In that riveting courtroom scene we all know from the movie A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson’s character famously tells us: We can’t handle the truth. That often seems the case with regard to food.
I have encountered the resistance to fundamental truths about food often, but I am committed to doing the best I can to tell them even so. I tell them in narrative every chance I …
Resistance to fundamental truths about food
Colorectal cancer.
Shudder. That’s the knee-jerk response that most of my patients give me when mention of their 50th birthday creeps into the conversation and I reveal that it is time for their screening colonoscopy.
Admittedly, a colonoscopy is not an experience that the overwhelming majority of the human race embraces with excitement and anticipation. Instead, it is a life event that is filled with …
What’s scarier than a colonoscopy?
Let’s consider salt.
The American Heart Association says, “It is estimated that if Americans cut their average sodium intake by more than half – to an average of 1,500 milligrams a day – there would be a nearly 26 percent decrease in high blood pressure and a savings of more than $26 billion in healthcare costs over just a year.”
The American Heart Association recommends foods with little or no salt to …
Finding the best diet for you is an art, not a science
The set-point theory of happiness suggests that our level of subjective well-being is determined primarily by heredity and by personality traits ingrained in us early in life and as a result remains relatively constant throughout our lives. Our level of happiness may change transiently in response to life events, but then almost always returns to its baseline level as we habituate to those events and their consequences over time. Habituation, …
Creating value for others boost to our happiness
Having early-stage Alzheimer’s, I get extraordinarily sentimental when I hear the words of songs when I go for early morning walks with my headphones on.
Yesterday morning, I heard the song, “Memories,” and some of the lyrics hit my heart, soul and mind. I looked up the lyrics on the Web: “Daylight (and the sun was about to rise soon after at that time), I must wait for the sunrise, I …
What is the excuse for not taking action on Alzheimer’s?
When I was a radiation oncology resident in Boston in the early 80’s, a few brilliant minds in physics and medicine came up with the notion that it would be a good idea to treat certain cancers with a beam of protons. Protons are the positively charged particles which are created with a hydrogen atom is split into its component parts, a proton and an electron. When accelerated towards a …
A proton therapy center opens: A radiation oncologist reflects
Infectious disease is the most hyperbolic of all medical fields, at least when the media gets ahold of such.
Right now we are to fear a new avian influenza virus. Previously there was another avian influenza strain whose outbreak threatened the world and of course SARS and, more distantly, the ebola virus and the threat of bioterrorism. And on the …
Is drug resistant bacteria a major public health issue?
When Angelina Jolie announced that she’d undergone a bilateral mastectomy to prevent the breast cancer for which a genetic mutation puts her at high risk, I found myself, as a doctor and as a woman, full of admiration and gratitude for her… and also, in retrospect, for Betty Ford.
In a single New York Times op-ed piece, Ms. Jolie used her celebrity …
Why we should be thankful to Angelina Jolie and Betty Ford
Women are undertreated and underserved when it comes to cardiovascular disease and stroke. Now, more than ever, this may even be more important due to several recent studies that have been published recently.
Several investigations have demonstrated two troublesome facts. In certain areas of the country, life expectancy for women is decreasing and women who smoke are much more likely to have lung cancer than men who smoke. These facts argue …
We continue to fall short in treating women with heart disease
In a word, no (unless you have cancer). So, let’s take cancer out of the picture and discuss hysterectomy for non-cancerous (benign) reasons.
First of all. A hysterectomy (removing the uterus) can be done via one of the 4 methods:
1. Vaginal, a small incision at the top of the vagina and the uterus is removed entirely through the vagina without any incision on the abdomen.
2. Laparoscopic surgery, where incisions are made …
Should you choose to have a robotic hysterectomy?
“Something bad has happened. I’ve got eyelash extensions,” singer and actress Kristin Chenoweth confessed on the “Late Show with David Letterman” last year while wearing large dark sunglasses, and visibly drowsy on Benadryl. “Here’s the problem: The glue has formaldehyde in it, and I’m allergic,” Chenoweth said. “I swelled up and I’m sneezing. . . . It looks like I have lips on my eyelids.”
The Broadway star is far from …
What are the health risks of eyelash extensions?
We live in a strange world. What would happen if tomorrow a common sedative was found to cause 21,000 cancer deaths every year? What if it resulted in breast cancer, mouth cancer, hepatoma and esophageal malignancies, and if the average patient lost 19 years of life? What if the drug also killed by cirrhosis, massive upper GI bleeding, accelerated dementia, and for …
There is no completely safe dose or form of alcohol
Too often patients feel like they’re in the passenger seat when entering the hospital. Even in the best of circumstances — such as planned admissions — patients often don’t feel in control of their own care.
One of the most unnecessary issues facing patients when they enter the hospital is untreated (or undertreated) pain. Often the focus of the medical team is to treat a condition, and controlling a patient’s pain …
How to have a hospital stay without pain
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Psychotic and manic depressive disorders can not only disrupt the life of the person suffering with one of these illnesses, but the lives of family and friends as well.
You should seek professional advice if you suspect that you, a friend or a relative or even a spouse may be experiencing a psychotic or bipolar disorder. It’s important not to attempt a diagnosis yourself. There are many external factors that can …
Understanding psychotic and bipolar disorders
Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians.
A 45-year-old man is admitted to the hospital for a 2-day history of fever and abdominal pain. His medical history is notable for cirrhosis due to chronic hepatitis C, esophageal varices, ascites, and minimal hepatic encephalopathy. His medications are furosemide, spironolactone, nadolol, lactulose, zinc, vitamin A, and vitamin D.
On physical examination, temperature is 36.5 …
MKSAP: 45-year-old man with fever and abdominal pain
In many of our local supermarkets, there is a section of organic produce in addition to produce that is traditionally farmed. For those of us selecting and preparing food for our families, we often wonder what items, if any, we should purchase with the organic label.
When I shop, I typically choose traditionally farmed foods for my family’s meals. There are certain items …
There is little nutritional advantage to organic food
For people of color, skin cancer may not be top of mind as a significant health threat. But as I tell my patients in the multi-cultural borough of the Bronx, NY, skin cancer does not discriminate and it impacts all populations regardless of color.
While somewhat rarer in skin of color, skin cancers, including potentially deadly melanoma, do occur and can be quite …
Skin cancer does not discriminate
Ah, the addictive power of modern food. Never underestimate it.
On a recent trip to New York I happened to be flipping through the channels on my in-flight TV when I ran across Mike Huckabee doing an interview on Fox News. I was surprised to see that he had gained his weight back. The former governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate had staked quite a bit on the success of his …
Did Mike Huckabee foreshadow his journey back to obesity?
Here’s a joke I love: A man goes to an old-school psychiatrist who, at the first session, administers some Rorschach tests.
“Just tell me the first thing that comes to mind,” the doctor instructs the patient as he shows him the ink blots.
“Sex,” answers the patient.
“I see,” says the doctor. “And this one?”
“Sex.”
“And this one?”
“Sex again.”
“Well,” says the doctor, “I see we will have to work on your obsession with sex.”
“Me??” …
The controversy over DSM-5 and the cataclysm in mental health
Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed non–skin cancer among U.S. men. It can be life-threatening, and many men have cancer without knowing it. For those reasons, doctors sometimes look for prostate cancer in healthy men (screen for cancer) by measuring blood levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a protein secreted by the prostate gland. High PSA levels can be caused by cancer and may lead a doctor to take a …
How one urologist approaches PSA testing
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