Quotes from Andrew Weil

The ways that my dogs can make me - and my visitors - happy constantly amazes me.

As an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1960s, I was fascinated by my visits to psychologist B.F. Skinner's laboratory.

The most common objection that I hear to walking as exercise is that it's too easy, that only sweaty, strenuous activity offers real benefits. But there is abundant evidence that regular, brisk walking is associated with better health, including lower blood pressure, better moods and improved cholesterol ratios.

Meditation while walking has a long, noble history in ancient spiritual disciplines.

I'm still not comfortable recommending that people eat saturated fat with abandon, but it's clear to me that sugar, flour and oxidized seed oils create inflammatory effects in the body that almost certainly bear most of the responsibility for elevating heart disease risk.

Anyone who knows me will attest that at any time during the day, you are most likely to find me picking tayberries, 'deadheading' peppermint, or succession-planting shallots. There is almost nothing, really, that I would rather do.

Remember that breath walking - as with any meditation technique - should not be pursued with a grim determination to 'get it right.' The point is to cultivate openness, relaxation and awareness, which can include awareness of your undisciplined, wandering mind.

Routines may include taking a warm bath or a relaxing walk in the evening, or practicing meditation/relaxation exercises. Psychologically, the completion of such a practice tells your mind and body that the day's work is over and you are free to relax and sleep.

Low levels of vitamin D in the population as a whole suggest that most people need to take a vitamin D supplement. This may be especially true for seniors, as the ability to synthesize vitamin D in the skin declines with age.

Most American diets, even bad ones, provide more than enough calcium for bone health, especially for men.

Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.

Health is wholeness and balance, an inner resilience that allows you to meet the demands of living without being overwhelmed.

The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight and well-being.

One of the most obvious ways dogs can improve our physical and mental health is via daily walks.

Insurance companies, whether private or government owned, must be compelled to pay for health-promoting measures. In turn, this will encourage physicians to offer such treatments in earnest.

If we can make the correct diagnosis, the healing can begin. If we can't, both our personal health and our economy are doomed.

In the world at large, people are rewarded or punished in ways that are often utterly random. In the garden, cause and effect, labor and reward, are re-coupled. Gardening makes sense in a senseless world. By extension, then, the more gardens in the world, the more justice, the more sense is created.

Human beings and plants have co-evolved for millions of years, so it makes perfect sense that our complex bodies would be adapted to absorb needed, beneficial compounds from complex plants and ignore the rest.

To be clear, I worry as much about the impact of the Internet as anyone else. I worry about shortening attention spans, the physical cost of sedentary 'surfing' and the potential for coarsening discourse as millions of web pages compete for attention by appealing to our base instincts.

It does kids no favors, and sets them up for a potential lifetime of poor health and social embarrassment, to excuse them from family meals of real food. Everyone benefits from healthy eating, but it is particularly crucial at the beginning of life.

The world is beset by many problems, but in my opinion, this hijacking of our brain's reward centers by electronic media is potentially one of the most destructive.

The usual justification for eating extra meals is that it keeps the metabolism 'revved up' so that weight loss is easier. There is, however, very little hard evidence that supports this idea, and a fair amount that disputes it.

You can't afford to get sick, and you can't depend on the present health care system to keep you well. It's up to you to protect and maintain your body's innate capacity for health and healing by making the right choices in how you live.

While sleep is clearly vital to emotional well-being, what is it, exactly, about sleep that is so necessary? As it turns out, mood disorders are strongly linked to abnormal patterns of dreaming.