Chuck Eichten, a design director at Nike, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1975 at the age of 13.  Since then he claims to have made a lot of diabetes mistakes, and done the occasional smart thing as well.  His take on diabetes -and on life- is that you can always do better, and he  has written a book based on this idea, The Book...

Last week I was shopping for new running shoes and brought home a pair that markets itself as, “made for a woman’s foot.” How smart, I thought. After all, men and women are built differently and move differently, so it makes sense I’ll be more comfortable and perform better in a shoe made for women. Amy Stockwell Mercer employs...

Editor’s note: We’re very excited to share with you a wonderful excerpt from Amy Stockwell Mercer’s new book, The Smart Woman’s Guide to Diabetes.    From Chapter 4: Eating Disorders and Body Image The dining hall of my boarding school was in the same building as the basketball court, locker rooms, and the...

  “This is the diabetes book I have been waiting for,” I said to my husband when I was just a few chapters in to After the Diagnosis: Transcending Chronic Illness, by nephrologist Julian Seifter and his wife, editor and writer Betsy Seifter. “Why?” Jimmy asked. I flipped through pages of patient stories. I examined phrases...

One in ten people with type 1 diabetes also has celiac disease, an autoimmune digestive disease that requires eliminating all gluten from the diet. In the new cookbook, Simply Sugar and Gluten Free, Amy Green, M.Ed, the woman behind the SimplySugarandGlutenFree.com blog, hits the sweet spot for those with dual diagnoses. Although Amy...

The African-American Guide to Living Well with Diabetes by Constance Brown-Riggs with Tamara Jeffries is aimed at the more than four million African Americans with diabetes. It covers the basics of food, exercise and medicine, but highlights two things not often found in diabetes books: soul food and spirit. Brown helps readers fold...

Sometimes I think cranberry relish became a staple of Thanksgiving dinner because of its colorful good looks. Its brightness is a foil for the browns and neutrals of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, creamed onions, and Parker House rolls. Without cranberries and perhaps an obligatory bowl of steamed broccoli, the meal over which we give...

I’m mildly agoraphobic and it’s not easy for me to plan long trips.  And while I like looking at travel guides for places like Ecuador or Tanzania and imagining what it would be like to go there, I know that I’m not brave enough to go through with the trip.  So what inevitably happens when I read these sort of ...

Danielle Ofri is a physician at New York’s Bellevue Hospital and co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bellevue Literary Review.  Her twin roles are inextricable, and in both medicine and arts and letters she has illuminated how illness has meaning, in an individual’s life and in our culture. In the hospital clinic and emergency...

Call me late to the game, this book came out last year, but I just read Dr. David Kessler’s The End of Overeating, Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Wow! If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s never too late to tell someone about a good book. I can no longer look at food as anything but salt loaded...