Photo: Thinkstock

My brother-in-law, an orthopedic surgeon in New Hampshire, tells me that he's expecting some long nights at the hospital and the clinic this month. His appointment book is jam-packed with patients trying squeeze every last benefit from their health insurance plans before the new year starts. That inspired me to call Maura Carley, president and CEO of Healthcare Navigation, an advocacy group that guides people through the Byzantine rules of their health insurance plans. I asked her to help me draw up a quick to-do list for this month. Here's her advice:

• If your health plan has a January 1 renewal, check the balance in your Flexible Spending Account, and then use the remaining funds to stock up on reimbursable items like eyeglasses, a bite guard for sleeping, orthotics, contact lens solution, and cold medicine, because whatever you don't use, you lose. One thing to note: "You'll need a prescription in order to get reimbursed for over-the-counter items," she says.
  
• During open enrollment, ask your HR rep what changes you should expect in 2012, because Carley says that many insurance plans are increasing contribution levels, deductibles, coinsurance and co-pays next year. If you've already had your open enrollment meetings, it might not be a bad idea to review the paperwork to see how the changes will affect your budget.
  
• If you’ve met your annual deductible and you don't anticipate many expensive services next year, consider scheduling almost-due appointments like a Pap smear, a dental cleaning, a dermatologist check-up or an extra session with your therapist. Doctors like my brother-in-law are prepared for your call. 

Read more:
Dr. Oz's ultimate health checklist, including the medical tests you need

Photo: Thinkstock

You've probably heard of bisphenol-A, or BPA -- it's the industrial chemical found in clear, sturdy plastics and PVC, and it's been linked to higher risks of cancer, heart disease, obesity and diabetes. It's the reason you switched from a plastic water bottle to a BPA-free stainless steel one, and why you stopped microwaving your leftovers in plastic take-out containers. And though most of the focus has been on plastic bottles, BPA also exists in the lining of canned foods.

A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association may change the way we look at those canned goods. The study found that those who ate just one serving of canned soup for five days showed increases in their BPA levels by over a thousand percent. The Harvard researchers told the New York Times they were stunned by the results.

So are we, especially because we've been really enjoying chicken soup season so far. But don't despair: while it's hard to find BPA-free cans (manufacturers like it because this type of lining prevents corrosion and is resistant to extreme heat), you have options:

• Make your own soup using one of these classic recipes: Chicken noodle, chicken and rice, broccoli leek, classic clam chowder. Store in containers made from glass, porcelain and stainless steel, and bring lunch portions to work in a Mason jar. 
• Look for soups that are packaged in Tetra Pak paper boxes with a BPA-free liner. 
• Switch to frozen (or fresh) vegetables.
• Cut back on your canned soup habit (you'll avoid sodium as well as BPA). 
• Develop a taste for miso soup that comes in paper envelopes.
  

Photo: Best Life

Every few weeks, we'll be asking one of the Best Life experts for advice on diet and exercise, ways to get better rest and strategies to live a little younger.

If you have a question, send it to us!

Q: I hurt my feet, and now I can barely walk, never mind run. How do I stay fit?

This sounds like an impossible challenge, doesn't it? You won't be able to squeeze in your 10,000 steps per day. But it's worth the effort to hobble into the gym, because you have more fitness options than you realize, says Jack Younghans, D.P.T., a Best Life physical therapist who helps injured patients stay in shape at his clinic in Long Island, New York. We asked him what moves were easiest on the feet, and were surprised by how many cardio options he came up with. Regular exercise may even help you heal. Younghans explains that when you increase your blood flow by working out, your body is able to deliver oxygenated blood to the injured foot more efficiently than it would be if you were sedentary.

These exercises are ranked from least impact (for the seriously injured) to most. Younghans says that if you feel pain at any point during exercise, stop immediately and talk to your doctor or physical therapist. Find out if physical therapy is right for you.

1. Rowing with an upper-body ergometer: You may have seen one of these mini-bikes for the arms and thought to yourself, "There's no way you can work up a sweat on that thing." But Younghans swears you can crank up the resistance high enough and row fast enough to get your heart pumping. If you don’t have access to an upper-body ergometer, you can keep build muscle and tone with these weight exercises.

