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Hair is sometimes a reflection of overall health, and in several situations – when a person suffers from anorexia nervosa, bulemia or if they are undergoing intentional rapid weight loss, such as with gastric bypass surgery – there is a clear connection as all such situations can lead to hair loss. This is because the body is perceiving a period of starvation. Its response is to shed what’s unnecessary, to use scarce nutrients for more essential body functions.

I always find life in the extremes to be instructive. Even if a person is not technically suffering from an eating disorder, it bears noting that nutritional deficiencies can affect seemingly  unrelated parts of the body. The more I function as a nutrition and fitness writer, the more I am convinced it makes sense to find the natural balance: eat a balanced diet, live a physical life, get the right amount of sleep, make sure you have things in your life that make you smile and laugh and have things you look forward to in the future.

The return of a green sensibility is particularly gratifying to architects who trained in the 1970s. This was during the first energy crisis, which shocked us into awareness of poor resource use and its environmental consequences. Architects such as Charles Rose in Somerville, Massachusetts, who I profiled (below) for BG+H in American Builders Quarterly magazine, speaks to this issue. As a writer on sustainability and environmental issues, I am thrilled to speak with designers like Charles Rose who create change, one building at a time.

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“It’s gratifying that sustainability is now in vogue,” says Charles Rose, president of Charles Rose Architects. The Somerville, Massachusetts architect remembers the first wave of eco-friendly design in the 1970s, and its subsequent decline over many years in the interim. But his unflagging interest in sustainability–and eco-friendly projects completed as long as 20 years ago, long before anyone was talking about carbon footprints–poised the firm to win the plum commissions they get today.

Rose-designed projects in diverse locations–from Massachusetts to Maine, New York, Florida, Indiana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Oregon–include museums, schools, corporate offices, and residences that favor the health of the earth and that of the people inhabiting the structures. But it’s the aesthetic of Charles Rose-designed structures that capture the imagination.

Their work is widely published (e.g., Princeton Architectural Press, Architectural Record, INSITE, and The New York Times), while several organizations have awarded honors to many Rose designs. Perhaps the strongest endorsement of the firm’s facility with design is that several clients are themselves engaged in the arts: these include Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna Beach, Florida), Gulf Coast Museum of Art (Largo, Florida), Currier Center for the Performing Arts (Putney, Vermont), and Oregon College of Art & Craft (Portland, Oregon).

But all clients, including those outside of the arts, benefit from a distinct, design-centric approach that results in buildings that also function well. Rose cites characteristics of the firm’s process that ensure such an outcome:

• Dialogue: “The client is very involved in the process,” explains Rose. “It’s iterative, with lots of brainstorming to work through the program. We really listen, drawing our best ideas from clients.”

• Strong sense for craft and building: “An exuberant, sculptural attention to detail” is a hallmark of their projects, says Rose. For example, employment of ancient Japanese joinery techniques might be part of carefully conceived details in a project, designed by way of three-dimensional modeling. “We have a very sophisticated crowd at the office,” Rose says, referencing the digital capabilities of his staff.

• Hyper-vigilant construction supervision: Those 3-D models might include a mock up of all conditions of roofing, for example. Armed with such detail, project managers can provide close supervision on-site.

These working principles support proper and effective execution of sustainability practices that define the firm’s brand. But as Rose notes, LEED certification is required in the public domain and by most corporate clients. “Sustainability is more than just an overlay,” he says. “It has always been a strong link in our work, a natural part of form and circulation, how the project fits in the context of the local landscape and culture.”

As an example, Rose talks about their work on their work on Vermont’s Currier Center. The 22,000-square foot rehearsal and performance space borrows its roofline forms from the surrounding White Mountains. But the roof eaves also allow maximum light during winter months. The structure’s discrete spaces echo the farm buildings context of the surrounding community, while auditorium doors unfold to a natural clearing that allows outdoor performances in better weather.

Residential clients generally approach sustainability from a personal health and cost containment perspective. Non-toxic finishes, mechanical systems to limit mold, and the use of geothermal technologies often accomplish that.

“Forty percent of energy consumption is in buildings,” says Rose, who is excited about the Franklin Regional Transit Center in western Massachusetts, a Rose design likely to begin construction in 2009 and intended to achieve a net-zero carbon footprint. The 60,000-square foot facility will have 16 geothermal wells plus rooftop photovoltaic cells–all consistent with the firm’s pledge to achieve “the health, well-being and the aesthetic experience of place.”

The transit center may be in vogue today, but it’s hard to imagine low energy costs ever going out of fashion.

Do you think that potholes (chuckholes, kettles) are merely the product of winter weather? Guess again — heat and rain are just as capable of ruining a road as are ice and snow. Which explains why Honolulu and Los Angeles have particularly bad pothole problems.

