki (although they could really be doing that, who knows?) the real health news of late has been interesting. There...

Absolut Health
I'm pleased to announce that Health Diaries has signed a sponsorship deal with Absolut Vodka. Starting on May 1st, visitors to Health Diaries will see ads for the world-famous vodka throughout the site. The slogan for the advertising campaign will...

Molly McGowan
I've been thinking about my great aunt's daughter, Molly McGowan, the one I mentioned in the last post who died at the age of 16 of Hodgkin's Disease. It's really sad because Hodgkin's is one of the more treatable cancers...

Saying Goodbye
I've been out of town for a few days, down in Coronado, California for a memorial service for my great aunt. She was almost 105 when she passed away and was a remarkable, feisty Southern lady. She led a long...

Michael J. Fox
I'm reading "Lucky Man" by Michael J. Fox, his autobiography about life before and after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. I didn't know what to expect when I picked this up but I'm so glad I did. Fox does not...

Red Is the Color of ...
The color scheme of Health Diaries seems fitting today, doesn't it? Some of you may wonder why I chose red as the main color for the site. When I first designed the site I thought it should be done in...

A Health Diary in the News
Congratulations to Laura of Is it Hot in Here? for being featured in an article on Tuesday in The Guardian UK newspaper. The article was called Web Therapy and was a great piece on the upcoming trend of health blogging....

A Tragic Start to the New Year
I just wanted to take a moment to say how saddened I am by the tsunami tragedy. The scope of it is almost impossible to grasp. I've cried so many times while seeing video and images of children and adults...

Happy New Year!
I fully intended to post Happy Holidays and Happy New Year messages, but somehow the time has just flown by. As many of you know, I am in the process of transferring every blog on the site from Blogger to...

Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to all of our American contributors and visitors! Whether you'll be feasting on real turkey or soy turkey (like me), I hope it's a great day for you....

Back Online
I was offline for about a week because my computer crashed. I am now up and running again on a new computer but have not been able to access my email from the other computer. This means that all of...

What's the Frequency, Rather?
Apparently I dont exist. I went to my polling place today and they informed me that I am not listed as a registered voter in this county even though I am definitely registered. I had to vote with a provisional...

Alternative or Traditional Medicine?
Sometimes people wonder if this site is more into traditional medicine or if it favors alternative medicine. All I can say to that is that it is neither. It is meant as a neutral place where people of all inclinations...

In Memory of Michelle
Michelle's sister, Nancy Richardson, sent me a piece about Michelle that I have posted on her diary. In my previous post I wrote that she was 25 years old, but in fact she was 29. Still way too young for...

Sad News
I have sad news to share. Michelle of the diary How Is Michelle Doing? passed away last Monday. She was only 25 when she died and had been battling colon cancer for five years. Though she did not write many...

Fast Food Nation
I watched Morgan Spurlock's documentary, "Supersize Me," yesterday. It's a fun movie to watch and not to be done before eating. The video of rotting French fries and burgers was incredibly disgusting. Sure, nobody eats McDonald's three times a day,...

Blogstalling
Alas, I've had to temporarily take down the "recently added" links that normally appear on the right side of the main page. These links are powered by a service called "Blogrolling" that makes it easy for me to add new...

Nip Tuck
The new homepage design is up. One feature many people have requested is here--now you can browse the diaries by title right from the homepage. No more searching the entire site when you can't remember where you saw a certain...

Feeling Much Better
Thanks for your well wishes, everyone. I'm feeling much better now. I guess it was just a freak summer flu. You might have noticed that the diaries are undergoing a mini-facelift. They will all be done by the end of...

I Can't Swallow but I'm Fine, Really!
I've been struck down by a summer flu of some kind. It feels like a flu rather than a cold because I've had a fever and body aches. There was one night there where I thought I was going to...

What Dreams May Come ...
I've decided to do something fun and add a dream diary section to the site. Many people believe that dreams affect our health and mental well-being. They can cause us both happiness and extreme stress. I thought it would be...

So Much Talent, So Little Space
As each day passes and the site progresses, I am repeatedly amazed at the many different unique writing styles in each of the diaries. It seems that so many people who have signed up are natural-born writers. A few of...

Plowing Ahead
Well, things have been so busy around here that I haven't had time to post an update. We've had nearly 100 new signups over the past few weeks and I'm working to get them all up and running. You can...

Transitioning
We are transitioning to the final design this weekend. Some pages have not yet been changed so we have a bit of a mismatched look going on. We hope you like the new look and features. The site looks best...

Two New Diaries
I'm thrilled to announce two new additions to the Health Diaries community. The first is a diary about multiple sclerosis called Life After MS. Sylvie's story is one that will inspire everyone, whether they have MS or not. Next up...

Excuse the rubble
Please excuse the transitional nature of the site's design right now. I'm in the process of changing some things, but also busy setting up new diaries. It will all look normal in the near future, I promise ... Speaking of...

Recently Updated
Now you can tell which diaries have been recently updated. On the home page, those diaries marked with a star have been updated in the last 24 hours. I'll be adding this box to all of the pages this weekend....

New Diaries
Today we introduce two new diaries, Pilgrim's Journey and Life in the Fasting Lane. Pilgrim's Journey will be written by Pilgrim, a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. I look forward to following the...

Introduction
This blog will be a place for me to update everyone on the progress of the site, what's new, what's coming soon, and to introduce new diaries. The first diaries went up over the last week and I'm really excited...