Health & Balance

CNN's Anderson Cooper Copes With Grief

Living With Grief continued...

His father's heart diseaseheart disease has been a lesson to him. Cooper gets his heart checked regularly, along with cholesterol and stressstress tests. He says that he goes through cycles of regular exercise followed by long stretches spent traveling, when he isn't able to work out at all. His diet follows a similar pattern. When he travels, Cooper says, "Some food can be pretty tough to swallow -- literally. I bring Power Bars and canned tuna."

Nowadays, though, life has slowed down some. Although Cooper still goes where disaster calls him, "the idea of decompressing is new to me in the last several years. I'd always stay in motion. I was always driving fast, always going out at night. But it lessens your creative abilities. Now I go out to my house on Long Island for two days and do nothing."

He pauses. "I used to be afraid of stopping. Now I have a life, a home, a mortgage."

And, it seems, a degree of peace.