Thanks to all of our readers for helping make 2012 a great year.

Happy holidays from all of us at Highlight HEALTH!

Walter Jessen, Diana Gitig, Kirstin Hendrickson and Faith Martin.

Thanks to all of our readers for helping make 2011 a great year.

Happy holidays from the team at Highlight HEALTH!

Walter Jessen, Diana Gitig, Kirstin Hendrickson and Faith Martin.

December can be a fun, joyous season. Families everywhere are celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Each of these winter holidays brings many festivities and lots of yummy, delicious food. The temptation to eat and drink in excess can be hard to overcome.

Although getting your five-a-day is important for promoting good health, overindulging on anything is bad for you. Indeed, overindulgence — consuming more calories than your body requires — is one of the main factors contributing to weight gain. Many of us love sweets during the holidays, but large portions won’t do anything but add surplus calories that get converted into fat.

Consider Santa Claus. One of the benefits of being “good St. Nick” is eating all the holiday cookies left by children around the world on Christmas eve.

Seasons Greetings! Welcome to the Holiday Edition of Grand Rounds, featuring some of the best articles of the biomedical and healthcare blogosphere.

At this time last year, I announced the Highlight HEALTH Network, a single source that aggregates content from all the Highlight HEALTH websites. This year, I have a similar gift for biomedical and healthcare blogosphere readers:

Health and Medicine blog carnival email and RSS subscriptions!

Health Highlights is a biweekly summary of particularly interesting articles from credible sources of health and medical information that we follow & read. For a complete list of recommeded sources, see our links page.

• 12 Tips for a Happier Holiday Season | Dr Shock MD PhD

  Dr. Shock offers 12 tips for a happier holiday season.

• The Acetaminophen Blues | Secundum Artem

  N.B. discusses the difference between non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and acetaminophen.

• Medicine 2.0 Wiki: Benchside to Bedside 2.0

  Rahul Shetty of Constructive Medicine 2.0 has created a wiki on Medicine 2.0 to serve as a common healthcare and life science resource.

• Drugs Don’t Work | InsureBlog

  Drugs don’t work … unless you take them. Seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Bob at Insureblog writes about a USA Today article discussing people with chronic health conditions who stop taking their medication.