Dr. Zeina Moukarzel

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Dr. Zeina Moukarzel

My Story With Medicine
Between 1995-2013, I have practiced as anesthesiologist and critical care physician (ICU/Burns’ Center) at Hopital Libanais-Geitaoui.

👩🏻‍⚕️Certified in Lifestyle Medicine (LM) | Former ICU doc
🌿I help Lebanese live healthier, longer, and calmer through the 8 pillars of Lifestyle Medicine.
🩺 In Person, Online & Workshop.
📍Lebanon

♥️ Narrative Medicine, Mindfulness & Zentangle In 2005, and till I quit, I was nominated Chief of Department of Intensive Care Unit/Burns Center. In 2013, I decided to quit; taking care of chronic pat

ients had become emotionally exhausting for me. Since, I had continued to practice medicine as General Physician, Smoking Cessation Specialist, Addiction Counseling (Teens, youth and their mothers), either face-to-face or virtual sessions. However, my medical practice was interrupted by my frequent travels to USA and Canada, to visit my daughters. I had also other professional activities, like expert for Lebanese Hospital Accreditations, Public Health writer and consultant (Middle East Strategic Perspectives), health education and awareness, medical blogger (In 2014, I founded, a not-for-profit LAMSA (Lebanon) (www.lamsaleb.org) (Social Media: ). Adding to that, I have followed in 2016 the 8-weeks training in Mindfulness-Based-Stress-Reduction at McGill University. Since, I personally practice this technique on a daily basis and I teach some of the exercises to my patients as stress reduction coping technique. January 2020, I moved to a new office in Brazilia-Baabda, but the Covid19 pandemic had emerged. With the lockdown ease, I am back to work for now as Smoking Cessation Specialist for youth (18-25 years old), privileging however the virtual sessions. Zeina Assaf Moukarzel, MD, MPH, MHA
Lebanese Order of Physicians Registration Number: A/571
Social Security (CNSS) Registration Number: 42/2002
Private cell phone: +961/3-341133

05/07/2026

Ever wonder why people in "Blue Zones", the places with the most centenarians on earth, live so much longer, and healthier?

It's not one secret. It's five habits, practiced daily:
🔵 Moving naturally throughout the day
🔵 Eating mostly whole plant foods
🔵 Managing stress
🔵 Staying socially connected
🔵 Living with a sense of purpose

Lebanese farming communities have quietly been doing this for generations. Turns out ancient wisdom and modern science agree.

03/07/2026

What if the secret to living to 100 isn't on your plate... but around your table? 🫒

Science is clear: connection is medicine.

People with strong social ties have a **50% higher likelihood of survival** over time compared to those with weaker connections (Holt-Lunstad et al., PLOS Medicine, 2010). On the flip side, loneliness raises the risk of early death by **26%** (Holt-Lunstad et al., JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015).

Meaningful relationships don't just make us happier, they lower stress and inflammation, support brain health, and help us recover faster from illness (Harvard Health Publishing; National Institute on Aging).

In Lebanese culture, we've always known this instinctively: health was never just about what's on your plate, it's about who's around it.

We don't just eat together. We thrive together. 🤍

Gather. Nourish. Connect. Live.

Live to 100 in Good Health.

References cited:
1. Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review. *PLOS Medicine*.
2. Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality. *JAMA Internal Medicine* (often cited via *Perspectives on Psychological Science*, 2015).
3. Harvard Health Publishing — on relationships, stress, and brain health.
4. National Institute on Aging — on social ties and healthy aging outcomes.

29/06/2026

Before lifestyle medicine had a name, Lebanese grandmothers were already practicing it.

Mujaddara. Hummus. Tabbouleh. Lentil soup. Zaatar with olive oil.

This is whole-food, plant-predominant eating. Exactly what the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and the European Lifestyle Medicine Organization recommend.

The Mediterranean diet, to which traditional Lebanese food belongs, has the strongest evidence base of any dietary pattern studied for preventing heart disease and cancer.

The threat isn’t Lebanese cuisine. It’s what’s replacing it.

Economic pressure. Ultra-processed imports. Convenience over culture.

Don’t abandon what was always evidence-based. Go back to the table.

Be Mindful.

24/06/2026

10 minutes of morning light outdoors.

It releases melatonin 14 hours later.

