Health

Public health is mostly a field for research and inquiry, but it's also an arena for action. The best way to think of public health as to see it tackling the health needs of an entire population rather than individuals (that is mostly what medicine does). I am a physician, but when I went into public health I said that my position was now that society would be my patient.

Global Health Leader & Former Dean of Harvard School of Public Health

It's inevitable for complex animals. Some simple animals avoid aging by exporting absolutely all the entropy they create, but that's because they don't contain any material that stays in place unrecycled. Basically, if an animal has any organs that rely for their function on being built out of long-lived cells (like our brains, for example), it's going to age.

Biogerontologist researching aging reversal and life extension therapies

Aging is a side-effect of being a machine with moving parts. All such machines, whether living or not, inherently create entropy in their structure. Living organisms have immensely sophisticated systems for exporting that entropy, but those systems are generally not 100% comprehensive, so aging still happens.

Biogerontologist researching aging reversal and life extension therapies

Many organisms have a pattern of temporal change and senescence that is reproducible and predictable for the species and gender — clearly with a huge genetic component. For example, the longevity of rats is 3.8 years while their 'cousins' the mole-rats live up to 30 years. These timings are probably optimized to fit with the ecology patterns of the species — predation, litter size, environmental variation, food abundance, etc.

Synthetic biologist & Harvard geneticist; pioneer of DNA sequencing technology

The physical and mental aspects of our lives are inseparable and taking care of the basic physical requirements is essential. Athletes and leaders rarely experience deep relaxation and this can become transformative in their lives.

A high-performance career usually demands your time, energy and focus within the often rigid structure of organisational life.... Your body and brain require sleep, exercise, efficient breathing and a vibrant diet in order to thrive. Everybody knows this and yet it can be extremely challenging to thrive amidst competing commitments, travel demands and expectations of your role.

The change I'm most passionate about – because of the impact it's had on my own life – is creating a healthy transition to sleep that begins before you even step into your bedroom. I treat my own transition to sleep as a sacrosanct ritual. First, I turn off all my electronic devices and gently escort them out of my bedroom.

Co-Founder of The Huffington Post & Wellness Advocate

My own life has improved in pretty much every way. These days, 95 percent of the time I get eight hours of sleep a night. Now, instead of waking up to the sense that I have to trudge through activities, I wake up feeling joyful about the day's possibilities. And I'm also better able to recognize red flags and rebound from setbacks. It's like being dialed into a different channel that has less static.

Co-Founder of The Huffington Post & Wellness Advocate

The sleep revolution is finally hitting the workplace. It's not in full swing yet, but you can see the evidence all around. But now the business world is waking up to the high cost of sleep deprivation on productivity, health care, and ultimately the bottom line. I expect the nap room to soon become as universal as the conference room.

Co-Founder of The Huffington Post & Wellness Advocate

This crisis is rooted in the collective delusion that burnout is the necessary price we must pay for accomplishment and success. Recent scientific findings make it clear that this couldn't be less true. Our golden age of sleep science is revealing all the ways in which sleep plays a vital role in our decision making, emotional intelligence, cognitive function, and creativity. Not only is there no tradeoff between living a well-rounded life and high performance, performance is actually improved when our lives include time for renewal.

Co-Founder of The Huffington Post & Wellness Advocate

The water crisis is not a future threat - it's a present reality. Every minute we delay action, two children die from preventable water-related diseases. This is not just an environmental issue, it's a moral emergency.

Water resources engineer and global leader in sustainable water management and governance

Studies estimate that climate change directly contributes to the death of over 400,000 people a year, and costs the world economy over $1.2 trillion per-annum. If we factor in man-made environmental pollution alongside climate-change, over 4.5 million people each year die as a direct result of man's impact on this planet.

The Ancient Greeks believed philosophy was a medicine for the soul. Socrates said 'I teach my student how to take care of their souls', which is where the word psychotherapy comes from. Cicero said, 'there's a medical art for the soul, and its name is philosophy'.

Ancient philosophy almost hasn't been bettered as a kind of therapeutic toolbox in 2400 years, and have a certain aesthetic to them which makes you feel part of a long tradition... You're part of a three millennia old tradition of wisdom that thousands and thousands of people have read the same book that you're reading, and found it therapeutic in very dark times.

As a nation, our brains deceive us into thinking we're going to be safer with a gun when in fact we typically endanger ourselves.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist & New York Times Columnist

There are two key advantages of thinking of guns as a public health issue. First of all, it removes some of the emotion from the issue because it's no longer about banning guns, it's no longer about guns being awful things. Secondly it moves the debate to be about evidence; where we can empirically show what works, at what cost.

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist & New York Times Columnist