Medicine & Health

Dr. Mehmet Oz is the author of "Healing from the Heart: A Leading Heart Surgeon Explores the Power of Complementary Medicine." (Dutton) He is a cardiovascular surgeon at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. He combines leading western medicine with ancient methods of self healing. The result is faster recovery for patients. He believes our physical health is linked to our spirituality, psychological make-up and emotional well being.

Robert McCrum suffered a stroke in 1995 at the young age of 42. He has written in detail about his experience and his recovery. Terry Gross talks with McCrum and his wife Sarah Lyall who was key in his recovery. His new book is "My Year Off: Recovering Life After a Stroke."

Pediatrician Lawrence Diller specializes in child development and behavior. He's evaluated hundreds of patients for attention deficit disorder, for which the drug Ritalin has often been prescribed. His new book "Running on Ritalin: A Physician Reflects on Children, Society, and Performance in a Pill." (Bantam Books). After seeing more and more parents come into his practice asking for Ritalin for their children, Diller became concerned, and wrote an article in 1996 that started a national debate about the use of the drug.

Emily Colas has written her first book, a memoir, "Just Checking: Scenes from the life of an obsessive-compulsive." (Penguin-Pocket books). She writes about her many worries and fears about germs, and food poisoning, and her compulsion to trace the design of a star in her head, while having conversations with people. Colas eventually was treated for the disorder.

President and co-founder of The Long Island Alzheimer's Foundation, Janet Walsh. As a teenager, she watched her father suffer with Alzheimer's. Later, when genetic testing became available for Alzheimer's, she took it and discovered that she is at the highest risk for genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's. Walsh will talk about how she choses her conduct her life with this knowledge, and her efforts to make the lives of Alzheimer's patients better.

A 1995 study by the American Psychiatric Association reports that families play a significant part in the recovery of depressed people. Mary Wallace and Rose Styron are the wives of journalist Mike Wallace and writer William Styron, who both suffered from bouts of depression. They'll talk about what it was like to help their husbands thru depression. Mike Wallace and William Styron will appear in the upcoming documentary "Dead Blue: Surviving Depression"

Cheryl Chase, executive director of the Intersex Society of North America. The society was set up to serve and provide peer support and medical information for hermaphroditic people who, at birth, exhibited some sexual organs of both genders. Chase was classified male at birth, but was "reassigned" female at 18 months.

Dr. Antoine Khoury (ann-TWAN COR-ee), head of the division of urology at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He works with many parents of children born with ambiguous gender.

Barbara Neilson a social worker at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She works with children with congenital abnormalities, and their families.

Architect David Hoglund and Alzheimers expert Beth Deely. The two were instrumental in designing Woodside Place, a community for patients suffering from Alzheimers disease. Woodside Place, outside of Pittsburgh, was specifically designed to help clue patients into their surroundings through symbols and the building's layout. A three-year study of Woodside found that its new philosophy of nursing home design led to a slower rate of deterioration, and higher levels of socializing and physical activity. Hoglund works with Perkins Eastman Architects out of New York.