by Dr. Sam Benjamin This Website is devoted to providing you - the health care consumer and, I hope, listener of my radio show - with valuable health information. Just so you know where I'm coming from, I am a medical doctor (MD), but I have a leaning toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). I am also a certified acupuncturist and licensed homeopathic physician, which gives me a broader-than-usual approach to health and healing.

With my patients, I use a combination of herbal therapies, nutritional therapies, and conventional therapies.

I have loads of clinical and academic credentials. For instance, I am a former associate professor of clinical pediatrics, family medicine and director of the center for complementary and alternative medicine at Stony Brook School of Medicine.

And, of course, you know that I have a nationwide radio show, The Dr. Sam Show, where I discuss - rather openly and bluntly - whatever health care topic is on my listeners' minds.


My goal is always to be a partner with my patients, not the captain of their ship. In addition, I feel that it is mandatory to spend appropriate time with my patients. I have a responsibility to provide them with resources so that they can read and hear more about the issues pertaining to them and their health.

My staff has always been trained to help patients in search of objective and honest information that would empower them. They take the time to listen and educate whenever possible, provide readable health-related information, show DVDs and tapes on a monitor in the waiting room, and more. The goal is always total transparency of practice and information about what we did and how we did it.


I am not just preaching; I take my own advice. More than a year ago, when I started to exercise and diet, I was very much out of shape and overweight. I took both exercise and diet gradually, at first, and then accelerated it. I eventually lost 100 pounds - not all of which I've been able to keep off. As many of you dieters understand, weight maintenance is a whole other effort.

When I began walking and doing other exercise, I wanted to go gung-ho, and prove myself capable of more than I was doing. But my understanding of the body and how it works caused me to restrain myself until my actual capacity matched my developing physical ability.


Throughout this Website I offer my own rather cynical opinions - especially in the Eight Keys to Good Health section.

I offer both traditional medicine, and complementary and alternative medicine viewpoints in a series of health articles on areas of major interest to me and - I hope - to you:

• Health Centers
  
  
• Healthy Eating
  
  
• Prevention
  
  
• Mind-Body Connection
  
  
• Drugs and Supplements
  
  
• Being a Smart Consumer
  

If you want to share an opinion, tell me a story, or request a topic for my radio show, please send me an e-mail. You know, of course, I can't respond individually, nor can I offer you specific medical advice. But I can discuss your topic on my radio show if it fits within my format.

> E-mail Dr. Sam