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A few years ago, I learned a painful lesson about what not to wear while sightseeing in the summer. As part of my unofficial tour guide uniform for a friend's visit, I slipped into a pair of old Reef flip-flops. I misinterpreted the deep indentations (classic indications of overuse) as signs that they'd been comfortably broken in by a jungle trek in Thailand and a day of beach hopping around Nantucket. I figured they were the best things to wear to walk around town (what are flip-flops but topless sneakers, right?). That night, a throbbing pain in my right ankle kept waking me up. A podiatrist later diagnosed the pain as Achilles tendinitis, and recommended that I wear a soft cast...until Labor Day! My summer was officially a flop.

Stress is something Joan Borysenko knows something about. She's a Harvard-trained biologist and author of the new book Fried: Why You Burn Out and How to Revive. For 10 nonstop years, she juggled completing her clinical research, running a working farm (yes, that meant feeding chickens), raising two kids, writing a book and running 25 miles a week. In her two free minutes each evening, she secretly smoked cigarettes behind a tree in her front yard. Then came the back pain. After that, a scary feeling that she was sleepwalking through her life, immune even to her kids' excitement about riding their new pony through the woods.

She, the stress expert, was at the point of nonfunction.

Borysenko was a perfect example of how trying to do more than you can do for too long can result in a host of problems: emotional exhaustion (say, feeling numb inside when you know you'd normally feel happy or sad), recurring physical effects (back pain, constant colds, headaches) and a sense of spiritual emptiness that leaves you isolated from others.

This state can look a lot like depression. In fact, it might be easier to think of yourself as depressed; you can seek treatment from a doctor for that. Recent research, however, has found that although both result in a loss of motivation and pleasure, if you're burnt out, you can usually reclaim your everyday happiness—from taking great delight in a piece of crispy morning bacon to enjoying your hours at work or as a parent—once you make some fundamental changes. So the question is, How fried are you and what do you need to do about it? Go answer these questions to find out.

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For a few years now, we've been hearing from various Cassandras about a potential link between long-term use of cell phones and brain cancer. GQ's in-depth feature last February caused Wall Street deal makers to pause between calls, and last September, epidemiologist Devra Davis made readers think before dialing with her book Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family. Our own Dr. Oz covered the topic on his show in 2009 and wrote a helpful article about it in the March 2010 issue of O magazine. Now, as you've no doubt heard, the World Health Organization classified cell phones as "possibly carcinogenic" last week.

Photo: Tara Donne

Baking without using wheat flour—the base ingredient in everything from chocolate chip cookies to red velvet cake—sounds like something out of a hybrid reality show called Survivor: The Bakery Challenge. Still, the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland says 6 percent of the population is now following a gluten-free diet, avoiding wheat. That means there are a lot of people roaming the aisles of health food stores wondering what the difference is between garbanzo and fava bean flour and rice flour, and what exactly is xanthan gum? Erin McKenna, who founded the gluten-free, vegan bakeshop BabyCakes NYC, which now has an outpost in Los Angeles, just published her second book, BabyCakes Covers the Classics (Clarkson Potter). Although she had her share of disasters when she was first learning how to make muffins and pies sans all-purpose flour, she's since perfected honey buns, thin mints and German chocolate cake, which makes her just the person to answer a few of our questions.

The decade-old diagram that told us to eat lots of grains, less meat, some vegetables and a minimal amount of sweets and fats has moved into a retirement community, off to play golf with the Marlboro Man and other long-gone icons. Its replacement: a plate, half devoted to fruits and vegetables, a little more than a quarter for grains and less than a quarter for "protein." There's a little circle off to the side for dairy. While I applaud the USDA's endeavors to help Americans eat a more balanced, healthy diet, I still have a few questions...

1. How big should my plate be?

2. What are they trying to tell us without actually saying? The word "meat" doesn't appear anywhere on the diagram. Is using "protein" instead code for "eat less meat" (not that there's anything wrong with that, as we learned from Michael Pollan)?

3. Isn't there protein in vegetables, grains and dairy? So why is there a separate section for protein on the plate?

photo: Thinkstock

At the therapist's office, the man with the clipboard has been replaced by a woman. That may not seem like a problem, but it is, as Benedict Carey, one of our favorite science reporters, concluded in a recent article in the New York Times. Carey reports that among mental health professionals, men earn only one in five of all master's degrees awarded in psychology, account for less than 10 percent of social workers under the age of 34, make up 10 percent of the American Counseling Association's membership and "appear to be declining among marriage and family therapists." The lack of male therapists presents an obstacle for men who are open to talking to a professional about their problems...but only if that person looks and sounds like them.

If this describes someone you love, you could tell him that, in terms of the research, a psychologist's gender makes little difference in the outcome of therapy. Or you could be a bit more useful. (Even if you don't agree with him, it's his belief that matters—you want him to get help, remember?).

To find out exactly what you can do, we followed up with one of Carey's sources for the article, Ronald F. Levant, EdD, a professor of psychology at the University of Akron, who is recognized as an authority on the psychology of men and masculinity.

Bad news for beachgoers: Jellyfish exist in every ocean on earth (some are as big as refrigerators), and all of them sting. This we learned from the National Science Foundation’s cheekily-titled report, “Jellyfish Gone Wild.” Fortunately, the vast majority of stings aren’t harmful—and some are barely noticeable. If you or your travel companion does feel the sting of a tentacle, Dr. Oz suggests two fast-relief remedies that can be found at a beach snack bar or in your bungalow’s kitchen. “When a jellyfish attacks, it implants thousands of tiny darts, called nematocysts, into your skin,” he writes in the May issue of O. “If you’re stung, fill a bucket with vinegar and soak the affected area for 15 to 30 minutes; the acetic acid in the vinegar stops the nematocysts from releasing more venom (if you don't have vinegar, Coca-Cola is a slightly less effective substitute by virtue of its phosphoric acid). Next, scrape the area with a credit card or knife edge to remove any clinging nematocysts.” Dr. Oz says that some people are allergic to jellyfish, so those experiencing hives or wheezing should seek emergency help ASAP.

Find more surprising first-aid fixes—for sunburns, bug bites, cuts, and prickly heat—here.

Writer Annie Murphy Paul discusses her article for the May issue of O, 10 Ways You Get Smarter As You Get Older, on WSHU Public Radio in New Haven, Connecticut. Go read how the mind improves as we age, then listen to the radio interview and find out the most surprising fact Paul learned while researching this story.