I explore the mechanics of pothole creation as well as the conditions that lead to poor pavement maintenance in this article for Pothole.info. My client is building its presence on the web with articles on all things pavement and pothole prevention and repair, and writing on technical subjects for the non-technician audience is something I particularly enjoy. Given this post went up in July, the subject matter is appropriate for anyone who thinks road deterioration occurs only in winter.

My clients at Pothole.info like to track trends in infrastructure (road and bridge building and repair) and transportation, including funding and consumer behavior issues that can affect these things. I stumbled onto an Advertising Age article that discusses lower rates of driving among young people, and turned it into a blog for Pothole.info. In the blog, I report on both the article content and what Ad Age readers said in response (it was a lively exchange).

What does this have to do with potholes? Lower rates of driving today might explode in five to ten years as the economy improves and when 20-somethings evolve from bikes and public transportation (my preferred modes of travel, btw) into homeowner-parents who might live too far from jobs to avoid being in cars. If cities, states and the feds fail to fund road pavement preservation between now and then, there will be many a rutted highway for those Gen Ys to navigate. Better to keep up the maintenance – because every dollar spent fixing a road is seven dollars saved rebuilding it later.

The Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 is a tragedy of many origins and, as of this writing, a cataclysm with dismal prospects for solutions. Regardless of political stripe, almost everyone agrees that a reduced dependence on petroleum is an important step toward fixing many problems.

The bike-to-work option is increasingly embraced by people who “get it,” as an estimated one million people bike daily to their place of employment during warmer months. I do this myself, riding 14 miles round trip to the health club where I train my sole fitness client – up to six times a week, February through early December.

I write about how to creatively approach bicycle commuting, even if your workplace is beyond your current biking distance abilities. If this article gets just ten people to trade four wheels for two, the world is made a better place.

My client at Pothole.info wants to increase understanding of how important it is to maintain the country’s infrastructure of streets, roads, highways and bridges. As they should – their product is a specially-formulated cold mix asphalt, which is remarkably better at preventive maintenance (potholes, cracks and other deterioration) than standard hot-mix asphalt. They asked me to write an article on how the gas tax works, so in my research I turned up some pretty interesting facts and projections that I itemized into a list (”Seven Things You Should Know About Gas Taxes in 2010″).

This is particularly critical in 2010 because we have 50-year-old highways that need repair and replacement, but we are also in a strongly anti-tax political environment even while federal, state and local coffers are running on fumes. Add to that increasing fuel efficiencies of cars and consequentially lower gas consumption, which reduces gas tax revenues. The challenge of pavement preservation becomes even more apparent.

I enjoy being a writer of white papers such as this because it is always interesting to pull meaning from complex landscapes.

When our country debates things that touch all our lives – healthcare, climate, and transportation, to cite a few topics – it’s easy to draw lines around simple “for” and “against” positions. But life isn’t entirely made up of binary choices, and I think this article for my client pothole.info,

FUTURE TRANSPORTATION FUNDING: ROAD REPAIR VS. SPECIAL ROADS FOR BICYCLISTS

helps illustrate the point. Road building and repair funding is mistakenly thought to be anti-green, while those who favor non-motorized transit (walkers and bikers) and public transportation are often characterized as unrealistically wed to environmental principles that fit neither our culture nor our economy.

We can leave the huge debate and discussion on the broad topic for another day. But this article finds a third way, where good roads are appreciated and used by bicyclists. How funding is allocated should take this factor into consideration. (Full disclosure: this writer gets a break on his car insurance because he drives less than 4000 miles a year, using his bike to travel an equivalent distance during the approximately eight months/year of bike-friendly conditions in Chicago.)

What I like most about this topic is how being a web content writer (in this instance, a white paper writer) sometimes allows me to mine out information that is lacking in mainstream and fringe media discussion.

My editor at RealJock.com asked me to write two articles regarding the healthcare reform bill as it affects the site’s readers, gay men with a passionate interest in fitness. The bill does not cover inequities in taxation of healthcare benefits for domestic partners covered by one partner’s employer-sponsored plan, nor does it authorize Medicare and Medicaid to provide early treatment for HIV infection (earlier treatment is proven to be cost-efficient) or hospital visitation rights. The bill does provide for some healthy-lifestyle prevention initiatives, however some people in the “Comments” area complain about how fitness efforts are unrecognized in individual premium pricing.

Every type of gym-based cardiovascular machine has its merits. This article written for Hairloss.com takes a look at the pros and cons of treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes and stair machines.  But there’s really no need to choose: the best fitness schedule would include each, and each used in different ways.

The editors at RealJock.com – where I am a writer on health, fitness and related social topics – picked my article, Build a Budget Home Gym, to be among the site’s ten favorite fitness and health articles of 2009.