Low testosterone. For men, these words have the same foul odor as “impotence,” “shrinkage” or “Justin Bieber.” The topic is taboo. Throughout civilization testosterone has been prized as the lifeblood of manhood, so a deficit would imply, by definition, that we are somehow less manly.

In August of last year, it was reported that local eye-care titan VSP would be excluded from competing for individual members in the state’s health insurance exchange market because the vision plan it provides is a stand-alone program. The move lead to conversations that VSP might relocate its headquarters out of state.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to uphold the Affordable Care Act briefly tempered some of the political brouhaha surrounding the new health care law. But partisan rhetoric flared again during election season, creating more confusion about the law than clarity.

On a spring day in 2011, 60-year-old Russell Edgar checked himself into a 14-day Newstart residential program at the Weimar Center. In the Sierra Nevada foothills above Sacramento, the center promised to teach people with diabetes, obesity and cancer how to reverse their health problems through natural healing methods.

Many of my estate-planning clients grasp the importance of wills, living trusts and financial powers of attorney but feel unprepared when the conversation turns to quality-of-life for their final years.

In the 1970s and again in the 1990s, the nation became engrossed with end-of-life issues when the media grabbed hold of the stories of Karen Ann Quinlan and, later, Terri Schiavo.

When Shelley Tabar’s father fell off her roof, she became his primary caregiver and subsequently lost nearly half her income.

Somewhere between board meetings, the kids’ soccer practice and family doctors appointments, women are ignoring an essential task: taking care of their hearts.

For business owners like Zennes Faljean, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Obama’s federal health care overhaul marked far more of a beginning than a conclusion.

At a conference in China in November 2010, Harris Lewin and Richard Michelmore approached Jian Wang, the president of global genetics company BGI, with an informal question: Could they interest the world’s largest genomics research institute in building a lab at UC Davis?