I’m an award-winning journalist who currently covers health, fitness and medicine for the Chicago Tribune’s investigative reporter/consumer watchdog team. I also created the Chicago Tribune’s first health blog, “Julie’s Health Club.” I started my career at the Tribune 20 years ago as a sportswriter. I’ve also worked as a national correspondent, an environmental reporter, a health columnist and have been part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting team. Since 2004, I’ve focused on science and health issues, covering a range of topics that frequently dovetail with my own personal interests.

1. As a sportswriter, I only had one notable lockerroom incident. A naked Milwaukee Bucks player jumped up and down behind me while I conducted my interview, trying to make his teammates laugh. It worked.

2. Pre-motherhood, I traveled to Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Bolivia, Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Brazil, Cambodia, Vietnam, Zambia, Tokyo, Europe and the Philippines. Now I just go to Target.

3. I’m a certified personal trainer through the American College of Sports Medicine.

4. My great-grandfather, Laban Deardorff, invented the Deardorff portrait camera.

4. My job during the Illinois Class AA girls’ high school state basketball championship was to throw the ball to Katie Meier, who is now the women’s head coach at the University of Miami.

5. I started keeping a journal in 4th grade, after reading "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" and "Harriet the Spy." I've kept one ever since.

6. My husband is my role model for fitness and good nutrition.

7. I’ve been a vegetarian since 1985.

8. My holy trinity: Nutrition, exercise, sleep.

9. After college, I worked for Frank DeFord at the nation's first and only sports newspaper, The National.

10. I've delivered a 9.2-pound baby without pain medication and completed two Ironman triathlons. Both events were life-changing. Motherhood is more satisfying.

Green living, meditation, exercise as medicine, nutrition, child and maternal health and environmental health. I’m a wife, mom of two boys, yogi, and year-round bike commuter.

BMI measuring in schools proves weighty issue 5/17/2013
Some parents argue that fat measure can have negative effect on students' self-esteem Some parents argue that fat measure can have negative effect on students' self-esteem

Can stem cells help those with arthritis? 4/24/2013
Once a person's own stem cells are injected into a joint, the cells generate anti-inflammatories, studies have shown. Stems cells taken from just a few grams of body fat are a promising weapon against the crippling effects of osteoarthritis.

When weight is disabling 4/24/2013
Morbid obesity — regardless of the cause — is increasingly viewed as a disability in court, especially in workplace discrimination lawsuits Lisa Harrison weighed 527 pounds on the day she was fired from her job at a Louisiana drug addiction treatment center. The 5-foot-2-inch Harrison, who believed her employer considered her "disabled" due to her weight, filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Athletes only too happy to be 'lab rats' 4/21/2013
Seeking an edge, some bodybuilders and cyclists buy failed experimental drugs After discovering that a promising new drug caused multiple types of cancer in lab animals, the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline stopped developing the compound.

Videos illuminate realities of end-stage procedures 3/27/2013
The goal is to help patients and families understand their options at life's end End-of-life choices and treatment decisions are rarely discussed in the medical community, despite expert advice meant to encourage communication, studies suggest. As a result, many patients spend their final days receiving invasive treatments that they might not have chosen if they had known more about them.