My Route to Enhanced Health, Energy, Happiness, and All the Good Stuff

Hi -- My name is Bobby Waddell, and for the purposes of this blog I am an alternative generalist who is an enthusiastic advocate for things I believe in. And, oh yes, I'm a writer and editor, with a longtime specialty in alternative health, which explains at least part of this blog's title. I live in New York City, and have since the age of nine.

I've been involved in alternative health for decades—personally since the seventies, and professionally since the late eighties. Early in this first decade of the new century (years I guess they refer to as the oughts), I began working with my co-author, Sylvia Goldfarb, on our book, Relieving Pain Naturally, a comprehensive overview of alternative approaches to chronic pain that we published after four years of work. The details of its basic division into 37 chronic pain Conditions and 27 natural Treatments can be found on the book's website http://www.relievingpainnaturally.com, a site that may well be how you found your way to this blog.

But I'm not limiting the blog to drug-free/surgery-free solutions for chronic pain, or even to alternative solutions for across-the-board health problems. There are many things I actively support and a lot of them fall under the rubric alternative. Although my description of myself as an alternative generalist may sound like an oxymoron, one thing I do know is that it's a big enough umbrella to cover all things alternative.

As I go along testing the waters, the topics below are the principal ones I want to explore, making sure to put my emphasis on the positive instead of the negative. After I obligatorily warn of the downhill slide caused by poor lifestyle choices—bad food, excessive drinking, smoking, lack of exercise, etc.—the usual don't's that everyone has heard about ad infinitum, maybe even ad nauseum, I'm going to do my best to stick to the good things you can incorporate into your life. (This might be a good time to state my oft-repeated mantra that, for me, a problem is an opportunity for a solution—I'm into solutions, not problems.)

I will also be asking friends and relatives to weigh in on alternative-type subjects they care about, and I'll be including nuggets of information from authors whose alternative books I've edited, plus snippets of relevant media articles and opinions I've come across and want to ballyhoo. Needless to say, it's all wide open as of now, so here goes my list for the whole alternative thing.

• Alternative approaches to chronic pain (since this is the link, I want to begin here)
• Alternative health in general, including alternative solutions for diseases and later at least one guest discussing one of these alternative therapies
• Diet, including at least one guest, and one expert on nutritious foods for dogs
• Supplements, including insurance coverage (or NOT)
• Exercise, including yoga as one form of fitness
• Physical energy for life
• Environment, including good green ideas and actions, a retro development, and at least one guest
• Sustainable products, clothing, and accessories
• You get the idea, right? ....