Posts by Sara Szal MD
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,…
Read More5 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…
Read MoreTop 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…
Read MoreThe Disciplined Pursuit of Less and How It Applies to Hormones and Aging
The beginning of 2017 is almost over, so by now you can know where you stand on your New Year’s resolutions. For most people, the energy of resolutions has already waned by end of January. Personally, I get tired of resolutions as a tasked goal. Sometimes they work, but usually they don’t. Instead, I prefer what my friend Jo…
Read MoreExcerpt from My Book, Younger
Exciting news – my publisher agreed to provide an excerpt from my new book, Younger! I hope you enjoy it, and even more importantly, that by reading it, you’ll begin to understand that we have more control over the way we age than we ever thought possible. It’s a simple matter of turning the good…
Read MoreThe Tell-All About Your Aging Skin (Part 1)
Forty-nine-year old Amy arrived in my office and plunked down a grocery bag filled with skincare products, everything from anti-wrinkle creams to anti-aging serums. She’d even tried injections of various kinds. “I fork over half my paycheck for a herculean ritual – and it’s getting me nowhere,” she complained. Her main lament was that skincare was…
Read More5 Genes That Make It Hard to Lose Weight, and What You Can Do To Combat Them
Do you ever feel like you exercise and eat well, but don’t see positive results? I feel you. I’ve been there! The problem may be with your genes. As scientists look into weight-loss genes, they have found that people with variations of certain genes are more prone to put on weight than others. I know,…
Read More3 Surprising Reasons to Cut Back On Alcohol & Caffeine + How to Do It
Everyone knows that alcohol and caffeine aren’t always the healthiest of choices. Is moderation effective enough to avoid their negative effects, or do some people have to quit altogether? It all depends on you. I’ll start with a short survey. Then I’ll discuss how alcohol and caffeine may be affecting you. Do you struggle with…
Read MoreHow My Great-Grandmother Influenced My Functional Medicine Practice
My great-grandmother embodied healthy living. She was a whole foodist and yoga practitioner—way before these things were trendy. When she visited us, she came armed not with candies and gum like my friends’ grandmothers, but with kale, carob, and wheat-berry cookies. She drank hot water with lemon every morning and evening. She extolled the virtues of…
Read MoreMy Top 5 Health Lessons of the Year: HIIT, Blood Glucose, Divine Unrest and More!
As I close out this year and look toward next year, I want to continue what was good and improve upon it. I have a vision of myself, fully expressed, beaming love and kindness to my family, friends, and community. But I started the year not in that state. So I took the vision of…
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