By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

Recently, I had my routine periodic dental checkup here in Naples, FL. The technician told me that I appeared to have a “dry mouth,” and needed to refine the fluids I was ingesting. My physician advised me to increase the amount of electrolytes in my water or to increase them in some other way. This was a real eye opener for me, as it might be for others.

For decades, we’ve been told a simple rule of thumb for hydration: drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day. The familiar “64 ounces” guideline is easy to remember and generally helpful. But like many health slogans, it oversimplifies a more complex physiological reality—especially for people living or working in hot and humid environments like Florida.

In these conditions, hydration isn’t just about replacing water. It’s about replacing what we lose when we sweat. And that includes electrolytes.

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By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

Nutrition has always been a complex and contested field, but social media has fundamentally changed how nutritional ideas spread, and how quickly they harden into belief. Today, millions of people receive their primary nutrition guidance not from clinicians, registered dietitians, or peer-reviewed journals, but from influencers on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and podcasts. Some are thoughtful educators. Many are not. And the system in which they operate almost guarantees distortion.

This is not primarily a story about bad actors. It is a story about incentives, formats, and scale, and why artificial intelligence is increasingly necessary as a stabilizing counterweight.

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By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

Six years ago this month, we were becoming aware of the SARS-Cov-2 virus, later described as the COVID-19 pandemic. It is usually remembered as a sudden viral catastrophe that demanded unprecedented emergency responses. 

With the benefit of hindsight, however, it is equally accurate to describe COVID-19 as a metabolic stress test, one that revealed how profoundly baseline health shaped vulnerability to an acute infectious threat. The virus did not strike populations randomly. It exploited long-standing physiological weaknesses that had accumulated quietly for decades.

Few developments illuminate this reality more clearly than the later emergence of GLP-1 receptor agonists as powerful therapies for obesity, insulin resistance, and related cardiometabolic conditions. These medications were not widely available during the pandemic’s early years, but their rise helps clarify what kind of resilience was missing in 2020, and why emergency medicine alone could not fully compensate for it.

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By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

At the end of 1976, I was deeply unhappy with what I saw when I looked in the mirror in my Evanston, Illinois apartment. I was about 25 pounds overweight. My skin looked pale. I had low energy and poor stamina. 

For someone who had once been a long-distance runner in high school and routinely played long singles tennis matches, it was humbling that I could barely jog a block without getting winded. My clothes were very tight around the waist and starting to look worn, which made me appear heavier than I actually was. For the first and only time in my life, I decided to make a New Years resolution to lose weight and be more fit.  

I also had an external motivation. Two months earlier, I had met the woman I would eventually marry, Joyce McNagny, in court. But I felt that if I asked her out then, I would be rejected because of how I looked and felt. I still would have made the resolution, but looking better for her was certainly a powerful additional impetus to succeed.

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By Michael J. Critelli | MakeUsWell Newsletter, 

I was recently at a book launch celebrating the life and work of Kevin Speier, a man whose battle with cancer was as much about dignity and resilience as it was about medicine. Kevin passed away in 2017 after a horrific battle with oral cancer. Our son Michael A. Critelli and daughter-in-law Jill Mamey Critelli created two books, Lemons and Ladybugs and Lemons and Ladybugs II. The latter book was the subject of the book launch.

Objective observers have rated both books exceptional. They touch on a number of subjects: how a man who died at age 33 and battled not only the cancer at the end of his life but also various kinds of addiction as an adult still managed to have profound and different effects on those whom he touched in his life (more thoroughly covered in the first book), the challenges and surprising joys of caregiving (his widow Angelina’s Facebook posts are included in both books), and the way he inspired everyone, including the co-authors, to think more positively about the transition from life to death.

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