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Explore the latest articles by Dr. Sara Szal, where she blends science and holistic wisdom to address the most pressing issues in women’s health, longevity, and personal transformation.
Do You Know Which Foods Make You Younger? And Which Ones Age You?
Five years ago, I found out my body was in a failure state as measured by my telomeres, the protective caps on chromosomes that reflect how fast you are aging. As with many stories of initiation, my failing telomeres started me on an unplanned journey of surrender and healing. You may wonder what my telomeres…
De-Stress to Look Younger: Top Health Apps That Beat Plastic Surgery
Cathy fit an all-too-typical patient profile: beyond stressed, cursing at the bathroom scale, and spending far too much money on toxic beauty products. During our second visit, Cathy complained that the repercussions were showing up around her face with sagging, wrinkled skin. Then she dropped the bomb: “I’m thinking about getting a little work done.”…
Viva Las Vagus: How Vagal Tone Impacts Your Health (and 10 Ways to Improve It)
Sometimes I wonder how long I’ve had a problem with my vagus nerve. Years? Decades? Vagus means “wanderer.” This nerve—the longest one in your body—wanders all over your body to important organs such as the brain, neck, ears, tongue, heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, liver, pancreas, gallbladder, kidney, spleen, and reproductive organs in women. The vagus…
5 Secrets to Turn Back the Clock
Jennifer was a forty-four-year-old patient who arrived in my office feeling defeated, worn out, and “older than her years” as she put it. As a third-shift nurse who worked grueling twelve-hour nights – frequently picking up overtime – the stressful struggle to balance sleep, two kids, and an unemployed husband drained her sanity, and took…
How Stress Harms Your Health and Aging
Mary was a thirty-nine-year-old patient who visited me complaining she felt burned out. Her sixty-hour workweeks left her beyond fatigued, with frequent headaches, miserable colds, and raging tension that cut into her sleep. On top of that, she confessed that lately life had become meaningless, which she attributed to an early midlife crisis, and her…
7 Anti-Aging Benefits You Gain from Consistent Exercise
In a previous blog, I wrote about my fifty-year-old patient Gigi who complained about feeling “doughy” and stiff. Like many middle-aged female patients, Gigi found that maintaining lean muscle mass was increasingly difficult as she got older. I get it: I find it hard too. And sometimes I need a pithy list of why I…
7 Strategies to Increase Lean Body Mass as You Age
Gigi was a fifty-year-old patient who visited me, lamenting that her muscles felt increasingly flabby – or “doughy,” as she put it. When I measured her body fat proportions, she had a healthy body mass index (BMI) of 24.5, yet she had nearly thirty-two percent body fat, and no longer felt lean. That loss (and,…
5 Secrets to Turn Back the Clock
“I don’t mind talking about just about anything,” forty-three-year-old Melanie confessed, “but here’s something I hate bringing up because it feels so uncontrollable: wrinkles. I’ve been getting…” She paused – lowering her tone to a whisper as if confessing to a priest – “chemical peels.” I’d been treating Melanie for almost a year when she made…
Top 8 Aging Hacks I Prescribe for Anyone
You can’t avoid it. You can’t hide it. Wrinkles are inevitable, and sagging will happen, eventually. Yet you have more control over how fast you age than you may realize. The answer lies not in expensive products or injections, but in everyday lifestyle choices. These choices affect what occurs inside your body – at the cellular level…