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Wendy Vranjes didn’t want to know her weight. She stepped on the scale and asked that the number not be revealed to her. Vranjes doesn’t even own a scale. “I just have to get healthy again,” she said. To do that, she’ll have to become a loser. A big loser. Vranjes is among the 76 people who recently registered for a 12-week weight-loss challenge in Franklin County that borrows its name from NBC’s popular reality show, “The Biggest Loser.”... Read more

Sometimes, a little tough love is the best thing for a person’s heart. When cardiologist Dr. Phil Ades, a medical consultant for EatingWell, is counseling a patient at risk for heart disease, he might say something like this: “There’s a ton of stuff people can do to prevent heart disease. Do you want to do this now, before your heart attack, or do you wanna do it after?”... Read more

Thirty years ago, Bernie Siegel, a physician and assistant professor of surgery at Yale, began to explore the “care” in health care. His investigations led him to found Exceptional Cancer Patients, a form of individual and group therapy designed to help people heal themselves through behavioral changes. As a leader in the mind-body-medicine field, this Brooklyn-born Bernie also sought to redefine what it meant to be a doctor.... Read more

You may have seen them tacked between “Apartment for Rent” signs and Club Metronome fliers, particularly if you’re given to wandering on the University of Vermont campus. The slightly oversized posters read:

Are you a healthy adult between the ages of 21 and 65? Do you watch at least 3 hours of TV per day on average? Would you like to know how watching TV affects your diet?... Read more

The sounds outside the Acupuncture & Qigong Health Center on Route 15 in Essex Junction on a recent afternoon are enough to grate on anybody’s nerves: trains whistling, traffic rumbling and the occasional door slamming. But inside, the darkened room is unusually peaceful. The serenity is most apparent in Colchester’s Bill Maynard, who has just received five needles in each ear. He closes his eyes and lets his tightly clasped hands relax on his black jeans. Maynard’s head tips back as if he’s sleeping.... Read more

MONTPELIER — It’s been more than three months since federal investigators visited Vermont to investigate whether a water disinfectant being used in Chittenden County is causing hundreds of health complaints. Last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report that draws no definitive conclusions and offers no concrete suggestions as to how the state should help those who are suffering.... Read more

An unexplained and lingering medical condition can sometimes feel like an unscratched itch. Ignore it, and it only seems to get worse. In an age when environmental horror stories abound, and previously unknown threats seem to come at us from all directions, even an apparently benign ailment can take on much larger proportions. That’s especially true when the perceived danger is in a position to affect children.... Read more

Any given morning in Irasburg, Doug and Richard Nelson can be found tending to their animals. Like most Orleans County dairymen, they’re up at the crack of dawn, puttering around the family barn. But at about 8 a.m., father and son climb into twin pickup trucks and head down a dirt road toward “Big Rack Ridge,” which is bordered by an 8-foot-tall, 6-mile-long fence.... Read more

Not every Vermont town has a 45-bed hospital, a full-service pharmacy and an elite private college with its own health center. Middlebury does. But the seemingly affluent town and its environs are also home to low-income residents who struggle to access proper medical care.... Read more

BURLINGTON — What’s in a name? For Fletcher Allen Health Care, some good and some bad.

The medical complex based in Burlington and Colchester could soon be rebranded, partly in order to highlight its link to the University of Vermont’s College of Medicine. A change of name might also be seen as a move intended to speed the health center’s recovery from the Renaissance Project scandal that smudged its reputation in the early part of this decade.... Read more