Try the following tips to help you get seven to eight hours of sleep each night.

Get at least 30 minutes of aerobic activity several times a week at least four hours before bedtime.

Limit alcoholic beverages throughout the day and avoid them after 5 pm. Alcohol interferes with sleeping.

Avoid caffeinated beverages and foods like tea, coffee, cola and chocolate, particularly after 4 pm.

A new trend in physical activity is quickly gaining popularity -- high-intensity interval physical activity (HIIPA). It’s based on the high-intensity interval training (HIIT) method and could be a way for you to get the benefits of intense training without the risks or even working out.

It’s mid-summer, 90 degrees and humid, but you want to work out and you prefer doing it outdoors. Treadmills really aren’t your thing – you feel like a hamster walking or running on one. 

You’re probably aware summer heat raises your risk for sunburn, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke, so it’s important to talk to you doctor before you work out in high temperatures. If you get clearance, there are strategies that can help make summer workouts more enjoyable. Try these five tips.   

Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the U.S. Each year more than 5.4 million cases of nonmelanoma skin cancer are treated in more than 3.3 million people, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation. Close to 100,000 cases of melanoma — the most dangerous form — will be diagnosed in 2019.

Here are eight things your doc absolutely needs to know, as they can indicate some pretty serious—even life-threatening—conditions that may need to be ruled out with tests, considered when issues occur down the line, or at the very least impact your ongoing overall health and wellbeing.

There are very few people except seven- or eight-year-old boys who enjoy and feel confident talking openly about embarrassing health issues without squirming, cringing and feeling super nervous. But when it comes to your health, you need to get comfortable in doing so in the confidential space of your doctor’s office. Here’s what your doctor wants and needs to know about:

If doctors could wave a magic wand, they would ideally know everything about you. But we all know that’s difficult-to-impossible to do in a world of infrequent appointments that are typically only 10 minutes long or less. As an MDVIP patient, you have the luxury of long appointments (averaging 45 minutes), during which your physician can really dig in to learn all about you—your health, your lifestyle, your family and relationships, that all contribute to the matrix of your health. 

You’ve heard it many times: limit your intake of highly processed foods. You know the fast, ready-to-eat convenient foods with a long list of hard to pronounce ingredients. Some are easy to recognize -- soft drinks (including diet soda), fast food menu items and packaged baked goods, to name a few. However, some of these so called “ultra-processed” foods, like energy bars, flavored yogurt and breakfast cereals are marketed as health foods. 

Walking is arguably one of the easiest, most effective forms of exercise. It’s relatively inexpensive -- all you really need is a good pair of walking shoes. And you can walk pretty much anywhere. But sometimes even the most dedicated walker needs more of a challenge than walking (or even power or race walking) or wants to burn fat and calories more efficiently. If this sounds like you, maybe your next step is running.

The term “heart attack” is kind of a misnomer. Nothing actually attacks your heart. So, what really happens during a heart attack? 

In a nutshell, a coronary artery becomes blocked. This prevents blood from flowing to the heart, and as a result your heart muscle is damaged. 

The medical term is myocardial infarction. "Myo" means muscle. "Cardial" refers to the heart. "Infarction" means tissue death due to lack of blood supply. Myocardial infarction and heart attack mean the same thing.