In the 2013 film Her, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) falls head over heels in love with his computer operating system. After meeting “her,” he never wants to be without her, and his life is changed forever. That’s how New Yorker Marian Rivman feels about her FitBit — the wearable activity tracker that counts her daily steps and the calories she burns and monitors her heart rate.
It’s no secret that America has a weight problem. According to the latest statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, more than a third of U.S. adults are obese — nearly 79 million people. On top of that, obesity also affects our kids, with nearly 18 percent of children and 21 percent of adolescents categorized as obese. The price tag for our girth as a nation is equally impressive.
Stephanie Dunn Haney never felt a sense of urgency about the pain on the right side of her chest. The discomfort only occurred when she coughed or sneezed, and she was trying to get pregnant with her second child. Once her second daughter was born, Dunn Haney didn’t want X-rays while she was nursing. Two years passed before she saw a doctor near her home in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. Test after test turned up nothing.
Unlike most Americans, Karla Hornstein knows her vulnerability to the brain-robbing disease called Alzheimer’s, specifically a rare and early-onset form that runs in families and has haunted her own.
Above: Karla Hornstein (top, center) and family before youngest, Jamie, was born.
In 2011, a 52-year-old runner and yoga enthusiast walked into the office of Monica Loghin, a neuro-oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, complaining of numbness and weakness in her lower limbs and difficulty controlling her bladder.