Better and deeper sleep which decreases heart disease risk by 34%.

Sleep is mandatory for wellbeing, health, and mental health.

23/06/2026

🌍 Join the Global Social Prescribing Alliance Summit 2026! 🌍

Excited to be part of the on 17th July - a gathering of global leaders, innovators, and practitioners driving the future of social prescribing and community-based health.

🔗 Register now: whis.world/gspa-summit-2026
💬 Let’s connect, learn, and collaborate to make health more proactive, inclusive, and community-powered!

22/06/2026

Nobody talks about what Lebanese men
are actually carrying right now.

- The financial collapse.
- The weight of being the provider when there is nothing left to provide with.
- The shame of not being able to give their family what they promised.
- The grief of watching their children leave.
- The anger that has nowhere to go.
- The exhaustion of performing strength every single day.

رجّال ما بيكي.
A man doesn’t cry.

Our fathers survived a war with that belief.
They were right, for that war, at that time, in those conditions.

But here is what the research shows:

- Suppressed emotion does not disappear.
- It becomes cortisol.
- It becomes elevated blood pressure.
- It becomes a heart attack at 55.

Depression in men does not always look like sadness.

It looks like:
→ Irritability
→ Withdrawal from the people they love
→ Overworking
→ Increased alcohol or narghile use
→ Physical symptoms with no explanation

مش لازم تبكي تكون تعبان.
You don’t have to cry to be struggling.

Asking for help is not weakness.
It is the strongest, most precise decision, a man can make about his own health.

If this is you:
- Talk to someone you trust.
- A friend. A doctor. A professional.
- One person. That is all it takes.

If this is someone you love:
Send them this video.

He will not find it himself.
But he will watch it if you send it.

خليه يعرف إنو مش لوحده.
Let him know he is not alone.

If you are in Lebanon and want to find support’ there is a Lifeline available 1564.

21/06/2026

‎I became myself without him, and I’ll always wonder who
‎I’d have been with him.

‎Je suis devenue moi-même sans lui, et je me demanderai toujours qui j’aurais été avec lui.

‎صِرْتُ مَن أنا بدونه، وسأظلّ أتساءل مَن كنتُ سأصير لو بقي معي

‎⁦‪ ‬⁩
‎⁧‫ ‬⁩
‎⁦‪ ‬⁩

19/06/2026

You are not tired because you are getting older.

You are tired because of some of your habits:

1- Blue light after 9 pm

2- Eating within 2hrs of bed

3- Irregular sleep/wake times

4- Caffeine after 2pm

5- Stress without a wind-down practice

Poor sleep doesn’t just make you tired.

It increases your risk of:

1- Heart disease

2- Type 2 diabetes

3- Depression

4-Dementia

5- Addiction relapse

And no, 5 hours is not ‘fine’.
The research on this is unambiguous.

Sleep is when your brain clears toxins, your celles repair, your hormones reset.

One small change this week: pick the same time and stick to it, even weekends.
That single habit shifts your circadian rhythm in 2 weeks.

Which of these 5 is your biggest sleep saboteur?
Comment below.

Be Mindful.

17/06/2026

After 60, you lose between 1% and 3% of your
muscle mass every single year you don’t train.

That’s not a theory. That’s what the research
on sarcopenia — age-related muscle loss — shows
consistently across thousands of patients.

By 70, if you’ve done nothing, you may have
lost 20–30% of the muscle you had at 50.

And here’s why that matters beyond how you look:

Muscle is what gets you off the floor when
you fall. Muscle is what lets you carry your
groceries. Muscle is what keeps you out of
a nursing home.

The research is clear: two days a week of
resistance training reverses this.

Not slows it. Reverses it. At any age.

Studies in women in their 80s show meaningful gains
in strength and function in 12 weeks.

The evidence behind this:

The 2024 Sports Medicine network meta-analysis of 151 trials found low-volume resistance training was most effective for improving timed-up-and-go, 6-minute walk test, and lean body mass in healthy older adults.

A separate RCT in older women found that even single-set resistance training produced the same improvements in muscle mass, strength, muscle quality, and IGF-1 as multiple-set training after 12 weeks — demolishing the myth that you need to train hard to benefit.

Be Mind Full. Be Mindful.

Address

Beirut

Website

https://www.drzeinamoukarzel.com/

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