A list of vitamin do’s and don’ts can help you to decide which vitamins you need and which vitamins and nutrients you can get by eating a well balanced, healthy diet.

Your nutritional needs will also change as you age, become pregnant or face illness.

Choosing the right supplements and foregoing the unnecessary will lead to optimal wellness.

Changes in medical malpractice laws are coming soon.

The system as it stands is considered broken and is blamed for contributing to driving up the cost of medical care.

Each year, physicians faced a 7.4 percent likelihood of facing a claim, but only 1.6 percent of claims received a payment, either through a settlement or jury award. Nonetheless, defending and insuring against these claims is costly for doctors.

Baby boomers housing issues is a growing topic as the population ages and needs change.

“Unassisted Living: Ageless Homes for Later Life” (the Monacelli Press; $45) written by Wid Chapman and Jeffrey P. Rosenfeld not only offers ideas but designs as well.

Read the whole interview here.

The 72 million American baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, are turning 65 at the rate of roughly 10,000 a day, and many are considering not just how to age (with or without annuities? soy sauce? crow’s feet?), but also where. Wid Chapman, an architect, and Jeffrey P. Rosenfeld, a gerontologist who specializes in the relationship between aging and the built environment, collected 33 examples of residences that have been recently designed to bridge the distance between one’s vital and declining years.

Beyond getting a colonoscopy starting at age 50, what can you do to prevent colorectal cancer? A lot, it turns out. The good news is that colorectal-cancer-preventing habits are nearly identical to those that help your heart.

There are ways to prevent colorectal cancer and a few dietary and lifestyle changes is all it takes.

Avoid red meat

There’s something about eating red meat—a lot of it—that seems to harm the intestines.

Numerous studies have linked red-meat consumption to a higher risk of colorectal cancer, as well as diets heavy in processed, salted, smoked, or cured meats such as bacon, sausage, and hot dogs.

If you just can’t live without red meat, limit yourself to two 4-ounce portions each week, but choose lean cuts, trim the fat, and don’t char it on a grill.

Conflict of interest between physicians and pharmaceutical companies raises questions about the ethics surrounding these relationships.

It’s the financial relationship that raises questions about the influence of drug companies on prescribing patterns or research results of doctors.

Nationwide, pharmaceutical manufacturers routinely pay medical professionals to assess a new product or to help contribute to the drug company’s sales. The companies fly medical professionals to seminars and conferences and may also pay speaking fees. State-employed doctors and researchers are generally no exception, though they are supposed to comply with their individual institutions’ conflict-of-interest policies.

Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. believes that heart disease is a food borne illness and the only way to prevent the disease is through diet.

Former president Bill Clinton recently talked about his vegan diet and his belief that a meat free and dairy free lifestyle has saved his life.

Hospitals are beginning to offer alternative health care.

You may not be able to choose untested herbal treatments but alternative therapies with a history of positive results are beginning to show up in hospital services.

What hospitals choose to offer runs the gamut, from well-known therapies such as acupuncture to less familiar treatments like reiki, in which practitioners channel a patient’s energy by placing their hands on or just above specific locations on the body.

Patient demand is the top reason hospitals offer complementary and alternative therapies, cited by 85 percent. Clinical effectiveness? That comes in second, at 70 percent.

Autism may begin in the womb.

This theory may offer some relief to parents who believe vaccines are the cause of autism.

The new science suggests that an overgrowth of brain cells in early embryonic development is responsible for the symptoms of autism.

“In autism something is going terribly wrong with mechanisms that control the number of neurons beginning in prenatal life and may extend to perinatal and early post-natal life,” says lead author Eric Courchesne, Ph.D. When there are too many brain cells, the brain can’t wire itself up correctly. If there’s too much wiring in the prefrontal cortex, it could help explain why children with autism have poor social skills, difficulty communicating and why some may never learn to speak at all.

Americans are getting fatter.

At the rate we’re going 83 percent of American men will be overweight or obese by 2020 followed by women at 72 percent projected to be overweight or obese by then, as well.

The implications go far beyond tight pants and groaning sofas. Obesity is a big risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Imagining an America of overweight, unhealthy people gives public health officials the willies. And it should be frightening to us civilians, too.

Although there is no hard and fast evidence, chicken soup seems to be the best remedy!