2. Swimming: You probably thought of this one already, but Younghans reminds those with pain in the forefoot to avoid jumping into the pool or doing flip turns between laps (both can add pressure that can make the injury worse). Check out this article for ways to feel comfortable in the water.

Photo: Thinkstock

Tryptophan. For years, that was our excuse for sneaking away from the table to "test out the guest pillows" after Thanksgiving dinner. Tryptophan had become the dinner guest's kryptonite. Then we started hearing that we weren't actually getting that much tryptophan in a couple of slices of turkey--no more than the same serving of roast chicken breast or tofu, and not enough to explain our overpowering drowsiness. And when we thought about that, it made sense: We don't expect to spend an afternoon comatose after eating a turkey and cheese sandwich from the deli. So what's making us so tired on Thanksgiving?

Lots of things, it turns out, including what we did the night before the big feast, how many helpings we ate of Nana's marshmallow sweet potatoes, what we drank with our meal, and what activities we have planned for Thursday evening. (See the nutrition blog at Boston.com for the full explanation, as well as a unique theory from a professor who has researched napping).

This Thursday, when you start feeling snoozy after dinner, give the turkey a break. The poor thing has been through enough already.

Photo: Thinkstock

As healthy as nuts are, they have something in common with the more dubious snack options: It's hard to eat just one, or just one handful, which is the recommended portion size. You may park yourself next to the bowl of mixed nuts at a party, thinking you're just going to healthfully nibble the night away, and before you know it, you've consumed 546 calories of almonds (that's the amount in a cup).

Fortunately, though, some types of nuts seem to come with their own alarm that sends you a signal that you've had enough. In a study published in the September issue of the journal Appetite, students who were constantly offered pistachios in the shell consumed 22 percent fewer nuts when the researchers left the bowls of discarded shells on their desks than when they took them away. The researchers think the shells acted as "visual cues" that reminded the students how many nuts they'd already eaten.

This study made us think of boxes of Japanese snacks that contain individually-wrapped serving sizes. It's pretty hard to finish an entire box of soy sauce-flavored crackers when the tiny envelopes keep piling up around you. For almonds and other snacks that don't leave a trace, your best bet is to put a handful in a bag, plate or cup and then hold on to that for a while. Better yet, stick to red pistachios, which not only leave a trail of shells but also stain your fingers a shade we'll call "snack-aholic scarlet."

Read more:
Why you should eat nuts (the list keeps growing!)

Photo: THQ

Despite all of the research I've read about the benefits of meditation (it can help reduce stress and anxiety, improve sleep, improve focus and generally make people happier). Not bad, those things, but I can never seem to fit even a few minutes of meditation into my day. When I do, it feels suspiciously similar to procrastinating. And it seems to my husband, who sees me lying on the floor with my eyes closed, that I'm napping (sometimes, he's right).

Read more:
Deepak Chopra on the 5-step path to a life of love
How to quiet your mind during meditation
Chopra answers what it means to "go inside oneself"

Photo: Thinkstock

For most of us, sports drinks tend to be an acquired taste—one we only acquire after about an hour of hard, sweaty exercise. But new research shows that our refueling options now extend beyond artificial-tasting limeade, and include things many of us crave even when we're not finishing a a spinning class. Here are three delicious, non-traditional options that have proven health benefits:

Chocolate Milk
Low-fat chocolate milk (yes, the real deal -- we're not referring to fudge-flavored drinks) has been shown in studies involving cyclists, soccer players and runners to be just as effective as sports drinks in helping athletes recover. It provides fluids to help you rehydrate and carbohydrates to replace glycogen burned off during intense activity. This affordable treat also has protein that combines with the carbs to reduce muscle damage and hasten recovery, as well as an added bonus of calcium. 

Photo: Thinkstock

Anyone who's ever tried to lose weight is familiar with scale creep -- you know, the pounds that slowly accumulate once the diet officially ends, when it often seems as if it's even easier to gain weight than it was before.

This is due to many factors, most notably our tendency to fall back into some old habits like Belgian Waffle Sundays. But dieting, especially on-again-off-again, can have lingering effects on our appetites. We can vow that once we go off the diet, we'll only eat when we're hungry, and we'll stop as soon as we're full. But in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a group of Australian researchers measured the levels of hormones (including leptin and ghrelin) that are associated with hunger. They found that diet-induced weight loss not only altered hormone levels, but caused them to remain "perturbed" (i.e., at levels that made the subjects hungrier) for a full year. In other words, in the months after a diet, you can't trust yourself to know when you're hungry or full.

