I’ve been curious for some time about the arrogance and rudeness in my profession. When a new patient starts to relate her health history and interrupts herself with a comment like, “The so-and-so doctor was awful” (or really unpleasant or disrespectful), I inquire “Oh? What happened?” And she’s truly glad to tell someone, especially a […]
Category: Healthy Lifestyle
Achieving and maintaining a healthy lifestyle can include visits with a lifestyle medicine provider, nutrition counseling, meal planning, stress management and exercise and sleep plans.
Physicians as Morons
I do know that title sounds judgmental, perhaps even harsh, but sometimes you wonder if there might not be a bevy of physicians who received their education online at the University of Phoenix, or their medical licenses by having a relative in Springfield.
Charcoal Grilling and Cancer: How to Reduce Your Risk
First it was smoking (then asbestos and DDT) and now charcoal grilling. One after another, life’s little pleasures are yanked from us by their statistical associations with increased cancer risk.
By now everyone’s heard about the significant connection between colorectal cancer and regular consumption of red meat (beef, pork, lamb) and processed meats (bacon, ham, sausages, cold cuts, hot dogs).
Can You Get Fried By An Airport Scanner?
Ever since 2009, when that guy smuggled plastic explosives in his Jockey shorts and tried to blow up a plane on its way to Detroit, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been pushing for full-body scanners at all airports.
Belly Fat! New Research Reveals…
Between the print and TV ads and the pop-ups scuttling like mice from the four borders of your computer screen, belly fat seems to have surpassed global warming as our next great anxiety.
It’s clear these ads are aimed at women, some of whom fall for the hucksterism of what is for many little more than an annoying physiologic change occurring during a perfect storm of dietary indiscretion, genetic predisposition, and stress. As one patient laconically remarked, “My divorce from hell took a solid year. I finally got rid of him, but in the process…” (patting her tummy with both hands) “I got myself…this!”
Overweight? Blame Your Car
The endless and usually irritating “which is better?” debate between city dwellers and suburbanites came to a grinding halt in 2003 when a study was published showing suburbanites were on average several pounds heavier than their urban counterparts.
The Carrot and Your Longevity
Well, not only the carrot. The sweet potato, too, and also the squash, greens (collard, turnip, and mustard), apples, green beans, cantaloupe, broccoli, and tomatoes, a colorful list you can etch into your brain and learn more about by clicking here.
Sex! Wine! Italians!
Many people, myself included, secretly wish they were Italian. In fact, I’ve been told that Italians themselves divide the world into two groups–Italians and those who wish they were. And perhaps, after reading the results of this medical research, you’ll wish that you too were Italian. That, or at least pour yourself a nice glass of red wine at dinner tonight.
Stress Less: Meditation
Meditation is the simplest relaxation technique to explain and by far the hardest to master.
Money and Happiness
“Money won’t make you happy.” A boring cliché, hammered into our heads by our moms since that gleeful afternoon when we showed her our first day’s profits from the lemonade stand. We still try our best to believe it, but secretly we don’t. In our hearts we’d like–just once–to be tested with wealth.
Sea Salt Nonsense
It was the 1920s social critic H.L. Mencken who etched the phrase into American history: No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.
14 Food Changes to Consider
Today we’re not touching on why sweetened beverages are rotten for you and we’re not ranting against fries, Little Debbies, or that new national favorite, KFC’s Double Down. I’m hopeful you’ve put all that behind you.
How Much Exercise?
I owe the details of this health tip to Dr. Joseph S. Alpert, the physician-editor of the American Journal of Medicine. Since a subscription to this highly respectable journal is, for non-physicians, $166 a year, I’ll assume it’s not regularly thrust through your mail slot and share his article with you.
Keeping Busy is Good For You
My days, probably like many of yours, are extraordinarily busy, and they’ve been that way for decades. I start early, end late, and it does seems as if the day goes by in a finger snap. Weekends, for most of us, is catch-up time for all the stuff we couldn’t squeeze in on weekdays.
Creativity and Health
After you’ve been a doctor as long as I have, you feel entitled to make sweeping generalizations, broad observations, and the like about the patients you’ve been attempting to keep out of harm’s way as efficiently as possible.
How Would You Rate Your Handshake?
Is yours pathetic? You know the type I’m referring to–that near-death handshake you’d expect from the dying Mimi at the end of La Boheme. Or is it the reverse? Have you reached out with your firm grip only to receive a pathetic little dead fish of a handshake in return?
Meet Elaine
So twice a year I head to Florida to visit my 88-year-old aunt. Except for the fact she’s a Fox News Republican, we enjoy each other’s company by agreeing to avoid political arguments. I might add she’s a former nightclub singer and makes a mean martini.
Will Alzheimer’s Skyrocket?
In 2006, the very dark comedy Idiocracy played local theatres for what seemed like a few hours before disappearing into DVD bins and obscure cable channels. Its Rip van Winkle story involves a not particularly bright Army librarian, recruited into a Pentagon hibernation program, awakening centuries into the future and finding himself the most intelligent person in America.
De-Cluttering Your Life
My staff people were chatting up the TV show Hoarders, about people who obsessively hoard stuff. I think you can’t really use the word “enjoy” or even “be entertained by” reality TV. At best the German word schadenfreude might apply, which loosely translates as “secret pleasure in watching the misery of others.”
Health Risks of the Oil Gusher
I still have t-shirts in a drawer somewhere from the 1980s: “Everything You Know is Wrong,” “They are LYING to You,” and “Question Authority.”
These came to mind when I see that everyone who fancies him or herself an “authority” on the deep-sea Gulf oil gusher–spokespeople from university medical schools, government agencies, and the oil industry itself–mainly trying to “reassure” us.