Jenny Leyh is a mother, freelance writer, cancer survivor and integrative health advocate living in Haddon Heights, New Jersey. Expecting your first child can be an exciting time. It’s a joyful period of planning—choosing nursery room colors, picking out items that you’ll need for the baby, and resting as much as possible before your baby […]

Jenny Leyh is a mother, freelance writer, cancer survivor and integrative health advocate living in Haddon Heights, New Jersey. For most people and for much of our life, our parents are a source of support, guiding us through many important milestones. We lean on them for advice and are influenced by their decisions. Their health […]

We are bombarded with messages about exercising our bodies—how it can improve life longevity as well as boost endorphins, making us happier, better rested, more energized and with an enhanced ability to concentrate. But did you know that the brain needs to be exercised as well? Not only because it can slow memory loss and […]

As horrific as the COVID-19 pandemic has been, it is bringing to bear what leaders and practitioners in health care already knew: our system has a glaring weakness in primary care delivery. A new in-depth report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) provides a crucial roadmap to how we can learn […]

People are creatures of habit. Science shows that self-regulating systems—like people—constantly work to return to the same form and behavior after they have been stressed or traumatized. That automatic rebound response—the same response that fuels healing and recovery—also makes behavioral changes uncomfortable and hard to implement for many people. Let’s face it, we all do […]

Burnout. More and more, I am seeing colleagues, friends, and my patients fraying at the edges. Some are on the edge of burnout and some are already there. More than a year after COVID-19 first entered our vocabulary, we are still seeing its effects in ways we might not have predicted. Women are leaving the […]

A good relationship between a patient and a physician is crucial and could become a lifetime — and life-saving — connection. Personally, I do something I like to call the HOPE Note when I see patients. This stands for Healing Oriented Practices and Environments Note. It is essentially a set of questions physicians can ask their patients that address the underlying determinants of their […]

There are many instances of successful merges between faith-based care and health care which reveal a substantial pool of best practices for confronting the challenging work of bridging the gap. As we’ve seen this year, more and more people are seeking different ways to remain healthy and take part in healing environments—wherever they may be. […]

Integrative primary care is the coordinated delivery of evidence-based conventional medical care, complementary medicine and lifestyle medicine within a primary care practice. Incorporating integrative medicine into mainstream primary care practices enables providers to: Deliver higher quality care Improve patient outcomes and satisfaction Lower costs Reduce burnout. Here are 7 ways to add integrative primary care […]

“Healing Tools” summaries are a collection of evidence-based resources to help providers and patients use integrative health approaches to improve health and wellbeing. The tool below is for patients with cancer and their family members as well as providers working with patients with cancer. To see more Healing Tools use this link and to learn about […]