Our emotions resonate with each other - for better and for worse.

In a global economy, the Bush doctrine of unilateralism - going it alone - has been disastrous. It's becoming increasingly clear that we're all in this together. Your happiness is my happiness, your suffering is my suffering, your recession is my recession.

Eating a stick of butter will raise HDL in those who are able to do so, but that does not mean that butter is good for your heart. It isn't.

There is often a simplistic view that HDL is good, so that anything that raises HDL is good for you, and anything that lowers it is bad for you. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Not everything that lowers HDL is bad for you. If you change from a high-fat, high-cholesterol diet to a healthy low-fat, low-cholesterol diet, your HDL levels may stay the same or even decrease because there is less need for it. When you have less garbage, you need fewer garbage trucks to remove it, so your body may make less HDL.

Chronic emotional stress shortens your telomeres.

When we are angry with someone, we empower the person we hate the most in that moment to make us stressed out or even sick. That's not smart.

Sometimes, people do the darkest acts in the name of helping protect their loved ones.

If we can reach populations in developing countries and help them understand the value of their indigenous diet and lifestyles rather than copying ours, perhaps we can reverse the exponential rise in cardiovascular disease that is plaguing them.

Preventing cardiovascular disease can help free up critical resources for treating HIV/AIDS and other illnesses.

In our experience, when people make comprehensive lifestyle changes, they usually can reduce or discontinue medications such as cholesterol-lowering drugs, anti-hypertensives, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, nitrates, insulin, and so on.

When it's good business to make healthier food, then it becomes sustainable.

In 2010, I consulted with President Clinton after his bypass grafts occluded and encouraged him to make healthy lifestyle changes including a whole-foods, plant-based diet low in refined carbohydrates.

The biological mechanisms that control our health and well-being are much more dynamic - for better and for worse - than most people realize.

If we are going to find sustainable ways of dealing with global warming, we have to base it on love and feeling good, not fear and loathing. If it's fun, then it's sustainable.

When we realize that something as primal as the food that we choose to eat each day makes such an important difference in addressing both global warming and personal health, it empowers us and imbues these choices with meaning. If it's meaningful, then it's sustainable - and a meaningful life is a longer life.

Having the BRCA mutation significantly increases the risk of breast cancer, but it is not always the only factor. Lifestyle choices may increase or decrease the risk of breast cancer, but that knowledge is an opportunity to empower ourselves, not to blame.

Lifestyle changes may slow, stop, or even reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer.

Lifestyle changes may help reduce risk, but no study has shown that lifestyle changes alone can eliminate the risk of breast cancer, especially in those carrying the BRCA mutation.

Let's all be more humble about the evidence behind medical advice but also respect the challenges to providing accessible lifestyle guidance.

Just like navigating in the open sea, triangulating the information you collect from media with your doctor's advice and some common sense will help map a sound path to safety.

Parents and kids know they should pass up the fries for an apple and exchange the video game for a game of tag - but knowing and doing are certainly different things.

I appreciate the power of a White House bully pulpit - but kids listen and learn primarily from other kids. If your son's friend tells him that the apple is better than the fries, he's more likely to listen.

In general, losing weight is a good thing for those who are overweight, but it's important to lose weight in a way that enhances your health rather than one that may compromise it.