At first read, this makes weight loss seem like even more of a Sisyphean challenge. But it really just reinforces what we've heard a million times before: the only diet that works is one that we can sustain indefinitely. Viewed in that light, this new research can actually help us get smarter about how we try to get healthier.

Here are some long-term strategies for keeping the weight off:
Resisting donuts, fast food, and eating late at night
Becoming aware of mindless munching
How to stop binge eating

Photo: PATH.org

Every day for fourteen years, I took a birth control pill. This wasn't a hassle; I can count the number of times I missed one on one hand. The fatal flaw in this mostly-satisfying relationship appeared in my mid-twenties, when the estrogen in the pills triggered a skin condition called melasma and caused large brown spots to blossom on my forehead, cheeks and upper lip. I tolerated my smudgy-looking skin for a few more years, until my sister got engaged. When I thought about her wedding, I decided I didn't want my happy, excited face to be shadowed by brown spots, so I made an appointment with my dermatologist to discuss brightening treatments, and another with my gynecologist to talk about contraceptive alternatives.

Since breaking up with the pill, I've made do with the NuvaRing and then condoms, but I've been keeping my eyes open for a better long-term plan. That's one of the reasons I was inspired to weigh the pros and cons of the most popular birth control in the US for this slideshow. There are a few new contraceptive developments that piqued my interest. Any Seinfeld fan who's never really understood Elaine's passion for the Today sponge can now find out what all the hoopla was about, as the sponge is back and available at retailers like Walgreens, CVS and Target. For those looking for something more effective and longer-lasting, IUDs like ParaGard and Mirena have been redesigned, and among health researchers and gynecologists, they're the new "it" contraceptive. However, the device that has me the most excited is a different birth control blast-from-the-past.

Photo: Run for Your Lives

Next weekend, in a forest outside of Baltimore, 10,000 people will be running as fast as they can in order to stay alive. Those who aren't fit enough to handle obstacles like chain-link fences, muddy streams or tunnels of sewage pipes will be attacked by the hundreds of flesh-starved zombies that lurk in the woods, waiting for their human prey. This may sound like the premise of the horror film you're planning to watch on Halloween, but it's also the idea behind the first-ever Run for Your Lives 5K. The only things this event has in common with the many other road races taking place this month are that participants will wear a bib with their number on it and a chip to record their finish time. They'll also wear a red tag (like the kind you see in flag football), and they'll be chased by volunteer "zombies" who will have the torn clothing, bloody faces and hungry eyes of the undead. Once a zombie catches the flag of a runner, that participant is out of the race--but they'll still be able to attend the after-party with survivors, musicians and other entertainers, and zombies (we assume the sports drinks and beer will act as an antidote). 

While the Run for Your Lives is now closed to runners, those who have the stomach to watch can purchase a spectator's pass that will allow them access to the course as well as the after-party (more information is available on the Run for Your Lives web site). A portion of all ticket sales will go towards the American Red Cross. Even though this event hasn't even taken place yet, zombie fever has already spread to other cities, and similar races are scheduled for next year in places like Boston, Seattle and Austin.

Watching the creepy video on the Race for Your Lives site made our hearts pick up the pace and got us thinking about the motivational power of zombies. If the feeling--real or imagined--of a rival breathing down our necks in a race can make us hustle, imagine how much faster we could go if we pictured that rival as a brain-eating monster? This Halloween season, we're going to try to a little experiment. When on the trail, the treadmill or even on the way to the office, we're going to pretend that we're being closely followed by a hungry posse of the undead, and that our lives depend on getting to our destination faster than usual. We may even do zombie pick-ups, in which we'll imagine being chased for two- to three-minute intervals during the course of a workout. We're getting the willies just thinking about it.

To help you form a mental image of the kind of monster than will cause you to get moving fast, here are some frightful examples:
Ordinary British pub-goers and townsfolk become deadly (if somewhat daffy) killers in the comedy film, Shaun of the Dead.
A plague turns noblewomen as well as nursemaids into flesh-eaters in lace and muslin in the novel, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Wandering corpses as well as scheming survivors become equally life-threatening in the television drama, The Walking Dead (the second season premiered last night on AMC).